No one’s fate gets decided by anybody but God, no matter the different scenarios you try to come up with. God is the ultimate judge and nothing ever happens that isn’t in accordance with His will.
That’s ridiculous. You are obviously not knowledgeable enough about the devine to hold a conversation with a believer. I suggest you do some reading and soul-searching.
And on that note, I’m going to bed.
Sleep well, ma’am.
(If nothing ever happens that isn’t in accordance with His will what is there to judge? … I mean, I’m a determinist myself but I don’t think the universe judges people-- it just is. If people are only what God makes them, can only ever be what God makes them, then what is there for God to judge … but God?)
(Maybe I really just don’t understand. Oh well.)
Your fervent faith blinds you to the potential of progress and innovation, leaving the vulnerable to those who operate with a sharper mind and a more strategic vision. Look, I’m not complaining but this god does have a sense of humor considering the amount of drama behind her ascension.
A presupposition where of the quality of ones circulatory systems contents determines the ability for an unknowable entity’s ability to impose their will over an individual.
To claim such purity is to suggest they speak with that entity’s authority.
Is this Purity of the Throne rhetoric?
This is well beyond my jurisdiction to judge, but I look forward to reading of the ratification by the Theology Council and the glories that will rightfully be bestowed upon you.
I think it is mayhaps irony, that these quotes are brought forth to stand in for a supposedly genetic superiority of the Amarr people, the idea that it is our blood that makes us superior - and not our conformity with God’s plan in thoughts, words and actions.
It shows how often capsuleers of the Empire end up being dangerously close, if not wholly subject to the most heretic and disgusting dogmas of the heinous Blood Raider cult and it’s myriad offshoots.
Yes, purity of blood and the body is important - but it’s not achieved by a certain material makeup. The sanctity of flesh and blood is wholly dependent on thoughts, words and actions - namely on those being good, being in accord with the will of God. The Amarr got chosen as His prime servants not because of their genetic makeup or some material quality of their blood: We Amarr became God’s choosen because we lived righteously and in fear of God.
Someone who stops caring about those very thoughts, words and actions and the quality of those either because of their pedigree or because they think that goodness in those springs forth from genetics and blood are the ones closest to the sin of pride, the first that fall and the ones that fall deepest. Amarr is meant to be humble servants of God, and that’s wherein true glory lies. They stop being True Amarr, and start being merely Amarr by heritage. Stricken from the Book of Records, those poor souls are truely the most miserable. Make no mistake: If you stop acting true to His will, you will not be His chosen anymore, Cpt. Alcerys.
Yes, there is sanctity of flesh. But the flesh is sanctifed because of the continuous use of the bodily tool in constant service of the divine through good thoughts, good words and - in the case of the body of especial importance - good actions. One shouldn’t confuse the effect with the cause in this.
And yes, there is importance in pedigree. Humans are product of habit and it makes a difference if someone has been grown up in the faith and a household where they learned to be fearful of God and humble themselves before Him - or one where they only learned to bear the trapping of faith without growing into it, making it into an empty shell, and in pride over their pedigree and ‘blood’. It makes a difference from whence we come.
That said, the admonition is: “To know the true path, but yet, to never follow it. That is possibly the gravest sin.” - The Scriptures, Book of Missions 13:21
It’s exactly an admonition spoken to the True Amarr, to those that should be servants of Lord God Pancrator, yet don’t follow the path of servitude, of humbling themselves before God and putting His will before theirs. That is the gravest sin, them who should know better, not humbling themselves before God.
And it starts with the belief that your status doesn’t depend on whether you live a life of true servitude, but that it is a given because of who birthed you. God in his mercy made it especially easy for you by having you born into this world in a position, where you had the opportunity to learn from the day you first saw the light of this world what it means to be a servant. Don’t squander this grace by feeling entitled over it.
The first and most important convert in the life of any True Amarr is themselves. To reclaim oneself for God as the wilderness needs to be reclaimed to be turned into a garden, is what makes you fertile soil to recieve God’s wisdom and lets you bear the fruit that is the Good Words which need to be spoken to those in need of them.
