390 réponses à ce sujet

[AlienWolf728]

Volus Warlord wrote...

How is this pisshole still open..

[Volus Warlord]

Erik Lehnsherr wrote...

Volus Warlord wrote...

How is this pisshole still open..

'Cause Arguing is Fun. 

I don't think this could even be categorized as arguing. More like a series of rants.  

[FINE HERE]

I think this thread has gone on far enough. Lockdown? Lockdown? Lockdown?

[SafetyShattered]

StElmo wrote...

nightscrawl wrote...

StElmo wrote...

Exposing the flaws, injustices and overall powerplay of institutionalized religion in society is a controversial but highly respectable theme.

As long as fair play is given to charitable works and the various good people that are also there, sure I don't mind. Or are you one of those that thinks that all such organizations are corrupt at their core, all members are willing participants in that corruption, and that there is no redeeming value in them whatsoever?

While we saw extremely little of the Chantry's good side in DA2, there were a few examples of it in DAO. I don't think those should be ignored.

I guess the questions is, should good being done be still called good if being done in the name of something bad?

If the mafia donates to a childrens hospital, does that make the mafia a better thing?

Please don't tell me your honestly comparing religious people to the mafia? ALL beliefs taken to radical measures can be dangerous. There are even radical atheist groups that exist. Does that mean that all atheists are bloodthirsty killers? No, of course not! Some of my best friends are atheists. Same for religious people. Are there some that go way overboard? Of course. But not all of us are like that, I assure you. If Bioware does decide to do this I hope that they are respectful to BOTH sides(religious and none religious people). If they want to show the negatives of religion they also need to show the positive things it has created. Thats just my opinion though, to each his own.

[Atlanth]

I'm hoping that they give us the opportunity to go either way: whether I want to be absolutely anti-Chantry or pro-Chantry. More freedom to play my characters the way I want.

Without a doubt there are good things one could say about the Chantry and good people in that organization, just like there are bad ones.

Still, in my opinion, the Chant of Light itself is somewhat problematic. According to the Chant, the Maker will only return if it spreads to all four corners of Thedas. That does not leave room for any other religions or beliefs. Something like this is reason enough for the Chantry - or at least the more militant parts of it - to clash heavily with groups like the Dalish elves (who have their own lands now again - another Exalted March anyone?) or even the dwarves.

Something to think about.

[Dean_the_Young]

slimgrin wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Why 'organized religion' rather than 'organized politics'?

Religion has no more unique sinister qualities than any of the many other secular ideologies that have been used to motivate people to acts of good and evil.

Please...

Moderation and contemplation on the internets. Crazy, no?

[Vandicus]

Erik Lehnsherr wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

GodWood wrote...

StElmo wrote...
One thing that has impressed me greatly and kept me in the DA game is the portrayal of the Chantry as apower hungry, dominant and manipulative force, in the DA universe. 

It draws heavy parallels with the historical and modern day context of the Catholic Church in real world society - which I find absolutely fascinating.

Barely.

The Chantry is quite tame in comparison to the Catholic Church.

Heh.. a very common misconception these days. 
The faults of the Catholic Church are maginfied a thousandfold and peddled as the truth.

Do you know that at one point they were selling "Tickets to Heaven"? 
Completely forgetting about morals because of Greed, which in their belief, they will go to hell for, the Irony.
They have done plenty like this and worse. 

Did you know that you're not using historically accurate terms?

Did you know that at one point slavery was treated as normal in every culture of mankind? Does this lead one to believe that the existence of culture causes slavery? Did you know that nearly every organization in existence has had corruption? Does this lead one to believe that organizations lead to corruption?

Religion is not why people commit evil acts(usually, unless the religion expressly advocates evil acts). Philosophy is not why people commit evil acts(again unless the philosophy advocates evil acts). Humans commit these evil acts. 

Humanity's history is fraught with the tendency to villify one group or another to justify any kinds of behavior towards members of that group of people. For example the idea that anyone who was in the Chantry when Anders blew it up was deserving of their fate. In this day and age its become popular to villify the entirety of the Catholic Church and its following for actions centuries old or performed by a small group of individuals. These detractors also tend to ignore that the Catholic Church several times played a significant role in the preservation of western culture. They were also heavily involved in the promotion of baroque art, and instilling many of the modern societal values that we have. Repeatedly picking at particular evil actions performed by members of an organization and generalizing them could be used to villify every member of every government/religion/social movement/philosophical movement that has ever existed.

[AlienWolf728]

I see no point to this thread other than to rile up religious folk.

[Mr Fixit]

Shadowfang12 wrote...

