Dagny considers the possibility that her husband, Roan Tom, might have been killed:
"If she devoted the rest of her days to the project, and if the gods were kind, she might eventually get his murderers into her clutch." (p. 483)
Krakeners are polytheists. James Blish's interstellar traders, the Okies, swear by the gods of all stars. Might human-alien contacts on an interstellar frontier with occasional lost of advanced technology revive polytheism? I suggest the following propositions:
gods are personified natural and social forces;
"God" is unified personified external forces;
science depersonifies nature (meteorology replaces the myth of Thor which survives in imagination, art and fiction);
persons are interdependent self-conscious individuals;
therefore, reality incorporates all persons but is not itself a person;
it is "God" as the object of awe and intuited oneness but not as a transcendent person, still less as a multitude of powerful persons;
nevertheless, Dagny, hoping that the gods are kind, responds to reality as she understands it.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It was more complicated than that! E.g., some centuries later we see the captain in command of the Allied Planets expedition on Lokon swearing, IIRC, "In God's name..." in "The Sharing of Flesh." I could argue just as easily that either some planets did not relapse into paganism after the Empire fell or, as civilization revived, monotheism became the preferred faith.
I also thought of Anderson's earlier novel, VAULT OF AGES, where we see the POV character becoming disillusioned with polytheism and deciding that the One God of the ancients was far worthier of faith than the "gods."
Ad astra! Sean
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