Religious consequences[DISCUSS]

[bmcclure7]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Where?

Slowing time, and reversing time, are two different things.

Gravity can slow time, but it cannot reverse it.

1.When dalinar reaches in to the beyond to connect Kalidin to his brother.

2. But it at least opens the doors to the possibility. It not like you can produce any evidence to the contrary. 

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

1.When dalinar reaches in to the beyond to connect Kalidin to his brother.

Which is not confirmed and never will be.

Spoiler

Questioner

Close to the end of Rhythm of War, Dalinar Connects Kaladin to something, which gives him the vision of Tien. Did he Connect him to Tien's dead soul, and if so, does Dalinar know what he did?

Brandon Sanderson

There are two prevailing theories on what happened here among cosmerenauts, in-world Arcanists. You would get two different answers. The most common answer is, Dalinar attached himself to the Spiritual Realm, pulled out possibilities, and showed one of those to Kaladin.

Questioner

If so, where did the horse come from?

Brandon Sanderson

Either pure coincidence, or some sort of matching of Fortune to the moment, that ended up leading Kaladin to the place he needed to be, which is the way a lot of Fortune works. Fortune would be like, "You should go here," and you don't even know why. That's what the Arcanist answer would be, it would be the most common answer. Some people would say he reached into the Beyond and connected Tien to Kaladin via Tien's actual soul. I will leave these both as equally valid theories. As I've said many times, I'm not gonna say whether there is an actual afterlife in the cosmere because it is too foundational to too many characters' beliefs, or lack of beliefs, or worldview in-world to have the author contradict them either way.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

And as you will note reading it, Dalinar was not able to simply "do" it, he had the Connection given to him, from some source of light.

So that leaves two possibilities.

1: The God Beyond made it possible, where Dalinar alone could not do it.

2: It was spiritual memory alone and the Beyond was not involved.

 

Neither of which allows investiture to reach the Beyond.

7 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

2. But it at least opens the doors to the possibility. It not like you can produce any evidence to the contrary. 

I can, traveling to the past simply is not possible within the Cosmere

Spoiler

Jarett Braden

With a huge interconnected work like the Cosmere, do you ever worry when introducing a new concept in a book? How it may affect past and future novels?

Brandon Sanderson

I do. This is the biggest challenge of having a large, interconnected universe like this. And the farther you write, the more difficult and dangerous this becomes. And this is why I need to have a large team, and some really solid beta readers. Because every writer, when writing a book, can get a little myopically focused on that book only. Which can be a good thing; most writers, it doesn't matter, because that book is going to be that book. But because the interconnectedness and the continuity of the Cosmere is so important to me, it's really handy to have a lot of people looking over my shoulder saying, "Are you sure you want to do that? Because it has this ramification here." We're not gonna catch all of them. But I do like that protection, and it is something that I think about quite a bit.

It is one of the reasons why I tried to build the underpinnings of the cosmere to be adaptable to a lot of different of the types of magic systems I type to write. This is why these fundamentals of Fortune and Identity and Connection are really what kind of drive creating the magic systems. You're often going to see me wanting to create magic systems that do similar things. And having these sort of magic system underpinnings that both drive me to ask "what new could I do with this?" but also have an intended connectivity between them is really helpful in a lot of different ways.

But it is dangerous, yes. And if I were going to give advice on that, it would be that make sure your fundamentals 1) naturally fit the type of systems that you would want to build, and 2) have enough versatility that they can be adapted to a variety of different styles of system. And stay away from some of the big problems, like time travel. Very early on, I'm like, "Cosmere can time travel into the future. You can speed things up for yourself, you can slow things down, your movement through space. But you cannot go backward." And having a few rules like that... there are not alternate dimensions in the cosmere. There are different planes of existence. But there are not alternate realities. We are not going to have the sort of things. (That I played with in Steelheart, because I knew I didn't have it in the cosmere. The Wheel of Time loves to play with alternate continuities as one of its themes of magic, and I love it. But it was built in and baked in from the beginning and used very well well. I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.)

