Would you put your annoyance above the survival of the human species?
I admit that my view of miriam is based on research quotes and the fluff story of when they were on the ship so I might be missing something.
But... Miriam is fervorously religious which is the first thing that annoys me. Secondly, They're on a hostile world that is just growing more hostile and she wants to inhibit science.
And I'm of the more pessimistic world view that humanity is screwed unless we start improving ourselves, be it genetic manipulation, selective breeding or some alternative that just has not appeared yet. Otherwise we will probably blow ourselves up or do something similarly selfdestructive.
Ey, nothing inherently bad with being religious. Deidre's religious, and just look at the fine genocidal hippy she turned out to be.
But seriously, not just is it a hostile world - it's a
god. If you're not believing after that, well, you might be human.
Miriam doesn't want to inhibit science, her very opening quote:
"...evil lurks in the datalinks, much like it lurked the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil."
If I got it right anyways. Essentially it means that knowledge and science - none of these are evil. It is the people who are the ones who create the evil, so it is the people who should be inquired [or to be more specific, nobody suspects Miriam's inquisition].
The self-aware colony, the sentient "homunculi," the question of whether or not transferring live matter is transferring you or a copy of you e.t.c. prove just how no one else but her is looking at these discoveries with restraint, caution or morality.
There is a reason why the University get more drones, that is because they grab random people and experiment on them.
Miriam is more than capable of ruling over her people ethically, as she is the only ethical leader who has the conviction of someone like Sheng-Ji Yang or Nwabudike Morgan.
And ironically, the people who sought to change the human body died much sooner than all the other factions because they gave away their human morality to do so "is life so fragile" anyone?
And lastly - it's possible for all factions to reach transcendence. But to first reach so, they have to be able to also hold off planet's forces, as well as Deidre Skye's forces.
Besides Sheng-Ji Yang, the Believers would be the best to do so. The University become reliant on technology, and where it succeeded in destroying other people - it failed to withstand the onslaught of the mindworms.
How do the mindworms attack? With fear. And how do you kill people whose only fear is God?
Miriam could have done it if she wasn't likely blown up by several trillion matter transported shard missiles by Zhakarov. I may be wrong on this, but I'm not sure if any other faction leader was ever concerned about whether or not they condemned one of their followers to death by giving them any order.
I think you missed out the Gaian-University war. There's one tech where Zak is enraged at Miriam's research and vows to destroy her and the mind worms.
Miriam's the Believers leader. I included the Gaian-University war at the end, but that most certainly happens after Zhakharov neutralizes the threat of the Believers.
Did my research blow minds? I do hope so, it did for me anyways
Note that Miriam does not represent a religion ideology, she's not helping people in needs or anything that every religions are teaching, but in the game she's representing those that are using a religion as a pretext to gain power and control.
U
wot
m8
At 26 she brought peace to the middle East
She's the believers' believing beast
You say she's religiously medieval
Bringing fundamentalist upheaval
Yet she's the only one who stops evil
Thanks you based Miriam
Take us to this planetarium
[Seriously, she was sent to stop violence, which she did. Then everyone started worshiping her as messiah when she didn't mean to appear so].
She's the only faction leader who you can find is straightforward and truthful, even Lal is guilty of a bit of secrecy.
She's basically space Jesus, and she fulfills her religious teachings - she isn't just a speaker. Christianity likely arose as an ethical improvement from Judaism and Paganism, as neither were the best for their time. In the same way, the conclave looked at all of Earth's religion and said 'we can do better,' creating Moral Miriam's school of thought.
Because in the end if they really cared about leading humanity into survival, they would have united their strength and their different ideas to all work together (that was the actual goal of the Unity project before Garland was shot, not the merging into a single mind like some faction prone but all those concepts working along as some kind of new UN).
With exception to Morgan, everyone on the Unity project before and after they split up believed they were saving humanity, and afterwards believed theirs was the only way to save humanity.
Except Morgan, Morgan lives for greed - literally. And that means he'll fight for humanity's survival as long as it lets him continue being greedy.
Also I think it's likely Miriam was the one who killed the Morganites, judging from her very specific quote about: "The Morganites fear what cannot be bought, because a trader cannot comprehend something that is priceless."
Just that nothing really violent is evident from that, just disdainful. So I'm going to judge that is making her the likeliest cause, on the level with Data Angels. Both have good probe teams too, so it makes sense.