How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

You're insulting my intelligence assuming I don't know that (particularly after I've pointed that out several times) but I'm assuming that wasn't your intent. In any case, I think this argument is running in circles of "It doesn't work" "yes it does" by now, so I'm just letting it be now. I've made my point as well as I'm going to make.

I understand what you’re trying to say, and I definitely know the stories you’re talking about.

The thing is, it’s just not correct to say something would be able to exist outside science. If it exists, it’s covered by science. There’s simply no way around that fact, no matter how much writers would like it to be otherwise.

In a world with magic, you could do science on that magic. Anything else is an objectively incorrect statement. If the writer chooses not to explore their magic system in that way that’s something different, of course.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 12th 2018 at 6:30:16 AM

The Light Novel Overlord actually had the Villain Protagonist propose a rather ghastly experiment concerning faith-based magic to a captive faith-based magic user. He intended to erase the man's memory and replace the name of the god he worshipped with the name of a different god to see how that would affect the power of his spells.

And speaking of faith experiments...I recall there was a study funded by the Templeton Foundation that attempted to confirm that prayer actually helped people recover from illnesses. When the results didn't conform to their beliefs (indeed prayer seemed to make people feel worse), they downplayed and rejected them.

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer

Edited by M84 on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:33:17 PM

As a Catholic...

Why we always screw it? Like, we really haven't do anything good noteworthy in the last centuries.

We have a Religion thread for this. That is well beyond the scope of this thread.

I mean, it hit close. We aren't good even for giving "feel good" feelings which is literally our only secular use.

You mentioned it, expect answers.

I strongly disagree with that. Arguably, I'd say the Catholic church has been better in the past century than it was the previous millennia.

But the PORTRAYAL of the Catholic Church is at its most sinister.

This actually brings up a topic that was occurring me these days. That the classic Catholic Badass Preacher type of character and demon hunter seems to be on more thin ice these days given A) greater sympathy for magical creatures B) a lot more disdain for the Catholic Church (and other organized religions). The bible-quoting, Latin-spewing archetype seems more poised to be either played for laughs or played as a villain.

But when the demon hunter is secular is suddenly better.

I guess that is because writers tens to associate monsters with minorities and thus monster hunters come off more as racist hate group members...

...which is why I'm becoming more cynical of "good lonely monster" stories.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:07:35 AM

My point when bringing up that study wasn't "Religion is bad" and certainly not "Catholics are bad". Heck, I didn't even bring up the Catholic Church directly.

My point was that it is indeed possible to run experiments on faith and its effects on the world. Because it's been done, even if it was rejected because the people performing the study had an agenda in mind and wanted results that conformed to their beliefs.

It actually seems like a really bad idea for magic users to just accept that they will never be able to understand certain things about magic. They should at least keep trying to learn more about how it works. Otherwise that could lead to stagnation. And in that case...no wonder they find themselves eventually eclipsed by technology.

Edited by M84 on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:18:25 PM

Mind you, this is why the Catholic Church hires atheists to test their miracles.

It's required for nonbelievers as well as believers alike to determine there is no scientific reason for a miracle to have occurred in order to get it declared miraculous.

They don't want to look like fools.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2000/04/20/miracles-under-the-microscope

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 12th 2018 at 7:20:10 AM

I did once play a D&D character who was an uber-religious pseudo-catholic (a worshiper of Athena, actually, but in a deliberately Hi Jacked By Jesus way) ranger. While the character was legitimately badass and moral a major source comedy came from his Church Militant nature being out of place in some situations. Essentially, he assumed everything he had to fight was some sort of supernatural evil or associated with one. For example, when he encountered a slime he declared "Heretic gelatin! In the name of Athena I shall smite you!"

With Van Hellsing Hate Crimes, it depends on how you "evil" you make "monsters" and the church's relationship with them. Presumably the existence of "good" vampires for example would make the church less aggressive toward them, especially if it was well-known. It also depends upon how much of a connection they have to demonic forces and the like.

What I do in my own setting is that vampires are caused by a supernatural disease that is demonic in origins. A person who becomes infected "dies" but has their body inhabited by something else. A vampire isn't the same being as the person killed to create them, though they aren't necessarily evil themselves (they usually are, but not always). Thus the Crystal Dragon Jesus religion more or less wants vampirism to become extinct (because the method by which vampires reproduce is murder), but does not want to kill all vampires per se (since not all vampires are evil and they know this).

I confess, speaking as a religious person, it's troubling so many characters in supernatural or urban fantasy have disdain for religion or none whatsoever.

But I try not to let it bug me.

It's better to have a good atheist character like Geralt than it is to have someone like the Imperium of Mankind representing all the worst in religion.

The best/worst thing of the IOM is that you can perfectly argue that their current state is slightly more moral than their secular version (less resources to kill xenos).

In fact. I absolutely loathe how fans ignore the horror of the Great Crusade. With all the rampant xenocide and religiocide.

That's why I'd call it the White Male Nerd Crusade as a insult. Because unsurprisingly, Great Crusade fanboys belong to those groups.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:28:15 AM

Yeah, I agree.