Yet, it’s the fruits of that labor that show us, if we have been good servants in God’s garden. And I don’t see any fruits growing on this field here, except sour ones that aren’t comestible at all.
I suggest you turn the light of your judgement against yourself, find your own flaws before you seek and point them out in others. Humble yourself before God and bring your own house in order.
“Which test reveals more of the soul, the test that a man will take to prove his faith, or the test that finds the man who believed his faith already proven? If you know this answer, then you also know which of these challenges bear the greatest penalty for failure. The gates of paradise will open for you one time only; woe to the soul who dares to knock twice.”
- The Scriptures, Book of Missions 5:14
Thank you Directrix Emeritus for your timely words and reminders. In these days of growing heresies, such as the Disciples of Purity and the Sedevantist cult of Nauplius within and those without who would use the worst of us as strawmen paint the rest of us, it is important for certain of the faithful not to be tempted by the claims of the so -called Purity cults, or those perilously close to such claims, and remember the lessons that Scripture has taught us, as said in the Book of Trials:
“All things were created by the Divine, and so the glory of our faith is inherent to us all;
When thine heart shines with the Light, thou shalt know no hardship;
When thine actions are in Light’s name, thou art immortal.'”
- The Scriptures, Book of Trials 2:1
Lunarisse Phonaga
Executrix Khimi Harar
Directrix Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coroneaque
Wife of Franco Phonaga
Mother of Ten.
P.S. While I am not posting further in this fora, if the OP would like to discuss further over tea and pastries in ‘Cafe Marlinea’ In Mehatoor, she can contact me via the mail neocomm.
Thank you! I did.
The will of God isn’t an open book. He has His own reasons for some things to happen and we mortals aren’t on His level ( far from it ) to understand and explain some of the things that the heathens find incomprehensible or not fair. That’s where Faith come into play. An unshakeable trust in His Goodness and His ability to rule the universes perfectly and justly.
His written word is a perfect roadmap for the faithful but it doesn’t explain matters that He alone must contend with. It isn’t a Who-is-who or What-is-what of the highest stratum of existence.
Our Lord can use evil to fulfill His will just as well as He can use the most faithful of Amarrians and Free Will does still come into play, even if that free will coincides with His grand and timeless design.
He will judge the unfaithful and evil ones and the reasons or measure of his judgment are born in the hearts of Men out of their own free will.
I hope you shall one day realize that He is the light burning in the darkness and that without Him nothing can exist.
What would Jamyl Sarum have to say about all this, I wonder?
Such an interesting turn the Amarr empire has taken in her decade of absence.
Something along the lines of “Yawn”, I imagine.
Not the first disturbed personality we’ve seen on the IGS, won’t be the last.
Ye gods and little fishies, not this absolute nonsense again.
You are not some kind of ‘transhumanist immortal’. You are a human being made of generic biomass with a brain flash-grown to match the final recorded brainstate of a dead person. You are, if anything, a disposable tissue person.
Nor would transhumanism itself—as specifically described by the definition you provide—make you ‘not human’. Augmented human capabilities are still, right there in the labeling, possessed by humans. An improved human condition remains the human condition.
FFS… human beings are animals. Human beings are also eukaryotes, and they’re cascading chemical reaction chains. All of this insistence on setting yourself up as somehow ‘exceptional’ and better than the things around you is, quite honestly, one of the least exceptional things I’ve seen pretty much every petty egotist in the cluster pull.
Void below, no there are not. There are capsuleers who’ve been clone-hopping for like… 20 years. Human beings have been active in this cluster for over fifteen thousand years. If you include the Jove and their offshoots, you might get to two thousand years of cloning, maybe a thousand of capsule use (we don’t really know, but I’m sure if you ask Valerie, she’ll be happy to tell you some rumors in the middle of the self-aggrandizing list of superlative accolades she’s given herself over the last 12 years).
S’true, she is. I, on the other hand, am far more a fan of specifics, and specifically, her use of ‘generally’ in this instance wasn’t a cop-out, it was a broad generalization. As in ‘there are times and situations where it will not be labeled as murder, but in the vast majority of situations, homicide is considered a bad thing’.
