Existence of the Divine

Joij21

🔥Deny, Defend, Depose!🔥
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Ok so because voodoo has literal hell hounds as a unit within the game does that prove that this mod acknowledges the existence of the Divine being a reality? And this might be something that would perhaps have to be answered sooner or later especially because toward the end of the game your civ can travel across dimensions and achieve a higher plain of existence. So I would assume they would have the ability to ultimately answer the question of that said existence. Which then leads me to ponder that if the answer (in this mod of course) is yes wouldn't that open up a huge can of worms? You could then essentially justify all forms of fantasy and magical alternate timelines with that possibility alone. Plus what would become of religions? Would one perticular religion be the correct one while all others are mere falsehoods? Or would the ultimate reality of the Divine be one where all religions are correct to a certain degree? Would there be one god? Many gods? Or simply some kind of spiritual essence like the Force in Star Wars? If your civ could make contact with this divinity in later eras (that old Star Trek movie where they meet God comes to mind) how would this be handled? What effects would this have on your people and their future? In C2C is the Divine a reality or does C2C take the Richard Dawkins approach (aka the god delusion)? And if C2C's stance is the later then shouldn't the hell hounds be removed as that kind of proves the existance of the Divine or some supernatural force?
 
The hellmouth dogs are a nod to popular culture i assume. c2c is filled with 'eastereggs'. I have no idea who created the voodoo content but they obviously thought the rule of cool applied here.

I think everyone gets to put some ' realism questionable' out there as long as it doesn't break gameplay. We have all the 'punks' and giraffe riders, and in the end humanity strives towards omnidimensional godhood.
 
I suppose but where do we draw the line? Does that mean the Christians should have the ability to literally summon God to destroy cities Sodom and Gomorrah style? Should the Jews have an Ark of the Covenant unit that melts enemy faces off and destroys their city walls? Should Hellenism have the Olympians punish your adversaries and give you favors? If one religion has a supernatural unit or ability then they all must otherwise that would be admitting that Voodoo is the one true religion in this mod.
 
Generally speaking the presence of particular buildings or technologies in the future eras should not be taken as an endorsement of their plausibility. This becomes more true the farther in the future you get. The Transcendent Era in particular should be regarded as highly speculative metaphysics. In reality we have no idea what the ultimate achievements of humanity (or our posthuman descendants) could be, so for the Transcendent Era we drew from various science fiction and metaphysical sources and threw in some of our own speculation.

The team does not all have the same beliefs on religious, metaphysical, or political issues, so I don't want C2C to ever be seen as endorsing views on controversial subjects.
 
I wasn't talking specifically about the later eras. Rather I was simply making a point that by having hell hounds as a unit within voodoo creates a conflict of interest. So I'm simply advocating for their removal because hell hounds don't really exist. However I believe some studies have proven that zombification is and was possible through the use of puffer fish poison used by voodoo practitioners, so I don't think the zombie workers need to be replaced.
 
I wasn't talking specifically about the later eras. Rather I was simply making a point that by having hell hounds as a unit within voodoo creates a conflict of interest. So I'm simply advocating for their removal because hell hounds don't really exist. However I believe some studies have proven that zombification is and was possible through the use of puffer fish poison used by voodoo practitioners, so I don't think the zombie workers need to be replaced.
This is a What If mod. You are going too deep. Back up take a breath and let it go. ;)
 
Well what about the other religions? Is it really fair that Voodoo gets a dog that can essentially kill anything while pretty much every other religion gets mostly culture and commerce bonuses? I mean shouldn't the Ark of the Covenant be a unit instead of a building just to compensate?
 
It's just a savage dog trained by fundamentalist, the name is meant to instill fear in their enemies.
Jaguar warriors weren't actual jaguars, only human warriors who wore jaguar skin as a part of their uniform.
The Persian and Byzantine immortals weren't actually immortal, but since the infantry division had that title, some of their enemies believed it and couldn't fight effectively against them.

Do you feel that the unit is overpowered, 15 :strength: at fundamentalism tech doesn't seem all that far fetched?
 
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Voodoo practitioners were and are amazing magicians who use very hard to fathom tricks of herbal chemistry to achieve the appearance of magic and they have a faith that promotes that spiritual entities and so on exist. Who am I to question the legitimacy. I don't know how real their answers are but I think we can often see that the results of their blend of faith and trickery does achieve some hard to believe results. This doesn't prove or deny anything about the reality of how the world really is according to their teachings. And I'd say that's largely the goal for us to express in C2C. We also have buildings that reflect rain dances, fertility festivals, etc, and they have a real effect, even if perhaps this is due to people having a placebo belief. So we nod at these faiths without committing to stating anything is or is not real nor proof of anything more.
 