A lot of people talk about how better the Imperium was than the present day. I was like, "It's Stalin vs. the Inquisition. Except Stalin is going to win and absolutely win completely with a subsequent eternal rule unless he's stopped."

I think "The Last Priest" was a great story illustrating there was nothing heroic about the God Emperor's crusade.

Even if he WAS Jesus and buddha, he's Space Stalin now.

I'd say the most malevolent depiction of religion in 40K are arguably the Orks. Their WAAAGHS are after all partly a bloody genocidal crusade in the name of Gork and Mork. The Orks' current leader Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is considered the Prophet of Gork and Mork, and many Orks believe he will lead them on Ragnarork, the final WAAAGH that will spill the blood of everything non-Orky in the galaxy in the name of Gork and Mork.

Edited by M84 on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:30:15 PM

Not Chaos? I mean, really?

If I may be incredibly blunt, this personally sounds like a religious equivalent of "I confess, speaking as a white person, it's troubling there are so many more black characters in fiction now." But of course, even in this day and age, the nonreligious are expected to bow to the whims of religious people, so it's not like this mciro-screed of mine is gonna make any difference.

The Catholic Church tends to be a interesting centerpiece for Urban Fantasy (or otherwise fantasy) stories, because they're one of the few (if not the only one) organizations powerful and old enough to truly participate in a masquerade meaningfully. They can be very well hiding all manner of strange and bizarre stuff in some warehouses, they may employ demon hunters (in fact the Catholic Church is probably the best bet as to how demon hunters would realistically maintain themselves finacially). But they're often a vaguely sinister organization with foreboding goals when they're not downright corrupt or completely insane fanatics.

So it's a curious case where realistically (well as much as you can use that word in a fantasy setting) they should be at the forefront of this whole demon hunting business but they're often cast in a more incompetent or sinister light. Besides the usual sins of the Catholic Church, I also feel they're an easy boogeyman to create, particularly to the US (where most of this media comes from) and its long history of Anti-Catholicism (as a cascade effect of Anti-Irish prejudice).

You'd expect a organization literally built to combat the Devil to be more proactive and effective in a world where they're running out and about, but surprisingly not.

@Protagonist: That reminds me, my next DND character was vaguely based on a Girolamo Savonarola type. The DM created a very morally grim setting of a colonized country where the whole clergy was corrupt to the bone and working for the invaders. He suggested I make a cleric so I had the idea of making him "the last honest preacher" of that place but allá Savonarola he's a Holier Than Thou fanatic hellbound on "cleansing the land of its sin". I was entertained by the dichotomy you don't see too often of "corrupt clergy" vs "fanatic clergy".

I think the point he was trying to make was more that it's a little bothersome that stories relying on religious elements (like angels, demons, Djinn e.t.c) feature so much open disdain or apathy towards them. Feels a little exploitative.

Edited by Gaon on Sep 12th 2018 at 7:54:27 AM

The Chaos Gods are the most malevolent deities. But the followers of Chaos don't quite have the same level of fanaticism — they are in it for themselves. Plenty of Chaos Marines don't have any particular loyalty to the Dark Gods even if they fight under their banner. Fabius Bile for one doesn't consider them gods at all.

The Ork WAAAGH, when portrayed seriously, is perhaps the most evocative of real life crusades.

Edited by M84 on Sep 12th 2018 at 10:55:53 PM

I wonder if stuff as Corrupt Evil Journalists have something to do with people from fringe ideologies getting full "corrupt media!!".

There many cases, from Trump to the Gamer bigots that rant about everytime that a page does mention social issues (unless is "gamers suffer because capitalism" that can work sometimes).

Like. Media is assumed to be always corrupt, not just biased but actively malicious.

That's partly because corrupt and highly biased media is a thing in reality. Just look at British tabloids. Heck, before there were more laws and regulations in place, biased journalism was a lot more commonplace. The problem is assuming that all media is corrupt and biased. To say nothing of the fact that a lot of people define biased media as "media that tells me things I don't agree with."

Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2018 at 12:07:03 AM

Is a nuanced thing. Is just like Corrupt Politician, they absolutely exist, but assuming that all of them are corrupt is immature and dangerous.

When fiction writers want a corrupt politician, journalist, religious figure, etc. they tend to base them on real life examples of such scumbags.

A problem arises when nearly all of the fiction out there relies on this sort of character trope. It bleeds into the public consciousness and helps reinforce the notion that politicians, as a rule, are corrupt.

We could just say that I like it when my protagonists are religious and it's no reflection on you or your beliefs or the authors. You know, versus appropriating racial dynamics for a completely different struggle.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 12th 2018 at 9:32:45 AM

The point was that for most of history depictions of religious icons were positive and the nonreligious were either treated with contempt or nonexistent.

The increasing number of stories that have negative depictions of such beings is fairly recent when looking at human history.

And as Scifi Slasher already pointed out, the majority of people are still religious and atheists are by and large a minority that are not respected.

Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2018 at 12:41:08 AM