>> This is getting onto dangerous ground so I will say just
> > that "Knowing" your god exists (with a big K) and knowing your god
> > exists are two different things. I was using the big K.
>
You seem to be drawing an epistemological distinction that doesn't
exist. It's difficult to refute your contention accurately without
knowing what difference you think the capital letter makes, but I'll
take a stab at it anyway (and if I'm wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me!)
By small-k knowledge you might mean 'being fairly certain', as opposed to 'being absolutely confident'. This is a true distinction, but it doesn't apply here because ancient peoples were 'absolutely confident' that gods existed, just as much as Gloranthans are. (They might, of course, be less confident that a particular sacrifice to those gods worked, or that particular myths were true, but that's a different question).
Alternatively, you might mean 'believing in something that happens to be false'. But the objective truth of a statement has no bearing on the subjective experience of believing it with absolute certainty.
Thirdly you might mean 'believing in something which you cannot prove to be true through direct observation'. This again, is not relevant, since there is ample proof of the existence of the gods of the ancient world - at least, from the perspective of a ancient person. Take the rain god. Water falls out of the sky; there it is, doing it right now. What more proof of the existence of a rain god could you possibly need? What other conceivable explanation could there be for rain falling out of the sky? Every time it rains you have your cast-iron-couldn't-possibly-be-doubted proof that there's a rain god. Not believing in the rain god would be like not believing in gravity. Heortling's ability to enter the God-world and to cast magic doesn't give them an epistemological edge, since its only proving something which is obviously true (much as Newton's laws didn't make people any more confident that gravity existed than they already were). Besides, there were plenty of people in the ancient world - heck, in the present world - who were pretty damn confident that they really had travelled to the God/Spirit/Whatever World, so I doubt that's much of a difference.
Or you might have meant something else I haven't thought of :-)
>> Real humans, now and in the past, may know their god exists, but purely on faith.
>
I disagree. Specifically, I disagree because they've got proof. Rain
falling, the sun rising, the shaman entering the spirit world, the
spirit voices in the underground temple, that sense of oneness you get
when you touch the divine... some of these things might not convince all
of us today (although some of them do remain pretty convincing to most
people) but they were convincing in the past. You didn't need faith to
prove your god existed - you had proof. Faith that your god would
triumph over his enemies, faith that his rules are the right rules,
faith that the priests really do know how to appease him; these things
you needed. But not for things you could prove were true through your
own personal experience.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ --__--__-- End of Glorantha Digest
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