Nature and Tactics of Evangalism

we're not here to do your homework for you.

That was pretty rude.
This is not "homework".

Of course, science is not irrefutable. Scientific theories must be refutable in principle. To be irrefutable, one must be a transcend to a state that encompass all there is to know about everything. It must be from a body of knowledge that knows all. In other words such a being must be omniscience. Do the Bene Gesserit have such a level of omniscience? Can such a body of knowledge exist in reality outside of the fantasies of a science fiction world?

They certainly never had it in the sense of being able to keep it, both Paul and Leto escaped their grasp. Paul was certainly not fully omniscient. Leto perhaps was. Until he decided not to be, by fostering the development of humans blind to his omniscience, and allowing no-ships to be developed.
Would knowing all convince you of the dangers to all of such knowledge?

Not per my current naive realistic interpretation of reality, but I am certainly up for convincing.

So with the naive realistic interpretation of reality do you not agree that the standards set by the Missionaria Protectiva are pretty high to be applicable to reality?



Is such an idea inspired by phenomenons such as Jesus and the like?

I think that the passage is an explanation of how to use religion.
Use religion in the sense of it being a tool. I think it describes the means by which to carry out their own purposes (which were informed, of course by their own religion). They explain that rationalistic explanations fail when confronted with the task of altering the religion of a population.

The Bene Gesserit's religion being somewhat unique in that it created for them no desire to convert others to their belief, it fed upon the belief structures of others and modified them to suit the ultimate task of attaining a "quisach haderach".
Perhaps a similarity should be noted in pagan mystery religions or gnostic Christianity with a value placed on secret knowledge.

I think that the Bene Gesserit might have had a naive realistic view.
I don't think that the Guild Navigators, Paul or Leto did as portrayed in the novels.
I think that for the Bene Gesserit they may have had some "faith" in something else, but they relied only upon a naive realistic view in practice.
Mind was built up to through nature for the sisterhood.
The approach of the Guild Navigators was to construct nature from consciousness, to make the reality from the mind.

I personally haven't read the books, but from your descriptions so far, it seems as though the main thought of philosophy employed throughout the book is existentialism, and possibly play that against some concept of determinism. Is that correct?
So in Herbert's world how is free will defined? Or is there no free will?

I don't recall free-will as ever being directly discussed.
My overall gestalt view is that it assumed such things as wills exist.

A major theme is the burden placed upon Leto who became able to see back through all time and was also able to either (control the future course of events/ or see all events into the future).
A point seems to be made for the importance to this omniscient being to want to create in humanity the ability to escape his control/prediction.
So perhaps very existential.
Humanity must escape the grasp of determinism.

Or so saith the Leto.

By "irrefutable" does he mean "untestable"?
If it is "testable" that means that someday it may be refuted, or at least surpassed.

The passage is from a work of fiction Chapterhouse Dune by Frank Herbert.
The quote is actually a fiction within a fiction. The Missionaria Protectiva is sort of the guiding principles of an almost exclusively female order. The order views religions as tools.

So by "irrefutable" I think she (the author of the passage) means supremely convincing. I think the view is that beliefs create something of a sociological battlefield. The Bene Gesseret play this field toward their own ends.
Science in their view is not sociologically convincing. Humans respond better to divinity.

I see someone has tagged this thread "political science",
as if to say that political science is about appeals to wonder rather than reason.
Astute tagging, whoever it was.

Thanks Kolyo. I'm not too humble to take that credit.