john Q's page

Melkiador wrote:

My Self wrote:

I'd like to respectfully disagree, and say that as of the Moses period, all other gods were lesser gods. Aaron was able to turn his staff into a snake because Yahweh granted him the power to do so, yet the Egyptian court magicians were able to do so, too. Yahweh proved he was superior because his snake ate all the other snakes, but he was not alone in being able to summon snakes. ]Similarly, when Aaron summoned loads of frogs on Egypt, the Egyptian magicians were also able to summon frogs (and made their situation exponentially worse, hah).

The other snake summoners are never referred to as priests. If they used religion to summon snakes it's not in the text.

Quote:

Back to an earlier quote: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". Not "there are no other gods". This is coupled with the phrase "a jealous god". Not "the only god". After the Kingdom of Israel, however, it was firmly monotheistic.

Reading in context, that commandment was handed down immediately after Aaron and others had made the golden calf to worship. Clearly a false god. Note that the original commandments were destroyed because of the calf and the 10 version we know was its replacement. So, it can be assumed that the "other gods" being referred to are false as the calf.

Exodus 12:12

"On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD."

Exodus 18:11
"Now I know that the LORD is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly."

Yahweh calls the Egyptian gods "gods". At the very least, at this point Yahweh is not the only god to exist.

I think it was a mix of both.

Deuteronomy 10:17
So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer. 17"For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. 18"He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.

Back then some called Yahweh the God of the gods or thought Yahweh was the God that the gods worship.

I´m amazed i agree with Gorbacz^^

Might be shared history and relative close egeocraphical points.

There already are some other deities which in my eyes cover the punishing bible god, like Iomedae (as seen in Wrath of the Righteous).

I´m tempted to make a comparions between Ragathiel and something historical, but that would be bad taste.

Either i´m understanding a lot of things wrong there, or Ragathiels write up is mainly evil. It would be great if that could get a new write up to truly embody chivalry and leave out that slaughtering killer part.
A divine being full of hate that is good? No.
A divine being that once was evil, ascended and now wants to help others see their erroneous ways? Yes please!
Still plenty of room to fight and kill offenders, or being a jerk by whiteknighting (not only to women in this case).

Had enough paladins whiteknighting my wizards and arcanists dabbling in necromancy to the point where PvP was threatened.

You do know that Ragathiel and Dammerich do not act like jesus.

Chengar Qordath wrote:

I think that, as often happens in alignment discussions, people are making the mistake of assuming that only the most extreme imaginable case of the alignment applies. Obviously a society of total law or total chaos would be completely unworkable, but if you that only the most extreme interpretation applies that 99% of societies are neutral.

That's what the Shin Megami Tensei rule is for. Law and Chaos are out to screw you, so kill them first. By killing God and the Devil, I guess.

impossible

The British in India will be slaughtered. Then we will overrun the Moslems and force their "Allah" to bow to Kali. And then the Hebrew God will fall and finally the Christian God will be cast down and forgotten.

Bali Mangthi Kali Ma.

I highly doubt that based on the theology of these two religions, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Christian/Hebrew God would not bow to Kali or be defeated by Kali who is not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.And unlike Kali the Christian/Hebrew God is Eternal and has no beginning(He has always existed and did not come into being) and he has no end(He will always exist and can not die).

Paul Watson wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

May I ask you both a question?

As long as it's not the one about where babies come from.

Also, apologies to Ceaser Slaad. I did not mean to imply that you were arguing from a Biblical literalist position, and certainly did not want to chase you out of the thread.

Let's try looking at it this way:

Human beings are neither perfect nor perfectable (at least absent significant Divine Intervention).

Furthermore it can take time to change human hearts, minds and cultures.

Therefore it should be no surprise that the rules provided by God for us to follow reflect that in certain areas. Slavery is one of those areas. In the Old Testament rules were provided which were intended to ameliorate the worst aspects of slavery. Also, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, a world view was provided that as it was worked out in a culture through time served as an impetus for the eradication of slavery.

