[CAVTT] The Test of Faith

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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101

Now, that’s confusing, Ms. Kernher. Do you want to bring reforms or not, did I misunderstand your intentions? In one place you are saying you must demand the change, in the other - that you don’t need power?..

Because in order to bring reforms you need the power. Power is the ability to do that, to realize the plans. If you don’t want the power, then you don’t want to change, and then… what’s the meaning of all this?

Very confusing.

Above you mentioned, that you sided with common people. But tell me, do Minmatar invaders actually fight against “flawed lords”? Because, most likely, said flawed lords are sitting in their luxurious residences, drink wine and watch holo-reports from the war, laughing at your attempts!

All the crewmembers of the ships, all ground troopers who charge with attacks, those who die first, those who are hauled to medbays after attack, who lose limbs, sanity, family members - they all are commoners, who protect their homes, their beloved Empire from foreign invaders - and by association, from you.

Say, for example, if a Valklear team would raid one of Chakaid’s farm, what would he lose? Like 1% of yearly income? And what will lose people there? Some will be raped, others murdered, homes destroyed, families torn, dead children, dead parents. How will his loss be comparable with someone who will lose whole family to such raid?

It’s a war between nations, between people. Yes, maybe it’s lords and ceos who play the chess on the map of our cluster, but each eaten pawn is someone’s life.

You have brought yourself already Tibus Heth into this discussion. But did you know, that when he started his protest and riot - that actually was even more, he managed to capture whole facility - he managed to do this without spilling blood. He didn’t kill guards, didn’t go “war” on them, and even same guards whom he first fought against were the first to join him. Fighting without spilling Caldari blood - that’s what you do when you really care about commoners.

But how many Amarr people (same commoners) have died in your ship or in Amarr ships that you have attacked with your new “friends”?..

It is a war, Ms. Kernher, and mistakes in the war mean human lives. It’s not enough to admit such mistakes.

They must be atoned.

With blood.

102

One might argue Heth didn’t want to do just that, either, yet he did. Cpt. Kernher seems to be headed down the same way.
So, the analogy she has made there is in my humble opinion more accurate then she’d herself realize. The subconsciousness works in miraculous ways.

103

Or maybe it just means that your argument is a slippery slope that one should avoid.

104

‘The system has grown into something that doesn’t work, run by people we can’t trust. It needs to be brought back to its foundations so we can fix it.’
‘Ahh, but what if it’s all built on lies??’
‘Then that’s even worse, and it means we really can’t trust the people running it!’
‘Or maybe it means it’s all a slippery slope!’

Seriously, wut? I mean, what exactly would the ‘slippery slope’ be? ‘OMG, you might wind up trying to fix everything that’s broken or dishonest about it, and we can’t have that’?

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105

Oh, Cpt. Arrendis, I feel flattered that you put so much energy into misrepresenting what I said.

The slippery slope is thus: If one follows her arguments, then one does away with those parts of Scripture she wants to privilege, as there is no salient feature of the latter given in her arguments that justifies saving them. Her distinction between the two is in her own words based on ‘faith’. (I’d rather call it irrational, blind belief.)

If nothing else, it should be clear: Giving arguments that are not consistent - but in conflict (!) - with ones declared goals is not a good way to go about reaching for those goals.

106

Scripture can be Analysed to Determine which Parts are Righteous, and which are Not.

However, this Requires an Objective set of Righteous Principles, rather than a Persons Particular Moral Views which Inevitably leads to Cycles of Oppression as One set of Nobility is replaced by Revolutionaries who become the New Nobility.

Thus, first we must Determine what Righteousness Is.

107

A) This doesn’t take any energy at all. Dealing w/you guys is like dealing with a bunch of Goons who don’t know enough to try to be careful.
B) What misrepresentation? You’re the one saying:

ie: ‘Maybe it’s all lies’.

