in Poul Anderson's "Star of the Sea" -
I: a goddess of the sea;
II: a goddess of war;
III: a goddess of peace;
IV: the mother of God.
To summarize Friedrich Engels' account of theistic religions:
personifications of natural forces;
personifications of social forces;
unified personification of external forces;
cessation of personification.
Thus:
I is nature polytheism;
II and III are progressive stages of social polytheism;
IV is monotheism;
the secularist Time Patrol agents represent atheism.
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to object to the last sentence of this blog piece of yours. I've never seen anything in the Time Patrol stories to make me think atheism was either required or desired.
Sean
Sean,
Of course atheism is not and should not be required. I meant that, in this story, the particular agents, Everard and Floris, are secularists as far as we can see.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but they are not dogmatist "secularists." And I never got the impression that Manse thought of himself as "philosophically" a secularist.
Sean
Sean,
OK. I only meant "non-religious," not dogmatic or philosophical.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And we do see members of the Time Patrol occasionally thinking about God. E.g., after Lorenzo de Conti, a good man innocently caught up in a causality vortex or nexus was killed, Wanda Tamberly was grieved and said: "Goodbye....If there is a God, I hope He makes this up to you" (THE SHIELD OF TIME [Tor, 1990], page 354.
Sean
Sean,
That is the agnostic prayer which anyone can make. God, if He exists, at least hears it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree! And I think Dominic Flandry came close to making that agnostic prayer when he said farewell to Kossara Vymezal at her lying in state/honor in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Sean
Sean,
More than close. He did address Kossara in her (to him unproven) hereafter.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Dang! I should have remembered that. True!
Sean
Sean,
Thus, Flandry becomes perhaps the first person to pray to St Kossara.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree! And did Flandry ever visit Dennitza again in later years? He certainly would have visited St. Kossara's tomb.
Sean
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