When Holm blames himself for his friend's death, Ferune gives us another splendid example of "bird talk":
"'Come off that perch, Daniel Holm.'"
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 2011.
- then continues as an uncompromising Ythrian:
"'If I thought you really blame yourself, I would not have left you in office - probably not alive; anyone that stupid would be dangerous. You were executing my plan, and bloody-gut well it worked too, kh'hung?'" (ibid.)
He says that he would have cried Oherran. This is characteristic of him - whereas Holm's response is not in character for the new First Marchwarden:
"Holm knelt and laid his head on [Ferune's] keelbone." (ibid.)
Ferune enfolds and kisses Holm and says:
"'I flew higher because of you...If war allows, honor us by coming to my rite. Fair winds forever.'" (ibid.)
When Ferune is dead, we hear from him one more time because Holm quotes him. The President of the Parliament of Man, favoring accommodation with the Terran Empire, says that "'...the winds of change are blowing.'" (p. 567) Holm replies:
"'I understand that's a mighty old phrase...Ferune had one still older that he liked to quote. How'd it go? "- their finest hour -"'" (ibid.)
So Holm quotes Ferune quoting Churchill - who, by the way, makes it into the Old Phoenix, as does Nicholas van Rijn.
Lastly, we should quote the new Wyvan as he addresses the dead Ferune in the words of the New Faith:
"'High flew your spirit on many winds...'" (p. 559)
(More "bird" language.)
"'...but downward upon you at last came winging God the Hunter. You met Him in pride, you fought Him well, from you He has honor.'" (ibid.)
(For an Ythrian of the New Faith, this is the best possible death, requiring no hereafter to complete or redeem it.)
"'Go hence now, that which the talons left, be water and leaves, arise in the wind; and spirit be always remembered.'" (ibid.)
(What had been Ferune returns to the environment. The spirit which flew high and will be always remembered was the person who is gone, not a separate entity continuing after the death of the body.)
"His sons tilted the litter. The body fell, and after it the torches." (ibid.)
Ferune's widow leads the sky dance.
19 comments:
Hi, Paul!
And this is one point where I disagree with the Ythrian New Faith, it's disbelief in or at least indifference to the issue of whether or not there is an afterlife. Of course, this might stem from the carnivore nature of Ythrians. Or, another possibility is they, like the Tigeries of Starkad, had less interest in the ultimate questions which has troubled or fascinated so many human thinkers, philosophers, theologians, etc.
Sean
Sean,
Anderson weakens the impact of an Ythrian's incredulity at the idea of a hereafter (in "The Problem of Pain") when he shows us that the Old Faith did involve the pagan idea of the dead going down hell road.
Paul.
Sean,
If there is no hereafter, then we will never know! This is logically odd. If I predict an eclipse for noon tomorrow and it doesn't happen, then I will know.
If there is no hereafter, then Evangelicals, Catholics, Exclusive Brethren, Muslims, Witnesses, Krishna devotees etc (each with a different expectation) will die confident of their place in the hereafter and will never be disappointed. This is logically very odd indeed.
How confident is any religious believer that, if a gun is put to his head and the trigger is pulled, he will remain in existence as a conscious entity after his brain has been destroyed? Is he as confident of this as he is that a train will take him from New York to Washington?
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
I would not say that the pagan Ythrian Old Faith's belief in going down hell road necessarily contradicts incredulity about the existence of an after life. Rather, it shows there was more variety in Ythrian thought than originally believed.
Sean
Hi, Paul!
Your first sentence reminds me of Pascal's wager. That is, it makes more sense for the atheist to believe in God than it is to deny Him. If he's wrong, he loses nothing. But, if God exists, he gains everything! Needless to say, we should believe in God for purer reasons than that.
And I only need to point out there HAVE been martyrs who died for their faith, that shows there are believers who were confident the after life exists.
Sean
Sean,
Basically, I agree. Diversity is to be expected. Nevertheless, when that Ythrian in "The Problem of Pain" responded with shock as if he had never heard the idea before and could not see any sense in it, that struck me as a genuinely different and alien response which I appreciated as such at the time.
Paul.
Sean,
Pascal's wager is intellectually dishonest. I cannot believe a doctrine by an act of will merely because it may be in my interests to do so. In any case, I want to continue to seek the truth. Evangelicals tell us that everyone who does not share their belief is damned, even though they can offer neither rational argument nor empirical evidence in favor of their belief. That has to be nonsense but, even if it were somehow incredibly the truth, we cannot do anything about it because we cannot believe anything by a mere act of will and it would be intellectually dishonest to try to do so. There are different beliefs about who is damned and there is no criterion of truth between them.
Do you understand my puzzlement about the strange logical status of belief in a hereafter: that, if there is no hereafter, we will never know. This puts it in a different category from other predictions, like whether there will be an eclipse tomorrow.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Considering how radically diverse Ythrian cultures could be from one another, I still don't think it's necessarily a contradiction that one Ythrian was shocked or astonished at the idea of there being an afterlife. The Ythrian we see in "The Problem of Pain" might well have come from a culture which either denied the after life or had little interest in such questions.
