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[Ashar Kor-Azor]

So, on returning to EVE I've found bits of memory regarding certain PF interpolations are just gone, and some are more important than others.

Mainly, I remember Gaven creating a convincing argument that the Amarrian scriptures are a collection of secular as well as religious knowledge; that if you piled every written piece of theology onto the sum total of the contents of every library, and added a byzantine and draconian review system that forced newer works to couch their terminologies and disseminations of everything from theories of hard science to ethics or theological constructions in a way that would not conflict with the seminal works or earliest core works, you would have Amarrian scripture and its method of review and contributory apparatus as embodied by the Theology Council.

But I don't remember any of the goddamn PF supports.

Anyone who does, list them here plox. I will give you golds.

[Louella Dougans]

http://www.eve-search.com/thread/881452/page/1

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=534154

the (unofficial?) interview with Grand Master Elata Ardo is where it says:
"This whole process is complicated by the fact that our scriptures cover many things. Only an Amarr truly understands what I mean, but the Scriptures are all - they are law, tradition, science, philosophy, history and prayer. There is no separation, but everything that a man need know is contained in the scriptures.
It was the great preachers who made the word of God into medicines and machines, it was the word of God that revealed to the Amarr the way to the stars. Whereas your people took millennia to work out the secrets of physics and chemistry, God revealed them to us."

[Ashar Kor-Azor]

Yes. YES. And a flood of memory comes surging back.

Thank yew, Louella.

[Louella Dougans]

bump this thread for relevancy to current topics on IGS, relating to size of "the scriptures"

[V. Gesakaarin]

I always thought the whole point to the Amarr Empire and the scriptures was that it was the fusion of faith and science into one whole? There always seems to be a lot of religious discussion but very little of the actual science/rationalism/humanist aspects to the Amarr even by those roleplaying them.

[Louella Dougans]

Why even bother.

Clearly, it is the view of many, that any Amarr rper who does not claim to have complete understanding of the entirety of the Amarr Scripture is Doing It Wrong.

The Scriptures are "small enough to be read in an hour or two".

So anyone who is not an expert on every single aspect of the Scriptures is doing it wrong.

Because CYBERIMPLANTS

[Karmilla Strife]

I've found that the sheer scale of the scriptures gives tremendous leeway for RP. We have a few snippets to work with, but the idea of a culture where every (accepted) academic concept is fascinating, partly because of the scale of the concept. I've personally enjoyed the work of players who try to incorporate that by applying the bits of scripture we do have into discussions of other, seemingly unrelated, subjects.

[Lyn Farel]

I always thought the whole point to the Amarr Empire and the scriptures was that it was the fusion of faith and science into one whole? There always seems to be a lot of religious discussion but very little of the actual science/rationalism/humanist aspects to the Amarr even by those roleplaying them.

Isn't it ? 

Edit : I have always tried to do something about that but all I got was "hurrdurr heretic hurrdurr". Not that I stopped trying, but there are mainly 2 enemies to that :

- Amarrian RPers that do not have the same interpretation and rely more on spanish inquisition tropes, which means, at least half of them if not more.
- Outside RPers that just are here to bash Amarrians in their RL crusade against christian/muslim religions, even if Amarr religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Why even bother.

Clearly, it is the view of many, that any Amarr rper who does not claim to have complete understanding of the entirety of the Amarr Scripture is Doing It Wrong.

The Scriptures are "small enough to be read in an hour or two".

So anyone who is not an expert on every single aspect of the Scriptures is doing it wrong.

Because CYBERIMPLANTS

Tbh I already debunked that implant argument today again (and Kat also did it before me). I welcome all characters that will try to thread on that slippery slope.

[GoGo Yubari]

A link to the IGS thread referred to here, please?

[V. Gesakaarin]

Isn't it ? 

Edit : I have always tried to do something about that but all I got was "hurrdurr heretic hurrdurr". Not that I stopped trying, but there are mainly 2 enemies to that :

- Amarrian RPers that do not have the same interpretation and rely more on spanish inquisition tropes, which means, at least half of them if not more.
- Outside RPers that just are here to bash Amarrians in their RL crusade against christian/muslim religions, even if Amarr religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I don't know... if I played an Amarr character I'd be all like, "Do you want to know where I found my faith? It was in my youth. In the ineluctable spaces between man's knowledge. In my ignorance of the world around me. I sought the truth of God's will as a rational man. In the understanding of His creation around me. As I looked upon the stars I wished to know Him and His work. God is the perfection of the universe all around us, and we are imperfect men who can only hope to achieve degrees of imperfection through our own work...

