"'...Calforni threw out the Mong long ago...'" (p. 148)
- so a single sentence tells us that a lot of history has passed.
Assessing the competing pantheons, the mayor of Hope, the new settlement with the mysterious windmills, says that:
Oktai and his fellow gods are Asians so they should have left with the Mong;
Sanacruceans attend the church of Tanaroa and Lesu Haristi because the Maurai do;
the Meycans worship Esu Carito;
but he himself trusts in science and arms.
In Preston, near here, there is a dog leg street with a Hindu Temple at one end and a riverside pub at the other. For a while, a Pagan moot met in the pub so I like to imagine Indian gods at one end of the street and British gods, including the river god, at the other. The gods enrich our lives but we imagine them, not vice versa. If we lived nearer, I would visit that Temple now and again.
5 comments:
I don't mind a mishmash of religions, myself, but that's because I don't take any of them too seriously. With people who do, there's potential trouble.
I should have added: "particularly with religions which claim exclusive validity".
The One behind all the gods might be taken seriously but even then there are different ways to understand It - or THAT (the term used in the Upanishads).
Paul: yeah, but note that the Religions of the Book, which make claims to an utter and singular "Truth", have been expanding at the expense of all the others for a long time.
They work better -as religions-, that is, as self-reinforcing meme collections, precisely because they're absolutist and intolerant.
If the other guy is prepared to negotiate and you're not, you end up eating him.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, if you believe something is TRUE, you will carry more CONVICTION than someone who does not really believe in anything.
Ad astra! Sean
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