Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Questions or discussions about Almea or Verduria-- also the Incatena. Also good for postings in Almean languages.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Rodlox »

Pthug wrote:
Rodlox wrote:thought the conversation was about how Christianity was transmitted to Almea -- in which case, yes, the Greeks are important.
How it was transmitted and what happened to it when it got there. The Greeks are obviously important, and are doubtless highly venerated, but my point was that Almean knowledge of humanity did not die with them. To believers, this is not only knowledge of humanity, but communion with *living human beings*.
...which, by now, surely ranks humans with angels in the "beings you don't normally encounter" class.
the Rome comment was more aimed at the fact that it doesn't matter if Rome or St. Petersburg or Constantinople or Cairo consider Almean Christianity to be heretical or not.
If you are a Christian, it matters to God.[/quote]

God seems to have no problem with numerous Churches who are heretical from the traditional Catholic* perspective --
* Nestorian Churches
* Coptic Churches
* Eastern Churches
* Mormon Church
* various Protestant Churches.

* = to pick a denomination at random.

besides, its a moot point - after His infancy, Jesus didn't have one either.
But he *had to have it cut off*. Imagine if the Jews had nose tentacles, and the covenant of Abraham was that these aliens had to cut the nose tentacles off. You do not have nose tentacles. Nobody you know has nose tentacles. That these people *had* nose tentacles to cut off in the first place makes them peculiar.[/quote]

the Lord in His mercy. He does what He does.

heck, Jesus was a Jew, and He preached to Jews and Samaritans - and His Message was spread to those funny-looking non-Semitic peoples.
And when I said iconography, I obviously did not mean iconography of Christ's hot cut cock. I meant the fact that he looks like a human, not a uesti.
one could further argue that Jesus looked like a Jew, not like a Swede or a San tribesman. that does not limit His Work.
There are differences -- different number of toes, as I recall, and obviously subtle facial structure differences too. Unlike his dick, Christ's toes and face make an appearance frequently, particularly in crucifixion scenes.
unlike Cleopatra 7th or Helen of Troy, the shape of Jesus' nose does not matter to salvation theology - nor does the count of his toes.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Pthagnar »

* it doesn't matter if YOU seldom encounter angels, or Mary or whoever. The *Church* is in continual contact with them.

* From the Catholic perspective God has lots of problems with those churches. It varies from case to case -- in the case of Mormons not even their baptisms are valid. In the past few centuries, the Church has been less, uh, militant in stating this fact, but it remains the case.

* Yes, I do not doubt that Christ could look funny and still be fine -- somehow Christ was appealing to Chinese and Africans and it can't *all* have been due to the fact that Christians looked rich and powerful. He was still a man like them, though. In order to be *sure* that Christ's salvation carried over to the uesti, theologians would need to construct a stronger reassurance than "well he looked about the same" -- see above for why.

* I did not claim that the toes did or did not matter for salvation. My question was an artistic one.

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Rodlox »

Pthug wrote:* From the Catholic perspective God has lots of problems with those churches. It varies from case to case -- in the case of Mormons not even their baptisms are valid. In the past few centuries, the Church has been less, uh, militant in stating this fact, but it remains the case.
and yet none of the heretic Churches - Rome included - have been destroyed by The Almighty.
* Yes, I do not doubt that Christ could look funny and still be fine -- somehow Christ was appealing to Chinese and Africans and it can't *all* have been due to the fact that Christians looked rich and powerful. He was still a man like them, though. In order to be *sure* that Christ's salvation carried over to the uesti, theologians would need to construct a stronger reassurance than "well he looked about the same" -- see above for why.
I doubt appearances matter - more like "uesti have souls"...as that does not matter one whit about toe count or facial features.

you're the only one obsessing about their appearance.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Pthagnar »

Rodlox wrote:and yet none of the heretic Churches - Rome included - have been destroyed by The Almighty.
This is because God is pretend and Christianity is wrong. I know this because Richard Dawkins knows this.
you're the only one obsessing about their appearance.
Hm, I have here a letter from you to your mother, saying you "wish her well". Do you have no shame, man? Incest is disgusting.

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by zompist »

Pthug wrote:If you give this attitude up and approach it like a Christian, then the fact that the Eretaldian Christians are beyond the reach of Rome becomes of
less importance than the fact that they are *not* beyond the reach of Christ. This is how the uesti remain in contact with humanity. What Christ
the human thinks is of more importance than what the human Elenicoi thought -- Christ is supposed to be the paradigm to which Christians are
supposed to compare themselves, the figure of whom the priest is the vicar. If one is to have such an intimate relationship with Christ, then
either his [literal] alienness is something to be a) wrestled with or b) repressed. How often is he portrayed as *looking* human, for instance?
Don't uesti lack foreskins? What is to be made of *that*?
I understand the Christian point of view— I put in the story many years ago, when I was a believer. I didn't see any real theological problem, nor have any Christians, to my knowledge, been troubled by the issue. As Lewis put it, if Christianity is true then God must be a cosmic God— he isn't blindsided or discomfited by the existence of alien species, he's their God too.