Some of my best friends are atheists.

For whatever reason, this sentence made me laugh so hard. It's just delicious.

Modifié par Mr Fixit, 30 septembre 2012 - 12:08 .

[SafetyShattered]

Withidread wrote...

Why do so many people feel there must be a political/religous/whatever statement? Why can't we just have a game that's fun to play?

I know. I will never understand this either.

[slimgrin]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

slimgrin wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Why 'organized religion' rather than 'organized politics'?

Religion has no more unique sinister qualities than any of the many other secular ideologies that have been used to motivate people to acts of good and evil.

Please...

Moderation and contemplation on the internets. Crazy, no?

I don't know where you learned what you learned, but your statement ignores vast swaths of history. As far as this game goes, well if they want to comment on religion, on anything for that matter, I'm all for it. My skin's thick enough.

[SafetyShattered]

Mr Fixit wrote...

Shadowfang12 wrote...

Some of my best friends are atheists.

For whatever reason, this sentence made me laugh so hard. It's just delicious.

Ok then....glad you found it delicious....I guess.

[dragonflight288]

*sigh*

I personally am a very religious person. I have absolutely no problem with a video game that questions the validity and integrity of members of a fiction religion. If you look hard enough in history, you'd be able to compare the Chantry to almost any group. The Catholic Church being easy with the crusades and the Knights-Templar in real life, but there are other historical precedents.

The ancient Spartans threw their elderly and sickly children (even new-borns) into a pit to die if they weren't strong enough. Their entire philosophy revolved around war. It got to the point that the ancient greek olympics banned any spartan from wrestling because their training was so deeply ingrained that they couldn't compete in a sport. It was always life or death, and the olympics banned them because it was too deeply ingrained into them. But the spartans have the most famous last stand at the battle of Thermopylae.

Does that mean I can compare the Dales to Leonidas and the Orlesians to the Persians if the Dalish had their own last stand? (I actually compare the 500 Casteless guarding that one city in Awakening while the dwarves fled to Orzammar as something similar.) Can I compare mages to a group that faces genocide whenever a right of annulment is called by the Chantry and have the Chantry be the evil aggressors?

Can I compare the chantry's monopoly on lyrium similar to drug lords? Can I compare Orzammar's merchant caste to modern corporations? The caste system to modern India (which has a caste system, and a caste similar to the casteless in the game.)

Look hard enough, and you can find a parallel to almost anything.

In the end, it's just a video game. Every choice I make ultimately affect nothing in real life, beyond putting money at Gamestop when buying it.

[KiwiQuiche]

Swagger7 wrote...

Androme wrote...

What amazes me is how people are always so keen on criticising the Chantry but not the Qun, and calls the Chantry power-hungry people, a reflection of how Atheists are in the real world; continously criticise Christianity, but not a word about Islam. While we can with absolute certainty conclude that it is in fact the Qun (and Islam in the real world) that wishes for power the most out of the two.

Common myth.  I've actually encountered multiple Muslims that make your same argument, but in reverse.  Most atheists I know (myself included) only speak against religion when it's out to actively do something against them.  So, if you're a Christian, you'll only hear criticisms against Christianity because that's what you are.  This is called sample bias, IIRC. 

Similarly, since all DA games have been set in Thedas so far, the chantry is the religion that a non-religious PC would most likely be negatively affected by.

Oh, by the way, "militant atheist" is something religious people call any atheist who opens his/her mouth.  It's like "angry black man" or "shrill feminist".  It's a put-down the majority uses to justify not actually listening to something a minority has to say.  Now I will agree that some atheists go out of their way to bother those who aren't bothering them.  Using a name like "militant atheist" just makes it sound like you're dismissing what's said soley because of its source and this can lead to confusion.  There's already a perfectly good word for people who go around insulting those who did nothing offensive: ***hole.

I'd also like to point out that Bioware did a good job of stirring all this discussion up in the first place, by making the Chantry so close to the actual Catholic Church.  I'm not complaining, just saying that if they don't like these conversations, well, they did it to themselves.

+1

And anyway, we've already seen both sides of the Chantry; the helpful, kind side, then the raging lunatics who abuse their power.In DAO it was more politics that stuffed everything up; Loghain and his stupidness, rather than the Chantry.
And in DA2 everyone was just insane regardless of religion, so it didn't really matter.

However I hope religion isn't a big play in DA3- I get enough of it in real life, don't need more in my games. I would prefer just getting into brawls, kinda like what Isabela said "It's like a bar brawl with everyone jumping in to a point they don't even remember how it started." more or less, so I'm seeing DA3 as more an opportunist wars going on, with a few doing it for sincere reasons. Most want revenge, money, land, wealth or even just to get in a bloodbath.

