Intergalactic Summit

No... They would be heretics who know nothing of God. God has chosen the Amarr as his people. This is absolute truth and is above question.

Mr. Ixiris, you do make one good point, that it must have been God's will that the Amarr lose at the Battle of Vak'Atioth. I'm inclined to agree that it must have been God's will, however I do not agree with the "logical" conclusions you draw from that. I admit I am at best a weekend theologian, and my knowledge of the Scriptures is limited but I have not seen anything in my own readings that says the chosen people can never know defeat or failure. Quite the opposite in fact as some of the well known passages make it clear that God's people will be tested and that in their trials they will come to know the Divine better. Further, I think it is fair to say that most religions that center around one or more deities also suggest that those deities will challenge, test, and even punish people, which makes perfectly logical sense to me. After all, there are simply some things one learns in life that can only be taught through failure.

I'm not going to get into the debate over the existence of a God, any God, in here, but if you wish to have that discussion elsewhere by all means let me know. I think I understood you well enough though, you were posing a hypothetical situation based on your perspective and I answered based on mine. I don't really care if you believe or not, that is your choice. What I am trying to illustrate is that it is within the realm of possibility for God's will to be detrimental to God's chosen people, especially in the case where the people might learn something from being made to suffer.

I'd also like to point out that for quite a good number of religious people something can have tangible causal effects and reactions and still be the will of the Divine. I can slide a glass off my desk, causing it to fall and shatter on the floor, and it most definitely shattered because it hit the floor, because gravity pulled it downward, because I slide it from my desk. At the same time, who is to say that the physics involved, those scientific principles that are observable, measurable, and repeatable, aren't operating the way they do because the Divine created those natural laws?



I'm going to assume that the disdain evident in that statement is something you apply to all religious people, rather than you trying to insult me personally.



Yes, a sign, with the phrase "You're doing it wrong" neatly written and signed by God, affixed to the door of the Empress' bedchambers would be clearer.

All joking aside, even the total decimation of the Empire may not be a sign one way or the other as to the Divine's feelings toward the Empire. It is entirely possible that such a thing could be a sign of disfavor, but it is also entirely possible that such a thing could be another trial laid before a people that would eventually allow them to better know God.

To be fair, I have an Amarrian in my corporation. He's actually a reasonable man and a loyal friend of mine.

Then again, he's an atheist.

I contend that it's not a very good God and you're not a very good chosen people if you have to suffer to learn things - and it has to force you to suffer to make you learn. But what I actually see is merely an excuse for the random and unpredictable vagaries of chance and happenstance in an uncertain universe - if God wanted me to spread its message across the universe, I'd expect a pretty damn cushy life in return.



Well, at the end of the day, while I can handily disprove the existence of your God due to the immense weight of logical evidence against it and the complete lack of empirical evidence in favour of it, I admit that I cannot disprove the existence of a God - one that exists far outside of human science, reason, logic, understanding and ultimately comprehension. However, such a God is so far removed from us that such speculation is ultimately meaningless. Yes, there could be a Creator, but it is so far distant from us in scale and scope that even the parallel of the ant and the human would be inaccurate - in fact, no metaphor could accurately describe the sheer magnitude of difference between us and it. Sufficed to say there is no conceivable reason it would or even could have any interest in the human race - let alone a specific cultural group within it.

Essentially what I'm saying is that while a God (but not the Amarrian God) could conceivably exist, such speculation is useless in our everyday lives. There could be an invisible rainbow-coloured winged horse selling air conditioning units that no-one but my second cousin's grandmother can or will ever be able to see but it's not much bloody use to me one way or the other, is it?



And what, pray, would you do if something like that turned up?

I suspect almost all Amarrians would immediately call it a hoax and disregard it. I imagine some on the IGS would even imply it was my doing.



Then we ultimately reduce every influence upon the Amarr Empire - positive or negative - to a giant cosmic guessing game about whether that influence is some kind of gift or a tribulation or a message. You'd think if you had a group of chosen people you wanted to deliver your message to every corner of the cosmos, you'd be sure to give them the message a bit more clearly.

Any of the empires isn't really a suprime leader in that fieald maby exept the Jovians... recently all the empires if you didn't noticed have created the new battlecruisers or the fuel blocks.

You could say the same about the Angel Cartel.

You thing that it was a bad decision ?

So, what you're saying is that God has a message, but he's not going to tell anyone what that message is until the recipients are long dead and can't do anything with the information he reveals?

What I'm saying is that more often than not God does send messages and signs in the times when people can use them most, but the burden of understanding a message sent from a being so far removed from human understanding, is naturally on us not God.

Hypothetically speaking, if God sent a sign to a Holder making it obvious to all who knew it, but that Holder, that they should free their slaves. Now, is it more important that this Holder understand the sign, or is it more important that a few generations later, the next Holder of the house who has much greater influence and power, who can free more slaves, understand the message that was sent to his ancestor?

You should take the time to ask a shaman if the guidance given by the Spirits is always understood in a timely fashion.

God speaks in cantrip, and it is up to us far inferior beings to extract a meaning from a mysterious (but perfectly natural) event that God should well know we will treat subjectively if we notice anything at all. Then, it's our fault if we misunderstand with no means of verifying what is the right interpretation. And then we're expected to act on it. And then if we ask for evidence, we're doing something wrong.

How do I know if something is a nudge on the material universe from God? If I stub my toe, is it a sign or just something I do like three times a week? If I'm just sitting around in space and a wormhole suddenly spawns, of all places, right in front of me. Is it a coincidence or a sign of God? How do I know I didn't somehow cause the event or that I was just one of billions of people it could happen to who it just happened to have happened to.

What if God does give us a sign and one of us knows in our heart that it is God telling us something and the other just thinks they know in their heart that it's God telling us something? What if we have a different interpretation of the meaning? How do we know who is right? What if we both think that it's a sign for the other person to do what we say to do and the disagreement leads to one of us dying?

If I don't understand what the spirits are telling me, I go to a shaman and ask them.

if the message is not understood, can't the holder seek out a priest to clarify the situation? Or are the priests not 'in the know' as to God's message, as they claim they are?

Your hypothetical situation is illogical:

Does the Holder follow God's command now (thereby enacting divine will as his religion says he should) or does he wait for someone else to carry out God's wishes later (and in the process, reject God's position of 'ultimate authority'?)