Intergalactic Summit

The Scriptures are God's law, as He has revealed to us. The fact that we are still discovering His wishes for us does not invalidate what we have already discovered. The Scriptures are not interpretations, they are the Word of God as revealed through His prophets.

I was going to stay out of this. I really wanted to just completely stay out of this mess. And yet here I am, finding myself wading into it. I must have more of a masochism streak then I realized.

Anyway, Samira, Cakzad, you two are employing entirely circular reasoning.

I say, slavery is wrong.
You say, God told us slavery was good.
I say, how do you know God is good?
You say, because God said so.
I say, how do you know you can trust God?
You say, because God said so.

Except God never said any of those things because God doesn't exist, but even if he did, he certainly never spoke with you personally, and if you think he did I suggest you get checked for brain damage. So who said all those things? People. People told you slavery was good because God said so. And maybe the people who told you that really believed it themselves, and the people who told them that also really believed it, all the way back into some misty time before recorded history.

But you can't use the scripture to validate the scripture, that's entirely circular. How do I know the scripture is the word of God? Because the scripture says so, and because everyone else around you agrees.

But the scriptures can't prove any of their claims. Its all just claims at the end of the day. How do you know the scriptures aren't entirely wrong and the 'real' Gods are those from Gallentean mythology? Their lore also says that its all entirely true, so if a work's truth is able to be judged by its own statements, then I could write a book that says "This book is true" and "Gravity is a lie, we can actually fly at will" it won't actually enable me to hack physics (I tried that when I was like 11).

The problem is one of perspective. Your culture teaches that it is virtuous to believe what those above you tell you is true. It teaches that faith in those people and what they say is valuable and moral and virtuous, while doubts, questions, and skepticism are seen as negative attributes.

But what good is faith when its wrong? If I practised a religion that told me gravity was a lie, and I had the utter faith and conviction that it was true, it wouldn't help me in the tiniest bit as I plummeted from a cliff to my death. The best things to believe in are those that are true, so that we can have an accurate map of reality. But, in order to do that, we need some way of testing which beliefs are correct or incorrect. Thus doubting, questioning, and being skeptical are valuable traits, allowing us to more accurately model the universe by filtering out correct beliefs from incorrect beliefs.

Now, I am an atheist, but that's because I don't believe the Amarrian God exists. I haven't seen sufficient proof to alter my probabilities in favour of the Amarrian God, or any other God, being anything but a cultural meme writ large. However, I also want to believe the truth, thus if the Amarrian God does exist, I want to believe the Amarrian God exists. If the Amarrian God does not exist, I want to believe the Amarrian God does not exist.

So that is my goal, to find the truth in whatever form it may exist in, however unpleasant it may be to know. Better a harsh truth then a reassuring fable. If truth is not your goal, then its easy to believe whatever you want, whatever you decide makes you feel the best. I could never live like that. Samira, I suspect you would continue to believe in your God if you were shown somehow incontrovertible proof that he doesn't exist. And before you say that's impossible, you can't prove God doesn't exist, you're entirely making my point for me. The best way to protect a belief is to declare it to be unfalsifiable, to claim that there is nothing anywhere anyone could do to change your mind ever. What a way to live that must be, never being able to update your beliefs in the face of new information, enslaved to the dogma of your religion. I pity you really Samira, you clearly lack the courage to face the truth, chosing to hide behind your so called betters. Or am I mistaken? Perhaps you are not so meek as I believe, being wrong about that would be a refreshing change. Do you believe in the search for Truth and the acquisition of knowledge and understanding? If the answer to that question is no, then I'm sorry, because you're entirely too far gone to help.

Barring that, if you are actually willing to change your mind when confronted with evidence that contradicts your faith, then I will pose a question to you. It is considered by some to be the fundamental question of rationality.

Why do you believe what you believe?

Eloquently spoken, Lieutenent Kernher.

However, no matter how eloquently you put it, the fundamental dilemma stil remains:

You cannot prove that it is God's will beyond your own religious texts (the authenticity of which are questionable given the number of revisions they've undergone and still undergo, not to mention the very obvious issue of the top-down authority structure that governs their interpretation and the ever-present political affiliation your religion holds to your Empire).

Even if what you say is absolutely true and we are all subject to the sovereign will of one god by whom we have all been created and whom has imparted upon one chosen people a divine mandate to reclaim all that belongs to god (which is an interesting way of phrasing it, to be honest); you still run into the problem that your Scriptures themselves never directly refer to the practice of slavery.

Beyond that, I would challenge you to think outside of the present circumstances and consider ways to spread the word and will of God that don't involve the forced enslavement of the cluster or the military conquest of worlds...but I understand that asking you to do so is also a violation of the Scriptures.

It's a wonderful system of circular reasoning and justification your Empire has put in place, isn't it?

It is God's will because the Scriptures say it is God's will.
The Scriptures say it is God's will because the Theology Council says that's what the Scriptures say.
To even consider otherwise is to invite sin and disorder into your life because it is God's will you are challenging.

Slavery is a cultural system, not a religious one. It is difficult to see that distinction in the Empire because they have intentionally intertwined their religion and their culture to the point that telling where one stops and the other begins is extremely difficult.

Yet they do remain separate, even if you cannot see it.

The word of God that keeps being subject to edicts, apocryphons, and change ? That, I call an interpretation. Either that, or the word of God is changing every minute.

Also, the very existence of heterodoxy directly hints at interpretation.

Because a universe without is empty.



Uh, yes they do?

And why do you believe that?

You can tell the same lie a thousand times and it never gets any more true.

The Amarrians have never been ones to give up however.

You can start with the law books.

Which brings us full circle back to the problem of culture being intentionally intertwined with religion.

Historical records are secular documents. Yet they qualify as divinely inspired, God-mandated Scripture?

Unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by "historical records."

If, instead, you are stating that historical documents which are part of the Scriptures mention slavery, and further that the slavery mentioned in these documents is a direct command by God to implement and practice slavery then that's another matter. However, my answer to such an assertion would remain unchanged; present to me the authenticity of these documents as direct commands form God and not simply the assertions of a group directly tied to the politics of the Empire.



Written and approved by those who stand to directly benefit from their inclusion in the sacred texts that govern every principle of a theocratic system...

You are an extremely intelligent individual, surely you can see the self-fulfilling cycle presented by your arguments? Surely you can see the circular rhythm of these discussions?

God's law is a myth. One you tell yourselves, over and over, until you believe it and think it is truth.

It has already been shown how easily this 'truth' can be changed. How easily it can be made, erased and remade, all dependent on which emperor, which house and which councils are in control.

As it was so well put previously no-one owns the concept of slavery, just as the Gallente cannot own the concept of freedom, nor can Nauplius own the concept and implementation of being crazy, despite immense effort.