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?

[truth_is_cold]

Not really.

I've seen something called "The Spirit of the Abyss". The Magog worshipped it as their God and it was the physical representation of the universal void. Of... nothing, I suppose. It wanted to bring about the heat death of the universe.

But to actively want something, and to need others to accomplish it or desire constant attention, makes me question its "heavenly" status no matter how abstract a concept it is.

[tobecaprican]

That sounds a sensible question.

To a very convoluted state of affairs, if you don't mind me saying so.

[truth_is_cold]

Honestly, I find it convoluted myself.

But if something is that much more capable, it doesn't mean it's a god. It means it's very old, and very advanced, and maybe specialized for an environment that's difficult for us to understand or beyond our sensory perception.

[tobecaprican]

Sounds like the literal interpretation, only coming around full circle and back into skepticism. I couldn't say I disapprove.

Better than mindless belief. I've a lot of that, where I'm from.

[truth_is_cold]

That's just what the Magog called it, having it introduced as their "god". And I have to admit it wasn't pleasant in appearance. But something frequently is made powerful by how weak you perceive yourself against it.

It could be beaten. Another point for scepticism there.

[tobecaprican]

That does rather defeat the purpose. It doesn't sound like anything my people would call a god.

[truth_is_cold]

Gods of other cultures have been imprisoned as inmates here. I knew Persephone. I still own a flower she gave me.

But I recall her as an exceptional person.

[tobecaprican]

Persephone.

She was on the Barge.

[truth_is_cold]

She was.

She graduated and departed.

[tobecaprican]

Oh.

[ His incredulous face. ]