It's nearly the anniversary of the Empress's Historic Announcement

So, I found that Samira’s answered a lot of the questions that I might have otherwise answered, but I’ll elaborate or introduce my own views where I feel the need.

Samira is correct in her answers. Analogies are always a bad idea when speaking about the Lord God, since they are never even close to precise, however I will use one now.

If a parent gives their child a toy, and the child goes and breaks it, does that mean the parent does not love the child? God created us and this whole universe. Orbis Factor, the Maker of the World. And in His love, He gave us full reign in His creation.

I think that one of the principles of science is that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. So, while we destroy certain things, God’s creation is impervious to our best efforts.

As far as free will goes, you either have it or you do not. There’s no middle ground. The moment God has stopped anyone from doing one thing, any single thing, no matter how small or great, then free will is gone. There’s some wonderful theological questions relating to free will and God’s omniscience, but that’s not really a topic for hear. PhD dissertations, maybe? Still, what God wants us to do and what we actually do are wildly different.

The Aseity of God is a wonderful thing. God’s existence is derived and dependent upon nothing else. So, when the Imperials say ‘I am faithful to God’ that has no actual bearing on God. The Lord God doesn’t look down on those expressing faith and devotion, see they are doing it oh so wrong and then change Himself to fit His believers.

Even then, they would still fail. Perfection outside of God is impossible. Utopia outside of Paradise is impossible. But, yes. This is also the best argument against TCMCs in the Amarr Empire. If Faith could be forced through such means, then it’s a hard theological argument against doing that. Again, it cannot be; so it’s not even moot.

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How? Seriously, how?

With all due respect, you sorely underestimate the people of the Federation. I have never met a more liberated and passionate people. There are untold number of charities in Federation space, and indeed, many of them fight tooth and nail for the sake of their cause because it is personal. As someone who also fights for a personal cause, that does not diminish the charity. And more importantly, it does not diminish their success.

And while I hate to pull the old card, Amarrian society is also severely sectioned into layers. You keep billions of people chained in slavery and often inhuman conditions, and your society leaves almost no room for upward mobility. Your advances go only to the elite. An elite that sits on a family fortune they have barely lifted a finger to acquire, and of which they give only a tiny portion.

There are more Amarr charities, yes. I won’t deny that the Amarr can be a very noble and kind people if you happen to be the right race, and you happen to be out of reach of a slave collar right at the moment. It’s a very picky kind of kindness. But whatever, point conceded.

I do not, however, concede that these people work harder, or even hard to begin with, for this charity. Not in the way the Federation citizens who strive for acceptance or a cause often work themselves to the bone. They are a deeply passionate people, driven from personal desires though they may be, I will rank them well above the Amarr in how hard they fight their battles, be it in courtrooms, in financial circles or demonstrations.

And they are at least equal, if not much higher then the Amarr, in success. Most Empires by now are. Even the Republic at least manages to not have it’s planets rise up in open rebellion.

The point is…I am not seeing god’s guidance and strength here. The Amarrians are barely equal to the other races at best, and downright inferior at worst.

If god only favors the faithful, howcome they can do no more then keep up?

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The very simple answer is that the Amarr Empire as an entity is not faithful. As an entity. There are certainly individual Imperials that have faith and strive to serve God. There are probably even ones that genuinely do feel they do God’s will even as they do the exact opposite. (I feel very sad for them and pray for them often.)

As to whether God only favors the faithful, that is something I am going to have to do some reading on and talk to my priest about. I want to say that God doesn’t only favor the faithful, but not without being more sure than I am.

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I suppose. The core point is I see little reason to believe god exists. And if he exists, even less reason to worship him.

God is either basically a villain, or he will not look out for us one way or the other. But I see nothing in this galaxy that might prove his power, or his generosity. Those who claim faith to him are doing worse then those who do not, if anything. The methods employed by his followers are cruel beyond measure, and whenever these arguments are brought up, they are hand-waved away with “Well they’re just not faithful enough”

…So who IS faithful enough? Where can I look to find any sort of proof that god is real, that god means well, and that his support actually matters?

