Help me with this "What if"

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I think Christianity likely would have continued to grow. Peter has mentioned ‘memetic reasons’, and I don’t know that I wholly disagree with him on those. His arguments are worth a look, for sure.

Memetics is merely a hypothesis, or if you will a "model", for how ideas and sets of ideas spread, or fail to spread.

They spread because they are useful for those who hold to them (in an immediate way, or more often in a long-term statistical-Darwinian sense), or because they give emotional comfort, or in some cases both.

And ideas don't always spread easily.

Some combinations of memes, most notably Abrahamic religions (or the entire idea of memes itself - David Brin jokes about this in at least one of his essays on the subject!), contain as one of their core ideas the notion of missioning. Of spreading the word. Because it is religiously true, or because it is intellectually useful.

(Another reason to promote a meme, or more often a set of memes, is fear. I fear rising religions fundamentalism worldwide, so I strive to promote atheism. Some religious people fear secularization, so they strive to promote religion. Some people of one religion fear a particular other religion, so they strive to promote theirs. Or to fight the other one.)



Other combinations of memes, or individual memes, don't contain such a missioning element. For instance Indo-European religions.

They may still get passed on from parent to child (often mothers can exert greater influence here than fathers, who are always away plundering during the summer months), as is common for pagan and present day religions (and for the non-religion of atheism, and also for political ideologies although I suspect to a lesser extent, for many reasons, one of which clearly is that it has always been fashionable for children to rebel against the politics of their parents, whereas religious rebellion only became fashionable very, very, very recently. If it even is).

Or they may get passed on only through imitation, that one person is seen to have success, and to follow certain practices, and so others observe this, and assume a correlation (correctly or not), and attempt to imitate those practices in order to get the same kind of success.



Other memes again are secretive. Many past religions, including Mithraism, were mystery religions, were ordinary lay followers were actively denied access to the full knowledge of the religion. Some were gradually initiated into the mysteries, first basic mysteries, then intermediate mysteries... gaining more knowledge each time, sometimes with new knowledge superseding old knowledge (as when you teach a child to play chess, you tell him that the pawn can only ever move straight forward - only much later do you confess to having lied, when you explain the en passant rules).

Memes pertinent to the active performance of magic (and by this I mean almost all RPG magic - passive "magic" would mostly be stuff like GURPS' Danger Sense, or most kinds of Luck type trait) can well be passed from master to apprentice in packages that also contain secrecy ideals. Don't share this. This is the good stuff. We should keep it for ourselves.

I can't speak much about Judaism, but Christianity and Islam were somewhat radical in not having any real secrets (ignoring the Assassin sect, of course), although no doubt many pagans, and also many converts, suspected that there were secrets, early on, because that was how most religions worked, so why would Christianity be any different? Of course there'd be some "inner knowledge" that the priest and the Bishop kept for themselves, or doled out only to their strongest supporters. Christianity and Islam, and also Judaism, are also wondrously accessible in that in theory everything is laid out for you in a text that you can learn to read.

Norse paganism lacked this having-a-text feature (without a scripture, you don't have anything you can be dogmatic about, although you can still be fanatical about some things (or even all things) - few were, but it is possible), but as far as I know, it didn't have any kind of mystery cult elements, since there was no priesthood. Sure, some practices were probably cult-like, in the comparatively religion sense of the word, but I've never heard anything about any kind of actively preserved mysteries (then again, if they were well preserved, how could we know about them?).



Some sets of memes, most notably scriptural religions (i.e. the Abrahamic ones), contain memes that make their adherents resistant to new and foreign ideas. Notice how the Nicene Creed defines precisely what it is correct to believe in, nailing down each item with painstaking detail and accuracy, to a degree that can easily look ridiculous if you don't know the historical context that made such creeds necessary? The great emphasis on correctness of belief (and grave consequences for incorrect or perhaps merely imprecise belief) fosters a close-minded attitude.

That kind of "memetic innoculation" clearly has an effect in the field of memetic warfare. It's a bit like a memetic immune system. That's a foreign idea! Attack and destroy it!

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Memetics is merely a hypothesis, or if you will a "model", for how ideas and sets of ideas spread, or fail to spread.

