Intergalactic Summit

Your ignorance on the matter is laid bare with this one ridiculous statement.

It something that cannot be done. Even with the lifetime of an Emperor it would be an impossible task to read the Scriptures for ones self, if you could even understand the language it was written in.

That's... curious. And I mean this sincerely, not as any kind of jab or poke or anything of that nature.

What makes you say that? Is there simply that much to read?

You are telling me the Empire doesn't index all these books? And that they do not have librarians who know which volume is relevant to whatever it was you are looking for? Can't you just walk up to any of them, armed with a library card, and request for the relevant volumes or for an index or indices to refer to?

Lady Newelle is being far too conservative in her assessment. The Scriptures are so mindbogglingly massive that I am not entirely sure there is anyone alive who has read them in their entirety. I suppose one could gain some cursory understanding through a digitally augmented reading which is the only practical way someone could consume everything. But, even still, they would have to have a doctorate-level education in practically every scientific, sociological, and religious field in order to absorb the information with any meaningful depth.

In addition, the language of much of the Scripture are in tongues only known to scholars and dedicated hobbyists in ancient languages.

So, yeah, it's not exactly a three panel pamphlet you can flip through in a waiting room.

This isn't merely about grammar. It's about word use. Words can be used to mean different things. The word 'race' for example might mean 'subspecies' or 'a competition of speed'. Furthermore, even if you look at the first meaning, you will quickly see that it has a range of meanings as well which are close to it, but don't match up exactly with 'subspecies'.
In any case a human race - not the sports competition - refers to a group of people. This group is special in that it is classified by physical and genetic properties of the members or on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution. Now, if you add the adjective 'lesser' that means not necessarily that this group of people is lesser because of those traits: It only says that being lesser correlates with that group identified by those traits.

To claim that such an adjective-noun combination always means that the adjective is fundamentally based on the properties that the given thing the noun refers to has makes little sense, if any at all: Otherwise that would mean that smaller squares are somehow smaller because of their specific squareness. All things have accidental as well as essential properties. You make the mistake here you assume that the properties that make a race 'lesser' need to be essential properties to that race. But this doesn't follow at all (neither grammatically nor otherwise). The judgement can as well be based on accidental properties, accidentally shared by all members of the group which happens to be a group of the type 'race'.

An example: If I poison all water on a planet that bears life. There's a sea-cucumber species living on that planet. All individuals are poisoned. I'm save to say that this sea-cucumber species is a 'poisoned species' without that having to mean that it's somehow essential to those sea-cucumbers to be poisoned.

Really, natural language is often vague and needs interpretations. We can trust words and grammatical construction, but they don't explain everything fully. The meaning of speech is underdetermined in most cases and needs interpretation. That's why the academic disciplines introduce technical terms that are well-defined and eliminate the need for interpretation as far as possible.


I haven't seen one response from the Empire's governmental and religious hierarchies that would give your claim any credence. Again, you rather read into their responses what you - well, if not what you want, then what you expect.


Of course 'they' refers to 'the people of Amarr'. That's trivial. It proves nothing. The crucial point it that 'thus' refers to the fact established by the entire prior sentence:

Why were the Amarr people saved and why did they become God's chosen?
The Amarr people were saved, because they lived righteously and in fear of god and they became God's chosen for the same reasons.

With that 'Amarr' acquired the new meaning of 'chosen of God'.

So, yes, this is semantics. But you're stuck on the level of syntax, where you already fail to follow all the references, stopping at a level of analysis that's incomplete. You never reach the level of meaning.

So, no, I'm telling you that you are either unable to manage proper grammar or are simply lazy about it, that you ignore the nature of language as interpretable and that you therefore commit to a rather crude form of literalism about the Scripture and whatever others say, too.

I'm not at all worried about any charges of heresy coming my way any time soon, but thank you for your concern.

Have a nice day.
- N. Mithra

To be fair, once you get into it it's a really good read.

I mean, except the really dry bits about names and families and stuff, and the scientific papers, and the economic accounts and things.

But oh, those stories and historical accounts. Entertainment for six lifetimes.

This thread is giving me a huge headache and annoying the hell out of a pig somewhere...

I'm gonna say that's a good thing, because the last thing we need is pigs with hell in them. HELLPIGS!!

No, that's a grave misunderstanding. It's only racist if it says that this race is lesser than that race, because it's this race. Racism entails the claim that some races have the essential property of being lesser. You are aware of the distinction between accidental and essential properties?


God choses people for living righteous and in fear of God... I can provide a couple of other verses that show that, but I rather just point you to the scriptures. Look through it, work on the different verses that deal with this aiming for the standards of proper exegesis.


If you stop there, then the meaning ends up being underdetermined. It's not only about more verses, it's about an entire exegetical tradition and society that adds further context, which you have to draw upon when looking at any every verse in Scripture. That's trivial

See, I'm not here to explain to you the alpha and omega of exegesis and provide you with a fundamental education. I'm sorry, you're the outside and you claim to give definite and true interpretations to which no alternative exists, working on far less than I made explicit. Maybe I failed: But if I did so, then you failed harder. All I need to do to prove you tentatively wrong is to show that if I do better in providing context that your poor attempt at pushing your opinion is the worse interpretation. It doesn't suffice that you say that I could have done more, if you yourself have done less than I.