I spent half my life in worship to him and only found true success and freedom when I turned away from him. How does that work? Things simply are not adding up.

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What is the importance of religious faith exactly?

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This is utter tripe. For one, again, the vast majority of Amarr are not the elite. They do not own slaves (a good half are slaves) and have no power to put a collar on anything. Two… it’s just flat wrong. If anything, the non-Athran races are the biggest beneficiaries of Amarrian charities, because they are the ones most often in need.

Yes, I’m sure Amarrian slaves and commoners do not work as hard as people in the Federation waiting for their government handouts while drones handle most of the labor.

Because you are measuring the value of faith on your personal success and freedom. Just as you are measuring the value of faith on the Empire’s success and progress, their ability to “keep up”.

Those of faith would send themselves into poverty, slavery, or death in order to help someone else. To work for someone, with no expectation of reward or advancement.

Providing a moral center and guidance in living life in service to others.

Things you’d never understand.

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This is not helping your case, Sam.

And who’se fault is that?! I’m sorry, but I am not going to give your people points for donating a tiny amount of your passively generated income to soothe a problem YOU caused!! Money that was largely earned on the backs of slave labor from a race YOU forced into slavery in the first place! So the Amarr arn’t even the ones doing the work, or the charity, yet we should give them points for it? That is utter tripe.

This is truly not how the Federation works. Yes, they do work hard. I used to be a slave, so I feel I can say that these people often work harder then I ever will. The Federal system of capitalism is surprisingly brutal, for all the benefits of democracy, and while life in the Federation is a true utopia, being able to afford that utopia requires a constant fight. And that’s if you 're normal. In their spare time they organize even more activities on the side. Blogs, charities, sporting events…The list goes on. Slaves do not do this.

Mayhaps they have it better then the slave who toils his life away in a mine. But if you have to compare yourself to them to look good, I don’t know what to tell you.

And how precisely should I measure it, then? By entry into paradise? What proof do I have that it or god even exists, what signs? Are you saying that the benefits of faith can not be measured in any material or emotional way, and thus, the Amarr enjoy the benefits of God’s guidance and strength without actually getting any benefit out of it in life?

Hm. Convienent. I hope you can see why I remain sceptical.

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Keep acting as if I am speaking for the nobility and the elite after I have continually said I am not. It’s a convincing argument, truly.

Maybe your community didn’t.

I never said anything about there being no emotional gain. The entire point I have been making to you is about its emotional impact. I benefit from it every single day. God gives me purpose and the strength to carry on when every part of me wishes to give up. I would not be the person I am without Him. If you never were able to get anything out of it, then I pity you, and I am sad that your teachers did not give you the guidance you needed.

It’s true, my moral compass broke a long time ago, however that does not mean I cannot grasp the concept in its varied incarnations.

To say neither the Federation or State have moral principles rooted in secularism, or that religion and faith is the sole arbiter of morality is an egregious mistake.

Moral principles stem from pretty basic and fundamental human imperatives required to function as social primates. Not killing each other, social norms that dictate interactions, how to share resources, they’re all principles derived from our psychology and biology.

I see no requirements of faith in morality insofar as it is constructed as a social norm to manage interactions between members of a society.

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I’m going to parse through all the hyperbole some. Of course people in the Federation work hard. Same with the State. Manna doesn’t just fall from the heavens. However, to say the Federation is a utopia is a little far fetched. They have their flaws as well.

I have to disagree some with Samira. Partially because my experience as a slave was in the Mandate, as far away from everyone as possible. I didn’t get to really see or experience much of the mode, in the average sense, of Amarrian culture and living. I can, however, tell you all about farming!

I don’t know much about Amarr commoners. However, I know they crew the ships that fight and enslave others. Idonis Ardishapur might have been the one to order the death of Starkman Prime, but it was commoners who manned the gun batteries. It’s not entirely possible to separate the elite from the commoners.