They spread because they are useful for those who hold to them (in an immediate way, or more often in a long-term statistical-Darwinian sense), or because they give emotional comfort, or in some cases both.

In the long term, memes or sets of memes can give their adherents a greater chance of socio-economic success. As individuals, or as societies. (Even mere emotional comfort can increase one's chances of sucess slightly, because there's less stress, so more energy to devote to gainful activity.)

Christianity clearly offers both some social benefits (at least long-term, such as counter-acting or trying to counter-act tribalism, along with an ideal of charity) and some degree of emotional comfort, but also some discomfort-causing factors (all that angst about sinning), and it's possible that the inherent pacifism in Christianity has a long-term cost (I think it has, but it's far from obvious that it's a significant cost).

Indo-European paganism, at least northen versions, offers little comfort (some flavours offer the promise of a pleasant or endurable afterlife, but mainly or only for the warrior elite) but no discomfort (there's no concept of sin - it's okay to have fun), and gives about as much social coherence as Christianity (lying and stealing is seen a shameful, at least within the tribe, and hospitality is a virtue, but it fails to promote universalism and (therefore) isn't big on charity).

Paganism is open-minded about new ideas. That makes it vulnerable to missionary activity (no immune system - my pagan ancestors were bubble children!), but also means scientific inquiry isn't halted by scriptural dogma.

On the other hand, there's a school of thought that says that scientific inquiry is greatly facilitated by the idea of montheism, especially a monotheism that says that a god created the world and then defined laws of nature which causes the world to function (to run like an engine), whereas polytheism tends towards everything happening being a direct act of a god, e.g. the sun god actively causes the sun to rise every morning.

It does make a lot more sense to study objective laws of nature (even if one's religion strongly promotes the idea that divine intervention in the form of miracles can happen, and even will happen several times in the lifetime of each believer, on average) than to try to study the whims of a multitude of constantly-active gods, which would be more akin to psychology than to hard or natural sciences, anyway. The later strikes me as futile. I can't wrap my head around trying to do science if one doesn't believe oneself to be in a universe that is at the very least largely mechanicstic.

Medicine went backwards in Christian lands in the middle ages (but not in Islamic lands. Although after the Golden Age, things went downhill there), suggesting that there might be some truth to the problem with scriptural dogma, but it is not true that progress halted completely for the entire duration of the middle ages, even though many make that claim (it's almost as silly as claiming that medieval Christians thought the Earth was flat). Maybe they didn't make a lot of progress, relative to how long the medieval period lasted, but they did make some. Some scientists were percecuted. Others weren't. Others again managed to achieve a bunch of results before they were stopped. Some science did get done.

So it's not 100% clear what the long-term consequences of this are.

In particular, it is not clear how pagans would do science (Poul Anderson offers one vision in the novella "Delenda Est" - he thinks they'd do science badly). I'm trying to figure out how that works in my Ärth setting (main among the still pagan Kelts), but those are just my own ideas, mainly based on the assumption of a largely-mechanistic universe, one governed by knowable and consistent laws (even if they're consistent but with rare exceptions), and aided by the inquiry opportunities offered by learnable magic (spells to sense and sometimes gauge or measure things, even if not to the same ridiculous pseudo-technological extent as seen in systems such as Rolemaster or GURPS Magic).

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Some combinations of memes, most notably Abrahamic religions (or the entire idea of memes itself - David Brin jokes about this in at least one of his essays on the subject!), contain as one of their core ideas the notion of missioning. Of spreading the word. Because it is religiously true, or because it is intellectually useful.

I think that this is a key factor here. In any "memetic warfare" situation, the meme that has a proselytizing ethos will always "win" eventually. If one side is actively seeking converts and one side only adds believers through childbirth, it's easy to see how the active side will eventually swallow up the inactive one.

Pursuant to this, it's worth noting that the only completely unqualified, unambiguous command in Christianity is called the Great Commission, and is a direct command to convert others. The early leaders of the Church were called "apostles", meaning "one who is sent away".

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Tuk the Weekah

I think that this is a key factor here. In any "memetic warfare" situation, the meme that has a proselytizing ethos will always "win" eventually. If one side is actively seeking converts and one side only adds believers through childbirth, it's easy to see how the active side will eventually swallow up the inactive one.

