In our Behind the Screens thread, one of the players asked about using the fact that he'd seen Errol Flynn do some sword technique in a movie as an example for a skill.
Well, I suppose I might allow that; but there are a lot of reasons not to do so.
When I was knee high to a grasshopper, my brother and I used to watch swashbuckers and then swordfight with sticks. We did what we saw in the movies, and worked hard to hit each other's swords. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I realized that this was entirely wrong. Real swordfighters are not trying to hit each other's swords; they are trying to hit each other, and using their swords to prevent each other from succeeding.
But when we see fencers in the movies, every effort has been made to prevent them from hurting each other. They are very certainly trying to miss. Thus the actors cannot really be good examples of how to hit, because that's not what they are doing.
Errol Flynn is a particularly difficult case. He was a dashing young actor who was a heartthrob in his day, and they always gave him these heroic roles. Unfortunately, he barely knew one end of the sword from the other. They always teamed him with Basil Rathbone as his principle enemy. This is significant: Rathbone was the European fencing champion. He knew exactly what he was doing. Flynn never stood a chance against him. Thus Flynn could wail into combat completely unskilled, and Rathbone could manage to keep both of them safe and make Flynn look good.
Thus if someone wants to tell me that they saw Basil Rathbone do something and want to use it as an example, I'll give them a professional level example.
But if someone says they saw Errol Flynn do something in a movie, I am really underwhelmed. You would do better to tell me that you saw Captain Blood or Robin Hood or some other Errol Flynn hero do it in a movie, and then I'll give you the same 1@1 Amateur example I give for anything explained in a book written by someone who doesn't really know how to do what they've described (like spells from a role playing game book).
I put this here so as not to take up so much space in the other thread. Comments are welcome.
--M. J. Young
Errol Flynn is a particularly difficult case. He was a dashing young actor who was a heartthrob in his day, and they always gave him these heroic roles. Unfortunately, he barely knew one end of the sword from the other. They always teamed him with Basil Rathbone as his principle enemy. This is significant: Rathbone was the European fencing champion. He knew exactly what he was doing. Flynn never stood a chance against him. Thus Flynn could wail into combat completely unskilled, and Rathbone could manage to keep both of them safe and make Flynn look good.
That would explain why Basil Rathbone always fought Danny Kaye in his movies. And I actually thought Danny Kaye was a pretty good swordsman.
I actually knew that anecdote about Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. I know it's a poor example - I was mostly making a snarky comment since I missed that roll by 3.
I know I'm going to start a fight by mentioning this, but at this point I feel I have to:
I believe it was John Cross who wanted to walk on water as a divine spell. He cited Jesus as his example (and why not? he's more or less the only person we've ever seen bother to walk on water as an act of divine magic, so, fine) and was given a 3@10 example credit.
The thing is, in the Bible we don't really see, step-by-step, HOW he did it, just, "he prayed, and it worked."
Ignoring the religious importance of Jesus as an individual, in the writing, this is really no better an example than "Raistlin spoke the in the spidery language of wizards, and there was fire." If we took this as just another distantly-removed written example, written by someone who was not an instructor, who never walked on water himself, and which includes no lengthy, detailed description of action, technique, nor even with what specific words he "gave thanks to God," doesn't that mean that even taking Jesus should only be qualifying us for 1@1 examples? What I mean is, our example in that case is not actually Jesus himself, it's whoever wrote the Gospel. Jesus himself didn't demonstrate how to walk on water, someone else wrote about somebody seeing Jesus walk on water, and it's that third-hand description that we're reading, just like how Errol Flynn isn't REALLY Robin Hood (who certainly would have been a professional level swordsman).
Or is there an exception to that rule for gods and other divine figures? If I cite Zeus as my example when trying to throw lighting, or Thor for my example when attempting to double my strength, will I get 3@10s because they're gods?
Osevens, if you were expecting me to start a fight over that, you were mistaken. I actually agree with you.
I do see your point.
Unless I'm mistaken, though, Raistlin is a fictitious character, and the person who wrote about him speaking in the fiery language of wizards to call fire invented that. Sure, it's true in some universe; but it wasn't true in the universe of the guy who wrote it. See, that means that if you were in that universe and you read that as a true account, I'd have to give you Raistlin's SAL as an example, or find a reason why not.
I also see the point that the account is second-hand and omits important details. That's problematic, though, from a different perspective. For one thing, sometimes we see in detail how Jesus performs a miracle (such as making mud from spittle to put on the eyes of the blind man and sending him to wash in the Pool of Siloam). Sometimes we see it in general (He gave thanks and broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples to distribute to five thousand hungry people), and sometimes we just read that He did it. On at least one occasion, He suggests that what He says is irrelevant--he says to the lame man, "Your sins are forgiven," and when the Pharisees object He asks whether it's easier to say that or "Rise, take up your bed, and walk," which he then repeats to the man, who walks. The implication is that the first statement healed the man as much as the second, and thus what was said was not at issue.
I'm going to give Jesus a 3@10 SAL at any miracle He performed; call me prejudiced if you like, but I don't see how I can do otherwise. I give lower skill levels to the apostles and prophets, although Moses and Elijah get some pretty high marks in my book. There are a few other recorded miracles that I would credit as credible accounts. I have a scholastic prejudice against the miracles of Mohammed, as they were not recorded for several hundred years after his death (although his teachings were), but in fairness I suppose I would give them high marks as well, particularly if a Muslim player cited them. I'm more skeptical, too, of the miracles attributed to Jesus as a child in various late apocyrphal accounts, or those attributed to him in America after his resurrection by the Latter Day Saints (I'm afraid their holy book owes too much to the fiction of Reverend Solomon and has too many anachronisms to be credible), but I take each case as it comes.
The problem, though, is that once having established that Jesus has such-and-such an SAL and that a particular act of his was recorded in scripture, I have to make the decision as to whether that serves as an example or not. Because of the peculiarities of Christian faith, the answer is usually yes, it does--He said that those who believed would do the works He did and also greater works, and thus any time it is recorded that he did something, that stands as an example demonstrating that a Christian who has faith the way He had faith can do what He did.
I don't know whether that's a satisfactory answer, and I don't know whether Scott Horton would treat any of this the same way I would (I think Ed Jones would, but he has his own prejudices too). I would not say that every referee has to treat every recorded miracle of Jesus as a 3@10 example, or that they couldn't just say that Jesus had a 3@10 Do Anything skill he used to do a lot of different things (C. S. Lewis, in Miracles: A Preliminary Study, would probably beg to disagree--he argues that Jesus only did things that fit into certain categories, and could not have acted outside those categories--but that's based on what was observed about the records, not on any proof that other things could not have been done). I'll continue to consider Jesus a 3@10 example of His own miracles, although I will do so based on the assumption that the character using that example actually takes the time to study it.
--M. J. Young
I had meant to cite Peter in that prayer. Peter gets kind of a bad rap because he failed to do a lot of things, however, notice he was the only one who even tried most of the time. He was the only one that tried to walk on water. He succeeded momentarily and failed. Jesus wouldn't be upset that he failed, Jesus would be happy that he tried.
After Jesus, he's probably the second Biblical person I want to meet in Heaven.
