@tenryu No, the idea of a perfect God is a very old one, arising in the neo-Platonist influence within Scholastic theology.
@tenryu awwww…
@Drazen: Neoplatonism was developed significantly after early Christianity, but an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God was an idea developed in late BC Judaism (though Judaism was not and is not united on that score) and gained muscle with the coming of Christianity (though, again, early Christianity argued over that one). You’re right in that it was the Christian/Neoplatonist fusion that finally cemented it, though, and Islam always took it as read.
Ah, @Ramidel, my knowledge of Hebrew theology is limited, I’m afraid, and the neo-Platonist position is, insofar as I’m aware, the most palpable historical grounding for the Idea of a perfect God. Could you direct me towards any thinkers associated with this earlier form?
I’m looking for better references on the Jewish side as we speak (a lot of this is recalled from history classes) but I know that on the Platonist side, the idea of the transcendent God came from Plutarch (who predated the Neoplatonists by a couple of centuries), and this was refined (Plutarch was more interested in ethics than metaphysics) by Numenius of Apamea (who I think was the one to formally equate God with Good).
EDIT: On the Jewish side, I find Philo of Alexandria. (30 BC-50 AD).
A bit earlier in history, one might also point out that Aristotle proposed the existence of an “unmoved mover” which (or whom) he describes as basically perfect and which, iirc, he actually refers to in the Metaphysics as “God” or “the god” (ὁ θεός).
@aetheria Aristotle’s writings weren’t incorporated into Abrahamic theology until centuries later, however.
@Drazen Certainly, but although Aristotle didn’t influence the Abrahamic perfect God, he did have an idea of a perfect god. Hence, the idea of a perfect god isn’t a modern innovation.
And of course anyone with any mythos lore knows that the supreme being is “[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.”
Hmm, pity the Necronomicron and Abdul Alhazred aren’t old enough to show up, lol.
Makes me wonder what a horror story version of this game would be like now:
Shapeshifting into a squamous tentacled horror to induce sanity checks, flesheating ghuls, dealing with Hypnos in the Dreamlands, adopting a hound of tindalos, traveling to Pluto on the back of a NightgauntOh anyone else think it’s a shame the MC can’t take the fruit of life to make a nice fig newton so the mortal RO won’t die on us?
My problem is that I simply can’t reconcile this world with a loving, caring God. Without that, I can’t help but hope God doesn’t exist. That’s the end of it for me really.
@RoseQueenKamijo Sorry about that, but with six characters as romance options, I’m already pushing the limits of how big the game should be.
@Drazen, @Ramidel, @aetheria Interesting stuff. Modern to me is anything post-AD, lol, but I had no idea the concept of a perfect (omnipotent, omniscient) God was introduced so early. I admit I’m no scholar on this; I research enough to base a story on and try to avoid plot hole ignorance.
@stsword What about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? A Cthulhu-esque game might be an interesting theme for another game-maker to work on. Who is the mortal RO?
@Shoelip I understand. You seem to be having the same trouble many people have in the real world reconciling a loving, caring God with some of the atrocities in the bible. How do you justify the Canaanite genocide with the gospel of love? The nature of God would appear to have changed over the centuries.
I’ll point out the game is fiction and that it is set in old testament times in a different world. The God in the game is more in line with that biblical version: a wrathful, fickle God capable of turning cities to salt, floods wiping out all mankind, killing every firstborn Egyptian male, etc. Yet he will achieve great things for the people who worship him.
I see
@Tenryu: No worries, you’re doing very well. The story you’re writing would fit the aesthetics of a chapter of the Old Testament or the Arabian Nights, and that’s what counts.
And if it helps, when trying to reconcile the two concepts, a D&D supplement called Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era specifically had to state as a rule that “if your God commands something, no matter what it is, following that command is not considered evil for game purposes and does not cause you to lose alignment points.” So there have been others who have had to wrestle with this exact problem and come up with a solution that works for their game.
Do we ever have a choice not to worship him? I mean, Makeda doesn’t and she seems to have sort of… well, transcended the typical Judaio-Christian-Islamic Misogyny and become a queen.
@Ramidel Ah, the joys of church controlled morality. “I, the representative of God do say unto you gullible folk, that killing people who follow the wrong religion is not against our God’s law that states not to kill people, because it applies only to those who follow our religion and have the same skin tone. In fact, if you go out and kill a whole bunch of heathens/heretics/infidels, you get bonus points with our almighty lord.”
I imagine any games that followed that rule would be utter chaos, considering that the whole point of D&D’s morality system was to create a universal judge of character.
Dunno why I didn’t find this earlier: Using the second Art, I will indulged myself and fly. This next journey is shorter and will be less taxing.
indulge*
@Shoelip: Please drop the sarcasm. Testament’s variant morality system is explicitly defined as relative to your religion, not absolute, so “the god of Israel” (as he is described in the rulebook) has very different ideas about magic than, for example, a Babylonian priestess of Ishtar. So yes, if the LORD commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, then Abraham will be more strongly aligned towards “good” if he gets the knife out because the LORD said so. You may recall that particular test of character from the Bible.
In any case, if you completely cannot work with this kind of moral system, where (from a human viewpoint) “what God wants” and “what is the moral thing to do” may not match up, then this probably isn’t going to be your game. This is very much the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for being inhospitable, who sent the Plagues to Egypt to force the Pharaoh to release the Israelites, and who commanded that Joshua massacre the Canaanites to make room for the new settlers.
@Bagelthief Thank you. I’ll fix this.
@Shoelip I’m not sure the jinn actually worship God, even if they (most of them) obey his commands. Sure you get the chance to pray to God in the game and it affects stats, but it isn’t made clear whether the jinni worships God, whether praying is just an impulse, whether praying itself is purifying, etc.
@Shoelip, @Ramidel I would say morality is an absolute personal code to judge what is good and what is evil. Church-controlled morality would be a social system, and thus, ethics. Ethics influences personal morals. If a person’s beliefs tells them killing heathens is moral, then they will see themselves as ‘good,’ since their society reinforces this. Another person with a different set of morals might see the first as ‘evil.’ How you see it depends on your own morals, whether they align more with the first person or the second. If they align absolutely with the second, it will be impossible to see the actions of the first as ‘good’ or in anyway justifiable.
I’m not saying either viewpoint is correct. Most of our current social systems line up with the second viewpoint and teach killing heathens is immoral (there are exceptions), and many people would have the same personal moral code against doing so.
@Ramidel Dropping the sarcasm wouldn’t really change my statement in a meaningful way… This is what it’d look like without the sarcasm:
“Church controlled morality is horrible and and leads to this:” And then everything else in the post would have been the same.
@tenryu That makes me think. Is it only western societies that have a deep seated concept of fairness? The way I see it, the evolution of morals in recent times all seems to stem from that concept, despite there being no actual representation of it in reality. I guess that’s kind of like the idea of perfection. Wikipedia seems to have failed me on this, but maybe they disguised it as “Social Justice”.
@Shoelip, Speaking broadly:
The Occidental ethical framework is centred on the Anglo-American and Enlightenment ideas of personal liberty as the foundation of morality. They also emphasise guilt as the sensation of wrongdoing.
The Oriental ethical framework is far more communal, centred on shared responsibility and personal sacrifice. They also emphasise shame as the sensation of wrongdoing.
At least that’s what I’m given to understand; do correct me if I’ve erred.