Make a few rules like that, and I think that's helpful from writing yourself out of problems with solutions that break everything. And let's just say that it is very hard to not do that, as evidenced by many film series which have a lot of different people working on them who can make their films work, but often will break the rest of the continuity in order to do so. And we can't afford to do that in the Cosmere. That's not something that I want to do.

YouTube Livestream 7 (May 7, 2020)

Meaning that investiture cannot do it, only something Beyond could.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Frustration

[Tglassy]

Totalliy did not read all of that.  Here's a few thoughts from what I did read.

I think it's completely logical that there would be athiests in all of the worlds of the Cosmere.  Why?  Because not all of the people have one on one conversations with gods.  

I mean think about it.  The characters we see are the important ones.  On Scadrial, Sazed doesn't DO anything.  He doesn't show up to people or do miracles.  He works subtly if he works at all.  Kel isn't going around saving people, and Survivorism doesn't claim he does.  As for Sliverism, very few people see Marsh.  

It's perfectly logical that someone would say that they're all just worshiping things so they have something to worship and a club to go to on sunday morning (so to speak).  

On Roshar, there are tons of religions.  Most revere the Heralds, but what if someone said "Meh, I don't believe the Desolations actually happened and the Heralds are jusat myths. Nothing exists but what I can touch."  That's an athiest.  Or close to it.  

And I wouldn't consider the Shards to be Gods, any more than I'd consider the Returned to be Gods, or the Kandra, or Kel.  They're just beings with a lot of power.  Sazed even says he is not Omnipotent, though parts of him COULD be.  

The Shards are PART of God.  16 aspects of God's personality and power broken off and seperated.  But what is 1/16 of infinity?  Infinity.  So each Shard is infinite...but has it's own purpose.

Being ABLE to do anything is not the same as DECIDING to do anything.  God can be Omnipotent, holding the power to do anything, but DECIDING what to do and what not to do.  It's not a matter of "God cannot Sin", as much as He decides what Sin is.  It's like saying I cannot exhale by breathing in.  The definitions don't work.  It's an oxymoron, and using it as an example of "Well God can't do this so he's not omnipotent" is just disengenuous.  If I have literally all the power, which is what Omnipotent means, then I decide to give that power form and restrict myself, then that's not the same thing as saying I no longer have all the power.  

Omniscient is all knowing.  It's knowing everything there is to know, from the thoughts and hearts of every person and creature to the movement and formation of every atom and electron, all at the same time, and being able to quantify all of that information.  Technically, being Omniscient also encompases the future, so one who is Omniscient would know the future and the past with the same exactness.  There would be no "blank spots" to one who is truely omniscient.  The Shards are NOT Omniscient, because of the way Future Sight works in the Cosmere.  Anyone who can see the future will block someone else who can, including Shards.  Ruin cannot read people's thoughts.  He doesn't know what people are thinking.  Therefore, not Omniscient.  But Preservation can, so if all the shards were combined, then perhaps the resultant being, Adonalsium, WOULD be Omniscient.  Maybe.  

Omnipresent is everywhere at once.  It is being there, in person, beside every single person during their entire lives.  It is also being beside every grain of sand, watching every atom and electron move.  The Shards are not Omnipresent, or at least their vessel aren't.  They come and go. It is possible to hide things from them.  or to do things while their attention is elsewhere.  A true Omnipresent person who is also Omniscient is everywhere and their attention is everywhere equally at all times and is capable of comprehending all of it at a one time.  

Most people don't quite grasp the vasntess of these words.  A God who is all these things knows and feels everything every person does at all times, and is able to give their full attention to every single person living at all times from the beginning of time until the heat death of the universe.  A God of this magnitude would know you, your deepest heart and desires, the circomstances of your birth and every single one of your choices, all the way through your entire liffe until you die, and what happens after, and He would know this from the moment the Universe was created until it died.  And he would be that intimately familiar with every single person who ever lived.  That is the vastness of what we are talking about here.

And the Shards don't match that.  

