> If you believe in subjectivism, then yes Humakt has no free
>will and will act only in the way his worshippers expect him to (which
also
>should mean no freedom of action either).
I'm not a subjectivist. At least, certainly not in the strict sense you imply, though I have been widely accused of it during many debates on the subject.
> ....If,
however, you believe that the
>worship of Humakt has grown up around Humakt being what Humakt is, then
>it's not necessarily the case that Humakt has no free will.
However, I believe that Humakt does have an existence independent of his worshipers (i.e. things would still die, etc), but that Humakt has no free will. You may disagree, though you have said previously that Humakt doesn't have free will. I just think that your apparent beliefe in his ability to decide to change himself spontaneously is a contradiction. Obviously we define these terms differently, which doesn't help.
>
- -..It is entirely
>possible that he could change the Way he Is and his worshippers would
>either follow suit or go off and worship someone else.
You believe this, I don't. I think the existing corpus of material on heroquesting and the theyalan view of the nature of the compromise (and Humakt is after all a Theyalan god) amply backs me up in this.
>Would a god exist if he had no worshippers is an interesting question,
IMO
I would say yes.
>Being the cynic & stirrer that I am, of course my view (in the minority
of
>one) is that all the gods were created by the priestly classes at the
dawn
>of time & they use the pow sacrificed to them to tap into earth power
(for
>want of a better term).
Now we're on a different topic, but I believe it is still relevent to our mutual understanding of our possitions Re. Humakt.
How did this priestly class come about? How did they learn to access this power? Are the current priestly classes aware of this? How does it affect their relationship with preists of enemy cults, if they're all in on a big conspiracy? If they aren't currently aware of it, how was the conspiracy forgotten so easily - the dawn was only 1620 odd years ago. How did the conspiracy split into so many fractious world-spaning cults and yet remain secret, with no trace of it in history? How do you explain the fact that the number of worshipers a god has doesn't necesserily affect the apparent power of the god, or the cult's magic? How do malkioni and easter Mysticism fit into this?
>One could even say that that's the secret of the god learners.
Except that the God Learner magic nolonger works, so if what you say was ever true, it isn't now. The God Learner experiments all failed in the end.
>Not that this is the secret of the god learners; I could tell you what
it
>is but I won't .... just yet.
How could you 'say that that's the secret of the god learners', if it isn't?
I'm confused.
Simon Hibbs
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