The uesti were obviously people much like those back home— thus, they were rational animals, but fallen. As Christians, the Elenicoi would conclude that God would do something to save them. This could happen several ways:

1) The redemption of Christ could apply to them. It's basically God's rule that incarnating himself as a human and dying would atone for men's sin. If God wants to say it atoned for other species' sin too, who's gonna gainsay him?
2) The Almeans might be redeemed by another act of atonement. Perhaps this took place earlier, perhaps it was to come. Almeans would be redeemed by God's local action, of which Christ's action on earth would be an example and a promise.
3) Or they're redeemed by something else entirely; perhaps the avatar-n-death thing wasn't the only card up God's sleeve.

As a matter of Almean history, the Elenicoi acted as if (1) was the case. They felt that the Miracle of the Translation, and other miracles accompanying their work, fully justified their mission work.

But recall that Eleďát is more or less an alliance of three strands. The position of the Arašei was more like (2) or even (3), and over in Barakhún they don't spend a whole lot of time dealing with Iesu.

Theologically, the big issue wasn't the species issue, but whether the Arašei religion was God's work on Almea, or a devilish trick. That was the big conflict for the Elenicoi, and it was only the intervention of an iliu that tipped the scales toward cooperation.

As for appearance, terrestrial humans and uesti are close enough that the natural thing was to ignore the differences. If you read Herodotus, or medieval legends of the antipodes, Europeans pretty much expected far-off peoples to be a lot funnier-looking than the uesti. And once the Elenicoi died off, of course, all iconography used Almean standards. Iesu (and the Elenicoi) were depicted as if they were Avélans (exactly as medieval Europeans depicted Jesus as a European).

What to do about the other species on Almea was less clear-cut. Eleďát accepts the Arašei belief that the iliu are unfallen, and so the question doesn't come up there. In theory the other races need salvation too, but in practice there is either no opportunity to preach (e.g. to the ktuvoks), or no interest on the other species' part (e.g. the elcari).

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Rodlox »

Pthug wrote:
you're the only one obsessing about their appearance.
Hm, I have here a letter from you to your mother, saying you "wish her well". Do you have no shame, man? Incest is disgusting.
I never wrote nor contemplated writing such a letter. it bodes ill for your argument that you are reduced to fabrications and lies.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Pthagnar »

Rodlox wrote:[I never wrote nor contemplated writing such a letter. it bodes ill for your argument that you are reduced to fabrications and lies.
You mean you have never written to your mother and wished her well? SHAME! SHAME!

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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Pthug wrote:
Rodlox wrote:[I never wrote nor contemplated writing such a letter. it bodes ill for your argument that you are reduced to fabrications and lies.
You mean you have never written to your mother and wished her well? SHAME! SHAME!
shame on you - you can't have it both ways.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by su_liam »

Pthug wrote:In order to be *sure* that Christ's salvation carried over to the uesti, theologians would need to construct a stronger reassurance than "well he looked about the same" -- see above for why.
"God clearly brought us pilgrims here to this world for a reason. If it wasn't to bring these heathens to God, then what was it?"

There may have been some controversy over whether the people of Almea were proper subjects for Christ's salvation among the Greeks. Some of them may have doubted whether uesti had souls. That debate is probably about as important in the present as the debate between Paul and Peter over whether gentiles should convert to judaism and get circumcised before they can be Saved. The debate has ended. Those uesti who became Christians are as secure in their hearts that they have souls and that Jesus is their Savior as many christian on Earth. If that wasn't the case they'd have a different religion.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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i.e. still important to theologians, and lying dormant in ideology waiting to come back whenever the time is ripe for the right heresy. you can't kill an idea!

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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Pthug wrote:i.e. still important to theologians, and lying dormant in ideology waiting to come back whenever the time is ripe for the right heresy. you can't kill an idea!
I could see it having some attraction to Earth-humans on Almea. How many of those are there? I don't see the idea as having any attraction to uesti who would choose to be christian. Those who don't believe that Jesus Christ is savior to the uesti wouldn't be christian or Eled'At. The one heresy that might develop from that idea and really take root would be someone who claimed to be the uesti incarnation of Eled' bringing the teachings that God intended for Almea. God would smite that one mightily, though, instantly making Its divine disapproval clear even unto the infidels...
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Salmoneus »

I think the important issue is not whether uesti and humans look the same, but whether they are both descended from Adam. Presumably the useti must be descended from Adam for the resurrection to have any salvific value for them, at least beyond the power of example (again, it would help if zompist spelled out their theory of atonement). So this suggets one of:
a) Eden is on earth and the uesti left at some point - at which point, I wonder? Which biblical figure founded them?
b) Eden is on Almea - that would be weird, since it's not mentioned in the bible, unless the whole 'east of eden' thing is interdimensional travel
c) Eden is on a third world no longer accessible

The second or third would have interesting consequences - who are the uesti, in that account? And who are the iliu? The angels who married with the daughters of man would spring to mind, and the nephilim, as would the children of Eve, Zoe and Lillith, the three wives of Adam.

