Religious Treecats

You have been fortunate cthia. Every openly avowed Christian I have had a significant interaction with has not been kind to me (to express it politely). Admittedly our society discourages open expressions of religious vocation, so perhaps the good guys are just not pushy?

Daryl wrote:You have been fortunate cthia. Every openly avowed Christian I have had a significant interaction with has not been kind to me (to express it politely). Admittedly our society discourages open expressions of religious vocation, so perhaps the good guys are just not pushy?

But speaking of, what would a treecat think if they'd met Steadholder Samuel Mueller? He did believe deeply in his religious tenets, and yet did terrible things.

Point being: there are religious zealots.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Daryl wrote:You have been fortunate cthia. Every openly avowed Christian I have had a significant interaction with has not been kind to me (to express it politely). Admittedly our society discourages open expressions of religious vocation, so perhaps the good guys are just not pushy?

But speaking of, what would a treecat think if they'd met Steadholder Samuel Mueller? He did believe deeply in his religious tenets, and yet did terrible things.

Point being: there are religious zealots.

A good question and a good point. If a treecat had been made a Key, then a lot of their underhanded crap would not have been possible. Truth would have been easily identified within the church. And evil too.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But speaking of, what would a treecat think if they'd met Steadholder Samuel Mueller? He did believe deeply in his religious tenets, and yet did terrible things.

Point being: there are religious zealots.

penny wrote:A good question and a good point. If a treecat had been made a Key, then a lot of their underhanded crap would not have been possible. Truth would have been easily identified within the church. And evil too.

The point of the question was that William Allen Hillman Fitzclarence, Steadholder Burdette (even more than Mueller) was convinced of HIS "truth" and so would not raise suspicions in a cat, who can only tell if a statement is an intentional lie..

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Daryl wrote:You have been fortunate cthia. Every openly avowed Christian I have had a significant interaction with has not been kind to me (to express it politely). Admittedly our society discourages open expressions of religious vocation, so perhaps the good guys are just not pushy?

But speaking of, what would a treecat think if they'd met Steadholder Samuel Mueller? He did believe deeply in his religious tenets, and yet did terrible things.

Point being: there are religious zealots.

IIRC the treecats had a discussion with Steadholder Mueller. Hera ruined his clothes by delicately using her claws to effectively shred them.

saber964 wrote:IIRC the treecats had a discussion with Steadholder Mueller. Hera ruined his clothes by delicately using her claws to effectively shred them.

Being religious doesn't preclude anyone from being a bad person.

On a side-note: It's kind of funny watching people anthropomorphize an alien species that find much of the stuff humans do to be silly or incomprehensible and religion would certainly fall under one of those classifications.

saber964 wrote:IIRC the treecats had a discussion with Steadholder Mueller. Hera ruined his clothes by delicately using her claws to effectively shred them.

Joat42 wrote:Being religious doesn't preclude anyone from being a bad person.

On a side-note: It's kind of funny watching people anthropomorphize an alien species that find much of the stuff humans do to be silly or incomprehensible and religion would certainly fall under one of those classifications.

The interaction with Mueller merely means that a read on the emotions of the people Hera cared about, informed her that he was not liked.

In the later books, once the cats can use sign language to directly communicate with people, then I do not believe that "anthropomorphize" is the correct word. It may never have been correct, because the author has written them in a way that you could correctly "attribute human characteristics or behavior"; as the word implies that the attribution is the result of sloppy thinking.

Joat42 wrote:

saber964 wrote:IIRC the treecats had a discussion with Steadholder Mueller. Hera ruined his clothes by delicately using her claws to effectively shred them.

Being religious doesn't preclude anyone from being a bad person.

It sure doesn't! Not if my experiences are a meter stick! I am telling you!

But for sake of discussion, let's assume there is a such thing as a true Christian who exemplifies everything that being religious should exemplify. Because the reverse of your statement is also true.

And ... if true, then a treecat who recognizes truth would come to know and recognize the true "Christians." And if there are "true Christians" and their mind-glows are strong and tasteful, then surely that might interest a Cat. It might even be the catalyst of a bond.

<Holy tasty mind-glow!>

joat42 wrote:On a side-note: It's kind of funny watching people anthropomorphize an alien species that find much of the stuff humans do to be silly or incomprehensible and religion would certainly fall under one of those classifications.

Careful careful! You are toeing the line of being guilty of it yourself. The act of anthropomorphizing does not deny nor denote intelligence.

Treecats IQ is said to equal or exceed that of humans.

Does alien mean incapable of

• Transcendence
• Philosophical thinking
• Existentialism

We must also consider that Grayson's Cats, being born and raised on Grayson, may be subject to indoctrination. Grayson's Cats might not have fully adopted any preconceived notions of the species.

At any rate, we certainly cannot dismiss the fact that exposure to the human species will somewhat anthropomorphize treecats, naturally...

"When in Rome..."

penny wrote:if true, then a treecat who recognizes truth would come to know and recognize the true "Christians." And if there are "true Christians" and their mind-glows are strong and tasteful, then surely that might interest a Cat. It might even be the catalyst of a bond.

The cat might now have the ability to decide whether something being said matches (or not), what the cat recognizes as true.

Otherwise a treecat does not recognize truth in a statement made by a person; what the cat recognizes is the emotional state of that person to be able to tell whether or not a conscious lie is being told.

penny wrote:It sure doesn't! Not if my experiences are a meter stick! I am telling you!

But for sake of discussion, let's assume there is a such thing as a true Christian who exemplifies everything that being religious should exemplify. Because the reverse of your statement is also true.

And ... if true, then a treecat who recognizes truth would come to know and recognize the true "Christians." And if there are "true Christians" and their mind-glows are strong and tasteful, then surely that might interest a Cat. It might even be the catalyst of a bond.

That's circular reasoning. If you define a "true Christian" (or any other label you'd care to bestow) as a good person, then by definition only good people can have that label.

The point here is not whether the people in question are good examples of their religion. The point is that bad people can also believe wholeheartedly in their religious tenets and use them to justify their actions. So my question was: what would a treecat think of organised religion in general or of one in particular if they are exposed to such a person?

<This two-leg's mindglow is tasty and he does believe in religion. That two-leg's mindglow is horrible and he also believes in religion. Therefore, there's no correlation between religion and mindglow.>

Discerning how the zealot is corrupting the tenets to justify their actions is very philosophical. A treecat living hands of hands of (Sphinx) cycles may decide to take that task up and come up with an understanding, but I figure the majority of them will simply think it's yet another two-legs silly concept.

Maybe what could happen is that a good person person in (to borrow other religions' concept) nirvana and in perfect harmony with their religion could have an even stronger mindglow. But how many of those are there? How can treecats get a significant sample of those to draw a conclusion from?

Also, the person whose mindglow we know to be the strongest is Honor, and she's not very religious.

We must also consider that Grayson's Cats, being born and raised on Grayson, may be subject to indoctrination. Grayson's Cats might not have fully adopted any preconceived notions of the species.

Not for a long time, while memory singers keep the memories alive. The transmission of knowledge and experience is very direct. Moreover, Grayson and Manticore treecats will continue to meet each other, exchanging experiences and memories.

At any rate, we certainly cannot dismiss the fact that exposure to the human species will somewhat anthropomorphize treecats, naturally...

"When in Rome..."

And does exposure to treecats cause dentrogatomorphise humans? (from Greek δέντρο "dentro", tree; and γάτα "gata", cat)