Mars the Divine (Empire of Time Series) by John Argo

Page 27.

I looked at him.

"The truth," he said.

I thought about all the thinking I'd done over the years, and framed my reply carefully. I was prepared to back everything up from Directions and Scripture. "I believe," I said, "that there is what is. The truth. Veritas. It is entirely independent of what we know (science) or believe (faith). That is a fact always lost on fanatics, who put faith above reason. It may also be lost on those who think the world is limited to what they know, which is the other side of the coin from those who think the world is limited to what they believe."

He smiled for the first time, wanly, like the Holy Sun briefly peering out on a cloudy day. "Your years of philosophical studies have made you in to a talking book."

"I am trying to frame my answer as well as I can, with what you taught me," I snapped.

"I know." He actually laughed. "I am delighted."

"You ridicule me."

"No, I am laughing because I know I don’t have a prayer, pardon the pun, of countering this terrific argument you are building in response to a simple question."

"It's not a yes or no."

"Very well."

"So as I was saying, the Truth is what it is, no matter how hard we want to believe in anything. We may believe in the truth, or we may believe in something else, but our faith doesn't change anything. That is the fatal weakness of faith, that it cannot stand alone because it cannot tell truth from falsehood."

"And reason?" he asked soberly, biting into a pastry.

"Reason is not a finished dogma, but a process of thought. As science it is a specifically ordered method of thinking. It is a journey, not a destination. We can reach milestones, like knowing gravity is a force, but we cannot contain the entire thing we study. Reason builds a model of the universe, but as the model becomes more perfect, it also becomes more like the original, so that we start losing as much understanding as we gain."

"And this has what to do with my question?"

"Neither reason nor faith can completely answer our most compelling questions, either separately or taken together. My answer to you as a man of faith is, yes I honor the Gods whether it is literally the Godpods who put us on Mars, or something beyond our comprehension that they represent. As a man of reason, I can tell you that I am agnostic about the whole Gods business, and that is because by definition the supernatural does not overlap with the study of natural things that science is."

He nodded. "That's good enough for me." He sipped coffee. "Now, Farr, what did Sam Gorepoint say to you in its entirety? I wonder if he told Timony as much, or more."

I tried to recall the things Sam said. "He was a priest, or did Trini tell me that? He got into trouble for killing a man who tried to mug him, and he was exiled down to the Tribers. He found a strange coin in a mine up here, which I think is under the Holy City someplace."

"Ah, yes. Did you get the idea anywhere along the line that he understood exactly what this six or seven point coin thing represents?"

"No. Do you know what it is all about?"

"Not entirely. I think he was on his way."

"That's what I think too," my grandfather the Abbot said. "Pity he did not have longer to pursue his questions. He was a brilliant and good young man, like yourself."

"What is down there in those mines under the Holy City?"

"Not the Godpods," he said. Before I could react to his cynicism, he said: "Timony came to me with an incredible story. See, there is still much chance or Fate or whatever you want to call it in the universe. Sam is a priest who took his education, did his decade of abstinence, and then made the mistake of thinking the grass is greer on the other side, so he quit the Temple and tried to make it in the public sector. He married, had children, failed in business, lost his wife and children, and ended up as a roughneck in the mines below us. He acquired skills, did well, almost succeeded, and then killed a man in a bar brawl, and was sent packing."

"I know that much."

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