Argus would only have had Eredar and Broken on it at that time.
That’s my point. AU Xe’ra would’ve already have made an AU Army of the Light since she’d already met the Draenei by that time. That’s how the Army of the Light was formed. During the evacuation of Argus, some Draenei joined a few Naaru and Velen and fled on the Exodar, some Draenei volunteered to take the fight to the Legion with Xe’ra, got Lightforged and set out on the Xenedar.
So the Army of the Light was already millennia old by that time in AU Draenor. Blizzard plot holes strike again smh
Leviticus, Deuteronomy, have you read what God’s Law is laid down as in those two books? and there’s also the fact that a good deal fo the New Testament is Jesus telling the rules laid down in the Old Testament to get stuffed.
What’s objective good? There’s no objective definition of evil or good for that matter save that “good” is defined in the bible as to what God aproves of. Adam and Eve eat the apple without any prior knowledge of Good or Evil which means they have no idea why disobeying God should be wrong. They’re just supposed to obey Him like robots. because again according to the story itself before that moment they had no knowledge of Good and Evil.
The only thing that can be said about objective good is that it should be “objectively demonstrable” but that’s tautological. The speed of light has an objective value of X millimeters per second. Morality however does not unless you take the Christian fallback position is that it’s whatever God approves of… of course Christians have taken to violence to the point of killing each other over doctrinal differences of interpreting that formula. If even his followers can’t agree on what that’s supposed to be, don’t hold your chances for finding that answer here.
1 Like
For one, I’m currently reading a discussion of this very topic in a chapter of the book “Is God a moral monster?” by Paul Copan. Part of what I’ve read so far; the Mosaic legal system stipulated in the Old Testament was always intended to be temporary. It was part of God’s incremental plan to save humanity that Jesus was the culmination of (and not telling it to get stuffed).
I’ve seen this argument before; trying to blame God for other people’s choices. They didn’t have to know good or evil to understand “God said not to do that, so we shouldn’t do it”. God gave them a choice, told them the correct option and what would happen if the wrong choice was made, simple as that.
Just because some Christians have at times made wrong choices, disobeyed God and called their wrongdoing “God’s will” doesn’t disprove the existence of objective good. That’s like saying the existence of criminals means all of a country’s laws are unjust.
“Objectively demonstrable”? Such as how monogamous relationships are more stable and fulfilling than polygamous ones? Or such as what we see happen when people love money? (1 Timothy 6:10). Or what follows pride and a haughty spirit? (Proverbs 16:18)
The criticism against Paul Copan, are that he’s essentially a contemporary apologist that tries to twist ancient scripture to seem more apologetic of genocide, child abuse, slavery etc. Christian critics say that his stances do more to step backwards into fundimentalism and not to move Christianity forward.
1 Like
One just needs to actually read the Old and New Testament to realize that god in both of them are vastly different. The one in the New Testament is a loving god while the one in the Old Testament is a wrathful and vengeful one.
I always found that a little strange and a bit contradictory
The book actually addresses and deconstructs that supposed contradiction.
I consider that criticism more of an insidious and disingenuous personal and ideological statement, plus a cop out. So why don’t you try actually assessing his arguments instead of dismissing them out of hand, Ren?
1 Like
What’s his answer for it? Out of curiosity
There’s quite a bit to unpack, because he addresses separate points people raise about God’s actions in the New Testament compared to God’s actions in the Old Testament, such as the genocide one Ren cited, the slavery issue, the question of violent punishments…
Part of the answer is that God’s salvation plan works in increments around our sinful nature. The structures of Mosaic Law were always meant to be a temporary measure while Christ’s death and resurrection was the fulfillment of that plan.
because I’m not here to debate God, or the Bible.
I’m here to talk about the lore of World of Warcraft. No amount of Fundamentalist copium is going to make Xe’ra the good guy in the existing WoW narrative.
1 Like
Then why did you try to derail yet another thread into a religious debate? Do you have any actual intelligent comments to make?
I’m not dreailing anything, the train was already off the tracks. read the title “Why morally grey light makes sense.” you dreailed it with “if you apply this heavily criticised revisonist apologist history of the Old Testament to the Light, we can subjectively say that the morally grey Light is actually morally good”
1 Like
That answers my second question, smh
Now, to try and get this thread back on track, this whole idea of “morally grey Light” and how it applies in relation to WoW’s other fundamental forces is a cosmological version of the golden mean fallacy.
