Hard Core Owen. from Alex Ferguson on 1997-06-19 (Glorantha Digest Vol 04)

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_interzone.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:37:17 +0100 (BST)

Owen Jones:
> Let me throw my hat in the ring as a hard core subjectivist then. In my
> (current!) view gods are a natural by-product of the creative juices of a
> magically capable people. The birth of a god requires a spark of life
> similar to that which fires up any sapient creature. However, without
> worshippers, a god has nothing to tie it to the real world and give it
> form.

I'd agree with the others that have said this isn't a "hard-core subjectivist" position at all, really, at least in the terms of the foregoing discussion/raging debate. In fact, you seem to be saying that the gods are, effectively, "objectively real", just that they _became_ real by a process that had lots of humans (and others) in the loop.

There are really several separate questions here, though they tend to be lumped together in practice:

The gods are (objectively/subjectively) experiencable.

The "history" of the gods, in general or in particular (does/does not) correspond to their mythology.

The gods are eternal and unchanging, vs. the gods are (wholely/partly) (artifacts of/created by) (belief/worship/other).

Obviously these choices interact, so some permutations might be very confusing, untenable, or imply very strange Gloranthas.

My much (applauded/reviled) Five Point Scale only addressed the first of these questions, since that was (if anyone remembers that far back) what was originally at issue. Doubtless if we had a scale for the others as well, we'd end up with a different combination for every Digester (except for large pools of "asleep", "don't care", and "voted for more than one candidate").

Softly, softly,
Alex.