R'hllor,Seven,Old Gods and The other ? Real fake good evil Judge!

[Mehmet Eren]

I consider there is real power for Rhllor shadow babyies!!! ( Can someone explain to me ....) so there is solid things lots of about Rhllor but but it is good and bad I consider him as a evil...

Secondly We have old gods it is real it strangly close to my idea concept nature every living things is connected and there are things/people which are chosen to control and use power before they are dead such as Bran Bloodraven.... I consider it Force of Nature and elements I am not sure about fire ....... and it represent goodness .... Nature .....

Moreover there is cold ice goods The other some wilding workship it .... we know very little about it and Melisandre consider Bran and bloodraven its champion which is false prediction .......and I asume it is evil story needs

So I say Can Rhllor and The Other can be both evil ...... We know that Rhllor see itself as a good and it claims there is only 2 gods but we already have evidence show that there is more 2 gods in the story What you think and Please give some information and OP.....:)

last but not least I think seven is fake there is no any solid evidence it is realy exist .....

[Mladen]

And there is a proof that Old Gods or R'hllor are real? With the risk of sounding like Uncle Vernon, "there is no such thing as real God". Martin didn't create deities, he created the systems of beliefs, religions, to be precise. R'hllor isn't either good or bad, he is just a God people believe in and acts upon a certain dogmatic belief. We never see R'hllor lightening a candle. We see his priests doing amazing things, people. The concepts of magic and religion are united here because people have the need to explain the inexplicable. The Old Goods are also not real. When we see people of the North praying to the Old Gods, conceptually they are not praying to the greenseers with limited powers, There is a significant difference between what we see Old Gods are and what people of North think of them. Basically, Old Gods =/= greenseers.

[King of Winters]

I think- oh. Mladen's already been here. Okay.

[Mehmet Eren]

I agree with that Old Gods =/= greenseers is dead and alive ones maybe ? there is solid power and similar concept goes with Rhllor also (magic+normally imposiable things ) but There is not magical things for seven if I recall correctly.....

[Reginald blackfield]

I think their are gods, I do not see how magic and more importantly prophecies can exist in the abscense of deities. For how else would prophets such as the Ghost of high heart and Patchface gain such visions? As for what God exists I don't know but probably the Many faces God, seeing that several Gods appear to have some power.

[SacredOrderOfGreenMen]

The Old Gods are "real" in the sense of not being exactly gods as we understand them. The weirwoods are supernatural entities that really in many way defy easy definition, but they do in the very fibers of their wood, "contain" the collective unconscious of greenseers, and perhaps even millions of years of souls.

Varamyr, while dying in front of the weirwood, feels his soul lift out and for a flash become "one" basically through nature: "Then both were gone and he was rising, melting, his spirit borne on some cold wind. He was in the snow and in the clouds, he was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare; Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood, and everything that's in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own."

Bloodraven says that the weirwood have sentience, but that sentience is nothing resembling a humans, saying that for them centuries of human time is like the falling of a leaf, and that the things they understand are "soil and stone...rain and sun." Or something to that effect.

[Pod The Impaler]

The gods are no less real as the world and those in it.

[Blazfemur]

The most difficult aspect of this thread, is going to be the separation of Magic, from Deity. powers bestowed don't necessarily have to come from the face and name you claim to believe in.

That being said, it appears the real "god" in this series is the blood. All powers stem from the different ingredients in the blood, and their potency, harnessed as magic. This series is all about ancestry, bloodlines -- forget the deities. it doesnt matter what name you claim to worship.

[Tana]

You forgot him of many faces

[Blazfemur]

interesting fact of note: int he house of the undying, when daenerys is pondering the prophecies, drogon flies above the door she just entered which was made of ebony and weirwood. black and white.

[Quwertzuiopp]

I think their are gods, I do not see how magic and more importantly prophecies can exist in the abscense of deities. For how else would prophets such as the Ghost of high heart and Patchface gain such visions? As for what God exists I don't know but probably the Many faces God, seeing that several Gods appear to have some power.

How can magic exist without deities? It simply exists, it is a force of nature. There is no reason to believe that there must be some supernatural cause for all of this. GRRM has said that magic is not science, but that does not automatically imply that is has to be divine in some way. Also, lack of understanding is the source for those believes, just like in real life. I don't understand thunder? there must be a thundergod.

On the topic of prophecies: What they are really doing is using magic to look at the path things may take in the future. If you look at the world as a gigantic simulation, in which everything has a cause and is itself a cause, you can simply precalculate what path the future will take. Since magic is wild and uncontrollable, this will come in the form of vague and symbolic images, where the brain tries to interpret the information it got as an input from ominous magic X. If you put quantum mechanics (which must reallistically still exist on Planetos because they do in our world) and/or free will to decide into the mix, the images might just be so vague because magic just gives you the average of the most likely pathes, where the path leading there might just be irrelevant, because at some point the prince that was promised will be conceived either way.

But remember: this does not have to be divine, since prophecies do not have to come true. They often do, because reallistically you wouldn't get them if they were not acurate in 99% of the cases, but at at least on point in the books, someone tells a female POV (I think it was Cercei or Dany) that you can prevent a prophecy from coming true, e.g. by killing the one that the prophecy is about. It is of course an ironical trait of prophecies that they will become true regardless of wether, or especially because you try to prevent them. I think we will witness at least one prophecy NOT coming true, because someone is breaking it through sheer will, probably the one most readers will expect to be, because GRRM likes to subvert his tropes and troll the readers.

Edit: fixed grammar and typos. if you find another one, you get to keep it.

