Can Your SCIENCE Explain Why It Rains?!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I mentioned before that I wanted the OGYAFE to have Untrue Religions, because as far as I'm concerned that's how religions are in our world work. What I didn't expect was how much fun I'd be having.

Here in The Real World, I have to admit that carrying on about nonsense like ghosts and spirits and psychics and astral planing and horoscoping drives me NUTS. "You know that's bullshit, right?" is the only thing I can think of to say. And I don't actually say it; it's just all I can think of to say, so instead I just stay quiet and then later go slam my head against something.

And yet here in this world I have characters who are totally, and rather hilariously casually, invested in astrology and animism and superstition,* which has about as much basis in the reality of their world as it does in ours, and I am having a BLAST. The setting is sorta-kinda mid-20th-Century in terms of technology, so you get people who are earnestly arguing about what a site's spirits will think of a new skyscraper being built on their turf, or including demon appeasement intheir car maintenance routines, or considering the most auspicious position of the stars when closing business deals, or--well, the entire tangential story I've got loudly playing in my head right now is based on a controversy about modernizing and exploiting spirits--and I love it. Here in our hospital a chapel strikes me as silly; in their world I LOVE that there's a little spirit shrine in every room.

... Then again, I do think they are being silly in the other world; I am just more tolerant of it. And I am fascinated with silly beliefs in both worlds, but around here it's more train-wreckish. Maybe I don't mind so much in OGYAFEland because they're fictional, and thus no real people get hurt when they believe in nonsense. Or maybe I should take a lesson from my own response to my characters, and try to treat real people who carry on about bullshit with more enjoyment than annoyance.

But it is still bullshit.


*But not, they will stress, in gods. That would be ridiculous.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a good exercise getting into the headspace of someone so different from yourself, isn't it?

I've always been bothered by books where Everyone Knows The Right Religion. It makes a little more sense when the gods walk among people, but even then I'd expect a whole lot of arguments about what they actually MEANT by what they said, etc. And if you've got a lot of gods (never read the Wheel of Time, so I don't know), then I'd expect different groups to focus on different ones. And after a long enough, time, they would forget about/downgrade the others...

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

The Belgariad is a good example of that. After the Gods agreed to remove themselves from the world, a group of Alorians misinterpreted Belar's last instructions and actually became a major hindrance. (And then there was the whole matter of Relg) It shows how hard it is to get things right even with gods around.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Darn that Bear Cult. If Alorns will find a way to misinterpret something, they will, especially when it means they get to try to take over the world.

To add to that excellent example, Eddings's Elenium and Tamuli series also have an entertaining take where the Elene god, whose church is definitely not a stand-in for the Catholic Church, is remote and uncommunicative and hierarchichal and only talks through his priests, causing his followers to have to interpret things themselves. I like that all the other gods frequenly gripe about what a stuffy old codger he is.