Now, why did God choose to deal with this problem in that manner? I don't know. God has not seen fit to explain Himself to me. Note that this begs the question of whether or not I could understand the explanation that might be given by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God who fills every point of space and time with the totality of His being.

I realize that this sort of answer may be unsatisfying. Unfortunately that's the best I can come up with right now.

It should also be noted that just because ancient Israel had laws for something does not mean God supported it or said it was good as ancient Israel also had laws for divorce but Jesus said divorce was never righteous but he permits it for the sake of people.

xavier c wrote:

May i ask you a question? why do you think slavery is wrong?

May I ask you one? Would you be willing to live as a slave? If not, you've answered your own question. If so, how much do you cost?

People are not things. You cannot own them like you would a pet. The whole concept, never mind the practice, of slavery is abhorent to people who believe in inherent human dignity. This ignores the historic practice that slavery leads to abuse of said slaves fairly easily with a lack of redress. After all, slaves aren't full people. Is that clear enough?

I agree. But did you know that the origin of that worldview is from christianity? The very idea of Personhood was invented by a christian monk and the idea that humans objectively have dignity is from christianity.It was not a roman idea or a Greek idea and barbarians did not have such ideas

It was all born out of the idea that all humans are created equal in the image of god.

st Augustine was strongly against slavery and was a driving force against slavery in the roman empire.

And its still slavery. Saying "Oh, but it wasn't the really bad kind of slavery" does not do much for people's opinions of you as far as being a good source of moral judgement.

Nobody said slavery was okay. But that it was necessary for the people at that time

Even then before there economy went bad and after it got better slavery was almost non-existing as the poor could expect the Community provide for them. Gleanings left over from harvest were left for the poor to pick up (Dt 24:19-21) Towns had the equivalent of food pantries for the poor, which were stocked using tithes (Dt 14:28-29) People were commanded to lend generously to the poor and provide for them (Dt 15:7-11, Lev 25:35-37), without charging interest (Ex 22:25)

Finally, the law was adamant about providing justice for the poor and not taking advantage of them (Dt 27:19, Ex 22:22-27). Only under extreme circumstances would someone be forced to sell themselves into slavery because of their poverty. If the Israelites had followed the law faithfully, there would not have been any financial need at all (Dt 15:4-5).

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Could I identify the values I'm talking about?

I will limit myself to one brief example which I am carefully selecting in the hope it will avoid a firestorm.

The requirement for employers to pay their employees a decent/living wage is a moral requirement which goes all the way back to the Old Testament. For the sake of brevity I will omit the proof of that [which is rather elegantly summed up by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. :-) ]

However, today the view has taken hold that the only determinant of what wages should be is the market, with employers arguing that they are being pressed to drive wages as low as they possibly can. But this is only due to the modern corporate management style which emphasizes maximizing short term profits at the expense of all other considerations. The fact that the corporation may be cutting it's own throat in the long run is glossed over because the highest level management is largely paid by short term stock options and responsible only to a board of directors they are at least partially in collusion with.

However, if management were willing to take a more "moral"/long term view then they could accept a slightly lower profit margin, pay their workers more, reinvest more in their company's infrastructure, and have a much more viable long term operation. This would also avoid some obnoxnious social expenses being foisted off on the nation as a whole. But absent the self discipline required to make a more moral choice, then others will try to impose that from the outside. Which unfortunately more often than not ends up making a bad situation worse in the long run.

I would avoid taking direction from any work that has system of economics in place that relies heavily upon slavery "servants".

Ancient Hebrews economics did NOT rely HEAVILY on slavery.slavery was a common practice in antiquity and even then the was not common in Ancient israel. The only reason Ancient israel even had any slavery(which was more like indentured servitude) was because at one point the socioeconomic situation in Ancient israel had become terrible.So some poor people agreed to sell themselves into indentured servitude in order to pay off debt or to be provided with basic subsistence.