Regardless, I’m willing to accept that there are a great number of charities. I’m not sure if this is good or not, as I would think there would be a curve that one could graph of charities to population. Too little charities and there is either something pervasively selfish among the population, or something else wrong. Too many would be indicative of a societal problem where such things are needed because they replace what society should otherwise provide. Just my thoughts off hand. Still, the fact that many Imperials recognize that the slaves and those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale need help is a good sign. Rather than giving a woman a fish, they might consider teaching her how to fish. Or maybe freeing her so she can catch her own fish. (I actually typed wish there at first, I almost didn’t change that. It almost worked better.)

Ms. Vuld, I would ask you to consider that proper worship and service of the Lord God can be and is achieved outside the Amarr Empire. The Amarr Empire doesn’t have some kind of exclusive agreement with God, despite their claims to the contrary.

It’s solid, convincing evidence on how absolutely the Amarr Empire failed by the fact you were a slave and you don’t even know the most basic of arguments for the existence of God. I’m actually amused now that my ‘holder’ was a decent, deeply faithful man who betrayed the Amarr Empire every second of his life, but made sure that I was well educated in the matters of faith.

When it comes to matters of God’s favor and faithfulness, I think I will use him as an example. His family had been hiding us for generations, always risking the Empire finding out that they were harboring us. If they had been found out, I am sure that his family and mine would have been executed. When the time came, when the secret was revealed, he left the Mandate to go to the Republic, no hesitation. He and his family were decently wealthy, quite well off and left it all behind to go to the Republic where the Nefantar are loathed by most of the other Tribes. However. In the one time I saw him after we were liberated, when I graduated with a BSN, he smiled. He has no mansion, no servants, no works of art in his house. What he has is the knowledge that he helped save a people. That has to be worth more than anything else I can think of.

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That being…?

You know, don’t even answer. We’ve been at this a while now and neither of you have been able to say anything truly new. You don’t even bother to bring anecdotal evidence or “basic arguments”. There are stories being shared of good people, which is nice. And there’s mentions of charity which is…Sort of nice. Always be wary of Amarr charities, for there’s usually an ulterior motive there.

But the core point was, I’ve struggled to retain my faith in god because there is basically no sign at all that there is one. Which means that if he exists at all the man gets up to so little you may as well worship somebody else.

He watches over the faithful, but only the TRUE faithful? Okay, who? Where? How? What can we see to confirm this? What results have come from this watch? Is god so weak that we can’t tell when someone is favored or not?

Because you must understand that for a skeptic, it’s not enough to believe that god is out there somewhere and that if you live a good life you’l get into paradise somehow. The most virtuous people are the ones who don’t worship god, so in my mind, god’s love can be written off as a false argument immediately.

His protection, then? One look at the Amarr Empire says no go on that one, as well. No other Empire has a large selection of worshippers and they seem to be doing just fine if not better.

Spiritual and emotional fulfillment? This is the only one that might hold any sort of water, for even the lowly slaves can find some satisfaction in their gruesome work simply by the virtue of their faith.

But this argument that god somehow watches over the true faithful needs to go. God is a figment of your imagination and/or too uncaring to really watch over anyone.

And I truly don’t see how anyone can still maintain that god is a good god after millennia of oppression, mass enslavement, mass murder, and a conga line of other crimes against humanity carried out in his name.

“Well, God works slowly…” Okay then, let’s find someone less lazy to worship.

Also, Samira: I am not ignoring you, but with all due respect, I don’t think you really understand what you are talking about at this point. If the discussion is going to be Gallente vs Amarr, my vote is on the Gallente for countless reasons.

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Tell me, do you think that is the only way to provide that?

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No. But I believe it is better at doing so than other ways.

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I suppose this is my fault for focus on points raised by others. However, I am going to answer. I am going to say that these are outlines, as the arguments and commentary fill thousands of tomes, and given the current state of the Amarr Empire, they’re all in the back corner gathering dust.

1: The First Mover, or Unmoved Mover. In our world, we see a chain of cause and effect. I do something that causes something. That effect, then causes something else. This for this chain to regress ad infinitum, would be impossible, because in short, logic really starts to break down when the concept of infinity comes into play. However, it’s not less fantastic to believe that there is an infinite causal chain having no beginning than that existence of God, who started this event. So, this argument states that the first cause in this chain had no effect. God stands outside time and our understanding of the world.