I mean, if you’re going to try to be pedantic, please, do, but get it right. There’s nothing quite as pathetic as someone who pedants badly.
Someone you look like, whose memories you carry, was born on Amarr Prime. You, on the other hand, are just a cheap knock-off copy that was grown in a medbay at… let’s see… no record of previous burn-scans since graduation, so you were grown in a medbay at Hedion University. Congratulations on 3 weeks in space, btw.
Anyway, even they weren’t born a capsuleer. One way or another, be it via marketing, or someone in a position of authority suggesting it, or other factors, they became convinced to become a capsuleer, which can be considered ‘lured’.
Ah, well, then you’re going to run into problems. After all, sin is disobedience to God’s instructions and God’s will, and if nothing ever happens that isn’t in accordance with God’s will… then nobody can ever sin, because they can only do what God wills them to do. Which means what they did… wasn’t a sin.
Ohhhh, now who’s resorting to cop-outs? You want to play the ‘there’s a grand and timeless design but also Free Will’ card? C’mon. If there’s a creator entity that has total control over how things play out (which you’ve claimed God does, because nothing happens except according to His will) and perfect predictive capabilities (which he’d need to, because Prophecy given by God is inerrant, and the only way for it to be inerrant is if God can perfectly predict how things play out… which, of course, is easy if nothing happens except by God’s will, mind you), then when God set the initial starting conditions of the universe, He made all the choices, ever.
Think about it: It doesn’t matter how ‘free’ your will is if all of the contributing factors were predetermined. Give a person X set of conditions, and they’ll make Y choice. If nothing changes, then neither will their choice. And before you try to tell me ‘they could decide that’s not what they want’, that’s something changing. That’s a different electrochemical brain-state that leads to that different choice. So now you have to explain how they got to a different electrochemical brain-state.
The initial starting conditions—not just the specifics of energy distribution, but the very fundamentals of universal constants and the physical laws that impacted, however indirectly, the original development of a bunch of naked, upright apes—are, in your construction, chosen by God. So God made all the choices. And that’s fine! That’s perfectly consistent with your ‘nothing happens but by the Will of God’ thing… but both that claim, and everything it implies., categorically prevent ‘Free Will’.
First, demonstrate even a single shred of empirical evidence that he exists. I’d love to see some.
“disturbed?”
sigh
In my line of work, “disturbed” is merely a word.
Actions generally speak volumes over simple words.
You neither know my actions, nor my words. Perhaps a bit more respect is warranted before you make assumptions as to my person.
@Arrendis You disagree with me. That’s noted.
Thanks for giving your opinion.
Well, I was summoned by name.
But you’re welcome.
The Caldari see the universe as a crucible, a testing ground only the worthy endure.
(It’s hard to blame them; their culture came of age on a glorified comet. If they can seem cold and even cruel it’s because they’re permanently trying to guarantee their own collective survival.)
Their creator god, the Maker, is an absentee figure, who wove the world into being and then departed to watch what would come of it all. People do still occasionally ask for his opinion on things (the Tea Maker ceremony can be taken as, “Let’s see whether the Maker thinks you’re worth saving”), but for the most part he’s … not here, anymore.
We Achura have a similar figure called the Creator, viewed with reverence but, again, someone who sort of got things going and departed. Our own homeworld is about as lethal in its own way as Caldari Prime, but requiring different qualities to survive: for the Caldari it’s the cold; for us it’s the sky, ground, and sea-- storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the perils that follow them, such as fire.
The notion that the force pervading the universe is inherently good and has a radiant, benevolent plan beyond maybe teaching us what we’ll need to survive the next test (not individually; this is collective survival-- not going extinct) is a bit alien to us.
This is the basic reason why, rather than a convert, I’m a long-term visitor to the Empire under an oath of service to Directrix Lunarisse Phonaga, who posted above. She sees God as a fundamentally benevolent force in the world. I have trouble seeing such a presence in the world, and therefore trouble seeing God as a real thing.