Edited February 22, 2023 by Tglassy

[alder24]

11 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

So YHWH isn't omnipotent then? He has limits. 

Tbf I don't care. What limits does he have? The Bible clearly states multiple times that He is Omnipotent.

11 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

And it proves that it can manipulate time. 

Because Investiture is energy, and lots of energy concentrated in small space does curve spacetime, Investiture acts in the same way. It's a natural process, not divine intervention.

9 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Being ABLE to do anything is not the same as DECIDING to do anything.  God can be Omnipotent, holding the power to do anything, but DECIDING what to do and what not to do.

You are still ignoring the fact that Shards can't do everything even if they want to. They have limitations. Intent is limiting their action. Ruin can't preserve something just because he wants. Preservation can't destroy something just to destroy it. They are limited by their intents which isn't self imposed. Mind and Vessel as well are limiting Shards. Shards can't act without a Vessel. They don't have the power to act. Other Shards also can limit each other. Investitng a plantet is also limiting their action as they can't just leave it. They have limits. They can't do everything. Pure Shard or a Vessel, both have limits. And by the definition of Omnipotence they can't have any limits, therefore they can't be omnipotent, as this requires no limits at all. You can still worship Shards as a gods, that's ok, by they are not Omnipotent. Period.

Power is not just infinite energy - it's the ability to act! Again, that's by definition. If Shards can't act in a particular way, they don't have that power, they aren't omnipotent.

[Elder]

I feel like this may be getting too close to a real religious debate.  I’m not saying anyone’s broken any rules, but this feels way too hot.  At least to me.

To get to the root of this tangeant/derailment, I think there’s enough WoB’s floating around that state that the author’s intent is to never reveal anything that completely destroys or vindicates any character’s personal theology.  Therefore, Atheists like Jasnah, believers in the God Beyond like Silence, and Survivorists like Marasi, rusts even people who believe in the Lord Ruler like the Yomen’s will always find something that will validate each of their beliefs.  They will also find things to cast doubt.  Therefore, there absolutely can be Cosmere aware atheists, believers in the God Beyond, etc.  etc.

I feel comfortable enough talking about real religion to say this:  People believe in whatever they choose to believe, whether or not evidence supports, refutes, or exists.  And Brandon Sanderson has been very respectful of that in the Cosmere.

I can see that here.  People are bringing religious passion and stubbornness to this discussion, and I don’t think it’s helping anything.  Some believe Shards are omnipotent, despite any argument or evidence to the contrary.  Some find the Shards utterly unworthy of worship and reverence.  Some advocate for the God Beyond.  Some for Adonalsium.  I would contend that Sanderson has given some evidence to validate all these viewpoints, room to disprove them all, and is trying to respect his character’s views no matter what.

I’m not accusing anyone of blatant disrespect, but I just don’t like the tension here.  Let’s handle this discussion of fictional theology better than some of the real life ones I’ve seen.

[bmcclure7]

16 hours ago, Frustration said:

Which is not confirmed and never will be.

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

Close to the end of Rhythm of War, Dalinar Connects Kaladin to something, which gives him the vision of Tien. Did he Connect him to Tien's dead soul, and if so, does Dalinar know what he did?

Brandon Sanderson

There are two prevailing theories on what happened here among cosmerenauts, in-world Arcanists. You would get two different answers. The most common answer is, Dalinar attached himself to the Spiritual Realm, pulled out possibilities, and showed one of those to Kaladin.

Questioner

If so, where did the horse come from?

Brandon Sanderson

Either pure coincidence, or some sort of matching of Fortune to the moment, that ended up leading Kaladin to the place he needed to be, which is the way a lot of Fortune works. Fortune would be like, "You should go here," and you don't even know why. That's what the Arcanist answer would be, it would be the most common answer. Some people would say he reached into the Beyond and connected Tien to Kaladin via Tien's actual soul. I will leave these both as equally valid theories. As I've said many times, I'm not gonna say whether there is an actual afterlife in the cosmere because it is too foundational to too many characters' beliefs, or lack of beliefs, or worldview in-world to have the author contradict them either way.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

And as you will note reading it, Dalinar was not able to simply "do" it, he had the Connection given to him, from some source of light.

