How do you think Jasnah feels?

[Calderis]

Brandon has flat out stated that he hates how in many books, people express views that an author doesn't share, held up as a strawman, only to be proven wrong later in the story. Essentially telling the reader, if they share that opinion "you're wrong" and part of his reason for never explaining the Beyond or an afterlife is explicitly to avoid that issue. 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

After people die, in this universe, where do they go? Because, at first they appear in the <?>, and then they go somewhere else.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

One of the things that's very important to me as a writer, when I am writing stories, is when we get to these kind of fundamental questions about faith and religion and things like this, that the narrative is allowing multiple characters' viewpoints to be plausibly true, if this makes sense. For instance, I am not gonna come out and say, "Is there a capital-G God of the cosmere, is there an afterlife?" These are not questions I'm gonna answer, because in-world, they can't answer them. What they can say is, your Investiture will leave what we call a Cognitive Shadow, which is an imprint of your personality that can do certain things. And that most of those fade away, and you can see them, glimpse them, and then watch them go. But, are they going somewhere? Or are they not? Is that simply the Investiture being reclaimed, Is it more of a Buddhist thought, where your soul is getting recycled and used again? Is it nothing, you return to, you know, being... yeah, is it a different type of matter? Or is there a Beyond, is there a capital-G God? These questions are not answered. I'm never gonna answer those.

Now, the characters will try to answer them. But it's important to me that both Dalinar and Jasnah can exist in the same universe, and that the story is not saying "This one is right, and this one is wrong." The story is saying "This is how this one sees the world; this is how this one sees the world." It's very important to me from the beginning to do that, just because... Like, I hate reading a book where someone espouses my viewpoint only to get proven wrong by the entire structure of the narrative, and in that universe, that person is wrong. But I'm like, "In our universe, I don't think that I am. Just the way you constructed everything makes it so that I have to be wrong, if I were living in your universe, even if it's not a sci-fi/fantasy one." If that makes sense.

This is just kind of for respecting my characters and for the people who hold the viewpoints of my characters, in particular if they happen to be different from my own viewpoints. I feel there are certain lines I'm not gonna cross.

So, the answer is: who do you believe? Which of the philosophies in the books do you look at and say "Yeah!" Or, even better: listen to lots of different ones, and maybe these different viewpoints are all gonna have interesting points that'll things to think upon.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

Jasnah as an atheist will never be "proven wrong" because Brandon is not going to invalidate the views of readers he worked so storming hard to understand and present a character that respectfully represents their beliefs. 

He's just not going to. 

[Darvys]

@Pathfinder This is utterly pointless, you only seem to read one sentence of every five i write and see it as an attack to then go on tirades trying to answer points i never made, and while i dismissed the undertone of you posts early on as unworthy of comment, it gets annoying rather quickly, i'm not here trying to argue against Jasnah's beliefs or statements, nor am i inclined to butt heads with people insisting on holding her as a standard for their own beliefs, i'm trying to further understand a character i enjoy reading about, you clearly can't help me with that, so as you said, no point dragging this on further.

[Pathfinder]

4 minutes ago, Darvys said:

@Pathfinder This is utterly pointless, you only seem to read one sentence of every five i write and see it as an attack to then go on tirades trying to answer points i never made, and while i dismissed the undertone of you posts early on as unworthy of comment, it gets annoying rather quickly, i'm not here trying to argue against Jasnah's beliefs or statements, nor am i inclined to butt heads with people insisting on holding her as a standard for their own beliefs, i'm trying to further understand a character i enjoy reading about, you clearly can't help me with that, so as you said, no point dragging this on further.

Agree to disagree. Thank you. 

[Thorn]

Within the context of the Cosmere, my impression of Jasnah and her worldview is that power, even creative power (a god) is not in and of itself a 1:1 demand for worship from its creation; and therefore, not a god of a religion that demands worship.  Thus, she can acknowledge the reality of their existence as powerful beings (she's an elsecaller, afterall), but it is simply the reality of their world and universe, even if she has greater knowledge of the "God Beyond", which she doesn't.  An Almighty in the sense of worship is a derived concept to her, even if derived and requested from Honor or Adonalsium.  

Perhaps it is better to consider her an atheist in the context of religion, but not as to powerful beings and creation.  It's a fantasy world afterall. 

In this sense, her view on the matter is a clearer picture of the truth of what we also know versus the Vorins who have a limited scope and prefer to accept what may be a derived concept in the Cosmere.

However, as with any of us Jasnah still fails as some of her reasoning, especially with her conversation to Taravangian in the Way of Kings.  An appeal to innate nature as a "just is" like math (or physics) doesn't really answer the questions.  It stumps the Taravangians, which further confirmation biases her worldview.  She uses the weak arguments of most others to sustain her worldview as she can't honestly conclude (which she admits to Dalinar later) that her view is definitive.  Further, such an appeal can lead to a rebuttal of where does the innate desire to worship then come from as opposed to innate virtues she believes in? (Shallan touches this but appeals to her feelings).  How is she deciding what is innate and what is not, other than by Jasnah preference?  