There is a bit about how if all the things that Jesus had done were recorded all the books in the world would not suffice (I think that may be hyperbole to make a point), but such a statement could be used to argue against CS Lewis's contention (of course, he would probably say that the unrecorded things still fit in his categories deduced.)
I think I am going to have to call your prejudice on this one, boss. That's the part that I figured was going to provoke an argument. To my eyes there's nothing that says he was limits-of-possibility good, as opposed to just 2@ good.I'm going to give Jesus a 3@10 SAL at any miracle He performed; call me prejudiced if you like, but I don't see how I can do otherwise.
And - with an eye toward refereeing in the future - is it appropriate then to ignore the third-hand source material and just assume that gods and their chosen handservants probably are 3@ with regards to divine magic?
I was trying to discuss that O7.
Some gods, yeah, but others it seems clear to me, anyhoo, no.
The Creator of Discworld wishes at one point that he had mechanical aptitude like other Creators and could have an elegantly put together universe with clever numbers and other examples (many a scientist has pointed out that our Universe is elegant...which seems a curious attribute for a random pile of junk that accidentally got burped out).
So the Discworld Creator probably has Create Universe at 1@10 or so.
That's true. That actually makes sense to me. The One True God, maybe a few others have 3@10. Some of the lower gods have 2@5. I don't know. I believe it's possible that all the gods of all of the religions exist. For reasons I don't want to get into on the board, I believe that the God of the Bible is the boss. Call the others Angels in Training if you will. Satan would even be considered a god, under this. Some people seem to think he is.
A1Nut - That would certainly fulfill the duality a bit better than him NOT being one, wouldn't you think? Equal-and-opposite makes the world go round.
A1Nut - That would certainly fulfill the duality a bit better than him NOT being one, wouldn't you think?
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here, but I hope you're agreeing with me. Could you explain?
Oh, and under my belief system, only Atheists, those who reject the authority of ANY god go to Hell. Them and the people who worshiped Satan on purpose.
A1Nut - I was agreeing with you.
You know what I find a bit creepy, though? Under Multiverser rules, nobody just STARTS with really high marks in a skill. So, if you were to have "Create Universe" (probably a M 15@ spell), you would need to practice it. How exactly does one practice creating universes? And what becomes of all those universes you created just for practice?
I'm actually surprised that you think this way. Satan is not the opposite of God; he is the opposite of Michael.That would certainly fulfill the duality a bit better than him NOT being one, wouldn't you think? Equal-and-opposite makes the world go round.
Not to get too deeply into it, if Evil is a co-equal opposite of Good, then Good has no claim to superiority or preference, and ultimately must yield to Evil. After all, if the two are co-equal opposites, than which we choose is a matter of preference, and anyone who is Good could not object that Evil was "wrong", only that we don't like it. It is then incumbent on Good to tolerate Evil because that is the only just course--but not incumbent on Evil to tolerate Good because Evil may be unjust with impunity. It thus becomes entirely wrong for Good to oppose Evil in any way under any circumstances, but must allow Evil to destroy Good unopposed.
It is only if Good has a claim to be greater than Evil that Good has any claim to anything at all. Fortunately, it turns out that Evil has nothing of value to offer, and must pervert Good to its own ends. No one really does evil for the sake of evil; they do evil in a desire to acquire something that is probably good in itself. Evil sells the line that you can get good things by following evil paths; it never tries to persuade you that by doing evil you can acquire something evil for yourself.
Further, even evil people have a sense of justice--a part of good--and feel they have been cheated if they are treated unfairly, even though they believe they, being evil, can treat others unfairly if it suits them. Honor among thieves is a lie devised by older thieves to make younger thieves vulnerable. If it is ever true, it is further proof that good is superior, not co-equal.
Actually, that's not entirely true. We just don't really talk much about the very few skills humans do not learn or develop, or about the skills other created beings may have. Every once in a while you'll see it in Eric's work, that some race or creature is born with a high level skill in something. It's not common among mortals, and it's not common in the verse generally--but that does not mean that it's the same everywhere. The Creator has all skills perfected, and always has; He created some beings with the ability to create, because that was their job. In worlds in which the Sun is a being, it was created with the high-level ability to produce light from the moment it existed. Apollo never learned to drive the chariot across the sky; he was created with that ability.Under Multiverser rules, nobody just STARTS with really high marks in a skill. So, if you were to have "Create Universe" (probably a M 15@ spell), you would need to practice it. How exactly does one practice creating universes? And what becomes of all those universes you created just for practice?
The downside for most of these beings is that they exist in a different kind of time, and in their realm they do not get better at anything: they are constant from the moment of their creation.
First, as Eric observes, it is quite clear that not all gods are 3@10 at everything they do....is it appropriate then to ignore the third-hand source material and just assume that gods and their chosen handservants probably are 3@ with regards to divine magic?
Second, particularly with the Bible we have another complication, and that is whether it is indeed "third hand source material". Christians are not alone in believing it to be "the word of God", that is, God's direct message to us delivered by intermediaries (and the technicalities of dictational versus plenary verbal versus other theories of inspiration only complicate the matter) even if we disagree with some concerning what books are in fact that word of God. If that is so, then the Bible is first-hand source material. In fairness, I would extend that to any "scripture" that makes that same claim for itself. I believe that the Bagavad-Gita does not; nor do the Norse Eddas. If a scripture presents itself as the recorded observations of third parties, it should be so taken; if it presents itself as the direct revelation of its deity, it should similarly be so taken. We can argue whether it is so, but it must be so in some universe (however distasteful I might find that). The LDS Book of Mormon would thus have to be taken thus despite the problems with it, but most mythologies would not.
I've got stuff to do, so I'd better wrap this up. Did I miss anything important?
--M. J. Young
Did I miss anything important?
Not terribly.
I agree with you on the idea of taking gods, their followers, and their texts in the light that they present themselves to their own believers (and thus giving high marks to Muslims who cite Muhammad, Asatruar who cite the Norse gods, and so on). Regardless of the problems with scholarship, these things must be true somewhere, and must have been gotten at least somewhat right.
My last question on that issue is, how do you resolve it for people citing divine magic examples from outside their own faith? Would you give John Cross high-mark example credits if HE cited Zeus for throwing lightning, or give me high-mark credits if I cite Jesus for water-into-wine?
Although I feel like debating you over the whole good and evil thing, if you'll indulge me.
Mostly because I believe it's not ok for Evil to be unjust without consequence - if Evil were to consume Good entirely, like you predict, then Evil would be all there was, and would thus become meaningless. After all, with nothing to contrast it to, Evil has no meaning.
Something is Evil because it is devoid of those qualities - those qualities which must be either themselves or their opposites - which define Good, and possessed of those (equal and opposite) qualities which define Evil. If everything is devoid of Good-defining qualities, and equally possessed of Evil-defining qualities, then people will forget what those qualities are, which leads to forgetting what they are not, and thus both sides lose; we achieve a state of sort of moral/ethical entropy, with everything indistinguishable from everything else. Both sides need the other to exist in order to define themselves. Good and Evil oppose each other, and in pushing against each other, make the world go round, figuratively speaking.