And apparently in DA3 we'll have choice like in DAO to approve, condone or ignore religious aspects of the game, or so I gathered from one of Gaider's post.

Also faith =/= religion.

[Direwolf0294]

I'd rather they present religion in a fair and unbiased way. You get so many atheists on the internet who are increadibly close minded and fanatical in their anti religious sentiments that they're being just as hate filled as they think the people and organisations they're fighting against are. Religion is like anything else in the world. Yes, there are bad elements surrounding it. Yes, numerous atrocities and injustices have been carried out in it's name, but to ignore all the good that has come from it and continues to come from it because you personally don't believe in a divine power is just stupid.

And before you ask, I'm an atheist.

[Dean_the_Young]

slimgrin wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

slimgrin wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Why 'organized religion' rather than 'organized politics'?

Religion has no more unique sinister qualities than any of the many other secular ideologies that have been used to motivate people to acts of good and evil.

Please...

Moderation and contemplation on the internets. Crazy, no?

I don't know where you learned what you learned, but your statement ignores vast swaths of history.

You mean the vast swarths in which the largest, most devastating, and most systematic genocides in Human history have occured under the aegis of secular ideologies?

Yeah, let's just ignore that. The politics of abuse of organizational power transcends religion to reach the simply mundane.

As far as this game goes, well if they want to comment on religion, on anything for that matter, I'm all for it. My skin's thick enough.

Hopefully they can do it better than what some people in the threat consider.

[Wifflebottom]

Why would people care if they paint the Chantry as a power-hungry manipulative institution? It's a fictitious religious group and if people are identifying the Chantry as the same thing as their own religion then that's their problem and if they get offended that's their fault. I see nothing wrong with the Chantry being a critique on organized religion, they do many of the same things good and bad as real life organized religions and people should be able to handle a critique on their religion without getting offended.

[GodWood]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

GodWood wrote...
Barely.

The Chantry is quite tame in comparison to the Catholic Church.

Heh.. a very common misconception these days.
The faults of the Catholic Church are maginfied a thousandfold and peddled as the truth.

What has the Chantry done worse than the Catholic Church?

[upsettingshorts]

Dean_the_Young is absolutely correct. Religion does not have anything close to a historic monopoly on mass murder.

It's just the motivation for which contemporary society is least willing to entertain excuses.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 septembre 2012 - 02:09 .

[Dragoonlordz]

I dislike organised religion, I would like the option being in game of keeping this stance. Just like how my Warden could mock the Chantry or critisize it. Just like my Hawke did about the Qun and Chantry. The one thing I would dislike is if my character was pigeon-holed into supporting the Chantry or Qun for purpose of story. The game appears to be relate to those religious themes so please make sure there is a more atheist or negative position through dialogue and plot for those of us who do not wish to follow the Qun or the Chantry. I think that is reasonable. Because both DAO and DA2 allowed this and had such freedom my concern is very small but figured I would take this opportunity to mention it since the thread exists here about this topic.

Modifié par Dragoonlordz, 30 septembre 2012 - 02:17 .

[Dragoonlordz]

Faerunner wrote...

 What I liked about DA:O was the balanced representation of pro and anti Chantry arguments, of theism and atheism, etc. (Especially between Leliana and Morrigan. Their arguments seemed very fair, balanced, logical, and left open for the viewer to decide what they believed.) 

DA2 seemed to be very slanted toward theism and organized religion. Anders, Merrill, Sebastian, and Hawke's unsolicited "She's with the Maker" comment, I'm looking at you.

I agree with the comment about DAO, how it was handled there I really liked. I think they did a better job of allowing such freedom in that game vs the second even though the second did allow some too.

[upsettingshorts]

Faerunner wrote...

 What I liked about DA:O was the balanced representation of pro and anti Chantry arguments, of theism and atheism, etc. (Especially between Leliana and Morrigan. Their arguments seemed very fair, balanced, logical, and left open for the viewer to decide what they believed.) 

DA2 seemed to be very slanted toward theism and organized religion. Anders, Merrill, Sebastian, and Hawke's unsolicited "She's with the Maker" comment, I'm looking at you.

Belief does not necessarily constitute adherence to or membership within an organized religion, as the cases of Anders and Merrill particularly exemplify.

As far as your criticism of DA2 goes: Theism yes, organized religion not so much. Sister Petrice is probably the most reviled character in the game, and with good reason, and let's take a look at the nature of her plots and what she represents.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 septembre 2012 - 02:22 .