Me>> Brithos is a land where the Death God is not worshipped.
>> Yet its inhabitants are shit-scared of Death.
>I propose two possibilities:
>There is some form of death worship going on there - non-human, so the
>Brithos guys know nothing and care nothing about it. (Or how about
>Underground - I've just thought?)
Yuck. The Brithini do not allow the worship of gods within their lands (cf the Arolanit sidebar in the Genertela Book).
>There is so much death worship going on that even though it is
>relatively distant it still affects Brithos.
Yuck. I've a better idea. Why don't we say that Gods do not need sapient worship and can manifest without it? That way we can sleep easier without worrying about Orlanthi Care-bears being necessary for storms to exist or underground death worshippers to frighten the Brithini with Death...
>What I was proposing was that if a god owns a rune, or rather owns
>the basic force which has been classified into a rune (to answer an
>earlier point you made), then if he is destroyed then that basic force
>has to go.
How does one destroy the Wind or the Sun? Since it's pretty much impossible then why _bother_ introducing oodles of amateur metaphysics to screw up glorantha?
Me>> In case you missed it the first time round, physical manifestations do
>> not need human or any sapient worship to happen.
>> Even if all intelligent life in glorantha was eradicated, then there will
>> still be storms.
>I disagree.
>If all intelligent life, or more specifically all life capable of
>worship, in Glorantha was eradicated there'd be no more gods.
Proof? All we have is human worship can affect physicial manifestations. But that does not mean that human worship is the source of all physical manifestations.
>[Incidentally - I'm not extending my theories to cover pre-dawn time. I
>don't know what was happening then (which I hope addresses another
>objection you raised)]
No, it doesn't. I refuted your arguement with the time honored _reducio ad absurdum_ to the effect that since Gods were around before humans were made, ergo they don't need worship. All you have said is 'I can't answer that'. So your theory is wrong.
>Your statement about physical manifestation needs an explanation I'm
>afraid, don't just shout it louder at me. What causes physical
>manifestation?
THEIST: The God.
SCIENTIST: A Physical Manifestation needs no cause other than its existance. Afterall a brick is not caused by a building.
>If the answer is scientifically based, why should that
>supercede a conflicting theist (or mystic, or natural) explanation?
Who said it does? OTOH you seem to think that if a scientist gives a correct prediction then he is disproving theism. Thus you seem to want scientists to get wrong results without noticing that this would disprove the scientist's view.
>> A strong wind. Temples to Orlanth are only found in the Genertelan
>> Barbarian Belt. There are plenty of mountain tops where strong winds
>> can be found all over glorantha.
>If you're saying, and _know_, not just saying, that in a land thousands
>of miles away from _any_ storm worship whatsoever, there are mountains
>with hurricane winds blowing in them, then my theory doesn't fit.
Yes. Ergo you are wrong in saying that Gods need worship to manifest.
>At the same time, teleport a Storm God worshipper there, and he's going
>to realise that there is little correlation between Storms and his Storm
>God.
>He's going to ask himself: Why am I bothering? Storms just happen. What
>about all my myths where Orlanth (say) did such and such a thing with
>his storms - sounds like it could have been a freak of the weather.
You've implicitly assumed that the Orlanthi believes that his God cannot manifest without worship. Given that I deny this both as a Orlanthi belief and as a universal truth, how is the Orlanthi going to come up with the conclusion that the storm is a freak of the weather?
>Same thing would happen if a Malia worshipper was teleported into the
>middle of a huge plague, and there's no Malia presence there in any form
>(or it's a very weak presence). Or, if you say Malia is just a name of
>the Disease Goddess, there is no Disease Goddess worship anywhere in the
>vicinity. It disproves the statement that the Disease Goddess is the
>mother of disease, and breaks the theistic argument.
Note that once again Richard has inserted his own theory that Gods Need Worship to Manifest into the scenario. If we deny the validity of that argument (and thus remove it from the scenario) _then_ the statement 'the Disease Goddess is the mother of disease' cannot be disproved and so the Theistic argument holds.
>> The Brithini and the Vadeli are notorious atheists and the Malkioni
>> are only marginally better. Many educated Malkioni see the Sun as
>> merely a Glowing Ball of re and deny the existance of Gods. Despite
>> this, they see the sun in the sky.
>I reckon the sun don't shine so bright over there.
And you are wrong.
>Sun worshippers I'm sure used
>to believe that the sun shone brightest over their temples. Sun
>worshippers got their come-uppance in this world when scientists come
>along with instruments and proved them wrong.
Perhaps if you stopped being so sure and took the trouble to look things up, you will find that this fantasy didn't happen anywhere.
>Scientists can't disprove theists the way they can here.
We can prove God doesn't exist? When did that happen?
>They have to _share_ idea-space, theorem-space, whatever we care to
>call it. Where there is a conflict, there must be compromise.
Oh? Why can't they simply talk past each other as happens in the Real World?
>> Odd. Before you claimed that one viewpoint cannot prove itself
>> superior to another. Now you explicitly deny that the theist can make
>> wrong predictions.
>No, the theist would have said no wind.
You said he would predict slight breezes and then went on to say that this is what would be observed. Why the sudden change of mind?
>> To be perfectly frank, I do not have a great deal of time for this
>> theory that the manifestation of gods are dependant on human worship.
>> The greatest concentration of the sea gods are found in the depths
>> where according to Tales #10 and Glorantha Beastiary, the worship
>> of the Sea Gods is at its strongest near the shores.
>Not necessarily human. I would have thought there were rather a lot of
>fish worshipping the sea gods in the sea.
Note that I said the _depths_ where there are very few fish (due to lack of sunlight etc).
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #571
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