Likewise, it is not necessary for Good to allow Evil to consume it. Opposition is not an inherently Evil thing. It is not necessary for Good to be superior in order to offer opposition, and it is not necessary to yield in order to be good. Even Jesus himself was not universally tolerant - recall the incident with the money-changers. You can, as He did, forgive people who injure you personally (the man who arrested him, whose ear was cut off and then healed), and that's Good, but it is also Good to defend others by resisting (as He also did - recall the incident with the woman he saved from being stoned), uphold your faith, and so on. It is possible for Good to resist while maintaining an equal footing (and after all, isn't the arrogance of assuming one's own superiority a mildly evil act?).
The thing I'd like to know is How do you define Good and Evil?
It was a movie that I saw a long time ago. A guy goes back in time to kill Adolf Hitler when he was a child. Hitler never comes to power, and the world is a better place, right? Wrong. Upon returning to the future, it turns out that one of the people killed in the Holocaust was a child who grew up to become a dictator that made Hitler look like a pansy by comparison. The time traveler then had to go back and stop himself from killing Hitler, and restore the original timeline, as it was the lesser of the two evils.
What is Good and what is Evil?
John, your example is much too speculative to be useful for anything. After all, it is entirely possible that had Hitler not come to power things would have been exactly the same (the principles he espoused were not uniquely his, and had great appeal quite apart from him), or better, or worse. The question is not whether the consequences of the act are good or ill in a pragmatic sense, but whether the act itself is good or evil in a moral sense. One of the serious problems with Minority Report is that in it people are convicted and punished for crimes they were going to commit, sometimes before they had any idea of committing them. Justice requires retribution, in the sense that those who do wrong must repay and those who are wronged must be repaid; it ceases to be justice if it is administered before guilt attaches. Therefore killing Adolph Shicklegruber is a morally repugnant act even if you know he will become Adoph Hitler, because you are punishing him for a crime he then will never commit.
Harry, I find your question fascinating. I think the answer lies in a separate question: does the character believe that the account is true? This is not a hypothetical "it has to be true in some universe" deal. Perhaps the more accurate question is this: does the character believe that the author of the account knew that the details he presented were true? Thus I would say that for John Cross, the account of Jesus turning water into wine (for which we have some detail of what he did) is a 3@10 example of God the Son performing a miraculous act; for you, unless you tell me that you believe that the miracles of the Bible are all true and accurate representations certified by God as telling of real events that happened in our world and were recorded by eye witnesses, they are 1@1 examples, the same value I give to fictional examples, on the basis that you accept that there is a universe somewhere in which these things happen, but you assert that the writers have no actual first-hand knowledge thereof and cannot be said to know the details or to have been reliably informed.
In the same way, you could assert that there are accurate authentic accounts of Zeus throwing lightning (I don't know whether anyone actually believes this, but we'll grant it arguendo) and so take a high SAL example (I would consider 3@10, although not everything Zeus does fits into that category because he is the head of a pantheon and thus he has servants better than him at certain tasks); John, however, would have to treat it as a 1@1 fictional account of something true in some universe but not true in the universe in which he heard the tale, and thus not an accurate authentic account.
*****
As to your assertion that good and evil need each other, I do not see that at all.
Good can survive entirely well without evil. We all know good. It involves doing what is best for others in every possible way. It is self-sacrificing. We could call it love, in the truest most selfless sense. If there were no evil in the world, good would still be good.
As for evil needing good to oppose, it does not. Evil opposes evil, just as good embraces good. Hitler turned on Stalin, Mussolini turned on Hitler. AD&D suggested that the core of evil lies in selfishness, wanting everything for yourself. It is inherently exclusive, and those who are evil will not keep alliances any longer than is to their benefit. If there were no good in the world, evil would continue to be evil, and to destroy everything, because that is what it is and what it does. What evil cannot do, however, is give anyone anything to want. Evil people do not want to get as many evil things for themselves as possible; they want to use evil as a means to get good things for themselves. No one wants evil for its own sake--not even the devil is the servant of evil, but is rather one who uses evil to try to bring good to himself and take it from others.
--M. J. Young
As to resolving examples, I like that approach. If I am ever in a position to referee, I think I will follow that logic.
Sadly, I have to monkey-wrench you even more: I was once devoutly Methodist, and believed very strongly in Christianity. Now, not so much. Do I have to currently be a Christian in order to believe that this is an accurate accounting of a divine act, albeit by a god (or servant of a god, depending on your flavor) I no longer follow? Can John Cross claim that he believes the Eddas are, in fact, accurate, even if he chooses not to follow them (and thus get high marks for claiming Thor as an example)?
As to your position on good and evil, I don't think that's necessarily true. Evil does not necessarily always want good for itself. There are evil people who, being selfish, still want nothing for themselves, or who want an evil goal like revenge for themselves, and are defined as evil because their only motivation is to bring evil upon others. This is a more nihilistic form of evil, that can exist... without good... and that proves your point not mine. >.> Bugger!
I'm going to have to consider this further. You win this round, boss.
Good can survive entirely well without evil. We all know good. It involves doing what is best for others in every possible way. It is self-sacrificing. We could call it love, in the truest most selfless sense. If there were no evil in the world, good would still be good.
But again, what is good? What is evil? I've told you the story about the guy in church. His sister said all kinds of things to me, but if I said something back to his sister, he wanted to fight me for it. Some people would say that he was being honorable in defending his sister. However, she's the one that started it, by insulting me in the first place. Is it still an honorable act? Not to mention the fact that the guy was a bodybuilder. He could have taken on me and 10 of my best friends without breaking a sweat. In other words, a fight between him and I would have lasted about 2 seconds. Is it still honorable to do that if you completely outmatch your opponent?
Now, if I had been the bodybuilder, and Eddie was the 98 pound weakling, instead of the other way around, and I was the one that said something to his sister first, then yes, I would say that Eddie was being honorable. However, the way it was, he was far from it.
So, I say again, what is good and what is evil?
What is good and what is evil? That's something that could never really be understood.
What you thought would be an awesome world for me turned out to be probably the worst place I could have been sent.
Trying to help my friend get a date turned him completely against me.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Killing thousands of people is an evil act, right? Well, if those thousands of people were the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan during WW2, and the war ended, it could be called a good thing.
History records Hitler as an evil person. However, he did help pull Germany out of a huge financial crisis.
Speaking of WW2, millions of people died, but it pulled the US out of The Great Depression.
So, I say again. What is good and what is evil?
To make it more confounding: Greed for money, and war, are both usually considered bad things, and everyone says two wrongs don't make a right, but when World War II brought the US enough money to end the Depression that was considered a good thing.
Edit: And, MJ, just another "how do I resolve this if it comes up?": What if the character believes the accounting to be true, but the referee knows it to be false? This is not a "your referee doesn't believe in the Qur'an, so you get no credit" thing, this is a "you've been duped by my NPC, who is a false prophet," sort of thing.
If I the referee know the account to be false, he gets 1@1. If I the referee know the account to be true, he gets the full example if he earnestly attempts to faithfully emulate it, regardless of his opinions on the account's accuracy. In cases where I the referee do not know (only possible when the example is from the player's world of origin, a mirror of this one, and sometimes not even then), I'll follow MJ's guidelines above.
In your example, I the referee know the account to be false. MJ's mileage may vary.
Two wrongs do not make a right, but three lefts do.
