Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)

by Frank Herbert

“Assumptions based on understanding contain belief in an absolute ground out of which all things spring like plants growing from seeds.”

Curiosity unsatisfied tended to create its own answers. Guesses were often more dangerous than facts.

“Our Missionaria Protectiva. Humans have such a powerful need that their own belief structure be the ‘true belief.’

Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. —ANALYSIS OF THE TYRANT, THE TARAZA

By your belief in granular singularities, you deny all movement—evolutionary or devolutionary. Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not move. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you. “The

“Your will and your faith—your belief system—dominate your universe.”

All organized religions face a common problem, a tender spot through which we may enter and shift them to our designs: How do they distinguish hubris from revelation?

Survival of self, of species, and of environment, these are what drive humans. You can observe how the order of importance changes in a lifetime. What are the things of immediate concern at a given age? Weather? The state of the digestion? Does she (or he) really care? All of those various hungers that flesh can sense and hope to satisfy. What else could possibly matter?