On Gods and Champions II
I've thought about it, and I simply can't do this in one post. So expect a III, and possibly a IV.
Now we've already covered my disdain for organized religion, along with my idea of the use of champions as exemplars of a personal creed, but we have to get further into what Gods and Champions actually are.
This comes down to one of the great fundamental questions in life. Is God Real? Like with every other giant philosophical question I've tackled I've come to think that the question itself is flawed. When we're dealing with something like God you have to be willing to get into the fuzzy details on what exactly constitutes "real." If you're asking "Is there a giant superbeing somewhere out there" then there's really no answer. If we're getting into superbeings the pure breadth of what "out there" can be goes well beyond the empirically observable universe and the idea of logical truth kind of breaks down from there. This is to say nothing of the fact that a truly omnipotent being should be above all rules of causality, continuity, and mutual exclusivity.
The important thing is that God exists as a character which influences us. Mythological figures are real in the sense that the character exists in peoples consciousness, even if we have monumental evidence that they don't exist in what I call "collective reality," and what most people call "The Real World." So in this way both Gods and mythological figures that are serving as champions are real. This form of reality is also how figures that did/do exist in collective reality exist to us when they're used as Champions. I'd like to point out that everything which you don't have direct observation of essentially exists only in this way, but that's one big philosophical circle jerk, so lets not get into that.
The important point here is the belief in a God doesn't really mean belief in a physical being. My interactions with these figures are purely with the constructed characters, and these characters are constructed heavily by my own interpretation of their characters.
Now we've already covered my disdain for organized religion, along with my idea of the use of champions as exemplars of a personal creed, but we have to get further into what Gods and Champions actually are.
This comes down to one of the great fundamental questions in life. Is God Real? Like with every other giant philosophical question I've tackled I've come to think that the question itself is flawed. When we're dealing with something like God you have to be willing to get into the fuzzy details on what exactly constitutes "real." If you're asking "Is there a giant superbeing somewhere out there" then there's really no answer. If we're getting into superbeings the pure breadth of what "out there" can be goes well beyond the empirically observable universe and the idea of logical truth kind of breaks down from there. This is to say nothing of the fact that a truly omnipotent being should be above all rules of causality, continuity, and mutual exclusivity.
The important thing is that God exists as a character which influences us. Mythological figures are real in the sense that the character exists in peoples consciousness, even if we have monumental evidence that they don't exist in what I call "collective reality," and what most people call "The Real World." So in this way both Gods and mythological figures that are serving as champions are real. This form of reality is also how figures that did/do exist in collective reality exist to us when they're used as Champions. I'd like to point out that everything which you don't have direct observation of essentially exists only in this way, but that's one big philosophical circle jerk, so lets not get into that.
The important point here is the belief in a God doesn't really mean belief in a physical being. My interactions with these figures are purely with the constructed characters, and these characters are constructed heavily by my own interpretation of their characters.
posted by Max at 11:06 PM
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