Where exactly did the Covenant get the idea that firing the rings will put them on the Great Journey? This is never explained.
The Forerunners left behind a ton of perfectly functioning technology. The Covenant`s own technological prowess is built upon the picking apart of this Forerunner technology, and the Covenant are shown throughout the series as being able to access a huge portion of it. Among other things, they can operate the Forerunner Keyship, control Forerunner doors and gondolas, and access the Alpha Halo cartographer.
Despite all of this, they haven`t figured out that there is no Great Journey. Yet, it took Cortana all of, what, a couple hours (?) to figure out what the true purpose of the rings were in Halo 1.
In addition, the Forerunners also left behind a talking lightbulb who simply *wouldnt shut up* about the purpose of the rings. Now, Guilty Spark does convince the Heretics in Halo 2, but after the Arbiter defeats the Heretics he and Tartarus (and later the Prophets) simply ignore anything Guilty Spark says, despite referring to him as an oracle.`
I just want to know why the Covenant races believe something despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
> I just want to know why the Covenant races believe something despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This can be applied for every religion in the real world. Imagine the Covenant as Christians or Muslims. From a logical standpoint, they don’t make a lick of sense and atheists (UNSC, say) just can’t understand why.
Pretty much already answered but I will put this into the mix as well. The forerunners thought of life as a great journey, throw that into religion and you get covenant Zealots. This is a topic I’d rather not touch too much upon as it can easily lead to flaming and other issues. So that’s all I personally will say.
> Where exactly did the Covenant get the idea that firing the rings will put them on the Great Journey? This is never explained.
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> The Forerunners left behind a ton of perfectly functioning technology. The Covenant`s own technological prowess is built upon the picking apart of this Forerunner technology, and the Covenant are shown throughout the series as being able to access a huge portion of it. Among other things, they can operate the Forerunner Keyship, control Forerunner doors and gondolas, and access the Alpha Halo cartographer.
Despite all of this, they havent figured out that there is no Great Journey. Yet, it took Cortana all of, what, a couple hours (?) to figure out what the true purpose of the rings were in Halo 1. > > In addition, the Forerunners also left behind a talking lightbulb who simply *wouldnt shut up* about the purpose of the rings. Now, Guilty Spark does convince the Heretics in Halo 2, but after the Arbiter defeats the Heretics he and Tartarus (and later the Prophets) simply ignore anything Guilty Spark says, despite referring to him as an oracle.
>
> I just want to know why the Covenant races believe something despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The average Covenant member knows that the Forerunners (whom they worship as divine) activated the rings and disappeared from the universe. They believe that activating the rings was the start of a ‘great journey.’ They are just trying to emulate the forerunners. And as someone said already, logic doesn’t often factor in to such decisions when it has been part of their culture since the beginning.
Also, Cortana was able to figure it out because she is an AI. The Covenant, despite all other technological capabilities, were never able to construct an efficient AI of their own. Mostly because they never bothered to learn how to make anything; they just gleam what they can from forerunner tech and modify to fit their own purposes. Forerunner AI’s, like 343GS, are quite elusive and much too intelligent to be conned by the covies, as well.
> I just want to know why the Covenant races believe something despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Why do people believe in God? There’s no evidence to support this claim is there? Just a book written many, many, years ago.
Religion, over time, has the ability to warp the mind to a sense of belief and passion that can be very scary. Self sacrifice, the sacrifice of others, self mutilation and torture, genocide. You only have to look at extremists in the modern world to get a true picture of this. Take an alien race that has different values to anything we may carry and you can set a whole new precedent for extremism.
I think that the covenant believed the forerunners used the rings to transcend to higher being leaving the unworthy behind. This probably happened as a way of explaining the forerunners disappearance. They believed by firing the rings that they too would transcend.