What is the path to electricity?

Annachie wrote:For thousands of years, give or take, lightning strikes were seen as the disfavour of God (or Gods)

Until it was pointed out that the main places that got struck were churches.

Then again the COGA probably has some fluff about the churches protecting the people from Langhornes anger.

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Expert snuggler wrote:Duckk's archive fu, in another thread, turned up
"David's words, emphasis mine.

And, third, the notion of lightning as sacred and not, under any circumstances, to be profaned by mortal hands provides the permanent remembrance of not just Langhorne's existence but of the consequences of Langhorne's wrath."

There's wide agreement here that the Safehold population, even in Charis, has an electricity taboo as part of their core beliefs and would turn against anyone trying to introduce it. Further, that an electric civilization has to wait until someone can "nullify" the Writ.

How is that even possible?

After the Reformation, after the Enlightenment, people of today's Earth will often die rather than violate a key article of faith. This is after our equivalent of The Reveal.

No religion I can think of has ever renounced its scriptures, and the Writ is provably correct, making it even harder.

The only path I can imagine working is gradual re-interpretation motivated by money. Even a fresh "revelation" from an apparent archangel visiting every church on the planet wouldn't work, not on people programmed from childhood, and that approach is opposite to Merlin's goals anyway. Ditto every archbishop on the planet hearing voices saying that the archangels's plan all along was to re-introduce electricity.

Perhaps the answer includes the Church of Charis "aiding" their, uh, brothers in religion by taking over funding of primary education. A lifetime later, there's a population who's been taught from childhood "it's not to be taken literally".

One way or another it has to happen. They're not going to fight the Gbaba successfully without electric power and computers. But how?

ericth wrote:I have to say it...
Doesnt electricity always use the Path of Least Resistance?

JeffEngel wrote:Well - its injunctions have, for the most part, tangible and accurate penalties for their violation, and its historical account is remarkably consistent with the available early historical documentation (the Testimonies). But where the Writ can't be disproven without the technology it denies Safehold, it certainly could be with it,

One thing terrestrial religions have had going for them is that they have had centuries of tradition that resists taking them literally enough to be vulnerable to falsification.

For that matter, I think it's in just that sense that most theoretically literalist believers on Earth take their religion now: community first, practice second, dogma somewhere along after them.

cralkhi wrote:The way to overturn the Writ is to offer a more appealing alternative. Proof and logic are far less important.