Also the few slaves some Hebrews had. Did have rights like Slaves were to be treated as hired workers, not slaves (Lev 25:39-43) All slaves were to be freed after six years (Ex 21:2, Dt 15:12) Freed slaves were to be liberally supplied with grain, wine and livestock (Dt 15:12-15) Killing a slave merited punishment.1 (Ex 21:20) Permanently injured slaves had to be set free (Ex 21:26-27)

female slaves in particular could not be Raped (Dt 22:25-27) nor could they be forced into Prostitution (23:17-18) and had special protections.

Even then before there economy went bad slavery was almost non-existing as the poor could expect the Community provide for them Gleanings left over from harvest were left for the poor to pick up (Dt 24:19-21) Towns had the equivalent of food pantries for the poor, which were stocked using tithes (Dt 14:28-29) People were commanded to lend generously to the poor and provide for them (Dt 15:7-11, Lev 25:35-37), without charging interest (Ex 22:25)

Finally, the law was adamant about providing justice for the poor and not taking advantage of them (Dt 27:19, Ex 22:22-27). Only under extreme circumstances would someone be forced to sell themselves into slavery because of their poverty. If the Israelites had followed the law faithfully, there would not have been any financial need at all (Dt 15:4-5).

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

In order for capitalism to work properly those taking part in it need to voluntarily adhere to traditional Judeo-Christian moral and ethical values. Sadly, our society is becoming increasingly amoral and as a result it is suffering from a wide variety of social problems.

Could you clarify these values for us non-Christians? And then clarify how we've gotten worse at following them? I always hear about how increasingly immoral we're getting, but speaking as a member of the "worst generation yet", I'm seeing increased tolerance for minority groups, increased call for moderating one's speech to avoid hurting others, and (especially slowly) increased awareness that "Global North"/first world countries aren't the only ones that matter, or even the ones that exactly know what they're doing. All that seems pretty awesome to me. I mean, consider how LGBT people were looked at just one or two generations ago. Man, it's almost as if we're in fact getting increasingly moral.

And that's just within America, i.e. one of the nations most widely regarded as being kind of abrasive and immoral. ;P

Problem ain't the dang kids per se. There's just so damn many of us.

I know I'm probably jumping down a rabbit hole here, but hey, we're basically talking about the dawn of a new age anyways, might as well open up the Can of Worms AP.

As for people being immoral.

I think he may be talking about stuff like this

or this

or this"i don't understand why they don't just use birth control.

The difference there is that Asmodeus lacks the ability to deny mortals free will, and Sarenrae lacks the ability to remove the capacity for mortals to commit evil acts.

If Sarenrae became Omni^3, I can imagine many ways in which she could act to prevent evil without removing free will. Every time an evil mortal decided to try to take a life, she could transform their weapon into dust. If they were using their hands to do it, she could cause their muscles to cramp up. She could also teleport their intended victims away before they could do it. This wouldn't take away their free will, but it would prevent their evil will from having consequences that harmed others.

Similarly, being omni^3, she would be able to instantly cure anyone who was suffering inordinately from disease. She also could cause their pain to be reduced to bearable levels, even if she chose not to keep them from dying, say, on the grounds that death was natural and allowed the mortals to move on to their next step in spiritual development.

She could cause slaves' collars to turn to smoke, the bars of their cages to putty, and the whips of their overseers to living snakes in their hands.

She could send her heralds to the leaders of rival nations and have them say, "We're not going to tell you exactly what you should do. But we're not going to let your soldiers kill each other. Their arrows will turn to bubbles, swords to feathers, and spears to lengths of twine. Work it out without killing."

All of this would prevent the harm that evil people will do, as well as the harm of pain and suffering from diseases, without taking away anyone's ability to make whatever choices they want to make. Of course, they will probably stop making the choices where OmniSarenrae causes the consequences to be harmless, because what's the point? But it's their own decisions to do that.

What would a omni^3 Calistria like?