Justice is good; vengeance is a good perverted.
When the girl verbally insults John, she is wrong. When John strikes back verbally against the girl, he is wrong. When her brother defends her wickedness, he, too, is wrong. Justice is what both John and the brother are seeking, but they are not going to get it by rendering evil for evil. Justice comes when the girl repays John for the wrong she did, and John repays her for the wrong he did, and the brother repays John for the wrong he in turn did. It is nearly impossible to get "justice" for yourself, because you lack the perspective: the wrong done to you seems so much greater than the recompense you claim. This is why justice is administered by third parties, those who can see how much wrong was done and what is fair recompense.
"Good" is that which brings us closer to God and closer to each other. "Good" is that which makes us more divine, and at the same time more human.
Evil is that which works against this, destroying the image of God, the humanness, in ourselves and in others.
Jesus said that the one who hated was as guilty as the one who killed. Consider that the killing is an evil thing in the sense that it destroys the life of another, but it is the hating that destroys the one who kills as well as the other. Hatred is evil, because it isolates the one who hates, separating him from the one hated as well as from others who cannot be party to his hatred--including God.
As to taking examples from other deities, I would raise this challenge: how true do you really believe the source is? Does John really believe that the Eddas are reliably true accounts of the deeds of gods who actually did the deeds reported? Do you genuinely believe that the gospels are reliable eyewitness accounts of real miracles? (If so, I would be interested in why you reject Christianity. I'm interested in that anyway, but the more so if you think the documents reliable accounts of real events.)
--M. J. Young
I reject Christianity because I see too much falsehood in what the religion has become. I believe Jesus was a real person, and I believe that the things he actually said were a good message. I do not believe he was God incarnate, and I patently reject Saul of Tarsus as any kind of source on him either way.
Basically, the way I see it, Christianity started out as a cult of personality among a small circle of Jewish philosophers. Normally, when the personality dies, the cult dies with him. But they had a ready change handy - the Greek mystery cult, which matches, shall we say later early Christianity. The problems start right from the jump with some of the disciples (whose letters didn't make it into the Bible) saying that no, in fact, the Jewish law was not abolished and that yes, in fact, you do have to be a Jew to follow Jesus (who was, himself, a Jew, and who said "not one jot of the law will be changed until the end of days").
Then you have Saul of Tarsus, who spent thirty years of his life persecuting Christians for a living, who has an epiphany while all alone on a road miles from anywhere, and he starts writing letters. Think about this for a minute. If George Bush wandered off into the Texas desert, showed up in Houston and started preaching Islam, they would have him committed. They would NOT base the next 2000+ years of Islam on what he had to say.
Well, as it turns out, Saul had a good thing going in terms of his salesmanship. And why not? He edited out all the parts that were distasteful. You don't have to be circumcised. No dietary laws. No Jewish regulations. Jesus "fulfilled" all that (remember that whole "not one jot of the law will be changed" part?).
Well, we like what he's selling, but we don't like the packaging. How will I give my cousins gifts for Saturnalia if they don't believe in the holidays any more? Oh, alright, you can keep your Heathen holidays (already the title I bear with pride was being said with a sneer) but you'd better make them relate to Jesus instead (and never-you-mind Bacchus or Osiris or Baldur or anyone else who did the "dying for their people and rising from the dead at the end of days to start the new world where gods and men walk together" thing first).
So now we have a Jewish cult of personality, centered around a dead personality, that you don't have to be Jewish to follow, with rituals based almost entirely on Druidic high magic and a cycle of holidays that originally revered nature, in a religion that denounces those who revere nature, and then later attempts to convert people by the sword to follow the Prince of Peace.
But it gets worse. Because now we have all of these people more or less on message, but we need a book. Well, there's plenty of stuff written, but it's all in Aramaic (which the Greeks can't make sense of) or Greek (which the Romans find distasteful and only the merchanting Jews understand), or Hebrew (which the Jews are fine with but leaves everyone else like "wtf?"). Well, this won't do, so let's translate them all into Latin (a version of Latin that would give a real Roman headaches, by the bye)! Well, we can't translate them all, that would take a thousand years, and some of them disagree with others and some of them disagree with themselves and some of them are so far out there mystic that nobody knows what they're saying... and then there's Constantine. Well, he had a revelation from God in front of his whole army! Surely he knows what's going on, right? Never-you-mind that Arias fellow - he's obviously out of his gourd.
So Constantine and his philosophers will tell us which ones to translate. Fine. Now we have one book that's sort of all telling the same story, if you forgive certain small inconsistencies here and there (like Jesus only fulfilling about half the Prophecies of the Messiah, and being from the House of David primarily through Joseph's bloodline). Only some of our translators are lazy and some of them are sloppy and some of them (being devout Christians by now) can't believe Jesus would have said something like that - it sounds downright angry! - so certain... errors... crop up along the way.
But we can't admit the book is flawed! People won't follow it. BUT if it's the divine word of God directly (never-you-mind the fact that there are, even now, plural versions of said direct word of God) then people won't question it. The book is right because God says so, and we know God is always right because the Book tells us all about it...
Two thousand years later, there's not enough left of what Jesus had to say to make a coherent religion out of, so I choose to follow a Neo-Pagan path. These are people who admit straight up that there's not enough left of these traditions to be certain they're getting it right, but it feels right enough to them, and there are enough people who feel the same way that we can all practice together, and get back to our roots a bit. Why follow a derivative religion when I can follow the paths it was derived from, and reach a deeper understanding of the divine by following just the gods, and sloughing away two millennia of bureaucracy in the process?
One of the things that attracts me to all Pagan faiths is the acknowledgment and worship of a divine feminine, a Goddess. (I relate to her most closely as Hecate, Greek goddess of the bridge between life and death, queen of witches and patron of sorcerers.) She has been a strong influence on me ever since I found my path. I feel that the monotheistic religions do society no favors in denying the Goddess. What I mean by that is, if women are not divine (because the only god is identified as male) then women are not special, and it is okay to discriminate against them. Compare this - as Merlin Stone did in her book "When God Was A Woman" - to societies that have an equality between the God and the Goddess, and you find societies with more balanced equalities of gender. I'm not saying one is the sole determinant of the other, but it certainly seems to help.
Now that I'm done with my vehemently anti-Christianity tirade, let me make a few apologies.
Firstly, it stands to reason that nine years of Catholic school (K-8) soured my early spiritual experiences in a way that leaves my perspective a bit jaded.
Secondly, much of my disappointment with Christianity is in fact a disappointment with Christians, especially the ultra-right-wing fundie lunatics who have been hijacking the Republican party these last few decades (I vote Democrat because there are no more Goldwater Republicans, but that's another story).
Oddly enough, I have nothing against people who happen to be Christian. I understand exactly what being Christian whole-heartedly feels like, and I know how powerful that is. To be honest, if I could have kept that feeling, I would have stayed Christian forever and been well pleased with it, but it is as much a sense of community as it is of spirituality, and I've never found either one again since the Methodist church I served in shut down. The Christians who give Christianity a bad name are the ones who want to "Christianize" America into their own ultra-restrictive version of Fundamentalism, regardless of the beliefs of other Americans (many of whom believe as much in freedom from religion as freedom of religion).