Which is why a few pagan NPCs in my Ärth setting engage in counter-missionary activity. They don't proselytize paganism, but they act against Christian missionaries, try to hinder their endavours, and try to unconvert recently converted areas.

They are some extremely competent indivdiuals, especially Eurielle of the Icy Land (and the fellowship she leads), Asbrand the Stuttering, and the apostate Johan the Trickster (who eventually joins Eurielle's fellowship, after having rooted out a traitor there), but they are up against formidable opposition, including the historical Olav Tryggvesson (Ärths version is some flavour of Lawful Evil Nazi Paladin, although that's not much of a deviation from real history), who in Ärths timeline took over the as King of western and Christian Denmark, after the death of Harald Blacktooth (Sven Forkbeard took over the eastern, stil pagan, part), whereas in our timeline he became King of Norway instead (and threatened Iceland that if they didn't convert, he'd go Viking on their asses).

It's possible the Christian Gerbert of Aurillac may enter the battle as well, in some capacity. He's not built on quite as absurdly many points as the others (he might be doable on a mere 140 so-called Goodie Points, roughly the equivalent of 300 of GURPS' CP, although it'll cost a few more points again if he actually becomes Pope), but having an off-the-charts IQ helps (in GURPS terms, he'd be IQ 19, while most of the others are ordinary geniuses in the 14-17 range). I don't think Gerbert will care much about the conflict, but his friend and pupil, Emperor Otto III, might ask him to help a bit, or Gerbert might get angry if Otto gets hurt.

Or Gerbert could be recruited for paganism. Most of Catholic (and Orthodox) Christianity bans learnable magic, which Gerbert (and possibly Otto III) practices. It's not very likely, but Gerbert has an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge, so in theory he is turnable. It's more likely that he'll try to reform Catholic Christianity to tolerate magic, aided by a sympathetic Otto III, though.

The one NPC who understands memetics the best, even having compared Christianity at one time to a disease (he doesn't have anything against sick people, but if any of them starts coughing on his relatives or friends or underlings, he'll object violently), the Irish ArchDruid Kolku of Ulster, is not inclined to get directly involved, since he's fairly easy-going on religion, but his sister, Daalny the Herb-Wise, is very opposed to Christianity and eventually forms her own counter-missionary fellowship ("Three Dryads"), and she might have caught on to the concept from her brother, or he might even tell her about it (he did use the coughing analogy while she was present, but she wasn't paying full attention). And of course if she gets captured or dies (which is a likely consequence of living dangerously, and believing fully that you'll get reincarnated upon death) her brother will be forced to get involved, to either rescue or avenge her.

Second place probably goes to Eurielle, who lived as a courtesan in Christian Paris for a few years (that's where she learned to hate Christianity) and might have some form of GURPS-style Empathy, but her understanding of memetics is still primitive and quite flawed.

Both sides tend to regard the opposition as deeply intellectually inferior (less so Eurielle - slightly less so), as an element of their fanatical Animosity, and given that they're geniuses, they'll be correct in about 99% of cases, and become painfully and embarassingly surprised in the last 1%. "Oh? An X who can think? How unusual..."

[combatmedic]

Have you read The Demon Pope?

It's in the public domain now.

Sixth short story in the collection.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10095/10095-8.txt

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Have you read The Demon Pope?

It's in the public domain now.

Sixth short story in the collection.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10095/10095-8.txt

Not yet. When was it written?

I became aware of Gerbert due to Judith Tarr's novel "Ars Magica", which was published at about the same time the RPG came out. Gerbert is also part of the RPG's Mythic Europe's backstory, where he was a very evil diabolist (I think it's detailed in the Rome Tribunal supplement for 3rd Edition).

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Not yet. When was it written?

I became aware of Gerbert due to Judith Tarr's novel "Ars Magica", which was published at about the same time the RPG came out. Gerbert is also part of the RPG's Mythic Europe's backstory, where he was a very evil diabolist (I think it's detailed in the Rome Tribunal supplement for 3rd Edition).

It was first published in 1888 AD.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

It was first published in 1888 AD.

The writing is extremely dated, but much of the information in what I've read, the first half or so, matches what I've read elsewhere. I'll read all of it more thoroughly, later on.