Belief

[jarandhel]

If you accept the premise that concentrated belief can create physical manifestations (ie: the concept that man begat the gods by believing in them) does that mean that things like Area 51, the Illuminati, the Hollow Earth, and the pregnant vampire elvis clone from the tabloids just might be real too?

I wonder...

(I should probably note that I'm in the midst of reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman at the moment, or else people will think I'm totally nuts.)

Comments

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

I'm not discounting something's ability to create itslef simply by existing (just to be confusing), but yes.

I also think it can make very little difference if you ever prove these things are real. If they're having an impact on your existence, they're real. Even thinking about whether or not they're real can count, so I guess that pregnant vampire elvis clone from the tabloids exist for you, in this regard. ;-)

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

I believed that before I read American Gods, what does that make me?

I think a certain amount of belief-energy has to be invested in things before they have non-corporeal manifestations.. far, far more for corporeal ones. I also think that people in this culture tend to have very little of this belief-energy for anything other than the God Science, and thus physical manifestations are rare and unlikely.

but not impossible ;)

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* I think I understand... you mean that things don't always have to be created by something that already exists, sometimes they just come into existance on their own? I agree.

And I really wasn't thinking about trying to prove them real or unreal... pointless exercise in the end, really, since that depends entirely on what scale you want to measure them by and most of the scales that can be used are less real than the things they purport to measure.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

It makes you very interesting. :) I used to wonder things that were sort of similar to that, like what if every fiction story ever written corresponds to events that really happened in some alternate universe, but I never really thought about those things being real here. With the other thinking I've been doing lately about immanent otherworlds, I'm forced to confront that concept. And Neil Gaiman's writing is an excellent catalyst since it deals largely with those ideas.

You're probably right about the belief-energy thing too... although, on the other hand, maybe that's so only because we believe it is? *grins and winks*