You are the genocide apologist you project onto Sylvanas fans, only you do it irl for Christanity.
1 Like
The light has always been kind of portrayed as morally grey and that it was those who use it, are capable of using for good or for ill
That’s just my take on it
Christianity does have a lot of skeletons they need to address. That was one of the many reasons why I left the religion
No offense to anyone, but I never understood the genocide apologist route some people take. Like, it’s never okay, regardless of who told you to do it
3 Likes
I was okay with a bit of moral ‘squishiness’ in the Light, it’s always been there – it’s the hinted slide at moral both-sidesism with the void that’s just completely boring.
There’s a distinction between off-white and 50% brightness, if you get me.
I agree with Pellex that the narrative has traded moral complexity in characters for moral complexity in cosmic forces and that has not been a good trade – that having six cosmic forces which ultimately don’t have any meaningful emotional force to them whatsoever has been a loss for this narrative, reducing their story weight and bringing things closer and closer to the emotional energy we might expect from the four cosmic forces of our reality: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force.
The more we can see of the metaphysics in bright simple lines, the harder it atrophies the importance of any of those things beyond “I think fire is pretty”. Why is it the Light that has taken on the force of Moorcock’s Order and not Arcane, yet the latter is described as being the cold, calculating one – where is the great Arcane threat out there? Why could we not have that conflict, especially when WoW’s cosmology was originally built on the inherent dangers of arcane magic?
We aren’t seeing the story evolve, we’re seeing the story be bludgeoned into something new, and yes, if you squint at it it kind of fits but the tone of things is dramatically different in ensemble.
When thinking about narrative progression, I have three questions I ask:
- Does this make sense when I explain things out long-form? If yes;
- Does this make sense intuitively based on what came before? If not;
- Is dissonance valuable to me here?
Personally, I think we’ve tapped about everything that Warcraft is capable of telling with the Light center stage in a way that doesn’t get two or more ‘Nos’ in the above list, and making the Light more grey, more squishy, does not change that. Arthas is one of the most morally awful people in the narrative, but within that narrative he demonstrates a ruthless greater good perspective which gives way to the awfulness of pride, and when pride has fully taken him, he rejects the Light altogether. When the Scarlet Crusade has completely fallen from their defensive (murderous) crouch, they start to reject the Light altogether. Note the presence of Shadow Priests there.
This is very distinct from the nonsense we are told played out with Y’rel.
I think we are also pretty tapped out on cosmic period and center-staging any of it is not an improvement. My Arcane question above is more to highlight how dissonant this assignment feels using even their own current justifications. The Naaru were as far as we ever should have gotten. In the hands of, say, Elder Scrolls writers – you could probably get away with a little more, but part of what lets Elder Scrolls pull off cosmic stuff so well is that they almost never give definitive answers about the true nature of anything that is powerful.
3 Likes
You shouldn’t actually given the time span between writings, the literal cultural differences between the authors, it would be rather shocking if they were more congruent.
1 Like
One would think the authors of the New Testament would know the Old Testament and kept things somewhat similar for the god they supposedly follow
But that’s me
Hard for me to resist a little commentary here:
It’s important to understand that the Bible was a compromise document and was not intended to be the cornerstone of the religion whatsoever so much as a helpful reference manual for the Church, which was itself intended to be the cornerstone.
There are also significant contradictions even within a single text – I think my favorite one to teach are the two origins of Genesis, because it illustrates how contradiction can be intentional on the part of the authors and serve a purpose in service of myth (in the anthropological sense – I am not ascribing any negativity here). Creation is told twice in somewhat (but significantly) different order of events.
There are a lot of literary reasons for this within the context of the culture that actually wrote Genesis, most importantly that it was probably not intended to serve as a chronological descriptor. This is also a popular explanation for the differing chronologies and events of the four gospels, even though they mostly agree on what happened at those events (particularly the synoptic ones, ofc) – the point was not the chronology, the point was the myth, and people ordered them differently for teaching.
I like these examples as introductions to apologia because others can be more contentious – either not seen as a contradiction at all or seen as too blatant of one.
Sorry for the detour, can’t help myself sometime.
2 Likes