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[Eschar]

I see this a lot, there is something about DF that dazzles retards people into believing the dwarfs are actually intelligent and learning. In reality, even a single celled organism is much more complex, 'intelligent' and alive than a dwarf. It has even happened on here for some reason.

... I remember that. It's the source of KittyTac's Conjecture: all Bay12 arguments eventually turn into disputes about quantum mechanics.

EDIT: why can't I ever remember KittyTac's username?

[hector13]

It’s because people anthropomorphise things, and get worried when people fantasize about doing great harm to these things.

I recall a back and forth I had with someone here about Undertale. They refused to perform a genocide run, whereas I had little problem with it, in part because

Spoiler: proper spoiler (click to show/hide)

that Sans fight was entertaining and the music was awesome,

but also because I paid for the game and wanted to see the consequences, regardless of how much the characters had grown on me.

[Rolan7]

Murdering all those characters I really liked was certainly an emotional "payoff" for me, particularly since a friend was watching and egging me on the whole time.  Art is supposed to evoke emotion, and this was a tragedy.  I enjoyed it as that, a tragedy.  A weirdly meta tragedy where I could stop at any point.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I did, sorta.  I was ready to do it - I was *trying* to do it - but Sans's words (ploy or not) halfway in utterly ruined my Determination.  Cancelled out the voice of my friend pushing me to do the depraved thing.

And that's a fine story as well.

[hector13]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I almost quit ‘cause of Sans too, but the boss fight was far too much of challenge to overcome for me to do quit.

Equally so I liked some of the touches they did for it, like Undyne becoming the hero, and the character just completely ignoring Mettaton’s playfulness in favour of murdering him outright.

But yeah, I’ve mentioned this before, but my brother got Mortal Kombat II when I was rather young, and I was rather effusive about all the brutal things you could do in the game, much to my mother’s concern. She raised this with me, to which I responded with “but mum, it’s only a game.” which apparently placated her. So that’s my position when it comes to these things; if the players know it’s a game, isn’t real, and they have no interest in carrying out what happens in the game irl, there’s no harm in it and anyone who thinks it is something to worry about is being a bit silly.

[Folly]

A Catholic school in Nashville just banned Harry Potter books. Which I can kind of understand why a religious school would want to ban those books. Or a non-religious school. But then I read their reasoning...

These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.

Honestly, how are these people allowed to run a school? This should definitely qualify as child abuse.

[Naturegirl1999]

A Catholic school in Nashville just banned Harry Potter books. Which I can kind of understand why a religious school would want to ban those books. Or a non-religious school. But then I read their reasoning...

These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.

Honestly, how are these people allowed to run a school? This should definitely qualify as child abuse.

They would have had to read the books to know what spells the book mentions. This is stupid.

[Lord Shonus]

Ignoring all the other issues with this, it quite literally verges on heresy. For the books to contain actual spells would require that sort of spell to actually exist, and Church doctrine has held, for centuries, that there is no such thing as witchcraft. Witch-hunting was mostly an activity practiced by secular or Protestant authorities.

[wierd]

I am not a Catholic, so I have glaring holes in my knowledge of their doctrines, but my understanding was that humans are forbidden from attempting magic, because (as mundane beings) we are unable to do it on our own (and must therefor rely on the "assistance" of a supernatural agent, other than god), and this only leads to trouble.  (Hence, the levitical prohibition against allowing witches to live. exodus 22:18)

This is seen in the bible with the likes of Simon Magus (and his heretical desire to use the holy spirit to perform magic), and the fortune teller that gets rebuked by Paul (Forcing the demon that was aiding her to depart.)

In that light, the notion that humans could use magical spells without such aid (eg, the rationale given by this supposed priest; The notion that spells can be used 'accidentally.'), flies against core biblical descriptions of the practice. (aside perhaps, for the witch of endor maybe, since she able to successfully call a spirit of the departed, and does not seem to use an intermediary.) It could be amended to something less heretical, by stating that it leaves the reader more open to temptation and habitation by an unclean spirit and should thus be abstained from (with prejudice). (I have heard similar things about ouija for instance.)


Is that at least close?

[Lord Shonus]

The Witch of Endor was specifically calling a dead human back to the world, and the word use to refer to this act is the same used for all unambiguous references to sorcery and divination in the Bible. In the case of Simon, the great sin here is violation of the Fourth Commandment, being a misuse of the Name.


A recurring theme in the Old Testament, and to a lesser extent in the New, is that the various entities worshiped by pagans did exist, but were mere pretenders to the title of "god".  Eventually, these would be combined with the notion of the Fall of Lucifer and become identified as the Fallen One's chief lieutenants. Older Christian doctrine held that the First Coming had broken the power of these entities, either destroying them entirely or driving them from the world.

[Reelya]

Yeah, the roots of the stories probably date from a time when they had tribal gods, and they acknowledged that other tribes had their own gods but "our god is better". This is why there's no actually contradiction when the Old Testament god strikes down the tribal enemies. He's not the god of those enemies, so him being a bastard to everyone who's not of their tribe makes perfect sense. Monotheism then got shoe-horned on top of this.

The best evidence for that is how they seem to be confused about whether he's only a god for their tribe, or he's everyone's god. Now it's evolved into "he's the god who made everyone, but he only actually likes our tribe". Judaism as a religion is a time capsule permanently stuck in between pantheism and monotheism.

