The possible ways to break Church doctrine

Aethor wrote:You do not show truth and dispel lies by piling new lies atop the old ones.
All you'd accomplish would be that no one believes anything you say.

Please. The "ultimate truth" is a worst possible lie. In the wolf&rabbit system, there is no "ultimate truth" for both wolf and rabbit: the wolf think the truth is that the rabbit should be eaten by wolf (so the wolf could exist!) and the rabbit think that the truth is that the rabbit should escape the wolf (so the rabbit could exist). And in such giant system as planetary-scale religion, there is simply no way to do something without at least SOME lie.

You are free to try direct solution, with the unbeliveable carnage and the all too possible collapse of the whole Safeholdian civilization, of cousre.

Aethor wrote:What's going on in Safehold is probably the safest approach: pick people who can digest the truth, reveal it to them, and eventually you will have enough of them in key positions, that when the full truth is made public, they can help bring the situation under control.

You don't understand the problems. The problem is, that there is a fundamental deficite of alternate philosophy.

The science simply wasn't able to exist in modern therms without the philosophical basis. The religious doctrine would firmly stand on it's way. The current "innovations" isn't a science: it's a modifications.

InvisibleBison wrote:You might ask, why didn't the Archangels put in a personal appearance? There are three possible answers:
1) They did - in the persons of the myriad "seijins" supporting the Charisians. Remember, Merlin and company never explicitly label themselves as seijins; they claim to be people with some of the abilities attributed to seijins - and also some abilities not attributed to seijins. Archangels in disguise could fit that bill!
2) They wanted mankind to fix things on their own for some reason - perhaps as a way to counter the corruption of mankind's spirit that occurred after Shan-wei's fall.
3) They were unable to do so. It may be that, though they were physically present on Safehold during the days immediately after the Creation, they are unable to make a physical return after leaving this world.

Actually, the answer to that question is already well known. The Archangels already told the people of Safehold that they were leaving and would not be back--that humanity was on its own. Nobody expects the Archangels to come back, so no one is going to question why they haven't shown up, either to support the Church or to support Charis. It's just not a question that people will even think of.

InvisibleBison wrote:
You might ask, why didn't the Archangels put in a personal appearance? There are three possible answers:
1) They did - in the persons of the myriad "seijins" supporting the Charisians. Remember, Merlin and company never explicitly label themselves as seijins; they claim to be people with some of the abilities attributed to seijins - and also some abilities not attributed to seijins. Archangels in disguise could fit that bill!
2) They wanted mankind to fix things on their own for some reason - perhaps as a way to counter the corruption of mankind's spirit that occurred after Shan-wei's fall.
3) They were unable to do so. It may be that, though they were physically present on Safehold during the days immediately after the Creation, they are unable to make a physical return after leaving this world.

But that's what we want! Different answers! The peoples on Safehold should recognizem that there is more than one point of view, that the problems - especially the religious and philosophical ones - didn't have a simply "right" and "wrong" answers. They mus understood, that the "absolute and ultimate truth", tegardless of it's foundation, is a lie.

The problem is, that the Safehold society couldn't go anywhere, if this "anywhere" somehow contradict the "Holy Writ". For example, the astronomy would simply be banging on a neutronium-grade wall: the "Writ" ultimately present the Ptolemean system, and IT THE POINT OF GOD AND ARCHANGELS, not mere mortals. Any attempt to heliocentric system would be the outlying herecy. And so - no astronomy, no conseption of space travel, no cosmonautic.

And there would be other problems. The medical system; "Writ" clearly state, that diseases didn't need the scientific explanation. Do as Book of Pasquale teach, and you would heal the patient if your soul and spirit is clear enough. Bacteries? What are you talking about? Heresy!

And so, and so. Without dealing with the Churhc basical doctrine on the philosophical level, the possibility for progress would be restricted.

Start small. There have to be areas of the writ that people routinely violate. Use secular literature etc to encourage these small defiances. Small breaks lead slowly over time (and that time may be over generations) to big ones.

as I understand it, we want to alter how the population of Safehold percieves the CoGa and it's doctrines in order to achieve three specific goals.

1. Distribute decision-making, inventions, trade, politics, and creativity across the entire population, and put an end to the CoGa's ability to exercise centralized control over all aspects of the population's daily life.

2. Encourage widespread inventions in the present day which do not blatantly violate the prescriptions, and lay the groundwork for the prescriptions to be retired in the future.

3. Get the population thinking of the archangels, the Writ, and the history of safehold in terms of cynical realism, instead of abject worship, and lay the groundwork for modern day priests to eventually openly re-interpret or disagree with the archangel's final orders.

As i see it, in order to accomplish those goals, we don't actually need to replace the CoGa with secularism or an alternate religion. We just need to add a few simple concepts:
1. A universe existed before safehold was created.
2. The archangels were not infallalible.
3. The holy writ was composed to achieve a specific purpose in guiding the population of safehold, and a different version of the writ might exist for worlds with different purposes.


We've already seen a hint of how to do this with the secret documents that have been passed down through the history of safehold. The simplest method is probably to publish additional documents, and place them into general circulation.

For example, Merlin could pull up all of the personal journals of the command staff, edit them for conciseness and clarity, and then just publish them using the same printing materials that the holy writ was written in, in order to confirm their authenticity. Reading someone's personal journal will do a lot to make you stop thinking of them as infallible.