I DO believe that there was a man Jesus of Nazareth who went about preaching faith and love and kindness and healing who was captured and tortured and killed (though I know not by whom, again another story) and that the message he brought was both a good one and a common one: love God, and, in the immortal words of George Carlin, "be excellent to each other," which is pretty much the underlying theme of ALL religions when you get right down to it.
I do not believe that he was God incarnate. That is not to say I am strictly opposed to the idea - the gods, both the Abrahamic God and others, have certainly done stranger things in their times - only to say that I do not inherently trust it, either. I believe he did wonderful things, but I don't believe he was the only significant person ever to do so.
I believe that whatever he was really up to, we can't tell that now. Two thousand years of human error and outright (and confessed) malfeasance have simply left us with too little to go on, especially in light of how much of Christian ritual and observance is entirely lifted from the indigenous Pagan cultures they converted anyway. At the very best I think Arias had it right: Revere Jesus as a prophet and take his message of peace and forgiveness to heart, but don't make a prophet into a god.
Now, to the idea of whether or not I take Jesus as a true example: Yes. I believe he did perform his miracles. I believe he did spread his message, and I believe it did a great deal of good for a great many people. I regard him a very powerful user of divine magic, certainly a prophet in the full glory and favor of his deity. Do I necessarily believe he gets automatic 3@10's (which I consider the hallmark of a deity acting within his aspect)? No. Benefit of the doubt I'll give him high 2@'s. He was certainly impressive enough for people to flock to him. He even did a great many things that seem to defy the bias level of our world, unless you assume that our Mag bias has dropped significantly since his time (and since the world's dominant religions almost universally deny, denounce, and abjure magic, that's not necessarily impossible), but to me he was a very enlightened man, not a god, so I do not credit him with automatic 3@10's, except perhaps in his Religion (Judaism) skill, evidenced by the fact that he was able to more-or-less effortless outdo the scholars and priests even as a child, which to me speaks of an automatic ability. The problem - and why I will always claim him as 1@1 examples - is that I know the gospels were written down by the followers of eyewitnesses, some 40 (Gospel of John) to 120 (Gospel of Luke) years after Jesus's death. Perhaps some genuine high-mark examples could be found among the Apocrypha, but I've never taken the time to go looking and would feel a mite dishonest doing so now.
Two wrongs do not make a right, but three lefts do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights made an airplane.
07,
There is an awful lot there, and not all of it I have an answer for. And, fair warning, I am one of those ultra-rightwing fundie Christians who've taken over the Republican Party (and turned it from a collection of losers who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag into something that could win, and along the way helped defend the people against the oppressions of the Government. Because the Religious Right rose as a defensive reaction.)
I come from a world where the movie Red Dawn, and the novel 1984 look less like fiction, and more like sober assessments of where we were heading.
The totalitarian fascist communist impulse was very strong worldwide, and it hated Christianity. It was strong in America.
One of the key moral questions is: Is Mankind perfectible, or are we tragically flawed? The Left thought we were perfectible, and that the only thing holding us back from Utopia were the traditional elements of society (family, church...), and so the family and the church got massively attacked. By their logic, it was reasonable to do so because a Golden Age awaited. Now we know that what awaited were the Killing Fields and the Gulag Archipelago.
So that gives you a little different sidelight on the history of the past thirty years.
One other bit of history, and I'm off to bed.
"More than a goat, less than a horse"...thats the value of a woman in many a society not influenced by Christianith.
PT
Personally, I believe that it's possible, just possible, that all the gods of all of the religions of the world exist. I believe that the God of Abraham is The Boss. Call the others "Angels in Training" if you will. The reason for this is because Christianity is the only religion that does not require good works to ascend to the higher plane. Christianity says "Accept the gift I'm offering, and I will take you there myself." Most of the others say "If you work hard enough, you might have a chance." I have a problem with a god that can't get you to the higher plane under his/her own power.
I believe that it is possible, just possible, that Zeus and Thor and the Hindu gods (whatever they are) really exist. This also answers the question of "What about that Hindu over in India that never heard of Jesus? Is he automatically going to Hell for it?" I've heard Christians say, with a straight face, "Of course he is" That, to me, just kind of blows the whole concept of the God of Abraham being gentle, kind, loving, and merciful completely out of the water. Not to mention the fact that I'd like to see where The Bible has their name written as the person who decides that.
So, I believe that is is possible, just possible, that the Hindu will get his Hindu paradise, whatever it is. I also think that, if that is the case, that he will be looking over at Heaven and saying "Man, I really missed out" However, he will have everything that he was promised, and he will be content and happy there.
And yes, even the Islamic terrorist will get his reward. Can you imagine living with 72 women who will all get PMS at the same time? I grew up with 3, that was enough, thank you. That sounds more like a punishment if you ask me. Not to mention that there is some speculation as to whether or not he will get to have any kind of relations with the 72 virgins. They might have to stay virgins. Kind of a "Look but don't touch" kind of a thing. Again, that sounds more like a punishment.
So, in closing, would I get any kind of example bonus for using Zeus as an example when throwing lightning bolts? I believe it's possible that he existed. I won't argue for his existence, but I believe it's possible that he did exist.
I only dealt with O7's objections in part last time because, in part, I was up at night telling possibly pagan stories (Goldilocks and Jack in the Beanstalk) to my sick youngest who is currently getting good rest.
Lets see if I can deal with this point by point.
=========================================================
I reject Christianity because I see too much falsehood in what the religion has become.
==Nice, clear theses statement. However, could not one accept its truth, and ignore the accretions of dishonesty?
I believe Jesus was a real person, and I believe that the things he actually said were a good message.
==And now we run into CS Lewis' Trilemma. Jesus was a good person says the thoughtful skeptic, but only that. However, he cannot be. He claimed to be God. If he lied, then he was not good. If he was delusional, then the same. Only if he was Lord could he still be good.
I do not believe he was God incarnate, and I patently reject Saul of Tarsus as any kind of source on him either way.
==I ran into a skeptic at a gaming con who filled my ear for an hour on how Paul was not good enough. Since then (a couple years later) I'd found an answer, but I don't remember that much. I do remember, I think, that there was a council that the books of the Bible were voted on, and my skeptic had said that Paul won because he had a lot of followers from his good salesmanship. Well, I'm not sure that we two were thinking of the same council, but there was one where 302 or so people voted, and perhaps 2 voted against it. This makes the insults to Paul seem unfounded.
Basically, the way I see it, Christianity started out as a cult of personality among a small circle of Jewish philosophers.
==The religious leaders marvelled that these were unlearned men.
Normally, when the personality dies, the cult dies with him. But they had a ready change handy - the Greek mystery cult, which matches, shall we say later early Christianity. The problems start right from the jump with some of the disciples (whose letters didn't make it into the Bible) saying that no, in fact, the Jewish law was not abolished and that yes, in fact, you do have to be a Jew to follow Jesus (who was, himself, a Jew, and who said "not one jot of the law will be changed until the end of days").
Then you have Saul of Tarsus, who spent thirty years of his life persecuting Christians for a living, who has an epiphany while all alone on a road miles from anywhere, and he starts writing letters. Think about this for a minute. If George Bush wandered off into the Texas desert, showed up in Houston and started preaching Islam, they would have him committed. They would NOT base the next 2000+ years of Islam on what he had to say.
