Yakow Harolsson, High Commander of the Companions of the Arena in Orcus on Aeneas is surprisingly scientific despite his quasi-religious status but his world view shades off into speculative philosophy. The Companions guard Ancient buildings and catacombs and Harolsson even has his office inside one.
He tells Ivar:
the Companions take no official position on whether Jaan the prophet is a returned Ancient and do not serve any religion;
faith in the supernatural is not empirically verifiable;
divine intervention may have suspended natural law by working miracles but these, by definition, are not experimentally repeatable;
the truth or falsity of historical claims can be investigated but, if Christ rose, he may have been in a coma, not dead;
or, if a saint did not live, it does not follow that the creed associated with him is false;
the Companions believe that the Elders existed on Aeneas a million years ago because they daily see the radiostatically dated Relics just as they believe in their sun and moons because they see them.
However, he infers that those beings evolved and moved away and hopes that they help less evolved beings to advance. Thus, an inference and a hope.
Ivar is skeptical because:
of the many known races, none have evolved further;
nothing natural evolves indefinitely;
natural selection stops when technology ensures survival.
On the other hand, who knows what exists in the rest of the universe? The answer, of course, is that we do not know. Therefore, the Commander's inference and hope are unwarranted.
1 comment:
Hi,Paul!
Quite right, what the Commander says about how whether a saint was real or not, that does not disprove Catholic Christianity. Here I was reminded of how it's now thought St. George and St. Christopher were merely legendary, not actual persons.
Sean
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