Hmm. Ktuvoks as the demon spirits of the one tenth of the nephilim? The iliu-ktuvok wars as the wars of the grigori and their imprisonment by michael? lots of ideas that would have occured to the elenicoi.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by zompist »

They could have created some mythology where the uesti descended from Adam, but this is trickier than it sounds. To an atheist it may seem that it's all made up; why not make up some more? But religions prefer to use preexisting material, or at least keep the new revelations consistent with the old. The Arašei already had an account of the creation of the Thinking Kinds, and there really wasn't any place to insert a digression to Earth.

Option (2) above is perfectly compatible with terrestrial doctrine. Much as some saints prayed to God "not as I think of you but as you know yourself to be", an Almean could accept the unknown redemption of Eleď, of which Christ's action on Oikumene was a symbol and a guarantee.

But it was easier just to modify doctrine a bit— and doctrine is a lot easier to change than unbelievers might think. To put it bluntly, it's already more or less magical thinking that a) sin is inherited from Adam; b) it's somehow erased by the incarnation and death of Christ. It doesn't really affect anything to change the rules of magic a bit, by adding that Christ's redemption was valid for other inherited fallennesses as well.

In part the idea of redemption is a spiritualization of the idea of debt. And this move is like saying "God dying wasn't merely sufficient to pay the debt— it was many times more than enough. Enough, in fact, to pay the similar debt incurred by other fallen beings."

It's really just one more step on a path the church had already taken. The OT God, though he's said to have created the world, is definitely the God of the Jews. He shares the ancient nomads' fascination with genealogy— the Jews inherited their special relationship with God, the heirs of David their kingship, the Levites their priesthood. All this was thrown out by Christianity once the Judaizers were defeated. Applying original sin to Adam, though it nodded to OT tradition, was a way of saying sin applied to everybody.

That is, back in AD 100, "sons of Adam" and "sinners" were coreferent. Now another intelligent species is discovered, and is obviously fallen. Do we preserve the "sons of Adam" bit, or the "everyone" bit? I think the Elenicoi took the obvious answer.

(I brought up the 16C debate over the Americas myself, but it's worth noting that many Spaniards had a strong incentive to find the Indians inhuman— it meant they could be enslaved. The Elenicoi, by contrast, had a strong incentive to find the Almeans human— it meant they had a divine purpose to save them. And for that matter, though other Spaniards had reasons to argue for the Indians, there was no one whose interests were served by arguing that the Almeans were not savable. Self-interest obviously doesn't explain all ideological movements, but it's a factor.)

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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su_liam wrote:
Pthug wrote:In order to be *sure* that Christ's salvation carried over to the uesti, theologians would need to construct a stronger reassurance than "well he looked about the same" -- see above for why.
There may have been some controversy over whether the people of Almea were proper subjects for Christ's salvation among the Greeks. Some of them may have doubted whether uesti had souls. That debate is probably about as important in the present as the debate between Paul and Peter over whether gentiles should convert to judaism and get circumcised before they can be Saved. The debate has ended.
Pthug wrote:i.e. still important to theologians, and lying dormant in ideology waiting to come back whenever the time is ripe for the right heresy. you can't kill an idea!
I think the only time that idea was revived, was the Passagians, and their version was that Christians had to restrict themselves to kosher food (even the Passagians didn't say "only Jews can be Christians")
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by su_liam »

As I understand it from reading the Almeapedia, the Eled'At aren't terribly interested in the Old Testament. Questions about the location of Eden just don't matter because the creation stories in Genesis just aren't that important to Almean christians. Seems like the Book of Eled' kind of took over for the Books of Earth. Christianity with Cuzeian theism substituted for Judaism. Adam and Eden are theologically insignificant issues.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by Shihali »

As I vaguely recall, the doctrine of original sin was still new and not firmly entrenched in AD 325; its greatest exponent, St. Augustine, wasn't born yet. At any rate, the last time I checked, two Catholic priests working as astronomers for the Vatican had spoken on different sides of the debate. One said that aliens may be sinless and not need salvation, and the other said he would be happy to baptize aliens if they wanted redemption. I take that as evidence that there is no official position on the topic and Christians are free to make up their own minds.