2: Similar to the First Mover, is the First Cause. In the world we can see that things are caused. There is a hierarchy of scientific principles that govern the universe. Stars are dependent upon atomic fusion, which is dependent upon gravity, dependent on mass, dependent on the Higgs field and boson. Again, this cannot be an infinite regression, so what ever this principle cause of existence is, whatever this final dependency upon all creation rests, is God.

3: Judgement. We can see in the world things are good and bad (generally.) We can look at a drawing of a circle and judge it to be better or worse than a circle drawn with a compass. We can be sick or healthy. We can look at the Imperials that murder and kill our people and judge them to be less than the ones that do try and help. However, all this implies a standard, that no matter what your criteria is, there is a standard of goodness. And there is something that is goodness itself. This is God.

4: Final Cause. We observe every day non-intelligent objects behaving in regular ways. The hydrogen in starts continues to fuse. However, such things are static. Even the staunchest atheist would not argue that this can be neither do to chance; if it were, then chance would dictate some things just happen. Gravity can be manipulated, but never goes off on its own program. I have never jumped and not come down because gravity decided not to work that moment. These non-intelligent things cannot set themselves. God has set them. The final cause is related to the first cause, in that if a cause and effect chain exists, at a certain point, constants were removed from that chain.

5: Intelligent Design. The world is orderly and predictable. All objects that exhibit such order are the products of intelligent design. Therefore, the universe is the result of an intelligent design. God is the intelligent designer. A more classic statement is that if you were walking on a planet and found a complete Rifter, would you assume that it just came into existence by random chance, or that someone built it? Is the universe less or more complicated than a Rifter?

6: The Greatest One. God is that which nothing greater can be conceived. This idea of God is sound and contains no logical contradictions. That which can be through of as not existing is not as great and that which cannot be though of as not existing: contingent v. necessary. To conceive of a god that possibly doesn’t exist is not to conceive of the greatest being, since the greatest conceivable being could not be nonexistent. Therefore, God exists. This is what happens when monks have a lot of free time, a self contained logical argument. I want to say that this is vastly simplified. Vastly. I would underline that if I could.

Note that all of these arguments simply focus on God’s existence. They do not answer what kind of God He is. Do you want walls of text? This is how you get walls of text.

I even cut this down a lot.

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… if these are your arguments for its existence, your God is on exceedingly shaky theological ground. Every last one of those arguments have been so thoroughly and consistently revealed for the utter load of tosh and nonsense they are that I genuinely didn’t think they still survived kindergartens in this day and age.

Then by all means, refute them? I mean, I actually posted them, so rather than just call them tosh and non-sense, post the counter arguments?

Most of the time, it’s from puffed-up hack philosophers who have more ego than thinking skills redefining an argument to turn it into an easily burned straw man.

Also, this is why I should not post before having my coffee.

7: Humans have an innate sense of morality. As right and wrong exists, there must be a correct sense of morality, a universal law. This universal law requires a lawmaker who is absolutely good, since the standard of all good muse be completely good. This absolutely good lawmaker is God.

Tell you what, I’ll give you the short versions because that nonsense will not be worth the time. Gish gallops rarely are.

  1. Assumes there’s a first cause, does not take quantum mechanics into account, makes the assumption that even if first move/first cause is a thing that this first move/cause is a/the God, does not take into account that “first” implies time and time as we know it ceases to function at the birth of the universe. This argument ceases to have even the slightest capacity to hold water the moment you leave dirt farming and rubbing sticks together behind and start understanding even the most basic of science.

  2. See one. Even assuming that there is a principle cause of existence (this is not a certainty given quantum mechanics and the fact that all the classical mechanics of reality doesn’t even function or exist during the early moments of the universe as far as we can tell) there is no reason to assume this is a/the God. Nor does it answer that if there’s a cause and effect requirement, something would have had to cause that ‘first mover/cause’. All this does is push the beginning of existence back a step without explaining that step at all.

