Fallen angels, dinosaurs, and atheists
Nov. 25th, 2016 12:30 amTo give context to my previous tweets, in my novel, something like a creation narrative literally happens: God, angels, adam and eve, the war in heaven, six thousand years later, the present day. It's not exactly the same as any accepted belief system, but something along those lines.
I have not decided if that's *instead* of the geological history we have evidence of in this world. If so, I need to, um, explain biodiversity, and dinosaur bones, and geology, etc, etc, etc. And coming up with a plausible present day derived from that history is more world-building than I want, I'm basing it on "like the present day, but with fallen angels occasionally wandering about".
Alternatively, the two histories are sort of parallel, God "smoothing out" the older history somehow. Which makes sense, but is a bit of a cop-out.
So far, I've just not mentioned it, but it feels like a question hard not to have any idea of.
In terms of certainty, there are still characters, like the main character, who personally remember the war in heaven and the creation of the world, and interacting directly with God. Not remember *very* well, because time passes, but have a reasonable certainty that things happened like that. And some knowledge of magic etc supporting their assertion of knowing how the universe works.
(What happens *outside* this world *since* the creation is left uncertain, because that really would overload my worldbuilding.)
But I haven't really addressed what non-religious philosophies exist. People who don't find the evidence for God convincing? Presumably those people do exist, and for people who think the evidence is convincing in *this* world, they will seem exactly the same as atheists in this world. But for me, they're more like flat-earthers. People who think God created that universe much as described, but hasn't intervened since and/or has no special moral place? They presumably exist. I think I have those characters, though they haven't had conversations about it yet.
That's what I meant by "can I have dinosaurs" and "can I have atheists" :)
ETA: And as London Crawling points out on twitter, it would be plausible to have people who believe in dinosaurs and angels, but find the account of a prime mover who personally created angels unconvincing. In fact, that might even be accurate in this world -- my account of creation is all given second hand.
I have not decided if that's *instead* of the geological history we have evidence of in this world. If so, I need to, um, explain biodiversity, and dinosaur bones, and geology, etc, etc, etc. And coming up with a plausible present day derived from that history is more world-building than I want, I'm basing it on "like the present day, but with fallen angels occasionally wandering about".
Alternatively, the two histories are sort of parallel, God "smoothing out" the older history somehow. Which makes sense, but is a bit of a cop-out.
So far, I've just not mentioned it, but it feels like a question hard not to have any idea of.
In terms of certainty, there are still characters, like the main character, who personally remember the war in heaven and the creation of the world, and interacting directly with God. Not remember *very* well, because time passes, but have a reasonable certainty that things happened like that. And some knowledge of magic etc supporting their assertion of knowing how the universe works.
(What happens *outside* this world *since* the creation is left uncertain, because that really would overload my worldbuilding.)
But I haven't really addressed what non-religious philosophies exist. People who don't find the evidence for God convincing? Presumably those people do exist, and for people who think the evidence is convincing in *this* world, they will seem exactly the same as atheists in this world. But for me, they're more like flat-earthers. People who think God created that universe much as described, but hasn't intervened since and/or has no special moral place? They presumably exist. I think I have those characters, though they haven't had conversations about it yet.
That's what I meant by "can I have dinosaurs" and "can I have atheists" :)
ETA: And as London Crawling points out on twitter, it would be plausible to have people who believe in dinosaurs and angels, but find the account of a prime mover who personally created angels unconvincing. In fact, that might even be accurate in this world -- my account of creation is all given second hand.