Lauren's Tales

You know, I thought I published this two days ago, but maybe I didn’t.  Given the spelling, it’s just as well.

I’ve been focused on the problem of evil and how it would fit into the universe of project I’m working on.

If you don’t know your way around theology, be sure to go read up on the problem of evil, natch.

So I have a world with two populations, each with an internally consistant cosmology that completely conflicts with the other.

Population A has a cosmology familiar from earth, namely qualified monism. God created the world. The agent responsible for evil in the world is a son or other emanation of god. God has other emanations rather like angels from more familiar contexts, but here would be considered lesser gods, servants of the Great God, who humans address with their prayers and consider responsible for giving laws.  The nature of evil for this part of the world is disobeying the laws laid down by God’s servants.

Population B has believed that the universe is not unique (though there are arguments about whether other universes are equal to their home one or are lesser shadows. Gods are local phenomena of a universe. They aren’t taken as lawgivers and such, just immensely powerful beings on the top rank of things that can be summoned and bargained with. The bottom rank would be occupied by strong and weak elemental entities. For the B guys evil is not something that has to do with gods. Evil is the measurable ill effects of a spell cast with unkind intention, or the residue of a spell cast by evil means (like cutting out peoples’ hearts or the like). Evil is to be avoided, largely because it is unpredictable and leads to misery, no matter what initial benefit accrues. Good mages strive to clean up evil, while evil mages make use of it.

I wonder how much of this I could fit into a book without boring people?