Besides, what are they going to do, dig up the graves of the Elenicoi and run DNA tests on them?
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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Rodlox wrote:I think the only time that idea was revived, was the Passagians, and their version was that Christians had to restrict themselves to kosher food (even the Passagians didn't say "only Jews can be Christians")
There are the Messianic Jews, I GUESS. And we are still talking about it now, so it is not *forgotten*.

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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Pthug wrote:
Rodlox wrote:and yet none of the heretic Churches - Rome included - have been destroyed by The Almighty.
This is because God is pretend and Christianity is wrong. I know this because Richard Dawkins knows this.
(meant to ask this sooner)

And what is Richard Dawkins' position on "cellar door" and Tolkien's secret vice ?
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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zompist: So the Eled'at doctrine of original sin is nothing like the one we all know and love. Awesome! Novelty is novelty. What then, if any, is their theory of salvation? Mind you:
Shihali wrote:As I vaguely recall, the doctrine of original sin was still new and not firmly entrenched in AD 325; its greatest exponent, St. Augustine, wasn't born yet.
This does not bode well for the early Christians' supposed reluctance to make innovative connections.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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rotting bones wrote:zompist: So the Eled'at doctrine of original sin is nothing like the one we all know and love.
Did you read any of the discussion? Again, to the early Christians saying someone was a son of Adam was to say that they were human. There were no non-sons of Adam. There was no population to which Christ's message didn't apply.

There's no actual problem here. If it makes you vicariously shiver for what you perceive as an outrage to Catholic theology, I suggest lying down on the couch till you feel better.

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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zompist wrote:Did you read any of the discussion? Again, to the early Christians saying someone was a son of Adam was to say that they were human. There were no non-sons of Adam. There was no population to which Christ's message didn't apply.
On Almea, where Christianity's universalistic streak was suitably exaggerated as a mode of adaptation to alien conditions, yes. (On Oikumene, I'm pretty sure humans were believed to have literally descended from a human male called Adam, a soul who couldn't have existed on two worlds at once, hence his children would have had to spread from one place to any others they might have come to inhabit. Weren't animals without question non-sons of Adam, even though some still believed that it may be possible to communicate with them? Who knows, things may have turned out differently if other species had sought to be baptized.)

I accept that. Once again, I assure you that I'm seriously interested in more juicy Eled'at theological complications like all those Jippirasti ones. If that still sounds sarcastic, I'm literally requesting a more expanded http://www.almeopedia.com/Ele%C4%8F%C3%A1t#Doctrine section. Just a request, and it doesn't necessarily have to involve this subject.

All I'm saying is, while it's possible to take it too far, there's no need to hold back on the innovation thing as much as all that. Look at the other stuff that was innovated by the same tradition on Oikumene.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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rotting bones wrote:All I'm saying is, while it's possible to take it too far, there's no need to hold back on the innovation thing as much as all that. Look at the other stuff that was innovated by the same tradition on Oikumene.
and all that, mind you, in a world under the baleful glare of Rome.

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

Post by su_liam »

Pthug wrote:
rotting bones wrote:All I'm saying is, while it's possible to take it too far, there's no need to hold back on the innovation thing as much as all that. Look at the other stuff that was innovated by the same tradition on Oikumene.
and all that, mind you, in a world under the baleful glare of Rome.
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These people got in a boat in Egypt and sailed to Almea. God's Will. Who's to say that other Children of Adam didn't do the same previously? It doesn't seem obvious to me that these people would be recognized as a different species. Sure they don't successfully reproduce. But, again, God's Will. It just doesn't seem impossible theologically or otherwise for the uesti to believe that they are related to the Elenicoi.

For my own part, it seems painfully unlikely that two species as similar as humans and uesti(or most of the other roughly human-shaped Thinking Kinds on Almea, possibly even including ktuvoks) could have evolved independently. An uesti with a 21st century Oikumene understanding of biology might be forced to admit that the best explanation for the similarity is that there is a real God and he clearly finds this form pleasing.
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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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rotting bones wrote:I accept that. Once again, I assure you that I'm seriously interested in more juicy Eled'at theological complications like all those Jippirasti ones. If that still sounds sarcastic, I'm literally requesting a more expanded http://www.almeopedia.com/Ele%C4%8F%C3%A1t#Doctrine section. Just a request, and it doesn't necessarily have to involve this subject.
OK, though I'm up to my elbows right now in morphosyntax, so it won't be right away. :)

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Re: Questions about Elenicoi and Oikumene

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zompist wrote:OK, though I'm up to my elbows right now in morphosyntax, so it won't be right away. :)
Thanks!
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