Intergalactic Summit

Because life needs purpose. It needs something bigger than ourselves. It is not enough to simply exist; there has to be a reason to exist.



It is a bad thing. It is not possible to rule justly without God. Mankind is sinful and blind without God's guidance.

The system needs less changes, not more. Your culture is poison.

I suppose my next question would be, why does the recognition that some things are secular and others religious stand in opposition to just governance under God's guidance?

Why can't such a realization lead instead to a greater understanding of God's nature, character and will? Why can't the distinction serve to keep separate the wills and desires of man from the will and desire of God?

Why is it inherently bad?

Why does there need to be a reason?

Herein lies the problem, lieutenant.

"The wills and desires of man are immaterial." Precisely, but how do you distinguish what is the will of man from the will of God when you cannot even see the distinction between them? You claim there is no separation, then you claim the wills of man and the will of God are one and the same in the Amarr Empire, which history has proven false more than once already.

The distinction is there. It must be there to avoid corruption, to honestly discern between the will of God and the will of man made to appear to be the will of God.

Your last statement is a striking example of the latter.

No, the problem here is that you can't have a discussion with someone about their religion and prove that it's wrong through the use of logic.

Nobody's faith will stand up to that test, Winds, Spirits or Goddesses. You're being idiots.

Maker! Do you actually think you can catch the Amarr in some sort of dogmatic trap and they'll willingly pull their entire Empire to pieces out of gratitude?

If faith fails the test of reality it is not faith it is imagination.

Pilot I have read your words many times here on IGS and believe you to be a reasonable man. I suspect no real God would demand that the thinking beings he or she granted intelligence to would have to abandon those God given faculties to be a true believer.

Faith is reinforced by fact, it does not run from it, It has been the faith of the Matari people in the one true God that has held them together despite being set upon by the hell's spawn slavery cultist who attacked our home worlds from the safety of orbit murdering untold numbers on planet after planet. Thru the travails of slavery our faith in God, the real one not the prop used by the Slavery Cultist kept us looking to the future beyond our pain and torment.

Those are facts, the false prop God could not supplant the deep faith the Matari held and still hold that one day we shall be freed of their awful Cult and the stench of the evil that is slavery will find no home anywhere amongst civilized humans. The fact is we are closer to that day than in many centuries, I am a man of faith and fact.

I do understand though Samira, I understand very well, and its sad really. I doubt there's anything I can do to help you. You don't want my help of course, if anything you want to help me, ironic, isn't it?

That's the thing Samira, I'm never satisfied with any answer, there's always another question to be asked. How can we learn anything, without asking questions?

So anyway, you want your existence to mean something, that's great, I totally here you there, I also want my life to mean something. But Samira, you say it exactly yourself, you want your existence to mean something. But what wanting something to be so does not make it so. If I want to fly, I can't just believe really hard that I'm capable of it, and jump off a cliff. I will promptly go splat if I do that. On the contrary, in order to fly, I have to understand how the universe works to a sufficient degree to build an aircraft. That's a much more effective method of achieving my goal (flight) then wanting really hard for it to be the case.

To step out of the metaphor then, you believe in God, because you want your life to mean something. If there's no God, your life is meaningless. But if that's the case, wouldn't you rather know that before you run into the existential splat at the bottom of the metaphorical cliff? The question of God vs. No God need not be unfalsifiable. You make it that way in order to shield your beliefs from scrutiny. You don't want to change your mind, and that's a damn shame really, I might as well be arguing with Diana Kim. But you're much closer to me genetically then Diana Kim is, so ingroup bias really makes me want to try to help you anyway. Maybe someday, years from now, some of this will start to sink in. I hope so. I know its incredibly hard to change your mind, its painful, and you have to be willing to give up cherished beliefs if the world doesn't turn out to be that way. It may make the universe seem a cruel and heartless place to live, full of random and meaningless violence. I understand why you would shy away from that for the comfortable fantasy of a protective deity, not having to hear the hard truths.

What do we really want from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish.

This is a difficult world to live in, compared to the much simpler lives our ancestors lived. Our time is burdened under the cumulative weight of successive debunkings of our conceits: We aren't special or unique, we live in an unremarkable galaxy amidst a multitude. We emerged from microbes and muck. We're related to our most hated of enemies. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. There may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere. Given so harsh a reality, of course we’re tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we’re safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream, that the ground is not rushing towards us.

I know what that's like, but it doesn't make the impact any lessened, when you do finally hit the ground, and you will hit the ground someday, maybe you'll even survive the impact.

But you don't have to be afraid, because we're humans, and we're smart, and we do build aircraft. We don't need a god to assign us a meaning, we can create our own meanings. I know you're cynical, and think much ill of people, and capsuleers in particular. Its true, we are flawed and imperfect beings. We are riven by rivalries and hatreds, divided among race, religion, creed, and economic status, and it very much seems that this is all we can achieve, that we will never be free of these things, we are sinful creatures by nature. We can't do any better without help, and if there's no god to help, then its impossible.

But we've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. Maybe you can't see that, maybe you think this is the end of the road for us, and there's nothing left. But we are still pioneers, and we've barely begun. And our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.

The significance of our lives and our fragile civilisations are then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

And then we get back to the question I had before.

If the Amarr claim it is the mandate of their God, their Culture, but no one else truly accepts that they are right, why are they allowed to continue it? Why is the Empire given exception to this by CONCORD?

At best they are 1/4th, originally 1/5th, and the only of the 4-5 that practiced Slavery. Something banned and abhored in the rest of the signatories. Just because someone is a member of CONCORD doesn't mean they get a free pass. But yet they are allowed to continue. The Republic going to war wasn't even necessarily to stop slavery, it was to get their people back. For example if the Empire switch to 100% Khanid based slavery system and released all non Khanid, the Republic wouldn't lift a finger proving they are opposed not to the Slavery, but to the use of their people.



The Caldari are against Slavery too, they're just not willing to break any of their precious trade agreements. But even still, no such vote has even taken place.



In short, ending Amarrian slavery isn't worth starting a war over. I actually agree with that. Because trying to end a major part of a culture by the tip of the sword will generally result in that country fighting back. I wonder where we've seen that before.

So in short, the Empire gets to keep their slaves because of Caldari greed and cowardice. Because with the State backing the Empire out of love of ISK, it's too big of a potential war and too many people could die for something really only the Federation and Republic care that much about. Lovely.