On the Church of Seiros and it being good/evil

[Onestep]

6 hours ago, Etheus said:

It's debateable whether Ashera can even be called evil. She's clearly an asshole. She imposes an impossible moral standard on all humanity, which they never necessarily agreed to, and is intent on punishing all of them if enough of them fail to meet that standard.

 

But if we call Ashera evil for her judgemental and inhuman perspective, all of those same criticisms apply to most real world deities, especially the Abrahamic God.

 

The moral question is one of philosophy. Does a higher power have the right to impose a standard on its creation, and does that creation have the right to resist that standard? (My personal answers are no and yes, respectively.)

Ashera's 'impossible' moral standard was 'Don't start a world war'. That's why the dragons remained neutral no matter what, because as long as they didn't join a war, the planet technically passed Ashera's test. Ashera didn't expect perfection. She just didn't want everyone to try to murder everyone else remotely different from them. Her test wasn't especially hard. The only pass condition she gave was 'Don't start killing each other en masse while I'm napping.'

The flaw in her test was that it could be manipulated by a relatively small group of greedy individuals. Just as the dragons wanted to 'cheat' her test by remaining neutral no matter what, the Senate were led into forcing war to spread in a grotesquely unnatural manner. Don't get me wrong, Ashera is hardly the pinnacle of morality, but her standards were fairly lenient.

And philosophy is hardly so simple. For example, one could define a society itself as a higher power in a moral sense. Does a society have a right to impose a standard on those within it? You could say no, but the simple fact of the matter is that you, as an individual, have been shaped from birth by the society you grew up in. Did you grow up in a Western Nation? Congratulations, you've been marked by Christian values, albeit ones reshaped by two thousand years of debate and reformation.

[PrincessAlyson]

9 hours ago, Onestep said:

Ashera's 'impossible' moral standard was 'Don't start a world war'. That's why the dragons remained neutral no matter what, because as long as they didn't join a war, the planet technically passed Ashera's test. Ashera didn't expect perfection

Exactly. I never found that to be impossible. If anything, Ashera wanted people to live in peace. That's why she had that condition. Tellius had great lore and I hope Three Houses uses some good worldbuilding. They need to expand on the Goddess and the people who look up to her.

[dragonlordsd]

17 hours ago, RexBolt said:

People always say that Churches in FE got to be evil because JRPG or whatever, but that's not really the case in most the series?

What about St Elimine's church? Or it's copy in Magvel? Braggi's church that goes against Loptuous? The clergy of Mila AND Duma that isn't part of the Faithful? All the incarnations of Naga's church?

Ashera and Begnion is one thing for sure, but in most FE games we have a benevolent church, alone or together against the evil one. Really, Ashera is the only real "The Church Is All Evil" organization in the FE series and that's only because Yune doesn't have a sect for herself.

I'll give you St. Elimine's, that was handled really well, and Rausten's wasn't so bad either.

But Mila and Duma regular members don't get credit for just being... well, regulars, if the core of the church is still mustache-twirlingly evil.

My point was that it's the conflicts between people that are the most compelling, and if there have to be religious conflicts, it's better to take them from reality. Even religious conflicts like the crusades were in response to other events,  such as the advance of Seljuk empire.

[Fabulously Olivier]

18 minutes ago, PrincessAlyson said:

Exactly. I never found that to be impossible. If anything, Ashera wanted people to live in peace. That's why she had that condition. Tellius had great lore and I hope Three Houses uses some good worldbuilding. They need to expand on the Goddess and the people who look up to her.

Considering we've done that no less than twice in the modern history of own world (and more than that in ancient history when you count massive events like the Mongul invasions), I'd say that yes, it is an unreasonable standard.

(Yes, I'm aware that we didn't literally have every nation participate, but we also have many times more nations than Tellius does).

Edited February 15, 2019 by Etheus

[PrincessAlyson]

Is it really so unreasonable for a deity to want their creations to stop fighting over stupid things? I don't think so, but we can agree to disagree here. I'd rather have a game where the church is neither demonized nor made out to be perfect.

[Lodestar65]

I'm thinking the religion/goddess isn't evil, just that the current leadership probably is.

