 Varieties of Thought Volume II |
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The Empire claims that all the different gods are the same. I of course do understand the need of religion and the reasons why the empire claims all the gods to be the same (eight divines, as they are called). But the question still stands: How do we know that the beings we call "gods" are truly gods? I know that the Dunmer from Morrowind claim that their gods (the Tribunal) live and walk among them, but concerning these I would rather say that the Tribunal is three Dunmer magicians who somehow obtained immortality through profane methods, like the dissident priests claim. But aside from them how do we know that the other beings we call "gods" are true gods at all? The priests tell us to believe, but this I cannot do, since I'm bound to use my reason and logic. So where is proof that the gods really are gods?
Some say that magic originates from the gods. But you could also say that magic is just a certain kind of energy and everything is just as logical and clear as the laws of nature, only that we until now cannot explain how magic functions from a scientific point of view. Perhaps that is the reason why we invented the definition "gods": In order to explain things we do not understand, in order to look up to something greater than we are.
I knew very soon that I could not find the answer there. So I began to look elsewhere and my thoughts wandered. By doing this I began to think about the problem, why people do think that gods exist, and finally arrived at this question: How do we know anything? How do we gain knowledge? The wise (and most other people) would answer to this: "We look at an object, observe it etc. etc. and then come to a conclusion." But as I began to think, I came to a different understanding.
So I claim that it is different, it is just the other way round. The first question is: How can we trust our own senses? Do they not trick us? How do we actually know that anything exists out there? Or do we live in a dream? The answer is quite simple: We do not know. We can not trust our senses; they are not fit to give us any true knowledge about anything. To give a commonly known example: magic. By using magic you can change the appearance of an object and hide its true nature. So how do we know that reality is not just a great spell of the gods to hide the truth from us?
But what of our mind? Well, there it is also quite simple. Every person has different opinions, different feelings and more: we are actually bound to think in certain patterns. Without these patterns of thinking we couldn't gain any "knowledge" (of course we do not know yet if this knowledge is true at all).
We gain information from our senses. Our mind has to bring order into this. Because of that we think in patterns of space and time. But we do not know if those two things really exist, maybe the gods are playing some kind of trick on us. Then we also think in patterns of causality and identity. How do we know that a certain cause is followed by a certain effect? Or that a certain effect has a certain cause? How do we recognize something and know that it is the same? Both are inside our minds and we think in these patterns without knowing about their truth. We just accept that they are true.
It seems therefore that every person not only has an individual view of the world, but more, nobody knows if his view is correct or not. The conclusion is of course that we cannot gain any real knowledge of our own world of which we can be certain of. This means that the beings we call "gods" might not be gods at all, it means that those beings might not even exist or that our reality is not true. We have to believe or not believe. We will never know.
The problem is, when we cannot be sure of our own reality, what should we believe then? I think it is not possible for us to think something else than our present reality, so we must stick with it. But we know now that we can question reality. And this leads to the conclusion that we can also question our gods.
As you might remember, dear reader, I first asked the question if the gods truly are gods. We know that those beings do exist (of course only when we assume our reality to be true) and that they live in Oblivion. But are they gods? What is a god anyway? How is a god defined? By immortality? By powers which are greater than ours?
I have a different approach to the problem. A god is a being which is absolutely perfect, a being not bound to anything at all. Now let us see if our "gods" fit into this category. The gods live in Oblivion. This is a place in another dimension which we think to be divine. And here is the first flaw of our gods: They actually are bound to a place. By my definition, god cannot be bound to anything and certainly not to any location.
Now some would answer me that the gods have powers beyond our imagination. Yes, this might be true in our world. In our world the gods are powerful, but what is in their own world? And even in our world we can destroy the gods, or at least their bodies, when they take physical form. It is even possible to summon lesser divine spirits. When my definition of god is true then our gods cannot be gods at all, since they are not perfect (we can have a little amount of control over them and we can even destroy them when they enter our world).
This leads me to the conclusion that there must be something higher and more divine than our "gods" (which are not gods at all, as we just noticed). Something which is even more powerful then themselves and which has also created them. This being alone deserves the title of god, even when we cannot experience it. It is probably to divine to meddle in the affairs of mortals like ourselves and has created the beings we call "gods" in order to do that.
My conclusion may seem heretic to some, they will seem heretic to the priests, of that I am sure. But I can assure you that it is not my plan to destroy religion. The beings we call "gods" are divine, because they were created by god. This of course leads us to the conclusion that we are also divine, at least to a part. That is the reason why I think magic exists, something divine came on us from god when we were created. Magic must be the divine energy which we cannot explain at the moment.
I also want to point out that I am not the first one having these thoughts. The Altmer philosopher Erundil and the Dwemer philosopher Barik would agree with me, if they were still living.