TITLE: Gods and Other Beings
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG
POSTED: March 19, 2005
NOTES: Elizabeth Weir thinking about galaxies and people and gods.
DISCLAIMER: Read
Elizabeth had read about and immersed herself in the central role that religion played on so many of the worlds visited through the stargate program. Near countless people whose lives centered on the idea that a single god existed. Culture after culture where that was an idea, not a belief, because those people had "proof" that was still being supplied by oppression, miracles, unexplained actions by the Goa'uld or the Asgard, or in one case, an Ancient. Whatever race planted and tended the seed, though, finding a world that didn't fall into that pattern was clearly the exception.
Before stepping through the gate behind Sumner, she had known they wouldn't find Goa'uld or Asgard on the other side. Still, she kept finding herself thinking, it shouldn't have been a surprise that the Pegasus galaxy would flip that rule on its head.
The Ancients were worshiped to a certain extent, but it was more about admiration, they had found. Many worlds looked to the builders of Atlantis and the stargates as a great and wise people who would one day return, and there was an element of religion in that; an almost blind trust that the return would occur, despite the number of generations that continued to pass without it happening. But most significant, Elizabeth noted in report after report, was the word "ancestors." If she eliminated Chaya as a data point -- accepting that relationship with the people on Proculus as the sole exception in this almost meticulously planned galaxy -- godhood never entered into the discussions the teams relayed back to her from all of the worlds they had visited so far.
It felt like a step forward.
Elizabeth was less sure, however, whether it was progress on Humanity's part, or if they were simply benefiting from another piece of someone else's plan. And it felt like making a distinction between the two should matter.
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