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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4133878" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, it isn't that.&nbsp; Neither protagonist is pleased to be used so by the Gods, particularly initially.&nbsp; No, I'm specifically referring to the subject of the heresy concerning The Bastard.&nbsp; I find that I would be a heretic in Chalion, because I could (if I had no alternative) worship a deity that was not omnipotent.&nbsp; The heretics believe that the Father and the Mother are not omnipotent, a belief reasonably justified by the way the Quintary interacts with the world.&nbsp; However, like the heretics, I can't worship a diety whose conduct is not worthy and emmulatable.&nbsp; The notion that the Bastard was born not through an act of world birthing cosmological violence, but rather through the cockolding of the Father and the lusts of The Mother renders the Quintary just another common paganism.&nbsp; It diminishes the deities.&nbsp; It reduces the conception of the dieties down to the merely superhuman, possessing the foibles, flaws, and character of mortals but simply greater power and authority.&nbsp; That's a pretty common conception because its easy to understand and identify with, and its common enough to be rather uninteresting to me.&nbsp; Prior to 'Curse of Chalion' I had associated anti-paganism pretty much exclusively with monotheism (and to a certain extent, some of the more philosophical branches of Hinduism).&nbsp; But so far as I had ever encountered, no author had ever set out to create an original anti-pagan polytheistic cosmology, and I saw some of the developments of 'Paladin of Souls' as undermining that conception.&nbsp; Which leads me to believe that the things that originally interested me about the religion were in large part accidental.Now of course, its certainly possible that the heretics are right and the Chalion orthodoxy is incorrect, but I don't think the author was being that subtle and it seems pretty obvious which side of the debate Bujold was coming down on.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4133878, member: 4937"] No, it isn't that. Neither protagonist is pleased to be used so by the Gods, particularly initially. No, I'm specifically referring to the subject of the heresy concerning The Bastard. I find that I would be a heretic in Chalion, because I could (if I had no alternative) worship a deity that was not omnipotent. The heretics believe that the Father and the Mother are not omnipotent, a belief reasonably justified by the way the Quintary interacts with the world. However, like the heretics, I can't worship a diety whose conduct is not worthy and emmulatable. The notion that the Bastard was born not through an act of world birthing cosmological violence, but rather through the cockolding of the Father and the lusts of The Mother renders the Quintary just another common paganism. It diminishes the deities. It reduces the conception of the dieties down to the merely superhuman, possessing the foibles, flaws, and character of mortals but simply greater power and authority. That's a pretty common conception because its easy to understand and identify with, and its common enough to be rather uninteresting to me. Prior to 'Curse of Chalion' I had associated anti-paganism pretty much exclusively with monotheism (and to a certain extent, some of the more philosophical branches of Hinduism). But so far as I had ever encountered, no author had ever set out to create an original anti-pagan polytheistic cosmology, and I saw some of the developments of 'Paladin of Souls' as undermining that conception. Which leads me to believe that the things that originally interested me about the religion were in large part accidental. Now of course, its certainly possible that the heretics are right and the Chalion orthodoxy is incorrect, but I don't think the author was being that subtle and it seems pretty obvious which side of the debate Bujold was coming down on. [/QUOTE]

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