So that leaves two possibilities.

1: The God Beyond made it possible, where Dalinar alone could not do it.

2: It was spiritual memory alone and the Beyond was not involved.

 

Neither of which allows investiture to reach the Beyond.

I can, traveling to the past simply is not possible within the Cosmere

  Reveal hidden contents

Jarett Braden

With a huge interconnected work like the Cosmere, do you ever worry when introducing a new concept in a book? How it may affect past and future novels?

Brandon Sanderson

I do. This is the biggest challenge of having a large, interconnected universe like this. And the farther you write, the more difficult and dangerous this becomes. And this is why I need to have a large team, and some really solid beta readers. Because every writer, when writing a book, can get a little myopically focused on that book only. Which can be a good thing; most writers, it doesn't matter, because that book is going to be that book. But because the interconnectedness and the continuity of the Cosmere is so important to me, it's really handy to have a lot of people looking over my shoulder saying, "Are you sure you want to do that? Because it has this ramification here." We're not gonna catch all of them. But I do like that protection, and it is something that I think about quite a bit.

It is one of the reasons why I tried to build the underpinnings of the cosmere to be adaptable to a lot of different of the types of magic systems I type to write. This is why these fundamentals of Fortune and Identity and Connection are really what kind of drive creating the magic systems. You're often going to see me wanting to create magic systems that do similar things. And having these sort of magic system underpinnings that both drive me to ask "what new could I do with this?" but also have an intended connectivity between them is really helpful in a lot of different ways.

But it is dangerous, yes. And if I were going to give advice on that, it would be that make sure your fundamentals 1) naturally fit the type of systems that you would want to build, and 2) have enough versatility that they can be adapted to a variety of different styles of system. And stay away from some of the big problems, like time travel. Very early on, I'm like, "Cosmere can time travel into the future. You can speed things up for yourself, you can slow things down, your movement through space. But you cannot go backward." And having a few rules like that... there are not alternate dimensions in the cosmere. There are different planes of existence. But there are not alternate realities. We are not going to have the sort of things. (That I played with in Steelheart, because I knew I didn't have it in the cosmere. The Wheel of Time loves to play with alternate continuities as one of its themes of magic, and I love it. But it was built in and baked in from the beginning and used very well well. I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.)

Make a few rules like that, and I think that's helpful from writing yourself out of problems with solutions that break everything. And let's just say that it is very hard to not do that, as evidenced by many film series which have a lot of different people working on them who can make their films work, but often will break the rest of the continuity in order to do so. And we can't afford to do that in the Cosmere. That's not something that I want to do.

YouTube Livestream 7 (May 7, 2020)

Meaning that investiture cannot do it, only something Beyond could.

1. Given in to him or not it changes nothing,  he used investigature  To connect to the beyond. Whether he initiated that connection or not means nothing. 

 

2.  Even if it's not confirmed in the world it's at the very least a possibility so it shouldn't be dismissed. 

[bmcclure7]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

Tbf I don't care. What limits does he have? The Bible clearly states multiple times that He is Omnipotent.

Because Investiture is energy, and lots of energy concentrated in small space does curve spacetime, Investiture acts in the same way. It's a natural process, not divine intervention.

You are still ignoring the fact that Shards can't do everything even if they want to. They have limitations. Intent is limiting their action. Ruin can't preserve something just because he wants. Preservation can't destroy something just to destroy it. They are limited by their intents which isn't self imposed. Mind and Vessel as well are limiting Shards. Shards can't act without a Vessel. They don't have the power to act. Other Shards also can limit each other. Investitng a plantet is also limiting their action as they can't just leave it. They have limits. They can't do everything. Pure Shard or a Vessel, both have limits. And by the definition of Omnipotence they can't have any limits, therefore they can't be omnipotent, as this requires no limits at all. You can still worship Shards as a gods, that's ok, by they are not Omnipotent. Period.

