The Science of Discworld II

), Offler, the crocodile god ( Mort and Sourcery ), Petulia, the goddess of negotiable affection ( Small Gods ), and Steikheigel, the god of isolated cow byres ( Mort ).
    Then there are the minor gods. According to The Discworld Companion , ‘There are billions of them, tiny bundles containing nothing more than a pinch of pure ego and some hunger’. What they hunger for, at least to start with, is human belief, because on Discworld the size and power of a god is proportional to how many people believe in him, her, or it. Things are much the same on Roundworld, in fact, because the influence and power of a religion are proportional to the number of its adherents. So the parallel is much closer than you might expect – which is what you should always expect with Discworld, because it has an uncanny ability to reflect and illuminate the human condition in Roundworld. Actually, it’s not always human (or mayfly) belief that matters. According to Lords and Ladies :
    There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Herne the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less.
    Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Herne was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak.
    When discussing religious beliefs, there is always the danger of upsetting people. The same goes when discussing football, of course, but people take their religion nearly as seriously. So let us begin by acknowledging, as we did towards the end of The Science of Discworld , that ‘all religions are true, for a given value of true’. We have no wish to damage your beliefs, if you have them, or to damage your lack of beliefs if you don’t. We don’t mind if we cause you to modify yourbeliefs, though. That’s your responsibility and your choice: don’t blame us. But we’re shortly going to have a go at science, and then we’re going to have a go at art, so we don’t think it’s fair that religion should get away scot-free. Anyway, whatever your beliefs, religion is an essential feature of the human condition, and it’s one of the things that made us what we are. We have to examine it, and ask whether Discworld puts it in a new light.
    If you are religious, and you want to feel comfortable about what we’re saying, you can always assume that we’re talking about all the other religions, but not yours. Some years ago, during Ecumenical Week, Rabbi Lionel Blue was giving the “Thought for the Day’ on BBC Radio 4, as part of a series on tolerance. He was the first speaker in the series, and he ended with a joke. ‘They shouldn’t have asked me to start the series,’ he said, and then explained how the later speakers from other religions would differ from him, and how he would be tolerant about that. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘they worship God in their way … whereas I worship Him in His.’
    If you see that this is a joke, as the good rabbi did, but also understand that outside that cosy context this is not, in a multicultural world, a good way to think, let alone speak, then you’re already getting to grips with the ambivalent role that religion has played in human history. And with the mental twists and turns required to live in a multiculture.
    The big problem with religion, for a dispassionate observer, has nothing to do with belief versus proof. If religion were susceptible to scientific-style proofs or disproofs, there wouldn’t be a lot to argue about. No, the big problem is the disparity between individual human spirituality – the deep-seated feeling that we belong in this awesome universe – with the unmitigated disasters that organised, large-scale religions have at various times, including in all probability yesterday, inflicted on the planet and its people. This is upsetting. Religion ought to be a force for good, and mostly it is … But when it isn’t, it goes spectacularly and horribly wrong.
    In both Pyramids and Small Gods , we see that the real problem in this connection is not religion as such, but priests. Priests have beenknown to