Back to Peter Metcalfe and me.
Me>>>>Why do any of these deities have to tell their worshippers anything?
It
>>>>ain't a lie 'til it's denied.
PM>>>I faintly recall a Divination spell in da roolz. I've never heard
ME>>As I said it's not a lie unless it's denied. As far as I can tell
you're
>>working from the following assumptions:
>>1) People are generally inquisitive and questioning
>>Wrong-people are generally unquestionning and submissive-they believe what
>>authority figures tell them.
>PMWrong. *Some* people will be inquisitive and questioning. There have
>been philosophy minded people in just about every closed minded
>religion you care to name. St Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam and
>Ibn Rushd for starters. These people weren't outcasts but were actually
>*listened* to by the authorities. They weren't all doupleplusgoodthinkful
>bigbrotherluving proles in the middle ages.
We're not talking about the Middle Ages here we're talking about the Dark Ages. Remember Socrates? Remember Galileo (if you want to drag the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in on this)? Of course there's always inquisitive and questioning people around. A lot of them are 1) dismissed as nutcases, 2) ignored, 3) rubbed out by the authorities.
ME>>Societies have been based on lies before and this isn't even
>>that big a lie.
>Codswallop. It's quite a big one. I strongly dislike it because
>in the 1500+ years of Dara Happan Society, *someone* is bound to
>spill the beans that their imperial theology is based on the
>gloranthan equivalent of the Donation of Constantine. If Yelm
>was really bound by something called the compromise, then why
>wasn't it revealed during the Plentonic Debates, the Empire of
>Nysalor, the Karsdevanic Clarification, the birth of the Lunar
>Empire and the Restoration? All these events were accompanied by
>serious soulsearching. The Plentonic debates started because people
>noted contradictions between what Plentonius said and the real world.
>For something as big as 'Our God is not all powerful' *not* to be
>revealed all through these years strains credibility methinks.
Hah. Don't forget Goebbels(?) "No lie succeeds like a Big Lie." (Badly misquoted)
1) Egypt-thousands of years of history-Pharoah is the living God. 2) The Roman Empire 500 years or so of the Emperor as God. 3) Over 1900 years of the Catholic Church-the Pope is God's right hand man. 4) Any religion-there are gods.
This list could go on and on.
(Sorry if this offends any theists but I'm an agnostic).
There probably were periods of dissent and cries of Yelm isn't almighty. Quickly followed by purges and shushing up of the whole business. Why on Glorantha would they write down that these sorts of events occurred? Peasants, business people and generals do not normally give a cowsflop for introspection-if some idea is going to interfere with their day to day business they will ignore it, ridicule it, or squash it.
As far as some people's tendencies to try and explain all Gloranthan activities, i.e. the origins of the gods, etc. in RW terms assuming that Glorantha works just like the RW this just makes me sad.
Oliver D. Bernuetz
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #284
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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