the last voyages // 4. video. no filter except for t-x.

[tobecaprican]

Some corners of my culture happen to take religion literally.

[ Gaius is using video, and sitting in his cabin. The lights are currently playing up, as they're wont to do, reflecting off all the glass and chrome of his replicated expensive apartment. He has a cigarette, a cup of tea, and little better to do but seek some conversation to defeat nerves and loneliness.

But not lonely enough to go outside. Visibly on edge, but his voice is calm, where the video feed doesn't flutter. ]

As in, there are-- were-- colonials in the universe who would swear up and down the pantheon that we really did travel in a boat down the river Styx in the afterlife. [ ffrrzzzztttt ] easy to make fun of, but they'd be the ones laughing now, I suppose. I'm dead, and look where I ended up.

I suppose they [ ffrrzzzztttt ] ing pass.

I haven't talked religion in-- well. Ever since I've been here. Not something I miss, to be clear, but there's a

discrepancy

that I'd like to explore. So talk [ ffrrzzzztttt ] your beliefs, Bargeites. Earthers, witches, the lot of [ ffrrzzzztttt ] first and last time - I'm trying to get it out of the way and over with.



[ OOC: My terribleness -- posting and running! I will tag back solidly in a couple of hours, may sneak in a couple here and there beforehand. ]

Comments

[truth_is_cold]

Nietzscheans don't have one. But I could see how reverence could grow into religion. The great philosophers, the progenitor, the matriarch. and patriarch.

There is also "the Way", a unification of several monotheistic religions that follow "the Divine", their idea o͏̕͢f̨ ̶ţ̧͠h̡e͝ ̶cr͘͞e͜͢a̵͡͠t̵͢ò͠r͘ and creation.

2/2

[truth_is_cold]

[And after shaking out his flexi-style journal like that'll help it.] I really hate this static.

Anyway, there is that but Nietzscheans don't observe it.

[tobecaprican]

So you're an atheist yourself. No inclination towards believing in any higher power, universal truths, greater metaphors, any one true deity, that sort've thing?

[momunculus.livejournal.com]

There were a handful of religions where I'm from, some dead and some current, though my nation leaned towards a more scientific approach. I suppose you could say that my countrymen treat God as more of an idea than an actual being, but I can't speak for everybody.

[tobecaprican]

God. I see.

Just the one? Supposing you were to speak for everybody.

[no_fastolfe]

...'Earther?' Are you from a Spacer world?

[Another Spacer aboard? COULD IT BE? No, Vas. Chill.]

[tobecaprican]

Spacer? [ Takes a second to think. ] No, not a term I've heard on any colony, I don't think. So sorry.

I take it you're an alien like I am.

[nicebluehat.livejournal.com]

Personal beliefs, or what's common back home?

I'm sure you'll hear plenty about the major religions of my planet from others, and this isn't my area of expertise, but back home it's a series of actions - - the standard burning of incense, formal prayer, almsgiving, that you'll find anywhere - done to please a god or gods, who are simultaneously part of a great spirit permeating all that exists and intensely local to a particular shrine of a city, village tree, crossroads... It's the actions more than the intent that appear to matter in general, and it can be easily reduced to superstition. It's not considered incompatible with Buddhism, strangely. [He referenced the River Styx, she'll expect him to understand Buddhism.]

I thought it was all nonsense until I met a few of our higher deities. I still don't know where I stand with them.

[tobecaprican]

[ Buddhism? Nope. His video feed shows only the mild incomprehension of someone learning something foreign, if not too confusing. Much. He doesn't bother chasing the word, just sort of unconsciously files it away into the other bits and pieces he's encountered. ]

You've met them?

...I suppose anything's possible, technically. I'm going to take a wild guess and say they were not named, oh, Apollo, Athena, Dionysus...

[hourglass-twin.livejournal.com]

How else would you interpret religion but literally?

[tobecaprican]

Some choose to take the scripture as metaphor, you know. Sort've like a morality tale. The gods being representations of concepts instead of actual beings. Slightly less mental than the others, if you ask me.

[ourlastbesthope.livejournal.com]

People talk religion too much. They talk religion when they don't know what to think.

[tobecaprican]

Chilling, then, to think it's what the mass majority of people in my worlds buy into. I suppose it's not different where you come from?

[timesbureaucrat]

Time Lords believe in science and tradition. There are some few eccentrics who worship Eternals almost as deities, but they're a very small minority.

[tobecaprican]

'Time Lords' sort've sound like their own higher power, to be honest.

[scentbombed]

I'm amazed no one's tried to throw anything yet. Religion can get awfully... sticky, where I'm from. I suppose it comes from having so many gods.

[tobecaprican]

That's why I'm on a phone, in my room, with the door locked.

We've a few too many as well. There ought to be a culling.

[and he goes straight to text]

[byronicsherlock.livejournal.com]

The River Styx? That circles Hades?

video.

[tobecaprican]

[ Squint at text, but-- Gaius has talked to enough people so far not to get very hopeful about that. He lets the video feed continue, taking a moment to tap ash off cigarette. ]

The very same. I didn't expect people to grasp the reference.

[doctor-j-crane.livejournal.com]

Standard earth beliefs, nothing special. Somewhat shaken by the barge, which was rather inevitable.

[tobecaprican]

Well, I don't doubt 'nothing special', but Earth isn't very standard. For me.

Why shaken? Ghosts don't enter into the system?

[with_discipline]

Vulcans follow logic and philosophy over religion. We did once worship gods. Some families still keep busts of them.

[tobecaprican]

Not dissimilar to Caprica, or at least I'd like to think so.

Polytheistic, then?

[worstsongever]

Does 'Greece' mean anything to you?

[tobecaprican]

I thought it was called Greek.

[ ...welp. ]