Me> PREMISE: Good Malkioni go to Solace after they die.
> PREMISE: Saints are Good Malkioni.
> CONCLUSION: Saints are in Solace.
>Nice and simple, but premise no: 2 is, not wrong, but misleading.
>Replace with - "saints are extraordinary Malkioni"
Extraordinary in what respect? Bad or Good?
>Conclusion becomes: It's not self evident that saints are in Solace.
When someone says 'All Men are Mortal. Socrates was a Man. Therefore Socrates is Mortal', do you interject 'since Socrates was an extraordinary man, it is not self-evident that Socrates is mortal'?
Bear in mind that at least four or five saints are stated in the literature to be in Solace, the onus still is on you (or anybody who wishes to take up the challenge) to demonstrate why Malkioni should believe that Saints are not in Solace.
>And these premises and conclusions still hinge on the Malkioni beliefs,
>and the malkioni don't _know_, they just have their faith.
The Malkioni _know_ just as much as the Theists do. IMO trying to portray the Malkioni as a society which gains its magical power by having faith (per Occam) as a virtue is unsupportable.
Consider:
The Orlanthi knows spells taught by his God. The Rokari utters prayers to the Invisible God that are answered.
The higher magics of the Orlanthi are powered by Orlanth himself. The Rokari know that mortal Saints who placed their faith in the Invisible God can perform deeds that outshine a pagan god.
To feel the presense of his God, the Orlanthi must undertake a pantomine act to receive the hallucination. The Rokari however merely has to go to church and pray at mass, thereby receiving spiritual reassurance from the Invisible God.
The Laws of Orlanth are misremembered by a smelly drunk who can be bought for a cow or even a pint of beer. The Invisible God has commanded that his Laws be written down for all time and interpreted by Holy Men so that the faithful will not fall into Manifest Error.
In keeping Orlanth's laws, the Orlanthi is raided by fellow Orlanthi every summer. In following the laws of the Invisible God and paying his tithe and taxes regularly, the Rokari lives secure in an orderly cosmos where he has nothing to fear from his fellow Rokari.
The Orlanthi claims that Orlanth is the King of all Gods. Yet Orlanth has rewarded his faithful with crushing defeat on the battlefield and so the Orlanthi has to pay taxes to those damned Lunars. The Rokari know the Invisible God, Creator of the Cosmos, has rewarded his followers for adhering to his ways. Accordingly the heralds announcethe the latest victory over the damnable Ralians.
How can anybody say in the face of this that the Malkioni have no 'proof' for their ways?
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