Power is not just infinite energy - it's the ability to act! Again, that's by definition. If Shards can't act in a particular way, they don't have that power, they aren't omnipotent.

 Limits of Yhwh 

1.  He cannot lie.

2.  He cannot give The nation of Israel to Abraham until the sin of the canaanites is complete. 

3. He cannot comment sin.

 So either

 

A. your definition is right 

Or

B. Yhwh is Omnipotent 

 One of these can be true but not both

Your definition may fit a General Theist God but not the Abrahamic God.  He is limited by his nature same as shards are limited by there nature. 

Edited February 22, 2023 by bmcclure7

[alder24]

27 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

 Limits of Yhwh 

1.  He cannot lie.

2.  He cannot give The nation of Israel to Abraham until the sin of the canaanites is complete. 

3. He cannot comment sin.

If this isn't because he doesn't want to do it (but still can), then by this definition Yhwh isn't omnipotent. The simplest explanation is that he has free will, he can do what he wants, and still be omnipotent. Just because someone swears to never lie doesn't mean that he isn't capable of doing so. Shards aren't like that. It's not like Preservation decided to never destroy, he just can't do it.

Edit: bringing God/Yhwh to this discussion isn't good. I'm not a theologian, and you probably as well. This just causing unnecessary tension. Let's argue about fictional deities.

Edited February 22, 2023 by alder24

[Elder]

25 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

 Limits of Yhwh 

1.  He cannot lie.

2.  He cannot give The nation of Israel to Abraham until the sin of the canaanites is complete. 

3. He cannot comment sin.

 So either

 

A. your definition is right 

Or

B. Yhwh is Omnipotent 

 One of these can be true but not both

Your definition may fit a General Theist God but not the Abrahamic God.  He is limited by his nature same as shards are limited by there nature. 

 

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

If this isn't because he doesn't want to do it (but still can), then by this definition Yhwh isn't omnipotent. The simplest explanation is that he has free will, he can do what he wants, and still be omnipotent. Just because someone swears to never lie doesn't mean that he isn't capable of doing so.

 

And we’ve officially crossed into debating real world theology.  If we’re gonna do this, tread carefully.  Personally, I’d prefer we didn’t.

[bmcclure7]

16 minutes ago, alder24 said:

If this isn't because he doesn't want to do it (but still can), then by this definition Yhwh isn't omnipotent. The simplest explanation is that he has free will, he can do what he wants, and still be omnipotent. Just because someone swears to never lie doesn't mean that he isn't capable of doing so. Shards aren't like that. It's not like Preservation decided to never destroy, he just can't do it.

Edit: bringing God/Yhwh to this discussion isn't good. I'm not a theologian, and you probably as well. This just causing unnecessary tension. Let's argue about fictional deities.

Paul disagree with you

So it is (impossible ) for God to lie for we know that his promise and his vow will never change! And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness.

 

 

[alder24]

18 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

Paul disagree with you

So it is (impossible ) for God to lie for we know that his promise and his vow will never change! And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness.

I'm not going any further. This has nothing to do with Shards and their limitations. God doesn't have intent like Shards do.

[bmcclure7]

17 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I'm not going any further. This has nothing to do with Shards and their limitations. God doesn't have intent like Shards do.

He has Holyness which functions like an intent in that it limits his omniscience.

[Elder]

On 11/21/2022 at 2:03 AM, Oltux72 said:

Let's cut straight to the heart of the matter. It took an extremely individualistic constable, whose statue the citizens of Elendel can go admire, to defend Scadrial against an alien god. After that will they still put their trust into Harmony? If not, what will they do? If gods wield the quivalent of nuclear weapons on your porch, athism will be unlikely to seem a good alternative.

So will we see a revival of activist Survivorism? Or, far fetched, Sliverism? Ideologically speaking you could point out that Rashek had sort of a point when he said that you need to break eggs to make omlette. And he kept Scadrial free of alien ship bombs.

Just throwing this up as a reference as to what this thread was originally about.