==Maybe. Maybe not.
Well, as it turns out, Saul had a good thing going in terms of his salesmanship. And why not? He edited out all the parts that were distasteful. You don't have to be circumcised. No dietary laws. No Jewish regulations. Jesus "fulfilled" all that (remember that whole "not one jot of the law will be changed" part?).
Well, we like what he's selling, but we don't like the packaging. How will I give my cousins gifts for Saturnalia if they don't believe in the holidays any more? Oh, alright, you can keep your Heathen holidays (already the title I bear with pride was being said with a sneer) but you'd better make them relate to Jesus instead (and never-you-mind Bacchus or Osiris or Baldur or anyone else who did the "dying for their people and rising from the dead at the end of days to start the new world where gods and men walk together" thing first).
==Melchizedek, Joseph and others are taught as Types of Christ. They 'prefigured' the Coming Lord. This is a teaching device on the part of God, I think or better guess.
Mankind, in its heart, as Pascal said has a hole shaped like God. I'll go one step further, Mankind has a hole shaped like Jesus, and its natural for people to try to fit something into that hole, and its natural that some of the things would slightly resemble the Christ.
So now we have a Jewish cult of personality, centered around a dead personality, that you don't have to be Jewish to follow, with rituals based almost entirely on Druidic high magic and a cycle of holidays that originally revered nature, in a religion that denounces those who revere nature, and then later attempts to convert people by the sword to follow the Prince of Peace.
==There is a great similarity between one of the ancient names of a father of a nation, and the head of, I believe, that nation's pantheon. The name comes from the Bible, and the deity comes from myth handed down. That was Assyria. I've heard there's more, I think, but I didn't research it.
It made me want to create a Multiverser scenario. The verser lands in a world, and sees a bunch of guys chasing one guy with obvious intent to murder. He likely helps, and finds out that the one guy is a follower of the Ancient Way, the worship of the Creator who sent mankind out from Eden. The others are his distant cousins who worship their great-great-great-great grandfather, the father of both their nations who tells everyone he is a god.
The verser is curious, and goes to meet this guy.
The guy explains that he's five hundred years old, and that he has a ton of skills, and fatherly authority, and so its easy to convince his children that he really is god.
"After all, I can shoot an arrow a mile and hit a sabertooth cat in the heart. Practise, practise is all it takes. And things like that tend to convince onlookers that you really are a god."
At this point, the verser may be wondering why this guy is confessing so easily, or what his reason is.
"Look, its obvious you're not from around here. I know my bloodlines. You're not related to me. I've been figuring on a plan. The Creator is full of love. He doesn't want to punish his children. So, I've told mine a lie, placed a bet. And you're an angel sent by the Creator to negotiate for the return of these children. I-on the other hand--want a better deal than he's been offering to his followers. So, lets make a deal. And until the negotiation is complete, you'e going to be staying with me, Mr. Angel."
He snaps his fingers, and a dozen guys grab you and toss you into the ancient prison...a big dirty hole in the ground.
But it gets worse. Because now we have all of these people more or less on message, but we need a book. Well, there's plenty of stuff written, but it's all in Aramaic (which the Greeks can't make sense of) or Greek (which the Romans find distasteful and only the merchanting Jews understand), or Hebrew (which the Jews are fine with but leaves everyone else like "wtf?"). Well, this won't do, so let's translate them all into Latin (a version of Latin that would give a real Roman headaches, by the bye)! Well, we can't translate them all, that would take a thousand years, and some of them disagree with others and some of them disagree with themselves and some of them are so far out there mystic that nobody knows what they're saying... and then there's Constantine. Well, he had a revelation from God in front of his whole army! Surely he knows what's going on, right? Never-you-mind that Arias fellow - he's obviously out of his gourd.
==You're assuming bad faith on the part of people you have no reason to assume such. In fact, you have good reason to assume the opposite.
The Jews took an extraordinary degree of care in copying the Old Testament. They would do things like count the letters in a book, and find the middle letter, and if it did not agree with what it was supposed to be, the copy was destroyed.
The most documented ancient text is the New Testament. If the NT is not reliable, then nothing of ancient history is reliable. Some of Homer's work had about 3000 plus different sources, and supposedly about 800 years later. The NT had 23,000 or so sources, and some of it was written within 31 years of the events.
So Constantine and his philosophers will tell us which ones to translate. Fine. Now we have one book that's sort of all telling the same story, if you forgive certain small inconsistencies here and there (like Jesus only fulfilling about half the Prophecies of the Messiah, and being from the House of David primarily through Joseph's bloodline). Only some of our translators are lazy and some of them are sloppy and some of them (being devout Christians by now) can't believe Jesus would have said something like that - it sounds downright angry! - so certain... errors... crop up along the way.
But we can't admit the book is flawed! People won't follow it. BUT if it's the divine word of God directly (never-you-mind the fact that there are, even now, plural versions of said direct word of God) then people won't question it. The book is right because God says so, and we know God is always right because the Book tells us all about it...
Two thousand years later, there's not enough left of what Jesus had to say to make a coherent religion out of, so I choose to follow a Neo-Pagan path. These are people who admit straight up that there's not enough left of these traditions to be certain they're getting it right, but it feels right enough to them, and there are enough people who feel the same way that we can all practice together, and get back to our roots a bit. Why follow a derivative religion when I can follow the paths it was derived from, and reach a deeper understanding of the divine by following just the gods, and sloughing away two millennia of bureaucracy in the process?
==Paganism is the derivative religion. The One True Faith was given by the Creator to Adam. Humans do have a tendency to add stuff on (See 1. Paganism. 2. the Pharisees. 3. RCC).
One of the things that attracts me to all Pagan faiths is the acknowledgment and worship of a divine feminine, a Goddess. (I relate to her most closely as Hecate, Greek goddess of the bridge between life and death, queen of witches and patron of sorcerers.) She has been a strong influence on me ever since I found my path. I feel that the monotheistic religions do society no favors in denying the Goddess. What I mean by that is, if women are not divine (because the only god is identified as male) then women are not special, and it is okay to discriminate against them. Compare this - as Merlin Stone did in her book "When God Was A Woman" - to societies that have an equality between the God and the Goddess, and you find societies with more balanced equalities of gender. I'm not saying one is the sole determinant of the other, but it certainly seems to help.
==A brilliantly funny book is "Wolftime" by Lars Walker. It has humanity in all its bizarreness including a devout Christian who listens for messages from God on his radio and radio station management who tell their workers to work hard because its God's work, but they can't be paid much for the same reason, and because the renovation of the manager's office took up all the money.
It also has Odin coming to a small town in Minnesota to confront an Enlgish Lit professor who seems to be cursed so as to not be able to lie.
Paganism confronts Post-Modernity and Lutheranism in Minnesota and a learned professor who feels like he's a failure and a coward.
Odin respects the principle of Womanhood, but not actual women.
Anyways, its laugh out loud funny, sharply acidic in its observations of how strange humans can be, and a great tale. I've read it a number of times.
Now that I'm done with my vehemently anti-Christianity tirade, let me make a few apologies.
