OrlandoNative wrote:He may have just been agnostic.
If you cannot answer yes to the question, "Do you believe there is a god?" then you are an atheist. I suppose one could have some mental illness that prevent one from knowing what they believed but otherwise it is that simple. Agnostic is usually(every time I have heard it defined by someone not deriding it) use in reference to what one believes about the evidence. For instance an atheist might('might', some do some don’t) say that they know god doesn’t exist. An agnostic would probably say that they think the there isn’t enough evidence to know whether god exists. The difference between theist and atheist is not what they think about the evidence for and against the proposition(that might be why one is one or the other though). The difference is whether one does or does not believe there is a god.
OrlandoNative wrote:Mmm... on the question of slavery, the Bible, taken as a whole,......
See my previous Final Note for my take on what the bible does or does not endorse.
OrlandoNative wrote:It's true there have been periods of time where technology hasn't progressed *much.....
I wasn't talking about the rest of the world. If you require that the entire world be used in any analogy than you will always be able to find some place that bucked the trend. As for the short time period, well what do you expect? Almost any place on earth that completely stagnated for too long got invaded and taken over. Also Safehold isn't earth. Safehold is one society. I will concede your point about the crudity of Homo Sapiens starting point though.
OrlandoNative wrote:....We don't know. While I agree it would be a somewhat bitter humor to find out that the "Return" was just another check on Langhorne's original plan, it doesn't mean it couldn't be.
Why the return will not be an end to Langhorn's plan. I said end not a progress check. It could be a onetime progress check, but it cannot be an end. Otherwise, you have the same problem as Gilligan building a boat.
OrlandoNative wrote:...... True, anyone who awakened might have to stay awake long enough for the repair to complete, but I don't really see anyone awakening for just an hour or two anyway.
You could have the first of say, five visits. However planning on actually having something physical last tens of thousands of years is insane(actually insane, evaporation might be a problem if you left something that long). Plus repair can only go so far, what do you do when data is simply lost. A thousand years in the future the Holocaust Deniers could have a point(then, not now). We could very well have lost almost all of the evidence by then and certainly lost much of the original physical evidence to decay.
OrlandoNative wrote:...."God" says to build a wall or dig a hole, how many folks are really going to ask "Why?"
The temple was built with Federation technology so it would be 'Angels' doing the work. So no "God says" scenario. The point I am making her was that ONE person couldn't have done it. I am saying nothing about twenty.
OrlandoNative wrote:Sheer speculation. We don't even know if the books will go as far as the Return.....
We do know that RFC plans for the Gbaba to return at some point. So unless the big G are returning before the 'return' we will see the return. Also, no anything cannot happen. RFC is constrained by his own writing style and past event in the series. Therefore, what won't happen is Merlin dying a pointless death in despair as all his friends die. That could happen in the Dune series but RFC doesn't write that way. See Honor Harrington's 'death' and the almost universal happy endings for RFC’s ‘good guys’.
OrlandoNative wrote:.....It *could* be an issue, or not. The story line could go either way......
If the bombardment platform really is just junk than the entire series is pointless. Merlin could have destroyed all the fleets and armies of the temple from his skimmer(or similar vehicle) and the series would be over. See the horror of all the pointless deaths for why that won't happen.
OrlandoNative wrote:It's possible, but how likely? 1000 years vs the maximum tested 100? One would have to be extremely lucky.
I did say the "Merlin had a thought that they might have been insane enough..." and if they did try, some of them might beat the odds. If the odds were 99:1 then put 100 people into stasis and five hundred years later, you get out one person. Heavy attrition but you do get biological people.
OrlandoNative wrote:Whomever it might be, it's likely to be more than one. Since it's mentioned as the "Archangels" - plural - ....
I see no reason to limit the possible 'return' to one person. So I agree there.
OrlandoNative wrote:This is what probably most of the readers assume to be the case. If so, not all that imaginative.
Not all that imaginative is not an argument. That said see the next point I made. You quoted it next in your post. See below for requite.
OrlandoNative wrote:Highjohn wrote:What it actually is:
Nothing we have thought of. The almighty author is much more creative than us and a much better writer so he almost certainly has something planned which is better than anything we think of. Not that it isn't fun to speculate.
OrlandoNative wrote:Well, we've covered quite a few possibilities. It could be some mixing and matching. Or, yes, maybe something entirely different. After all, the Ghaba could just stumble over them a year before the Return, and wipe them all out. Not exactly the ending we might expect or want, but, then again, that's sort of up to the author, isn't it?
No that won't happen RFC isn't an complete asshole.
OrlandoNative wrote:Actually, I'm not convinced beliefs have changed.....
Yes they might. On the other hand what percentage of the population are those people? You can still find believers(sincere and possibly on this forum) who believe in Thor, Poseidon or Zeus. The point is that the vast majority of people I the Southern United States felt that way and now the vast majority in the Southern United States don't. There was a change of religious beliefs. If want an even more obvious change in religious belief see the Roman Catholic Church and limbo. They actually have decreed the change in belief and they formulated limbo earlier too. So there were too changes in belief. One limbo exists. Two no it doesn't.
Note: If slavery was reinstituted it probably would be racially based. Racism is the most likely justification for that and there is plenty of racism to go around. The other real option would be some sort of indentured servitude or selling oneself to clear debt.
Note 2: The quotes are used as markers, nothing else. I am trying to reduce the length of the post(Yes I know the length is my fault). So I am using small excerpts to make it easy to find what I am responding to.