Maybe at some point that will change. My education in the Amarrian faith and way of thinking remains ongoing, so perhaps at some point I will find the truth in it.
In the meantime, though, I won’t lie, to the directrix, to God, or to you: I don’t see such a presence in this world. To me, this world appears at best indifferent; at worst, deeply cruel.
There are two wills of God, the revealed will of God and the hidden will of God.
The revealed will of God is the commandments of God made plain by means of the Sciptures and the prophets, such as “Thou shalt not steal” and “Reclaim all the stars in the heavens”.
The hidden will of God is what God actually makes happen according to meticulous divine determinism. So yes, the hidden will of God was that the Minmatar would rebel and God secretly determined their every act in that rebellion.
Punishments and rewards are meted out according to the revealed will of God. So yes, God will punish all the Minmatar with an eternity in Hell for their rebellion, even though the hidden will of God determined every last bit of that rebellion.
It is best not to think too much about the hidden will of God and focus instead upon his revealed will. Obey his commandments and be loyal to the Vacant Throne. Leave the hidden will to the philosophers.
All of which is to say ‘I want to have it both ways but I can’t figure out how and I’m too cowardly to admit it’.
Or, alternately…
‘God is dangerously insane and utterly unworthy of reverence, but he’s also a hostage-taking blackmailer who’ll do horrible things to you if he decides to make you do things he wants to do horrible things to you for.’
“A Crucible”
Perhaps - But then again, So did the Jove. As can be ascertained by the centuries of their involvement, and the cloaked observatories scattered throughout the cluster.
“a testing ground only the worthy endure”
This phrase also defines the “Proving” concept so deeply embraced by the Triglavian invaders that wrecked more havoc in Caldari space than any other, losing more systems to the weaving of Pochven than any other empire.
The story of “The Maker” seems vaguely lending to Jove history, oddly enough it seems. Take and make of that what you will.
Was it “the benevolent plan” for Amarr to be utterly destroyed at Vak’Atioth by the Jove? For an Empire to be so self-righteous as to think they could take on a force so ancient. Perhaps to promote humility within Amarr? Well, we see where that went.
If there is a presence in this cluster in line with the characterization of "at best indifferent (Jove), at worst, deeply cruel (Triglavians). Then perhaps their common ancestry should shed light into this perspective.
To the Triglavians, you must Prove yourself. Whatever cost to come out on top. Seems rather familiar in the cluster’s political and corporate spheres.
What’s not to say the Triglavians and Jovians have not been fighting an ancient proxy war through the races of New Eden for their entire existence? Here we are, merely puppets doing the bidding under subterfuge and false-promises of power.
Humanity left divided.
Division fueled by technological races.
Technology that further reinforces the Division between the empires.
If there is going to be a force for good in the cluster, it will only ever come from humanity.
At least the Jovians knew when they should stop interfering.
The task of good vs evil was given to humanity to sort out. Tempted by technology far beyond our comprehension. Tempted by power beyond a throne.
My hope is it’s not too late to turn the ship around.
What made you assume these assumptions were directed at you in the first place?
Hm.
Interesting idea, sir. It doesn’t quite match up with the way the Triglavians emerged, though. We only even learned they existed because the Drifters (“Vigilant Tyrannos,” which I guess you must be calling the Jove) found their way into the Abyss somehow just a few years back and promptly prioritized that over, well, everything.
And the Triglavians themselves seemed fuzzy on how to get back into K-space. Guess we helped them work that out, ourselves.
So I think the cultural similarities between the Caldari are down to convergent (cultural) evolution. The Caldari came of age on a glorified comet (harsh!); the Triglavians came of age in a black hole field or whatever the Abyss is-- something similarly hostile (OMGWTFBBQ).
(It’s hard to say what the Triglavians might have been like back before whatever happened between them and the Sleepers/Vigilant Tyrannos, and apparently the Drifters did in fact recognize an old enemy. Their present cultural patterns, though, are consistent with the likely demands of survival in a horrendously harsh environment.)
Not too surprising if they came out with some similarities in outlook, sir. And some significant differences in how far they take it.