Firstly, it stands to reason that nine years of Catholic school (K-8) soured my early spiritual experiences in a way that leaves my perspective a bit jaded.
Secondly, much of my disappointment with Christianity is in fact a disappointment with Christians, especially the ultra-right-wing fundie lunatics who have been hijacking the Republican party these last few decades (I vote Democrat because there are no more Goldwater Republicans, but that's another story).
==Hmmm, as one of those lunatics, let me ask you a question. How is it that voting for the party of 'hate crimes', political correctness, speech codes at college, and the Prophet of Gaia, the Most Holy Albert Gore is something a Goldwater Republican could do?
I recently read 'From Dawn to Decadence' by Jacques Barzun. I was struck by his description of American Transcendentalism. I'd heard it described, I think, mostly as a philosophy or a cultural movement. That was somewhat the impression I had.
Barzun clearly stated it was a religion.
And this brings up a common rhetorical trick: "I'm against religion in politics." (Of course, my theories of life, the universe, and proper moral behavior are not a religion. They are 1)The Obvious Truth 2)A theory or philosophy. 3)Something I don't even think about because all right-minded people agree with me.)
Jesse Jackson has been telling people for a very long time who to vote for.
If you like religious liberty, and freedom of speech...thank a Baptist.
Oddly enough, I have nothing against people who happen to be Christian. I understand exactly what being Christian whole-heartedly feels like, and I know how powerful that is. To be honest, if I could have kept that feeling,
==Feelings are nice, and in fact neccessary. I'm perhaps a bit of a mystic myself, but one does not have 'feelings' about the Law of Gravity.
I would have stayed Christian forever and been well pleased with it, but it is as much a sense of community as it is of spirituality, and I've never found either one again since the Methodist church I served in shut down.
==I won't defend how a lot of churches act.
The Christians who give Christianity a bad name are the ones who want to "Christianize" America into their own ultra-restrictive version of Fundamentalism,
==Freedom and morality are not incompatible. You have radically misunderstood what would happen if the Religious Right won. There'd be more freedom, a lot more.
regardless of the beliefs of other Americans (many of whom believe as much in freedom from religion as freedom of religion).
I DO believe that there was a man Jesus of Nazareth who went about preaching faith and love and kindness and healing who was captured and tortured and killed (though I know not by whom, again another story) and that the message he brought was both a good one and a common one: love God, and, in the immortal words of George Carlin, "be excellent to each other," which is pretty much the underlying theme of ALL religions when you get right down to it.
I do not believe that he was God incarnate. That is not to say I am strictly opposed to the idea - the gods, both the Abrahamic God and others, have certainly done stranger things in their times - only to say that I do not inherently trust it, either. I believe he did wonderful things, but I don't believe he was the only significant person ever to do so.
I believe that whatever he was really up to, we can't tell that now. Two thousand years of human error and outright (and confessed) malfeasance have simply left us with too little to go on, especially in light of how much of Christian ritual and observance is entirely lifted from the indigenous Pagan cultures they converted anyway. At the very best I think Arias had it right: Revere Jesus as a prophet and take his message of peace and forgiveness to heart, but don't make a prophet into a god.
==Let's refer Arias to Lewis, and see who comes out alive in a cage match, hmm?
Now, to the idea of whether or not I take Jesus as a true example: Yes. I believe he did perform his miracles. I believe he did spread his message, and I believe it did a great deal of good for a great many people. I regard him a very powerful user of divine magic, certainly a prophet in the full glory and favor of his deity. Do I necessarily believe he gets automatic 3@10's (which I consider the hallmark of a deity acting within his aspect)? No. Benefit of the doubt I'll give him high 2@'s. He was certainly impressive enough for people to flock to him. He even did a great many things that seem to defy the bias level of our world, unless you assume that our Mag bias has dropped significantly since his time (and since the world's dominant religions almost universally deny, denounce, and abjure magic, that's not necessarily impossible),
==I suspect something like this. The Power of God is something that is Really Scary, and humanity likes its tidy, neat categories.
but to me he was a very enlightened man, not a god, so I do not credit him with automatic 3@10's, except perhaps in his Religion (Judaism) skill, evidenced by the fact that he was able to more-or-less effortless outdo the scholars and priests even as a child, which to me speaks of an automatic ability. The problem - and why I will always claim him as 1@1 examples - is that I know the gospels were written down by the followers of eyewitnesses, some 40 (Gospel of John) to 120 (Gospel of Luke) years after Jesus's death. Perhaps some genuine high-mark examples could be found among the Apocrypha, but I've never taken the time to go looking and would feel a mite dishonest doing so now.
The problem - and why I will always claim him as 1@1 examples - is that I know the gospels were written down by the followers of eyewitnesses, some 40 (Gospel of John) to 120 (Gospel of Luke) years after Jesus's death.
This is a good point. If a player were to actually see Jesus work a miracle, that would be another matter entirely. (Especially since I the referee would know exactly which Jesus this was and precisely how skilled he happened to be.)
Exactly.
So you're saying that there is no world in the Multiverse where Jesus is God the Creator in human flesh?
It is my considered opinion that Communism cannot work barring some fundamental change in humanity's biology or spiritual nature or some other major change such as the development of worldwide empathy by psi skills. But, as a GM for Multiverser, I have to separate my personal view from GM stance.
And sometimes this involves things we find repugnant. I ran a Satanist for a while over at Worldwalker. I tried to treat him fairly and without preaching. But, I think thats not what he wanted. He wanted to freak people out, or incite something. Instead, I just did my job (and he had a hard time grasping the point that WW is not freeform with the player having the ability to make up plot at will.)
I've created a world based on the idea that France is right, and my country wrong. I've created a pagan world for Wodium which I thought was quite good. I wish I could find it. It had floating islands of Law amidst a sea of Chaos with Eris overlooking everything.
That said, its my job to create a world in a professional manner, but I don't have to leave my brain at the door. I created a Libertarian world based on the works of L. Neil Smith, and I annoyed my Libertarian player when the bounty hunter in this anarchist state shot him out of hand. He claimed they would not do this because Libertarians would be afraid of starting vendettas. Well, the guy was a verser. He had no relatives. So if that had been checked into, that might have been found. More importantly, I don't see how a gunhappy world is going to be neccessarily uber-polite. The Hatfields and the McCoys had plenty of firearms after all. RAH's saying of 'an armed society is a polite society' is true to a certain degree in certain situations.
So you don't have to make a world that corresponds to the most utopian dreams of ideologues, but being able to at least get partway there is a good thing even if you know that in the real world such fantasies would never work.
Edit: However, it is probably not a bad idea to try just as an exercise in tolerance and mental flexibility. And yah, sometimes it hurts. Just saying 'Imagine a world in which Communism is successful and humans are normal' is enough to make my brain zone out, and a tiny headache to begin. Still, I should try it.
Tadeuz - I'm not saying there's no world in the Multiverse where that's true, only that I doubt that that world is our world..
As for Communism and the human psyche, well, yeah, it's a bit flawed. But then, look at where it's been implemented (mostly agricultural areas) versus what it was written for (mostly industrialized areas), and the quality of people implementing it, and you see why it has failed. It's a good idea, in theory - the idea of the workers owning the means of production and providing for everyone equally, rather than some lazy-but-rich tycoon owning everything, doing nothing, and keeping it all for himself - it's just, we have too many tycoons and not enough working men in positions of power.
