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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 39: Cooper 85
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 268
Cooper stared at Afo, the green alien who had just showed him what might have been a charm bracelet of holy symbols from innumerable faiths. What, exactly, was the nature of his syncretism? His aversion to polytheism struggled against his desire to learn, and the latter was winning. The emperors of the Medo-Persian Empire had a peculiar form of syncretism--they permitted every subjected nation to continue worshiping whatever gods they had always worshiped, as long as each promised to pray for the well-being of the empire. After all, they recognized that the diversity of religions suggested at least one of them was true, but that humans would lack the understanding necessary to determine which one, so it made the most sense to support the worship of all of them so that the right one would be included.
“So,” he ventured, “do you worship all these gods because you believe them all to be true, or because you’re hoping that whichever one is true will be among them?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re all true. God is an incredibly complex and incomprehensible being.”
“But,” Cooper objected, “how can they all be true, given that they disagree with each other?”
“But do they? Or is it just that our limited mortal minds cannot reconcile paradoxical truths? All of it could be true, in ways that we just cannot understand.”
Cooper was hesitant to say that that was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard anyone say. After all, if Afo was right, it could be an incredibly wise insight. How could he put that without being offensive?
At that moment the ship, as predicted, jolted to a halt. Everyone was thrown against the harnesses, and since this was his first experience at this, Cooper lost his train of thought. The second mate started shouting, “All right, you swabs, let’s get moving, we have cargo to unload, and no one gets shore leave until everything is in order--”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Afo said quietly, as if this was a rehearsed speech he had heard a thousand times before. Brian tried to listen to the instructions, but was confused enough that he hoped someone would guide him to where he had to be and show him what he had to do.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