[Tglassy]

15 hours ago, alder24 said:

You are still ignoring the fact that Shards can't do everything even if they want to. They have limitations. Intent is limiting their action. Ruin can't preserve something just because he wants. Preservation can't destroy something just to destroy it. They are limited by their intents which isn't self imposed. Mind and Vessel as well are limiting Shards. Shards can't act without a Vessel. They don't have the power to act. Other Shards also can limit each other. Investitng a plantet is also limiting their action as they can't just leave it. They have limits. They can't do everything. Pure Shard or a Vessel, both have limits. And by the definition of Omnipotence they can't have any limits, therefore they can't be omnipotent, as this requires no limits at all. You can still worship Shards as a gods, that's ok, by they are not Omnipotent. Period.

Power is not just infinite energy - it's the ability to act! Again, that's by definition. If Shards can't act in a particular way, they don't have that power, they aren't omnipotent.

No, I was agreeing with you.  Or I meant to.  Sazed says he's not omnipotent, but that parts of him COULD be.  If Ruin was Omnipotent, he could just blink and destroy the planet...but he COULD have done that if he'd had his body.  Odium can't just destroy people he doesn't like.  They all have limits within their intent, and therefore don't fit the "Omnipotent" bill.  However, if all sixteen shards were united, all the intents put together into one, then it's possible the resulting creature COULD be omnipotent.  

Which is why I wouldn't call them "Gods", by my definition.  Just uberly powerful beings that, when compared to someon without a Shard, could be considered one since they don't have the frame of reference ot know what they're looking at.  

[Frustration]

18 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

1. Given in to him or not it changes nothing,  he used investigature  To connect to the beyond. Whether he initiated that connection or not means nothing.

If it was done externally then no, it was not investiture.

[alder24]

9 hours ago, Tglassy said:

However, if all sixteen shards were united, all the intents put together into one, then it's possible the resulting creature COULD be omnipotent.  

With this I will say it's possible. But it raises a question. How could an omnipotent being be shattered and killed?

9 hours ago, Tglassy said:

Which is why I wouldn't call them "Gods", by my definition.  Just uberly powerful beings that, when compared to someon without a Shard, could be considered one since they don't have the frame of reference ot know what they're looking at.  

I see nothing wrong with calling Shards, Rashek, Kelsier or Returned a deity. Religion is more than just a powerful god, it's also about the idea, the moral views and guidance. Not every earthly religion even believes in gods - I think Buddhism is one example.

[NameIess]

On 2/21/2023 at 4:04 PM, bmcclure7 said:

But you stil wouldnt be an atheist, your refusal to worship them doesn't come from disbelief in there exist but it what your knowledge and expectations of God are. 

As I said, Shards are not gods in my mind. It’s not that I don’t see them as worthy of worship, they’re just not gods. People have worshipped the sun. Atheists believe in the sun. Does that make them not atheists? No, because they do not believe that the sun is a god. 

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, UnfortunatelyNamed said:

As I said, Shards are not gods in my mind. It’s not that I don’t see them as worthy of worship, they’re just not gods. People have worshipped the sun. Atheists believe in the sun. Does that make them not atheists? No, because they do not believe that the sun is a god. 

Yeah, Shards are no more gods in my mind than gravity is.

[bmcclure7]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

If it was done externally then no, it was not investiture.

It specially yes connection was involved. Connection is a application of investiture. 

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

Yeah, Shards are no more gods in my mind than gravity is.

Gravity didn't create the world, and doesn't have will, or a mind.

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, bmcclure7 said:

It specially yes connection was involved. Connection is a application of investiture.

No it is not, Investiture can influence Connection, but they are not the same thing.

And if external aid was needed then Connection on its own cannot do it, and thus Investiture cannot.

3 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

Gravity didn't create the world,

... It quite literally does.

3 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

and doesn't have will, or a mind.

Given the looseness of the definition of a shard's "will" and "mind", I can very much say that gravity wants to pull anythign with mass together.

Or say there's a superheor that can control gravity? then they have a mind, but they are nothing more than a man. One given too much power.

