Having slept on my own question to myself I think the answer is at least
partly that it is interesting to seriously consider the ramifications of
something that I myself would not have believed sufficiently possible to
assert in an official game setting. There are lots of reasons, some of
which I alluded to, to say, "existing Earth faiths would probably not
project forward so essentially unchanged," but once you let go of that, it
is a great deal of fun to say, "screw that, what if they did?" Which after
all is what SF is actually about: taking existing aspects of human
experience, putting them somewhere else, and playing with what might
happen.
I think to the extent that the "Ortho-Catholic Church" was successful, it
would play off the "fact" that their initial evangelization would draw on
Solomani populations, so that there is a common nexus in their pasts so
that the events and doctrine can feel relevant to them. Further, the
Traveller humaniti conceit allows some of that deep resonance connection
to be deployed for evangelization of other human races. If you add in the
"Roman" concept of discovering your gods everywhere you go (and if they
are "The Gods," of course you would, this is not merely cynical, but also
true and faithful). The big fun would be how the OCs would deal with
"messiah" figures in other faiths they deal with, whether they attempt to
disprove them, overwrite them, or co-opt them. The doctrinal implications
of "your Christ was also our Christ" would be great, because all of the
great heresies were about Christology. Any attempt to lay out an
engineering diagram of fully human/fully divine and begotten/pre-existing
breaks the faith model. Which is why the Athanasian Creed says, "Thing A
and its polar opposite are both true, and if you don't believe both, you
will perish eternally." Like they say, try to believe one impossible thing
every day.
Anyway, good fun.
> And your final observation here maybe gets at why intrigues me about
your
> Traveller church. When Traveller says that Dulinor is a Virasin, I
think,
> "okay, makes sense, whatever they are." But when you say, "Cleon was a
(Latin) Catholic," I go, "huh? That doesn't make sense." So why why does
a
> made-up faith for Dulinor or Herbert's OC Bible make more sense in that
part of my brain than faiths I have already met, which have lasted for
2000 years, lasting another 3700? I find that question interesting. And
I
> like the time and thought you've put into this. We use the phrase so
much
> that we've got at acronym, "IMTU," but I'm thinking that a lot of the
time, as this list shows, what's really more interesting than what's
IMTU
> is what's in his Traveller Universe, and his, and his. Gary's, Evyn's,
John's, all you guys. Good stuff.
partly that it is interesting to seriously consider the ramifications of
something that I myself would not have believed sufficiently possible to
assert in an official game setting. There are lots of reasons, some of
which I alluded to, to say, "existing Earth faiths would probably not
project forward so essentially unchanged," but once you let go of that, it
is a great deal of fun to say, "screw that, what if they did?" Which after
all is what SF is actually about: taking existing aspects of human
experience, putting them somewhere else, and playing with what might
happen.
I think to the extent that the "Ortho-Catholic Church" was successful, it
would play off the "fact" that their initial evangelization would draw on
Solomani populations, so that there is a common nexus in their pasts so
that the events and doctrine can feel relevant to them. Further, the
Traveller humaniti conceit allows some of that deep resonance connection
to be deployed for evangelization of other human races. If you add in the
"Roman" concept of discovering your gods everywhere you go (and if they
are "The Gods," of course you would, this is not merely cynical, but also
true and faithful). The big fun would be how the OCs would deal with
"messiah" figures in other faiths they deal with, whether they attempt to
disprove them, overwrite them, or co-opt them. The doctrinal implications
of "your Christ was also our Christ" would be great, because all of the
great heresies were about Christology. Any attempt to lay out an
engineering diagram of fully human/fully divine and begotten/pre-existing
breaks the faith model. Which is why the Athanasian Creed says, "Thing A
and its polar opposite are both true, and if you don't believe both, you
will perish eternally." Like they say, try to believe one impossible thing
every day.
Anyway, good fun.
> And your final observation here maybe gets at why intrigues me about
your
> Traveller church. When Traveller says that Dulinor is a Virasin, I
think,
> "okay, makes sense, whatever they are." But when you say, "Cleon was a
(Latin) Catholic," I go, "huh? That doesn't make sense." So why why does
a
> made-up faith for Dulinor or Herbert's OC Bible make more sense in that
part of my brain than faiths I have already met, which have lasted for
2000 years, lasting another 3700? I find that question interesting. And
I
> like the time and thought you've put into this. We use the phrase so
much
> that we've got at acronym, "IMTU," but I'm thinking that a lot of the
time, as this list shows, what's really more interesting than what's
IMTU
> is what's in his Traveller Universe, and his, and his. Gary's, Evyn's,
John's, all you guys. Good stuff.