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One True Religion


Guest Jacob Santos

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Guest Jacob Santos

Something that permutates from the discussions with Brandon talking about religion within the world is that the people are able to worship any given god and have any religion. The "True" gods of each world do not so much mind as they don't really care. I don't believe Harmony is the only "God" that lets his followers enjoy the freedom of "free will".

I don't believe that the "Gods" or shards in the worlds are actual Gods. I don't think the shattering of Adonalsium is what people think it is. Of course, I am pulling this right out of my chull. I haven't read Brandon's mind (yet!_), so I have no idea. Just hear me out (I always feel a little dirty using hearing in this context, but meh).

The problem is that we don't currently know what Adonalsium is or how it supposedly shattered. That won't probably be known for quite a while (a decade? or two). Regardless, I think Adonalsium was meant to be held in shards as a game of possibilities. I also don't think that the whole of Adonalsium could be held by one person, even if it expanded the person's mind. Most likely that is what shattered Adonalsium in the first place.

(Could Hoid have tried first and shattered into the people near him since he couldn't hold it completely and it rejected him? Meh. Unlikely.)

The point I'm attempting to make (poorly?) is that Adonalsium can't be completely splintered. Something as powerful and infinite as Adonalsium couldn't possibly be destroyed. My guess it that when everyone lets go of the shards, it will form back into one and the cycle will repeat.

I think the nature of Adonalsium is competition and breeds competition through conflict. I think I'm biased, but I don't think that this is the first time Adonalsium has shattered. I guess it is part of the religious question, "What came before, before?" I don't think that the final world of Hoid's will be what is in the existing chapters (partly because it looks very very similar to Jim Butcher's Codex Alera world for better or worse. I don't think Brandon copied it any more than I believe Jim Butcher read the released chapters and thought "I'm totally going to rip that world off.").

The conflict is the war of species. The reason is simple. Conflict breeds innovation, evolution, progress. I don't think this was meant to be evil. The concept of human life value is part of the normal chain of life. Dog eat dog world, so to speak. To Adonalsium it is natural that humans would battle other creatures and not interfere, because really, taking sides would be against what it means to be God. God does not interfere, because to judge would be to be unfair to the balance and it is important to be fair to the balance.

Of course evidence would be important, but in this case it is mere speculation based on discontinuous information.

Adonalsium

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I believe the red line running through all the Cosmere stories is about people with powers that make them seem godlike to most other people. But none of them are Gods in the way Earth religion works - all shardholders are still mortal (several are dead, after all), and even Adonalsium, whatever he/she/it is, shattered. This goes back to Clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - the people of the Shardworlds see these incomprehensible powers and attribute them to godhood.

In fact, one of the more fascinating ideas behind the cosmere mystery is the notion that at some point, a small group of people, maybe even friends, were in the right place at the right time and got hit with splinters of Adonalsium. Maybe they still talk. They seem pretty humanlike in some of the few glimpses we've had. Maybe some of them meet for Poker once in a while... :rolleyes:

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