[hops]

As a religious person myself I do my best to respect people's beliefs, but I really hate it when somebody just makes up shit and state it as if it's undeniable fact. I mean, where in the Bible does it say that Harry Potter is nonfiction?

[Reelya]

Well the Pharaoh had sorcerors who could turn staves into snakes. So actual wizards used to be a thing, according to the bible. There's been a distinct lack of such wizards ever since we had good recording keeping and could check.

BTW there were zombies when Jesus rose from the dead, too.

“Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

This is a pretty big claim for an event that's not recorded by any other source. The temple was split? The dead rose? and "appeared to many"? Which many. And if so, why don't we have any corroborating reports. you don't have to be a Christian to think that the literal dead walking is noteworthy. The city had Romans in it, why didn't any Romans write about this?

[wierd]

Odd, The egyptians kept METICULOUS records.

Just, on papyrus, and those tend not to survive long without very dry, still conditions.  tomb robbers, bungling 19th century archaeologists, and "antiquities dealers" have taken their toll.

(In relation to the "mystery schools" that would have been the origin for these "wizards", Not a whole lot survives.  Such texts were.... highly sought after....  and in most cases, such texts were never authorized by said schools to begin with; being institutions with a specific 'culture' associated with them; Specifically, one focused more on direct tutelary instruction from a master to his novitiates, and where the structural layout of the schools themselves held metaphysical meaning in that instruction, in place of instruction books.  Sorry Hogwarts, no quills and ink in those schools. Any books created, were created by students that had attended and then left Egypt (and abandoned the school; since they would not have made books about the school had they retained ties. It was prohibited.)  Though this is mostly the take of much later greco-roman mystery schools, which would have been contemporary of Simon Magus. They claimed to have obtained their mysteries from Egypt, and various other places.  Actual ancient egypt had an "all pervasive" god known as heka, that was the personification of raw magic, and was the necessary predecessor to all other gods in the pantheon. He did not have temples, because the worship of all other gods, by necessity, gave him homage.  Magic was treated in that culture much like how we treat technology; suffused in all tasks of daily life, and inconceivable to consider a life without it.  If was mere superstition, or a real force, the egyptians clearly felt it was the latter.)

[Reelya]

I shouldn't get carried away. But you don't even have to take things out of context to make the point, just print bible verses.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+7&version=NLV

‘Take your special stick and throw it down in front of Pharaoh so that it will become a snake.’” 10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh. They did just as the Lord had told them. Aaron threw his stick down in front of Pharaoh and his servants and it became a snake. 11 Then Pharaoh called for his wise men and wonder-workers. They did the same thing using their secret ways.

Fair enough, Egypt had wizards who can transmute staff to snake.

Aaron raised the special stick and hit the water of the Nile in front of Pharaoh and his servants. And all the water in the Nile was turned into blood. 21 The

fish that were in the Nile died. And the Nile had a bad smell. So the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. The blood was through all the land of Egypt. 22 But the wonder-workers of Egypt did the same thing using their secret ways.

OK, so Aaron turned all the water in Egypt into blood but then the " the wonder-workers of Egypt did the same thing using their secret ways". So we have Egyptian wizards who can turn an entire river into blood, killing everything in it. Y'all should wonder why they weren't using such magic in wartime.

Additionally, isn't there a problem here? The river was already blood. Did it turn back into water, then get turned into blood a second time? Since the bible clearly says they did the same thing. But, then it clearly states:

And all the Egyptians dug around the Nile for water to drink. For they could not drink the water of the Nile.

So, the river was permanently turned into blood after all. Did God turn it into blood, then turn it back, then the wizards turned it into blood again, and it stayed as blood? This is nonsensical. Also, you'd wonder why they'd deliberately fuck their own river so nobody could drink from it, yet not immediately be executed by the Pharaoh.

The key problem here is that the entire story is baloney. It works ok for the staff-to-snakes since you can have more than one staff. Or if you hypothetically turned a camel into a frog, then the other guy could replicate that "using their secret ways" since you can in fact have more than one camel. But it clearly falls apart here since the is only one Nile River, yet the person writing up the story just stuck to the repeating pattern and hasn't accounted for that at all. You can't replicate permanently turning the Nile River into blood, because it's already blood. Duh.

So Aaron put his hand out over the waters of Egypt. And the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the wonder-workers did the same thing using their secret ways. They made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

you'd think that the wizards would learn their lesson after the blood-river thing and not immediately double the frog problem.

Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron and said, “You pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people. And I will let the people go, so they may give a gift in worship to the Lord.”

Yeah, he should be asking his wizards if they have any anti-frog spells, and clipping them around the ears for making twice the frog.

“Say to Aaron, ‘Put out your special stick and hit the dust of the earth. It will become lice through all the land of Egypt.’” 17 And they did so. Aaron put out his hand with his stick and hit the dust of the earth. And there were lice on man and animal. All the dust of the earth became lice through all the land of Egypt. 18 The wonder-workers tried to cause lice to come by using their secret ways.

Seriously, didn't they learn from the frog thing, and the blood river thing? Aaron makes a lice plague, and the wizards are like "oh hell yeah, double the lice sounds good".

[wierd]

The question is if it is actually blood, or something that was a close enough approximation that everyone was fooled.

I doubt that people were pulling out microscopes and looking for red corpuscles, you know.