If one follows her arguments, as you’ve suggested, then the first thing she’s calling for is the establishment of a commission of subject matter experts who, with not authority under the current system, have no vested interest in either maintaining or overthrowing the status quo. They would then undertake to attempt to ascertain the legitimacy of each work of Scripture. She’s even suggested an avenue for this: comparison with the unaltered copies held by Tetrimon, which haven’t been subject to any potential Theology Council revisions.

So, if the foundation of her call begins with ‘let’s find out what’s the truth and what isn’t’, then there’s no inconsistency. You simply want to apply the same standard to the portions of the larger body that she—based on orthodox teachings of the faith—considers the oldest and most reliable.

You’ll also note, her response was not to say these earlier works shouldn’t be evaluated, only that if they were found to be false, that would be even more reason not to trust a system that engages in lies in order to expand the lies it’s built upon.

How is that a slippery slope? That seems to me more like seeking a solid foundation.

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108

Exactly my goal.

109

Emphasis mine.

The claim that the Tetrimonic copies are unaltered is contested. It was a claim made by the prior leadership of the Tetrimon during the period in which they were trying to return from their exile. It should be noted that during this exile they were under Khanid protection, so there was incentive for them to take an anti-Theology Council stance, and that they seem to have quit pushing the claim that their scriptures have preeminence now that they have returned into the Empire proper.

The claim that the Emperor altered prior scriptures during the Moral Reforms is not substantiated and is based primarily on people uncritically accepting the Exile era Tetrimonic account of the matter.

Scriptures certainly were added after the Moral Reforms, as is normal Amarr custom. Some of these scriptures also certainly superceded older scriptures. But neither of these processes is the same as Samira’s belief that the earlier books saw heavy interpolation that actively deleted and replaced true scripture.

Given the utterly dismal track record that the Council of Apostles had as a ruling body and their clear willingness to attempt regicide, I would certainly not trust the version of scripture they claimed to be unaltered from original. Remember, it was their rapid power grabbing expansions that allowed for the growth of both the Sani Sabik and Equilibrium of Mankind. It was also the excesses of the Council of Apostles that drove Samira’s beloved Toth into his ill fated search.

If they were willing to try to eliminate an Emperor to protect their power, they certainly would have been willing to manipulate holy texts for the same goal.

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110

I agree that it is not appropriate to take the Order of Saint Tetrimon at their word that their copies of Scripture are genuine and unaltered by their own hands. But that does not negate that access to them might be valuable in any examination into the truthfulness and righteousness of Amarrian Scripture.

111

The Theology Council already has access to those scriptures. I helped move the copy myself.

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112

We can no more trust the Theology Council’s word than the Order’s.

113

At this point in the Amarr religion’s existence, I’d expect pretty much everything about it can be contested on the grounds of ‘did this get changed from the divine revelation at some point?’ So… that really doesn’t surprise me at all.

Well, sure, but if he had, how would anyone who continued to exist within the system know, after a couple of generations? Ultimately, you’re in a position some people might fight hilariously similar to ours:

Pretty much any chance of producing a verifiable version of your cultural history that isn’t immediately open to question and challenge as distorted by religious revisionism on the part of power-mad extremists was utterly destroyed… by the Amarr.

I dunno that I find it hilarious, myself, but I do certainly appreciate the irony.

114

You won’t trust a large body with countless trained experts, many of whose expertise is specifically going to have been detangling this issue, but you would trust, what, a random set of commoners plunged into the deep end of difficult historical and theological text analysis?

One serious flaw in your foundational premises seems to be an assumption that the Theology Council is small enough to keep the level of corruption you believe happened hidden.

You distrust them completely because the council disagrees with you on capsuleer souls, on the Empress Jamyl, and on TCMCs. But it’s not as if one person made those decisions! Those were decisions made by large bodies of different experts. If there had been major dissension on Jamyl or Capsuleer souls, we would have heard about it. On the one issue that was contested, that of TCMCs, we did hear about the dissension on the council.

If you were just suggesting that the TC would be improved through expanding commoner opportunities for theological careers, that would be reasonable. Instead you repeat the Khanid secessionist slander that the entire body is corrupt.