[giant snake]

I don't know if it's R'hllor that is evil or if Melisandre is just part of a dangerous faction or something, but I think that Stannis is definitely doing a deal with the devil in order to get what is his.

The Seven are socially the same as the Medieval church...and they aren't as well. It doesn't seem like much of a moderating force of great influence. Maybe this has to do with the 300 Targaryan years. At any rate, its Septons and Septas seem to be more of a good sort than not. The Seven is the only one that seems like a real religion though. R'hllor is more like a cult or an old world religion of the nobility, like Zoroastrianism.

Wait I take that back: The Drowned God of the Iron Isles is a good parallel for the Viking's religion.

The Old Gods are more like the Traditions of ancient civilizations.

[TheSovereignGrave]

Wait I take that back: The Drowned God of the Iron Isles is a good parallel for the Viking's religion.

I'm not exactly an expert on Norse religion, but I'm almost certain that it's nothing like the Drowned God.

[Quwertzuiopp]

I'm not exactly an expert on Norse religion, but I'm almost certain that it's nothing like the Drowned God.

Not at all. "Vikings" where a seperate group in norse society, more like socially accepted pirates. At the beginning of the viking age, they became a lot more accepted, but with time they were more and more outcast. Also, while the ironborn care for nothing but plundering and raping and pillaging, that was exactly why Vikings increasingly became social outcasts as time went on. Still the real vikings were never really all about rape and pillage, they where mostly about setteling land, even if they had to take it by force, and getting rich, again even if using force. Eventually, most realised that trading is way more effective than pillaging. Also, most images and stories of vikings are not from themselves, but from monks hundreds of years after the fact, who where more than likely biased, because monasteries where raided much more often because of the gold there and because the vikings where heathens.

Also the drowned god is NOTHING AT ALL like what we still know of the norse mythology and gods. Most importantly godS not goD. The only resemblance I see is that the drowned god calls fallen warriors to his underwater paradise, while odin calls fallen warriors instantly to his endless feasts while everyone boring (to the norse) was doomed to rot in the eternal hell of ice and boredom. That is litterally the ONLY resemblance. Also, that part about the fallen warriors? Thats just something made up by the warrior elite that noone else and not even all of themselves believed in. (For all we know from our limited sources)

[Blazfemur]

Inevitably it's in the hand of those that practice it, which is what i think grrm was getting at. like real life, you have your religious extremists and those that kill int he name of thir faith, then you have tolerant ones that are like, "oh, you dont believe what i do? ok cool, no big deal."

Is Thoros evil?

P.S.-there wont be actual confirmation, of deities in this series, it's already been stated.

[Reginald blackfield]

How can magic exist without deities? It simply exists, it is a force of nature. There is no reason to believe that there must be some supernatural cause for all of this. GRRM has said that magic is not science, but that does not automatically imply that is has to be divine in some way. Also, lack of understanding is the source for those believes, just like in real life. I don't understand thunder? there must be a thundergod.

On the topic of prophecies: What they are really doing is using magic to look at the path things may take in the future. If you look at the world as a gigantic simulation, in which everything has a cause and is itself a cause, you can simply precalculate what path the future will take. Since magic is wild and uncontrollable, this will come in the form of vague and symbolic images, where the brain tries to interpret the information it got as an input from ominous magic X. If you put quantum mechanics (which must reallistically still exist on Planetos because they do in our world) and/or free will to decide into the mix, the images might just be so vague because magic just gives you the average of the most likely pathes, where the path leading there might just be irrelevant, because at some point the prince that was promised will be conceived either way.

But remember: this does not have to be divine, since prophecies do not have to come true. They often do, because reallistically you wouldn't get them if they were not acurate in 99% of the cases, but at at least on point in the books, someone tells a female POV (I think it was Cercei or Dany) that you can prevent a prophecy from coming true, e.g. by killing the one that the prophecy is about. It is of course an ironical trait of prophecies that they will become true regardless of wether, or especially because you try to prevent them. I think we will witness at least one prophecy NOT coming true, because someone is breaking it through sheer will, probably the one most readers will expect to be, because GRRM likes to subvert his tropes and troll the readers.

Edit: fixed grammar and typos. if you find another one, you get to keep it.

I still need an explanation for how a lackwit fool like Patchface could possibly have any knowledge of these magic spells and where he gets these dreams from.

[Roxy Carmichael]

Magic? Yes.

Gods? No. Deities are just a way for people to explain the things/magic they don't understand. I think Bran's storyline makes this pretty clear.

Good and evil? Sure, but that's a bit more relative.

[Hangover of the Morning]

I still need an explanation for how a lackwit fool like Patchface could possibly have any knowledge of these magic spells and where he gets these dreams from.

I think Patchface is just a handy plot device created by Martin to insert some clever and creepy foreshadowing into the story. I don't think that there's any more to him and he certainly doesn't receive any messages from any deity. He blubbers random things that only in retrospect appear to be meaningful.

[Joe Blackfyre]

I'd like it if they were real, but alas Martin has confirmed that we will never get confirmation in the series. Which basically means he doesn't believe in any gods IRL, and is possibly just deconstructing religions in Planetos according to his own particular moral guidelines.

Doesn't mean we can't make up our own fanon though, as absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. ;)

[giant snake]

I'm not exactly an expert on Norse religion, but I'm almost certain that it's nothing like the Drowned God.

It has more to do with ethos than on the unimportant details of deities and the myths. Old world religions aren't about doctrinal details as much as their codes of behavior. In that way, the Drowned god is effectively the same as Thor.