From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Thu 19 Jun 1997 - 22:37:17 EEST
Owen Jones:
> Let me throw my hat in the ring as a hard core subjectivist then. In my
> (current!) view gods are a natural by-product of the creative juices of a
> magically capable people. The birth of a god requires a spark of life
> similar to that which fires up any sapient creature. However, without
> worshippers, a god has nothing to tie it to the real world and give it
> form.
I'd agree with the others that have said this isn't a "hard-core
subjectivist" position at all, really, at least in the terms of the
foregoing discussion/raging debate. In fact, you seem to be saying that
the gods are, effectively, "objectively real", just that they _became_
real by a process that had lots of humans (and others) in the loop.
There are really several separate questions here, though they tend
to be lumped together in practice:
The gods are (objectively/subjectively) experiencable.
The "history" of the gods, in general or in particular (does/does not)
correspond to their mythology.
The gods are eternal and unchanging, vs. the gods are (wholely/partly)
(artifacts of/created by) (belief/worship/other).
Obviously these choices interact, so some permutations might be very
confusing, untenable, or imply very strange Gloranthas.
My much (applauded/reviled) Five Point Scale only addressed the first
of these questions, since that was (if anyone remembers that far back)
what was originally at issue. Doubtless if we had a scale for the
others as well, we'd end up with a different combination for every
Digester (except for large pools of "asleep", "don't care", and "voted
for more than one candidate").
Softly, softly,
Alex.
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