VS and the religious element

That's kind of what we're discussing.

Yeah, but that's my point - you're choosing a forum about video games to do it.

Time. Place.

This is neither of those things.

Perhaps we'd be better discussing which weapon to nerf next? Which one is your favorite?

You're misusing the stat in that case.

Sure, 51% believe in god and/or spirituality. 41% are atheist.

But Compared to an astounding 94% (really?? wow. ugh) general public who believe in god or higher power, and only 4% atheist

(*unaccounted remaining % refused to answer or replied "I don't know").

Which would refute what you were replying to (that scientists would be more likely to form an alien cult) using it as an affirmation.

In a thread about the religious element in VS?

That'd be as out of place in this thread as an in depth stoned-studentesque discussion about why we're all here and if god's real, eh? ;P

You're totally right. Go start a thread about 'nerf [insert your favorite weapon here]'. In the meanwhile, I'll be here discussing something that has no relevance to that.

That's just confirmation bias - none of the other humans besides the science personnel had ready access to the artefacts. Who's to say if they were on display in the local civic centre for any Auraxian to see that they wouldn't have become religious too.

Ever consider the Vanu artefacts are controlling the VS?

Right, by derailing a thread about something totally unrelated to what you're talking about. Kay, gotcha.

'More likely to' would be misleading. Unless, however, such a cult was in line with the beliefs and intentions of the scientists, that is. Or, as whatupwitdat said, more in line with the intentions of the aliens that left the artifacts that the scientists are studying.

You may be interested on reading about the real Henry Briggs. You may find it irrelevant, except that logarithms have an extrinsic relation to much of western mysticism. Or maybe not. The relationship may not be intentional.

Ah, but please tell me why the Big Bang happened.

I have no doubt that it did happen, but I don't think that it did happen precludes the possibility of a deity in the least. Maybe a giant cosmic space bunny simple pressed the "Big Red Bang" button?

The VS religion was invented by Tom Cruise as a way to avoid taxes. It was only after filling out all the proper tax documentation and government forms successfully that anyone had any evidence he might actually have divine powers.

Kinda. We humans have reached a point of technology and reasoning that the gap were something is magic or science is way smaller then it has been in the past (like when Clark wrote this). However should something like say Element Zero from Mass Effect be introduced rapidly, like say by alien contact, you better believe that the average person will see them moving things with their minds and think that "****, that blue alien babe has got some weird magic **** going on"... at least for a while. The quote says sufficiently advanced technology which means it needs to be so far from our understanding as to how the universe works that we can't comprehend it. And if anything is going to hae that effect it would be aliens.

I believe it was made a religion to help control the people. I doubt as many people would have defected to Vanu if all they said was "Yeah, We just want to be able to research this technology..".

I'm thinking that their implants and technology are influencing their thoughts. Some sinister ancient Vanu indoctrination or conditioning through their tech. The original discoverer could've killed himself in hopes to stop this conversion from spreading.

Scary stuff!

And again, We don't have any official lore (Or at least I can't find any) that says one of the Vanu Leaders commited suicide due to vanu tech having an adverse effect on him..

Oh, really? For some reason I thought that was the case. Either way, I still like to think the ancient Vanu are trying to get into our heads...

The article used to appear on the official UK PS2 site, but I think since then the UK/EU sites have been absorbed into the US PS2 site so the article no longer exists.

However an archived copy of the article can be found here. It reads, in part:

So what happens is that Briggs finds a small alien statue in Pluto's moon belt. Later on Auraxis he finds a second small alien statue, except this time he also hears the voices of the Vanu speaking to him.

10 years after finding the second statue, Briggs kills himself.

Ahah! ****** please face*