  3. There is no standard of ‘goodness’ that is not artificial. It’s an abstract created by the human mind. There’s a lot of reasons for it developing, given that we’re a social animal, and there’s no proof or even indication that this concept exists without us. You’re making assumptions and drawing conclusions on very faulty grounds here. Jumping to conclusions may sound like a lovely thing to do given the ‘leap of faith’ implications, but ‘leap of faith’ can also be considered a drunken tumble down mount dumbarse.

  4. This is like a puddle saying the hole it’s in has to be created and set for it, because it fits it so perfectly. Thus God. It’s nonsense. You make the claim existence can’t be what it is without outside force/intelligence setting up the rules, i.e. physics of it and then just leave it at that? Not backing up this rather extraordinary claim?

  5. Ah, Watchmaker. The notion that something complex needs a designer. An eye and a camera has similar features and capabilities, the camera is designed and thus so must the eye and all that tosh. This is a non sequiteur. Complexity has been shown to arise from the simplest of beginnings countless times. The most basic of self-replicating system that manages to sustain itself will almost inevitably start exhibiting greater and greater complexity, with order and predictability. This occurs in nature constantly, as well as occurring constantly within our own laboratories and computers. Oh, and as a little callback, any ‘intelligent designer’ would have to be as complex, orderly and predictable and thus would require its own ‘intelligent designer’. Again, it’s just pushing the boundaries of our ignorance further back by stuffing God into it out of nowhere.

  6. That something can be conceived of does not suggest it must exist. This is a significant fallacy. Innate ideas and a priori arguments haven’t held water for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before our people even decided to head off Matar to check out the other clumps of dirt out there. Even if you were to accept this premise, another one (we can not truly conceive of or understand a God of this kind) deflates and eviscerates it. In addition, since if this is to hold true with God, it would have to hold equally true to all other conceivable things and this is demonstrably nonsensical.

In short, pretty much all these arguments fall into the trap of simply inserting the idea of ‘God’ where we don’t already have very solid answers. The lack of solid answers somehow being treated as proof or support of its existence, while in reality all it is is exactly that: A lack of knowledge or understanding. Where we once didn’t understand lightning, we invented the supernatural to explain them. Different ones from different people, of course. Where we didn’t understand seismological quakes, we invented intelligences that wreaked havoc upon us for imagined sins.

The pockets of ignorance where we can stuff these ‘Gods’ are ever receding. We gain more and more understanding of the universe and existence every single day and trying to shoehorn it into the gaps in our knowledge, be it through fuzzy philosophy, poor assumptions or just blatantly not understanding basic science, is a losing battle, I can assure you.

How far away will your god be in the end, as our ignorance’s horizon is beyond sight?

No. I believe he exists. I have seen things. I have felt them. I stand ready to fight the fucker to the end.
I don’t, however, feel the need to ‘prove’ the existence of neither him, the spirits of my people or anything else of the sort, because it quite simply can not be done. Not with our current capabilities.

Frankly, we don’t have to. It’s pretty damn irrelevant in the end.

Oh for… another one. Edited in: 7. Humans and other species have developed morality and lack of it independently. Right and wrong are absolutely mutable abstracts that differ from culture to culture and species to species, and is entirely dependent on the observer’s own mind. This implies exactly nothing except social animals developing social tools.

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Ex nihilo nihil fit, and so on. These are all arguments and everyone of your points has its refutations, and they get refuted and it continues almost ad infinitum. That’s why they are arguments. My God is not some ‘god of the gaps’ He is greater than that. I see His work in everything.

At the end of the day, there is no proof either way. The existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven. This is, itself, another argument. Even if God Himself came down from Heaven and gave you a golden tablet, I suppose you could still find some way to explain it away. Drugs, psychotic break, Jovians, existence in a vast simulation run by a sub-standard author.

Rather than both of us repeating and summarizing the words of those vastly smarter than us, I’m going to leave it here. Anyone wishing to do further readings can without the filter of either of us.

Isha, you have the choice, the freedom of whether to believe or not. And that’s the kicker. At the end of the day, no matter how much theological groundwork has been done, no matter how many arguments are made, how well they are written, at the end of the day, there is a step you have to take from arguments and possibilities and take it on faith. In church, we say “we believe,” not that “we know for absolute certain.” That last step will never be filled in.