The Doom was:
"...terrible fury from the air..." (p. 20)
- which:
"...wrecked and burned..." (ibid.) cities.
Poul Anderson's twentieth century readers knew what that was.
Many early explorers of the wrecked and abandoned cities:
"...died of lingering sickness..." (ibid.)
- so the cities became taboo. Taboos make sense. They were the only precaution that could be taken.
However, something else happens:
"...many thought that the 'glowing death' was the sign of godly anger." (ibid.)
"...godly...," not "Godly." John says:
"'...the gods go with you.'" (p. 21)
The story is set in a:
"...region of the Allegheny Mountains.'" (p. 19)
Would polytheism return to a formerly civilized region? Is polytheism a kind of natural religion to which societies revert when civilization is removed? In some works by Anderson and by James Blish, interstellar travellers invoke "the gods." (Personally speaking, polytheism appeals to my imagination but not to my intellect.)
3 comments:
Humans are natural animists; they project personality and intention onto everything in their environment. Cursing an inanimate object and kicking it is an illustration of this. Polytheism is a natural outgrowth of animism. Monotheism, I think, was the result of a series of low-probability accidents.
We explain many phenomena by unifying them. Thus, one law of gravity explains the fall of an apple and the orbits of planets. One atomic/molecular theory explanations the multiple forms and transformations of matter. It came to seem that one god explained a diverse but unified nature better than many gods. Now we explain natural phenomena by impersonal forces but there are only four basic forces and theoreticians try to unify them.
"Monotheism, I think, was the result of a series of low-probability accidents."
That fits with a website conversation I had here
https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=10476
Search down the page for 'Baerg' for the main part of the discussion about religion.
I had expressed surprise at the statement that Athens during the 'Greek Dark Age' had no religion. The reply by the author of the website includes "(And having a religion with only a single god who actually rules over humanity? That’s extremely weird, mostly limited to Judaism and its offshoots.)"
The whole series "https://lawcomic.net/" is very interesting.
Post a Comment