One other side of this that I find fascinating is Jasnah's demand for proof though.  The flaw in this demand isn't that it's a reasonable question on the front end, but the expectation on the back end.  No all sovereign, infallible, worship demanding God owes proof to its creation.  To submit to the judgment of creation is to void ones godship.  

An example outside the Cosmere of this is seen when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the desert.  Satan demands proof, and Jesus never gives it.  To do so, would be submitting to Satan.  We probably don't think about that when we demand for proof, but that's the reality and implications of our demand.  We want to judge the existence of God, which is antithetical to them being God in the first place. 

However, a God who demands worship is likely to leave the instructions or interactions.  This is something in the Cosmere that we do not have, are not aware of, and may never be told by Brandon when it comes to the God Beyond.  Thus, you're free to choose your own path about its ultimate existence or not.  

 

 

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, Thorn said:

One other side of this that I find fascinating is Jasnah's demand for proof though.  The flaw in this demand isn't that it's a reasonable question on the front end, but the expectation on the back end.  No all sovereign, infallible, worship demanding God owes proof to its creation.  To submit to the judgment of creation is to void ones godship.  

An example outside the Cosmere of this is seen when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the desert.  Satan demands proof, and Jesus never gives it.  To do so, would be submitting to Satan.  We probably don't think about that when we demand for proof, but that's the reality and implications of our demand.  We want to judge the existence of God, which is antithetical to them being God in the first place. 

I find the logic here to be flawed. 

Jasnah, and I myself as an atheist, demand nothing. Asking something to submit to her will would require that she believe there is something to offer submission in the first place.

Jasnah, and again myself, is just unwilling to take something on faith without evidence other than what is taught. 

This feels to me like one of the very arguments that Jasnah herself mentions as her main problem with the devotaries. 

Quote

“You wonder why I reject the devotaries.”

“I do.”

“Most of them seek to stop the questions.”

There is no need for a demand or submission. There are just unanswered questions. 

1 hour ago, Thorn said:

This is something in the Cosmere that we do not have, are not aware of, and may never be told by Brandon when it comes to the God Beyond. 

Not may not. Will not. Precisely so that people like both you and I can hold to our convictions and enjoy the Cosmere, without being either implicitly or explicitly told that our views are not correct. 

Edited April 9, 2019 by Calderis

[Numuhuku]

On 4/5/2019 at 11:28 AM, Turin Turambar said:

How do you think Jasnah would feel when she finds out that she's wrong, and there is (was) a deity, and numerous underdeities (also known as shard things that are sort of like Valar)?

She might be surprised, but I don't think she'd be too broken up by it. Even Dalinar, for all his devout beliefs, accepted the fact that the shard honor being capable of death meant that he wasn't "really" the supreme God, and that there was a higher power beyond it. I'd say Jasnah would take the more materialistic stance that honor was simply an entity that happened to have a great amount of power, and as benevolent as he might have been, that in and of itself was no more reason worship him than it'd be to worship Jasnah simply because she had radiant powers that the majority of the population did not have. Dalinar might be inclined due to faith to believe in a higher power beyond the obvious limits of Honor, but Jasnah I say wouldn't be inclined to make that same leap.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Numuhuku

[earthexile]

I think Jasnah would see the Shards for what they are, Human beings with a metric crapton of Investiture allotted to them. She has access to some of the fundamental forces that were attributed to the Almighty, and the ability to see into multiple layers of reality. She's seen behind the curtain, so to speak.

When someone else in another Cosmere novel gained the powers of a Shard, he named himself God. But I think if Jasnah gained a Shard and ascended, she would see herself as Woman With Incredible Power. It's a matter of what do you think a God is?

[Chana]

The way I see Jasnah is that she just doesn't consider beings with a lot of power to be worthy of worship. Like the fact that there is or was somewhere some being that would influence the people that prayed to it and require stuff from them in exchange she doesn't see a point in following it. She sees her life as her own and independent of any such beings and as we can observe in cosmere so far there was no deity that actually required everyone to worship them, they mostly don't really care. So by that logic there are no requirements that would cause her to worship a being that said being needs to fullfill. I feel that the argument Shallan makes with feelings kind of portrays this whole debate, if a person feels this closeness or whatever the feeling of the deity being there is, no logical arguments will change their mind and vice versa if the person is not feeling it, it will be extremely hard for them to be convinced by any argument. Because in the end you cannot prove or disaprove the existence of God by logic. You can show that the teachings of a religion are illogical but that's about it. It is possible that there will occur something in Jasnah's future that will change the way she feels about God (although hard to imagine since it seems she already endured a lot) and then she will become religous but I would argue that right now introducing any being would not change her mind, so there's no criteria