Once you get those 3 concepts into general circulation, you can still argue that the Writ is POETICALLY true, while also arguing that certain portions are no longer applicable in the changing world. For example, torture of heretics or harchong serfdom.

Once you get that far, you'll need to spend a hundred years or so developing steam technology, avoiding electricity, and encouraging independent regional churches. After a century, you may be able to convince people that the proscriptions are no longer relevant to a modern society, even if they were neccessary in the past.

At some point, it is going to come down to the fact that Langhorne was the one that disobeyed, while Shan-wei was the one that stayed true.

There is an entire planet that needs to accept this point. The drift of the CoGA can perhaps be a start, but in the end this will be the trickiest part of the entire process. Once you can get people asking what Shan-wei stayed true too, the rest is rather easy.

Random thoughts

'All truth is relative'. Well, that many be true for you, Dilandu, but it's not true for me.

Merlin is not going to establish some other religion or set of folk tales to make people do what he wants, that's just what Langhorne did and Merlin is not going to be that man. He has been explicitly working on the principle of not actually lying to people about anything new he tells them since his first day in Charis, since he feels that's the only way to build trust and keep being believed. He is NOT going to change that now.

"if the Shan-Wei would truly remorse for her actions, would she be forgiven? " If she had shown repentance, not just remorse, while she was alive, certainly. But she didn't. So now she is in hell and you can't get out of hell by showing remorse, part of the punishment is the forced realisation that your actions in life were wrong. 'Pay attention and repent while you still can!' The answer is already well known and so undisturbing. Therefore the whole question is deeply irrelevant.

Merlin expects that there will be future very bloody religious wars over the great reveal, he dreads them but doesn't see any way around them.

There are going to be alternative religious views on Safehold after 'the current war' (as David Weber described it somewhere) is over. There will be at least the CoC and the CoGA (continuing) and the first is not going to be monolithic.

Breaking Church doctrine is, ultimately, unnecessary.
The necessary steps are these:
1) Destroy the OBS so that the Proscriptions can be violated.
2) The Empire of Charis maintain its current freedom of religion.
3) The Empire of Charis survive.
If Charis survives, and keeps innovating, and breaks the proscriptions, and keeps surviving, and then at some point the truth comes out about the Archangels and the Writ...well, a lot of people won't believe. But a lot of people will, and the CoGA will be dragged down by the weight of its own lies.
And at that point, some Safeholdians will go looking for alternatives to the CoGA (in Owl's archives, perhaps); some will cling to the wreckage of the CoGA, and some will give up on religion entirely, across the whole spectrum from a Ricky Gervais-esque "meh", to a Dawkins/Nietzsche "bring the whole thing down".
Merlin, Nimue, OWL and the Inner Circle have neither the power nor the right to shape how Safehold deals with the fall of the Church. All they can do is ensure that Charis maintains a stance of religious tolerance, enforced by the ICA if necessary, and pressure other states to adopt similar policies or permit their religious minorities (of whatever persuasion) to come to lands that tolerate them. That will be enough to keep Safehold moving forwards, and cut short religious conflicts.

I expect the end result to be something like this:
In Harchong, if the Empire remains, loyalty to the CoGA will be enforced. If the Empire falls then things get a bit unpredictable.
In Siddarmark, on the other extreme, anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of them will end up either atheists or deists, because they've seen the CoGA at its worst. A much smaller portion, mostly remaining Temple Loyalists, will cling to the rump CoGA. Otherwise there will be a number exploring and syncretising "rediscovered" religions, in the vein of Sikhism or Subud, and some will follow the Staynair-ised Church of Charis, whatever that ends up looking like.
In Charis the largest portion is likely to follow Staynair's Church, the next portion will probably be the non-religious (atheist/deist/etc), then the explorers, then finally the remnant CoGA.
Other lands will differ based on various factors, like how hard they've been hit by the CoGA (Delferahk will be fairly unimpressed, Dohlar likewise I think, the Border States might be less affected depending on how the war goes); how pious and honest their senior clerics are (the more personally holy the clerics, the more will follow either the CoGA or the regional Church-of-Charis-like structures) and so on. What we are NOT going to end up with is a Grayson-style planetary church, be it based on the CoGA or the CoC.

Randomiser wrote:Random thoughts

'All truth is relative'. Well, that many be true for you, Dilandu, but it's not true for me.


Well, so who is right: the wolf, who need to eat the rabbit to survive, or the rabbit, who need to escape the wolf to survive?

Merlin is not going to establish some other religion or set of folk tales to make people do what he wants, that's just what Langhorne did and Merlin is not going to be that man. He has been explicitly working on the principle of not actually lying to people about anything new he tells them since his first day in Charis, since he feels that's the only way to build trust and keep being believed. He is NOT going to change that now.

The problem is, that this may not work at all. On the some point he would simply stand before question: to tell the whole truth, for that the peoples completely unprepared, or try to prepare them by fiving the the truth in small parts.

There are going to be alternative religious views on Safehold after 'the current war' (as David Weber described it somewhere) is over. There will be at least the CoC and the CoGA (continuing) and the first is not going to be monolithic.

You missing the point. BOTH of this "alternative religious views" is based on the absolutely same doctrine, and divergent only in formalistic parts. The actual difference between CoC and CoGA is much less than between the Catholics and Protestants on Earth.