[PrincessAlyson]

On 2/15/2019 at 6:17 PM, Lodestar65 said:

I'm thinking the religion/goddess isn't evil, just that the current leadership probably is.

That's my current theory as well. The Pope/High Priestess/whatever woman looks a bit too nice...

[Guest This Guy]

On 2/14/2019 at 10:32 AM, PrincessAlyson said:

Yes! I am so tired of the JRPG trope of the evil church. It's overused and very predictable. Religion on a whole isn't evil. It's the people who run it that could be bad news. Because people are inherently flawed. I'd like to see at least two factions.

This

 

Your plot twist shouldn't be something that most if not all of your intended audience immediately assumes said twist before hitting the Title Screen.

 

The trope is just a joke at this point and it's well past the time to retire it.

[Enduin]

IN the real world Prophets tend to be liars cause you know Gods don't really exist, so it would great if they played around with that in the game. Sothis potentially complicates things as she's clearly more than just a normal being, and the Crests are surely quite magical and supernatural, but it would be interesting if Seiros was a big fraud, doubly so if she was for good intentions and not evil ones, and the whole Goddess/Revelations thing was BS and she just happened to either find the Crests which offered immense power and/or she made a deal with Sothis or some other Manakete who wasn't exactly a god but just pretty powerful in order to bring peace to the world. Mix that in with just run of the mill religious zealotry for some like the Priestess we see, as well as run of the mill bad people looking to abuse power and get ahead by any means necessary like some other nobles and church heads and you've got a decently interesting setup and premise for a game with potentially interesting conflicts and motivations by antagonists. 

Going for a plot of the Church is secretly and knowingly Evil with a capital E and there are real gods, potentially Evil and Good, working things from the sidelines would all kind of be lame and cliche at this point. Even just having a plot of them imprisoning the Goddess in order to use her power, not for pure Evil, but just "maintaining order" would be novel enough. 

Edited February 22, 2019 by Enduin

[PrincessAlyson]

11 hours ago, Guest This Guy said:

The trope is just a joke at this point and it's well past the time to retire it.

Yep. The Evil Church trope is so very cliche now. 

 

11 hours ago, Enduin said:

Even just having a plot of them imprisoning the Goddess in order to use her power, not for pure Evil, but just "maintaining order" would be novel enough. 

Exactly. I could go with that. If there is a faction of the religion that is bad, I'd like to see the Goddess call out their bullshit.

[Guest This Guy]

It's not even about it being Cliche, it's that we all automatically assume it when a church in a JRPG is introduced.

You can't say something is a plot twist when it fools no one.

[St. Brady]

Enduin: "In the real world Prophets tend to be liars cause you know Gods don't really exist... "

 

Can you please stop it with that Fedora tipping nonsense. We do not know and can neither disprove nor prove it. Put that stuff elsewhere.

 

Etheus: "Considering we've done that no less than twice in the modern history of own world (and more than that in ancient history when you count massive events like the Mongul invasions), I'd say that yes, it is an unreasonable standard." 

Given how simple it is and how vague it is to the point that there is rather a lot of leeway. Enough where smaller skirmishes like small clashes between bandits and mercenaries won't even incurred her judgement I'd say it is reasonable if people bothered to put in the effort. 

Also calling this simple standard unreasonable... I'd argue by this reasoning that almost all moral standards are unreasonable.  People being flawed will break it no matter how simple it is.

 

Also the inculcable damage caused by wars counting Crusades...and other acts. 

Out of all 1,763 recorded historical conflicts, 123, or 6.98%, had religion as their primary cause. 

Source: Encyclopedia of Wars 

 

Many of these have been argued by historians to have been motivated by social political and economic issues. 

 

Not on to the topic of Fire emblem... I'd go with Alyson's idea of a balanced view of the Church here. Anyways we will likely have some good Church people if priest are playable in the game.

Edited July 25, 2019 by St. Brady

[Tenzen12]

Spoiler

So basically Church is not evil per se. It genuinely trying (and until now it succeed) in keeping peace and help people, but lot of it's teaching is fabrication and Rhea did some shady stuff to revive her mother. How much she involved rest of church or innocent people  is unknown.

 

[Captain Karnage]

That's a necro