the last voyages // 4. video. no filter except for t-x.

[to_be_caprican]

Some corners of my culture happen to take religion literally.

[ Gaius is using video, and sitting in his cabin. The lights are currently playing up, as they're wont to do, reflecting off all the glass and chrome of his replicated expensive apartment. He has a cigarette, a cup of tea, and little better to do but seek some conversation to defeat

Comments

[majorum_pride]

Nietzscheans don't have one. But I could see how reverence could grow into religion. The great philosophers, the progenitor, the matriarch. and patriarch.

There is also "the Way", a unification of several monotheistic religions that follow "the Divine", their idea o͏̕͢f̨ ̶ţ̧͠h̡e͝ ̶cr͘͞e͜͢a̵͡͠t̵͢ò͠r͘ and creation.

2/2

[majorum_pride]

[And after shaking out his flexi-style journal like that'll help it.] I really hate this static.

Anyway, there is that but Nietzscheans don't observe it.

[to_be_caprican]

So you're an atheist yourself. No inclination towards believing in any higher power, universal truths, greater metaphors, any one true deity, that sort've thing?

[majorum_pride]

Not really.

I've seen something called "The Spirit of the Abyss". The Magog worshipped it as their God and it was the physical representation of the universal void. Of... nothing, I suppose. It wanted to bring about the heat death of the universe.

But to actively want something, and to need others to accomplish it or desire constant attention, makes me question its "heavenly" status no matter how abstract a concept it is.

[momunculus]

There were a handful of religions where I'm from, some dead and some current, though my nation leaned towards a more scientific approach. I suppose you could say that my countrymen treat God as more of an idea than an actual being, but I can't speak for everybody.

[to_be_caprican]

God. I see.

Just the one? Supposing you were to speak for everybody.

[momunculus]

Almost every religion I can think of only worships one god, yes. However, depending on who you ask, not every religion worships the same god, and no one can agree on which one is the true one and which ones are false. Then again, there are others who will claim that they're really one and the same, and that everyone is just splitting hairs.

To complicate matters, there's also your run of the mill frauds and charlatans. If they can't find a god to suit their purposes, then they'll simply pull a new one out of thin air.

[clears her throat] But like I said, my own nation wasn't one for worship, other than a few fringe elements. I can only give you my observations. If you're looking for personal experience, then I'm afraid you're out of luck.

[to_be_caprican]

I'll take anecdotal data as well as personal, it's all rather the same to me. I'm not religious, myself, so it's only fair.

So these monotheists, they believe theirs is the one and true god? Truer than the other ones, I mean.

[no_fastolfe]

...'Earther?' Are you from a Spacer world?

[Another Spacer aboard? COULD IT BE? No, Vas. Chill.]

[to_be_caprican]

Spacer? [ Takes a second to think. ] No, not a term I've heard on any colony, I don't think. So sorry.

I take it you're an alien like I am.

[no_fastolfe]

[Her nose tilts into the air a solid twenty degrees.]

I am human, no-one has as yet tried to tell me otherwise. But I am a Spacer; an Auroran. Born on the oldest of the fifty colonized Spacer worlds. And we are quite different from Earthers.

[Ugh. Now she's remembering Sherlock's words about racism and that's something she so deeply doesn't want to address.]

Physiologically and culturally. [There. That's specific and not a slur!]

[to_be_caprican]

I'll believe it. You being human. I mean, so am I.

Fifty's-- a frakking lot of worlds, I can't imagine the politics. My home's only got twelve. I don't know about Spacers, but I'm a... Colonial, I guess, from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Thus far, can't see much different between us and--

You call them Earthers, too? I sort've just made it up for lack of anything else.

[nicebluehat]

Personal beliefs, or what's common back home?

I'm sure you'll hear plenty about the major religions of my planet from others, and this isn't my area of expertise, but back home it's a series of actions - - the standard burning of incense, formal prayer, almsgiving, that you'll find anywhere - done to please a god or gods, who are simultaneously part of a great spirit permeating all that exists and intensely local to a particular shrine of a city, village tree, crossroads... It's the actions more than the intent that appear to matter in general, and it can be easily reduced to superstition. It's not considered incompatible with Buddhism, strangely. [He referenced the River Styx, she'll expect him to understand Buddhism.]

I thought it was all nonsense until I met a few of our higher deities. I still don't know where I stand with them.

[to_be_caprican]

[ Buddhism? Nope. His video feed shows only the mild incomprehension of someone learning something foreign, if not too confusing. Much. He doesn't bother chasing the word, just sort of unconsciously files it away into the other bits and pieces he's encountered. ]

You've met them?

...I suppose anything's possible, technically. I'm going to take a wild guess and say they were not named, oh, Apollo, Athena, Dionysus...

[nicebluehat]

No. [she caught the irony but this is serious business to her, Gaius] Myths about the ones you listed are considered part of Earth's cultural tradition even outside Greece, but they're treated as literary figures rather than literal gods to be worshipped. [She shakes her head with a rueful smile.] For all I know now, they're other names for who I met.

You're likely unfamiliar with the story of Izanagi, but it bears some notable parallels with your Orpheus. I met a few of the players in that legend.

[to_be_caprican]

[ His eyebrows shoot up when the gods are recognised, and an incredulous, almost pleased grin breaks when they're referenced as literary. It's an odd shaped puzzle piece to the grander scheme of what Gaius is working out, but he knows it goes somewhere. ]

Right. You do get around, don't you?

[hourglass_twin]

How else would you interpret religion but literally?

[to_be_caprican]

Some choose to take the scripture as metaphor, you know. Sort've like a morality tale. The gods being representations of concepts instead of actual beings. Slightly less mental than the others, if you ask me.

[hourglass_twin]

I suppose it makes sense if you've never met a god.

[to_be_caprican]

Indeed. The gods in my world aren't really that, mm. Sociable, I suppose. And they can stay that way.