I agree with you on the idea of making worlds that you don't necessarily agree with. At the very least it helps you see where your own prejudices lie, and helps you expand yourself as a writer. Personally, I agree with the idea of an armed society being a polite society, but like you said: within limits. Gun-happy people who are genuinely dangerous would not last long, but neither would someone with no relatives and no friends to back him up who decided to go around picking fights.
And as for your Satanist Verser, I hang my head in shame, because "freaking people out" is not what Satanism is about - at least not if he's following Anton LaVey, who is basically the modern authority on the subject. If he's one of that sort, then, yeah, you're basically wasting your energy on him (something real Satanists would caution you against). (Yeah, I read all about it in my early teens - some of their philosophy is alright, but their ritual practice is a bit flat.)
If it were up to me, we would go back to the Wild Wild West. Everyone has a 45 on their hip, and settles disputes at High Noon in the town square. No need for police, no lengthy trials, just solve the problem on the spot.
Tadeuz - I'm not saying there's no world in the Multiverse where that's true, only that I doubt that that world is our world..
==OK, because you sounded really intolerant which surprised me. I know there's a bunch of lefties who are 'tolerant' as long as you agree with them in every particular, but I didn't think you were one of them.
As for Communism and the human psyche, well, yeah, it's a bit flawed. But then, look at where it's been implemented (mostly agricultural areas) versus what it was written for (mostly industrialized areas), and the quality of people implementing it, and you see why it has failed. It's a good idea, in theory - the idea of the workers owning the means of production and providing for everyone equally, rather than some lazy-but-rich tycoon owning everything, doing nothing, and keeping it all for himself - it's just, we have too many tycoons and not enough working men in positions of power.
==And thats why I'm voting for Whatshisface/Palin. At least I can get one blue collar person into the corridors of unreality.
The basic problem is that the hard-working and clever and courageous are not going to work any harder than the lazy and stupid and cowardly if they don't get a reward from it. I'm not an Ayn Randian, but the question "Who is John Galt?" seems apropo.
I agree with you on the idea of making worlds that you don't necessarily agree with. At the very least it helps you see where your own prejudices lie, and helps you expand yourself as a writer. Personally, I agree with the idea of an armed society being a polite society, but like you said: within limits. Gun-happy people who are genuinely dangerous would not last long, but neither would someone with no relatives and no friends to back him up who decided to go around picking fights.
==I read an autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt. It alleged that when he arrived on a train (this is before he became seriously important) that he and the other greenhorns on the train were greeted with a fusilade of fire, which they later found out was over the top of the train, but at the time was rather scary.
Switzerland has tons of weapons and little violence. Japan has little weapons and little violence. I suspect America would have violence whether it had weapons or not, but as it is, it has a fair degree of violence. But it also has people living in the country far from the police which has surprised a visitor from England where they've had weapons taken away and a rise in violence.
Culture plays a complicated role in all this.
OTOH, I like the theory that women got the right to vote in Wyoming because of the pistol which was easily hid in the folds of their dresses. It made ignoring a woman's opinion a dangerous thing.
And as for your Satanist Verser, I hang my head in shame, because "freaking people out" is not what Satanism is about - at least not if he's following Anton LaVey, who is basically the modern authority on the subject. If he's one of that sort, then, yeah, you're basically wasting your energy on him (something real Satanists would caution you against). (Yeah, I read all about it in my early teens - some of their philosophy is alright, but their ritual practice is a bit flat.)
==Don't worry. I'm well acquainted with gamers and have heard the phrase 'don't freak the mundane's' a number of times.
I am a bit surprised at your stance because I had thought the general pagan stance was 'being in revolt against the One God is just as much bondage as being his servant, a pagan does not choose either path.'
And John A1Nut, you might enjoy the Libertarian classic by Robert Heinlein "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
People don't have to agree with me. I like them just fine whether they agree with me or not. I have a problem with people when they try to make others agree with them. I'm of the mind that our rights end at one another's noses.==OK, because you sounded really intolerant which surprised me. I know there's a bunch of lefties who are 'tolerant' as long as you agree with them in every particular, but I didn't think you were one of them.
I'm tragically sad that Ron Paul didn't make it through the primaries. I honestly think he would have been the salvation of the country. Seeing as I don't like McCain and I don't trust Obama I might just write him in.==And thats why I'm voting for Whatshisface/Palin. At least I can get one blue collar person into the corridors of unreality.
You can't really generalize about Pagans, is the thing. There are too many different ways to be Pagan. One can be Wiccan, Asatruar, Hellenic Reconstructionist, Egyptian Traditional, just to name a few. Then there are people like me who are eclectic and borrow from lots of paths, based on spiritual feeling, personal agreeableness, or any number of factors.I am a bit surprised at your stance because I had thought the general pagan stance was 'being in revolt against the One God is just as much bondage as being his servant, a pagan does not choose either path.'
Personally, I've never heard it said quite that way, but I wouldn't disagree with it either. I would characterize where I am now as being neither path. I am not a servant of the One God, and I do not rebel against him either, any more. If I come off as hostile, it is only because I've had repeated bad experiences that have left me jaded, even as they contributed to my spiritual development. I had my time of service and my time of rebellion, and now I accept His religion as one path among many, and one I choose not to follow.
Some people disagree, and like I said before, I'm fine with that, so long as we disagree agreeably. I believe it's a perfectly valid path and does a great deal of good for a great many people, present company included, but not so much for me. I do not begrudge everyone who follows that path equally, only those people who wish me ill for not feeling the same. (In short, I don't want to be made to agree with people, just like your first quote seems to say.)
All I ask in return, is the same: Be happy for me that I have had a spiritual experience, that I have communed with the divine, which is more than many people can claim, and that I am - for now - at a place that is spiritually comfortable. Maybe my journey will continue, maybe this is as far as I am to go. Either way, right now, I'm happy with here.
I'm a fan of the old-fashioned meaning of 'tolerant'. That is, you're wrong, but its your choice to make, and I'd defend your right to that choice. I cannot in good conscience agree to your choice, but as a Baptist, I believe in soul liberty.
Freedom is evidently of vast importance to the Most High as he gave us the freedom to choose truth or error with all the consequences that entails.
I'm not a fan of new 'tolerance' which frequently suffers from the flaw of being illogical. 2 +2=4; A does not equal Not-A.
As to Ron Paul, I rather liked much of what he stood for.
I will add I am writing in Ron Paul as my vote.
I early voted today for McCain/Palin (with Palin being a major reason I voted for the ticket).
Might I ask why Palin was the reason you voted for them?
I like George Carlin's take on voting (paraphrased) "If you vote, and you elect some yo-yo that ends up screwing up the country, you are responsible for putting that person in office, therefore, you have no right to complain. I, who did not vote, who did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what that person does, therefore, I have every right to complain."
I like George Carlin. On the other hand, if you didn't vote against that yo-yo, you're also partly responsible for what that person does. Really, the right to complain rests solely with those who voted for someone else.
Since we're sharing, I voted for Obama/Biden yesterday. Intelligence, vision, charisma, judgment. That, and a progressive economic policy.