Moreover, I see a contradiction in Ythrians of the New Faith believing in God the Hunter and apparently denying there is an afterlife. To believe God exists seems to me to togically imply the existence of some kind of afterlife.
Sean
Sean,
Interesting but I disagree. Surely there can be a single deity but no hereafter or vice versa? You associate God and hereafter because of your belief but surely there are alternatives? In the Old Testament, God's Covenant was with the living, historical people or nation of Israel, not with individuals who, when dead, faded away in an underworld indistinguishable from that of the pagans. I visited a Reform Synagogue with a school group and the Jewish layman (not a rabbi), when asked, said that they had no belief in a hereafter.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Actually, I agree with you about Pascal's wager. We should believe in God for more honest reasons than the crass self interest seen in Pascal's wager.
I am a Catholic, not an evanglical Protestant. Which means I hold them to be in error in many ways. And the error I focus here is their arrogance in claiming to know who will be saved or not. The Catholic Church teaches that God will judge those who are in error with as much mercy as possible. That means God will judge a Tibetan Buddhist who had never of Christ by what that Buddhist believed was true and by how he had lived his life.
I admit I find your puzzlment to be itself puzzling! Because I do believe God is real and that there is an afterlife. Which means I believe you WILL discover the after life is real after you die (but not for many more years, I hope!).
Sean
Sean,
I will be astonished if I find myself still in conscious existence after dying, astonished! And I doubt that a hypothetical hereafter will be anything like what anyone imagines. But it is surely odd that, if there is no hereafter, then we will never know. With other predictions about the future, we will know if the prediction comes true and know if it doesn't.
Paul.
Two things wrong with Pascal's wager: it is wrong to believe out of self-interest; it is impossible to change our beliefs by an act of will, unless we practice extreme self-deception. Beliefs change on the basis of evidence or reason, not on the basis of a decision: "I decide to believe this." Impossible. I believe that the Earth is a sphere and goes around the Sun, contrary to everyday appearances, because I have been shown evidence and have been presented with arguments that this is the case. I cannot now decide to believe that the Earth is flat.
Hi, Paul!
I have an emotional revulsion to the idea of worshiping a God that exists but that I won't ever have known existed after death because I would be as non existent as a snuffed out candle flame. How would it be right to worship God if I simply ceased to exist after death? Would God truly create beings who knew He existed but who would become NOTHING at death?
What you said about the Old Testament only applies to the older, more primitive parts. It's my belief that as time passed Israel came more and more to realize that there is an afterlife. That was certainly the case with many Jews in Our Lord's time: belief in heaven and hell, good and bad angels, etc.
Frankly, I would not consider Reform Judaism a good source for what most Jews believe. It does makes me wonder what Orthodox Judaism says about such questions.
Sean
Hi, Paul!
Replying to both your notes here.
Of course the hereafter is beyond our understanding while we are still in this life. Both the Beatific Vision (life with God) and the Miserific Vision (damnation) are beyond our understanding in this world.
Look over your copy of Anderson's OPERATION CHAOS, he gives some interesting speculations about what Heaven might be like (esp. after a saint came from Heaven to the assistance of the Matucheks in response to their prayer). And I thought PA's suggestion that Hell might well be an ultimate state of entropy at the heat death of a universe interesting.
In fairness to Blaise Pascal, his remarks about the wager mighth not be meant to be taken seriously (altho I will look it up). I agree it would be hypocritical and deceptive to affect belief in ideas that one does not truly believe. Altho, as a Catholic, I would leave room for divine grace so moving an atheist that he might come to believe in God.
Sean
Sean,
An emotional revulsion is not a logical argument, though! I reckon, if God is there, he knows what he is about, even if it doesn't make sense to us.
To exist temporarily is better than not to exist.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Logically, is it truly better to merely temporarily exist when at death we will eternally cease to exist? To never have known ourselves to have existed? In his boldness as a writer, Poul Anderson examined such ideas in "The Martyr."
Wouldn't a God who created beings who knew or believed He existed and gave them only a brief, temporary existence also be a cruel God?
Sean
Sean,
Not the way I see it. But our beliefs are different. I believe, on the basis of a lot of empirical evidence, that nothing lasts.
"Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
"A bubble in a stream,
"A child's laugh, a phantasm, a dream."
"...our little life is rounded with a sleep."
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Of course nothing merely MATERIAL can last forever. But I believe the human soul is a "substance" which lasts forever. Yes, I realize you don't believe that! (Smiles)
Sean
Sean,
No. The evidence indicates that consciousness, including intelligence, arises as one kind of organism-environment interaction. Cognitive and psychological processes can be expected to end when biological functions cease, just as music stops when a musical instrument is destroyed.
Paul.
Post a Comment