Just like shards.

[bmcclure7]

5 hours ago, UnfortunatelyNamed said:

As I said, Shards are not gods in my mind. It’s not that I don’t see them as worthy of worship, they’re just not gods. People have worshipped the sun. Atheists believe in the sun. Does that make them not atheists? No, because they do not believe that the sun is a god. 

They worshiped sun because they thought the sun was alive. Atheist diss believe that sun is alive. 

If the Athiest really believed that the sun was alive and named Apollo then they wouldn't be atheist even if he didn't consider Apollo a god.

 

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

They worshiped sun because they thought the sun was alive. Atheist diss believe that sun is alive. 

If the Athiest really believed that the sun was alive and named Apollo then they wouldn't be atheist even if he didn't consider Apollo a god.

 

....

How does that make any sense?

[Elder]

7 hours ago, alder24 said:

With this I will say it's possible. But it raises a question. How could an omnipotent being be shattered and killed?

We truly don’t know the circumstances here, and won’t until certain books get written and or published.  

I know I’ve been hesitant to talk about real life religion, and I have no desire to debate the merits or tenants of a real life religion, but, I do find this relevant:  Christianity is built around the idea of an Omnipotent God willingly becoming mortal and allowing himself to be killed by mortals.  Rather specific circumstances, not exactly the same results, and it didn’t exactly take, but it’s there.  

Note, I’m not saying that’s what happened with Adonalsium.  I have my own theory that may or may not work.  We’re probably a long way off from the when the relevant books will be published for this.  

In the meantime, more along the point of the original post, I have been contemplating Survivorism more. It seems to me that Survorism is the categorical rejection of Shards as gods.  Gave Entrone was a Survivorist based on his conversation with Marasi, but in the face of the Kandra he declared that he worshipped Industry and Progress.  Granted he’s also religiously complicated for his involvement with Autonomy.  They know that Harmony exists and bears the Shards of Ruin and Preservation.  They have and revere the words of founding.  Survivorism still would just rather follow Kelsier.  They’d still rather follow his purported ideals and the moral structure of his church than follow a more powerful god who demands little of them.  There’s a fair debate as to whether the Survivor or Harmony does more for them.  
 

I also wonder if Autonomy might not want to simply recruit Kelsier as a new avatar, maintaining the Church of the Survivor. It might make for a decent peace settlement.  If Kelsier can be invested that way.  I have other thoughts on that.

[NameIess]

Just now, bmcclure7 said:

They worshiped sun because they thought the sun was alive. Atheist diss believe that sun is alive. 

If the Athiest really believed that the sun was alive and named Apollo then they wouldn't be atheist even if he didn't consider Apollo a god.

I don’t agree. Some civilizations believed that their leaders were gods. Many atheist historians believe that those leaders existed, but deny their divinity. The definition of an atheist is not “someone who does not believe in anything supernatural” it is someone who does not believe in gods.

[bmcclure7]

3 minutes ago, Frustration said:

No it is not, Investiture can influence Connection, but they are not the same thing.

And if external aid was needed then Connection on its own cannot do it, and thus Investiture cannot.

... It quite literally does.

Given the looseness of the definition of a shard's "will" and "mind", I can very much say that gravity wants to pull anythign with mass together.

Or say there's a superheor that can control gravity? then they have a mind, but they are nothing more than a man. One given too much power.

Just like shards.

1. It literally says connection did it.  What do you mean to say connection can't do it.

 

2.  No gravity did not create the world creation implies direction, action, Choice, Gravity is an effect it doesn't have these things.

 

3.  You are purposely using language incorrectly in order to confuse drawing attention away from the weakness of your argument.

 

No gravity doesn't want to pull things down gravity doesn't want anything. It's an EFFECET.

 Shards do want things, (RoW)  They take actions on their own (RoW).   They make choices on their own (RoW) They are at the very least incomplete pieces of a person.

Gravity is not a piece of anything. 

 If you compare a shard to gravity then you must compare yourself to gravity.