Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination
She asks for more clarification, and I am glad to provide it, staunch in my atheist views. I had had this debate many times before, this was well covered territory for me.
"The human race on my world is still relatively young when compared with the actual age of the world. Thousands of years ago, all the way until quite recently (hundreds of years ago), religion and science were one and the same - a way of providing explanations for things they otherwise didn't entirely understand. Things like why does the Sun rise, why do great natural disasters happen, or plagues, etcetera. Humans are intrinsically curious, but not all boast the same abilities to be able to keep digging for answers more detailed than 'a god did it'." He paused to take a breath, to grab a sip of his drink.
"As time went on, as science evolved and provided answers to a great many things, many who still devoutly trusted that it was their 'God' or 'Gods' (depending on which religion) sought to undermine and deny what science had explained. So they edited their 'original' texts to suit their means, they endorsed slavery, they endorsed rape, and they actively restricted means of their less fortunate followers from receiving education, so that they might some to their own conclusions." It was terrible, and my tone became carefully guarded as I spoke of the dark things religious fanatics would do.
"Even the 'nicest' interpretation of certain religious texts still restricted couples who shared genders from being romantically involved, or advised that it was 'sinful' to have sex before one was married in the eyes of 'God'. And people believe in it, they follow the priests en masse, they worship and pray and even though they live in so-called 'sin' themselves, they are more concerned with making sure everyone else on the world believes in what they do rather than see that there is a much more logical way to see the world - through science.
"The Egyptian Gods were long-ago classed as mythology, though they existed for the same reason as all religions on my world do - to help man interpret the world around him, and to allow a few privileged folk to lord it over the masses, by anointing themselves as 'blessed' by the very gods they invented." I was talking a lot, but I didn't want to leave anything out for her, lest she feel like I was trying to hide something from her.
I listened to her talk of her family, admiring her tattoo, nodding with a small frown on my brows as she mentions their dying. It would seem a lot of death surrounded Wessex, but still she lived on, seemingly strong enough to keep on living despite the trials and tribulations of her past. "How long have you been Ascended for?" I ask softly, curious as to when that all tied in to her story, her history - her in general.
"The human race on my world is still relatively young when compared with the actual age of the world. Thousands of years ago, all the way until quite recently (hundreds of years ago), religion and science were one and the same - a way of providing explanations for things they otherwise didn't entirely understand. Things like why does the Sun rise, why do great natural disasters happen, or plagues, etcetera. Humans are intrinsically curious, but not all boast the same abilities to be able to keep digging for answers more detailed than 'a god did it'." He paused to take a breath, to grab a sip of his drink.
"As time went on, as science evolved and provided answers to a great many things, many who still devoutly trusted that it was their 'God' or 'Gods' (depending on which religion) sought to undermine and deny what science had explained. So they edited their 'original' texts to suit their means, they endorsed slavery, they endorsed rape, and they actively restricted means of their less fortunate followers from receiving education, so that they might some to their own conclusions." It was terrible, and my tone became carefully guarded as I spoke of the dark things religious fanatics would do.
"Even the 'nicest' interpretation of certain religious texts still restricted couples who shared genders from being romantically involved, or advised that it was 'sinful' to have sex before one was married in the eyes of 'God'. And people believe in it, they follow the priests en masse, they worship and pray and even though they live in so-called 'sin' themselves, they are more concerned with making sure everyone else on the world believes in what they do rather than see that there is a much more logical way to see the world - through science.
"The Egyptian Gods were long-ago classed as mythology, though they existed for the same reason as all religions on my world do - to help man interpret the world around him, and to allow a few privileged folk to lord it over the masses, by anointing themselves as 'blessed' by the very gods they invented." I was talking a lot, but I didn't want to leave anything out for her, lest she feel like I was trying to hide something from her.
I listened to her talk of her family, admiring her tattoo, nodding with a small frown on my brows as she mentions their dying. It would seem a lot of death surrounded Wessex, but still she lived on, seemingly strong enough to keep on living despite the trials and tribulations of her past. "How long have you been Ascended for?" I ask softly, curious as to when that all tied in to her story, her history - her in general.
CHULANE