It is you, the barbarian and the heathen who live in your own ignorance and it is our mandate to free you from it. To liberate you from your own darkness and into the light of God's truth."

You know, it's odd though, if you look at history and say some of the Islamic Caliphates of the past they were both based on religious doctrine just as much as the realization that in order to run a well ordered Empire you need good administrators, intelligent bureaucrats, and creative scientists. The Scriptures are just as much religious/philosophical as they are scientific/administrative/legal because they're the embodiment of millenia of collected works in how to run a well-ordered Empire, no?

If the Amarr were as dogmatic and intolerant or as "anti-science" as some portray them as then it doesn't explain how they rose up into the stars on the backs of advanced spaceships.

[V. Gesakaarin]

This might also seem odd to some, but is out of the realms of possibility that the Amarr would give sainthoods to scientists?

It would be interesting if they did, like the Amarr equivalents of Saint Einstein the patron saint of relativity, or Saint Feynman the patron saint of nanotechnology.

[Vic Van Meter]

This might also seem odd to some, but is out of the realms of possibility that the Amarr would give sainthoods to scientists?

It would be interesting if they did, like the Amarr equivalents of Saint Einstein the patron saint of relativity, or Saint Feynman the patron saint of nanotechnology.

I think, having grown up in societies where science and religion are somehow diametrically opposed, it's harder for us to understand the concept of theocracy or even religious and scientific harmony.  It's been a very long time since even the Deist philosophies, much less a time when the western world didn't make that distinction.  Unfortunately, Amarrian culture is very heavily based on Roman and Holy Roman Empire thinking, where great scientists were often priests and monks struggling to understand God's work, usually because they were their cultures' most educated people.

Amarrians probably would sanctify scientists especially since the idea of advancing warp drive technology and discovering a new complete text of Scriptural work are held in equal esteem as works of God in Amarrian society.  Being a complete theocracy, helping the empire is helping God's work and discerning God's work helps the empire.  It's all seamless, and Amarrian society seems like a very practical theocracy as opposed to less rational real-world examples.

That's sort of the challenge of playing an Amarrian, because you have to be able to weave the religion subtly into your RP.  Most people RP religion a bit like a sledgehammer, they're either calling for the execution of everyone else on charges of heresy or they never talk about it.  I guess that, especially nowadays, it's hard to have an undercurrent of religion even in matters that don't seem very religious because it's seen as a mutually exclusive dichotomy.  For Amarrians, though, they've grown up in a society where everything they do is based around a universal religion they've been learning since birth and have been practicing along with everyone they grew up with.  It's not just going to church on Sunday and forgetting about it the rest of the week, people research wormhole science or transport freighters full of frozen food religiously.  They don't even think about it; it's there for them the way we think of such universal things as the economy or government administration.

So yeah, it's probably a lot softer than most of our conservative nutters are playing it, but also a lot more pervasive than we sometimes play it.  But it's elements like that which make roleplaying fun!  Nobody wants to just roleplay a character where all the questions are already answered and all your reactions are already decided.

[V. Gesakaarin]

Well looking at the Scriptures themselves, the only real parallel the Amarr seem to have with modern religions is monotheism. Because they don't have a single book that is the source of all dogma that can never be changed or amended, they have a living body of work that has both been collected over thousands of years and is continuously updated, added to, and changed as required or demanded.

The whole Catholics in space or WH40k Imperium of Man dynamic to it seems a bit odd to me, because the closest I see the Empire being to is something more like the society of Frank Herbert's Dune, where you have this element of science and underlying religion/feudalism combined with the crushing weight of history.

[Druur Monakh]

Well looking at the Scriptures themselves, the only real parallel the Amarr seem to have with modern religions is monotheism.

There is only one?

Oh dear - I think I accidentally turned into a closet pagan.

[V. Gesakaarin]

Well looking at the Scriptures themselves, the only real parallel the Amarr seem to have with modern religions is monotheism.

There is only one?

Oh dear - I think I accidentally turned into a closet pagan.

I'd clarify and say modern monotheistic religions and more specifically, the aspect of having a single prophet/messiah figure who hands down the word of God that is transcribed into a single book is absent in the Amarr faith as far as I can see.