Hell Hounds are actually War Dogs with tattoos/war paint and on drugs. With lots of publicity saying how bad and magical they are. At least that was the intent.
 
You're getting too philosophical and deep with this. It's a game.
 
I think the question was well warranted. We have an imperitive to explain our modding philosophy.

At some point, perhaps way down the road here, and probably will never live long enough to do it, I'd like to make a Fantasy VS Sci-Fi version of C2C where you have to really pick one or another path and whatever you choose really crafts your potential tech tree into one of magic or one of technology. Unlikely ever to manifest but damn that'd be a good game huh?
 
The way I see it, we are both making a game and telling a story about humanity. For me, working on the space material has been an excellent way to develop my thoughts and knowledge about space travel and colonization.
 
The way I see it, we are both making a game and telling a story about humanity. For me, working on the space material has been an excellent way to develop my thoughts and knowledge about space travel and colonization.
I completely agree. Obviously, we must admit we WILL be wrong because we know there are a lot of unexplained factors, one of which is exactly the question brought up here and at some point in the actual future, it WILL become a proven known reality or completely disproven. However, I think we've done well to keep our proposed 'truth' being as wide a range of potential still, going unanswered all the way through. We leave these big questions still a matter of great conjecture.
 
I suppose but where do we draw the line? Does that mean the Christians should have the ability to literally summon God to destroy cities Sodom and Gomorrah style? Should the Jews have an Ark of the Covenant unit that melts enemy faces off and destroys their city walls? Should Hellenism have the Olympians punish your adversaries and give you favors? If one religion has a supernatural unit or ability then they all must otherwise that would be admitting that Voodoo is the one true religion in this mod.


I don't believe Christians were around to "summon God" and destroy Sodom and Gomorrah... That is a part of the collection of tales called the Torah, which describe a period in time that archaeologists have later called the Bronze Age Collapse - the fall of Eastern Mediterannean civilization.
And the Ark melted faces in a Hollywood movie, not in any original stories we know of...
And your enemies were about as likely to receive favors from the Olympian gods, as you were, as they were notoriously fickle - and if one god aided one party, another often went to the other side. They are spiteful beings underlining a contemporary Greek worldview.

This is where we should draw the line. It's all stories with a moral core. The people surviving through the Bronze Age Collapse had no idea why it was happening, we hardly do today... Steven Spielberg created an iconic scene by melting a wax doll, showing us the desired fate of all Nazis (and as a symbolic counter to the endless amounts of people gassed and burnt in ovens during the Third Reich). And the Hellene stories arise from the ashes of the Bronze Age Collapse - fickle gods indeed.

A dog dressed up and trained to kill people, can easily be called a "hell hound".

All quite logical.

The divine isn't about one truth, but about people trying to make sense of a world that seems crazy.
 
The divine isn't about one truth, but about people trying to make sense of a world that seems crazy.
One does not rule out the other. And those people were certainly looking for the truth, they didn't intentionally go for bad explanations.

And your enemies were about as likely to receive favors from the Olympian gods, as you were, as they were notoriously fickle
You couldn't get them reliably on your side, but you could certainly set them against you. And then they were no longer fickle. Just ask Odysseus.
 
The notion of an absolute truth, is a relatively recent one, made by the entrance of 19th century natural science on the field of thought. There appeared to be things objectively explainable and thus the question became whether our origin stories could also be objective. Atheism has shipped the story of religion being about an absolute truth, because it is the one sure way to bring it down and show it to be wrong. But our predecessors didn't spend much time on such ideas, religion isn't and never was about objective truths, but about understanding yourself and the world around you.

As explanations go, I find religious stories to be amongst the greatest that humankind has ever created.
 
The notion of an absolute truth, is a relatively recent one, made by the entrance of 19th century natural science on the field of thought. There appeared to be things objectively explainable and thus the question became whether our origin stories could also be objective. Atheism has shipped the story of religion being about an absolute truth, because it is the one sure way to bring it down and show it to be wrong. But our predecessors didn't spend much time on such ideas, religion isn't and never was about objective truths, but about understanding yourself and the world around you.
This is a huge claim. I'm not saying no religion has ever been like this as many are, but tons of religion for thousand of years were very heavy-handed about the objective truth. Basically any god-king is going to assert the objective truth of the land. The caste system of India wasn't optional depending on personal feelings. Aztecs were not making massive human sacrifices to understand themselves. Any place and time without religious freedom, which there are many, has a state enforced objective truth.
 
Finding out what is true and what are workable solutions to problems is the domain of science. Ethics, morals and what to do with your life is the domain of religion. Both subjects shouldn't trespass on each other's domains, or trouble will ensue.
 
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