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115

I distrust them because they’ve proven to be swayed by politics instead of faith and reason. I distrust them because they’re the product of a coup that turned away from Amash-Akura’s divinely-inspired system into a weak body whose primary purpose seems to be to validate the policy decisions of the all-powerful rulers they are subordinate to, and to uphold the appearance of obedience to Scriptural law.

116

Wasn’t this completely bass-ackwards claim already add-ohhh, yeah, it was!

One of those Amarr… was you, Gaven. So, again, it’s not an issue of hiding the corruption…

Just sayin’… again.

117

Ms. Arrendis,

you’re really good at putting words in other people’s mouths, quoting out of context, misquoting and general twisting of words. But you do yourself a disservice f you think that you’re doing it at a level where the attentive reader isn’t able to notice it. And honestly, I don’t care for the reader who will cheer for you, because doing so is expedient to them.

What you’re really not good at is honest debate. Go figure out if you fail on the debate or the honest part of that.

May God have mercy on your soul.
N. Mithra

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118

I was talking about corruption in the sense of the council choosing to rubber stamp policy that they actively believe to be wrong.

Not corruption in the sense of inaccurate textual transmissions.

The point I was making is that Samira’s political rubberstamping of new scriptures hypothesis requires a pretty amazing conspiracy of silence. We should be hearing disgruntled rumblings from back channels, at the very least, if these issues were seen as problematic by any significant group of theologians.

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119

No? How about the Council’s reaction to the call to nominate Jamyl, where it was reported that the heirs seemed to be having a very heavy hand in the decision? What about all the concerns against her that conveniently stopped after she became Empress, especially after she made a few examples out of people at the beginning of her reign? What about Ardishapur Chief Co-Ordinator Izon’s response to the decision, where he was clearly grinding his teeth while saying it? I know a ■■■■■■■■ half-truth answer when I see it, I’ve written hundreds of them. What about all those members of PIE – and there have been some – who opposed Jamyl and the reunion with the Kingdom and King Khanid’s elevation again to heir but said nothing because it was the improper thing to do? What about the fact that we sweep people under the rug by erasing them from history in order to pretend we never do wrong?

And what about all of the slaves, who quickly learn to hide their disgruntlement lest they face punishment? I am from Thebeka, from Numayriyah, and yet I knew very little about any sentiment against Amarrian rule there. And yet, after the deathglow attacks, I learned, to my surprise, that there had been a much larger undercurrent of anger against the lords than I could have ever imagined. Despite having grown up there, the truth had been kept hidden from me, because people knew I’d have reported it to the overseers. Or perhaps just because I had pretended it wasn’t there, because I chose to ignore the signs.

As I have said before, Amarr is a society of masks. Silence and submission is our culture. We’re all so afraid of being seen doing anything wrong, afraid of being seen as lacking in adequate faith and due diligence to our superiors, that we’re all terrified of speaking out. And when someone does, we’re quick to disown them, disassociate ourselves from them, so we don’t get caught up in whatever punishment is coming to them! Our only response to problematic affairs is to say, “We hear and obey,” as most every Amarr capsuleer said after Cardinal Itharen defended having a Sani Sabik in the Succession Trials. As you yourself did.

I have been punished, by PIE, for speaking out against problems in the Empire, against sinners. I have been told it was not my place, that we had to wait for the right opportunity, to gather evidence, to leave it up to people higher in the hierarchy than me. I have been told, on countless occasions, to keep silent. I am still told that, that I should have ‘followed the proper procedures’, ‘gone through the right people’.

No, Lord Lok’ri, a conspiracy of silence isn’t as ‘amazing’ as you claim. It’s the status quo. It’s what we all expect, what we all do, what we all demand.

Speaking is the only way for us to ever address these problems. That is why I am speaking.

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120

Yup. Totally putting words in your mouth by quoting your exact words.

Yes, and my point was that one isn’t necessarily separate from the other. One person acting in bad faith while the rest take them at their word is all it takes to start things.