Ceremonial Faith

[Cainehill]

Arryn said:
It's also illogical from the standpoint that if the god is empowering his/her/its followers with enhanced priestly ability so as to better spread the faith, you'd think said god might want his/her/its followers to be able to bring him/her/it back from the dead ASAP so that said faith won't falter.

Then again, as Neitzsche said, "God is Dead", and dead gods arguably shouldn't be able to impart any enhanced priestly power upon their followers while dead, because, well, dead gods aren't very much fun. I'm sure the deity _wants_ to be called back from the dead, but well, she's dead.

[Arryn]

Caine,

By that logic, the priests shouldn't be able to bring her back at all, for their power, derived from the god itself, would vanish upon the deity's demise. OTOH, if mortals (priests in this case) create their deity through their own power, then they can certainly invest themselves with extra power too. It either works one way, or the other. If the system is logically self-consistent.

Of course, I'm a firm believer in that there's no such thing as logical self-consistency with regards to the subject of religion, but that's a taboo subject here (and my thoughts on religion and politics are by now fairly well known to folks here).