VS and the religious element

Or it's because NS are a bunch of corporate money-grubbing scum and milk the other factions for all that they're worth. Support your faction and reject all NS gear.

I imagine that TR weapons are very reliable, having gone through several hundred years of stagnation and tweaking the same design over and over again. NC weapons, on the other hand, are cheap crappy lowest bidder trash and jam a lot, but every single soldier has signed an NDA and isn't allowed to say when they jam (or even that this happens in the first place) - this extends to their helmet cameras, so the "lag spikes" you see in-game are just instances when the camera automatically shuts off to censor the feed. VS weapons - they just require more batteries. More batteries make everything better.

And how does that break down between the various disciplines? From what I've heard, biology has significantly more atheism than the other sciences.

For reference, I follow Vanu out of devotion for batteries.

Just like the rest of us, by now the VS probably don't even remember why they fight.
The fact that scientists converted(And that one of their top men kicked the bucket upon contact with the Vanu artifact) means you are probably.. Mind controlled to some degree. Because it's as you point, irrational otherwise.
The facts that the VS appear to be somewhat distanced(Notice their voice macros) and lately probably altered to the point of sounding like the Zealot voice pack, are there too. Docile, then crazed. And you know, "Zealot" being used is quite an interesting choice. I think you guys(VS) got it worst than TR or NC when it comes to worst case scenarios of what you are. *Hug* I suppose your spandex and cool looks come with indoctrination by some God-Brain and before you know it, it's PROBING TIME.

Also what if the Vanu aren't dead, but probably like the Chaos Gods of WH40K since you brought it up? And we're all just fueling them with our carnage. It would make sense that they were malevolent, with the kind of tech they left us(Tanks, ESFs); They sure aren't lawn mowers, they're made for war. Yes, the VS altered them but I doubt the Vanu only produced Hover Boards and candy canes. On the other hand perhaps the Vanu are long gone and what lore SOE came up with is all there is to PS2... Personally I prefer the versions I read here, including mine, to that heap of SOE nonsense.

Now, can we fight more until we all become Chaos just in case I'm right? We have an Earth to conquer and Khorne hungers for skulls and blood! I am tired of being a discount Space Marine, getting my head blasted by glowing stuff.

Today, millions of people go to religious buildings to prey to gods. These are otherwise normal, educated, rational, intelligent people, who know about the world, physics, who work, and apply logic and reasoning in every other aspect of their life...

...apart from their totally unproven, un-supportable, un-measurable, un-investigateable god. For whom they throw all logic and reasoning out the window and believe in because they have 'faith'. People who actaully belive man is made is gods image as opposed to god being made in mans image. Worse, there are otherwise perfectly normal people who actually believe the world is just over 2000 years old because it says so it a religious book.

Why might it be different in the future?

Personally I ignore the religious/cult stuff. I play a Vanu because I don't like the ultra right wing fascist TR and the mega right wing capitalists with pet jar-heads NC.

I could not disagree more.

You are right that everything we experience is subjective. What I see as Red might look like Green to you. We will never know. What matters is we both agree it's called Red and which things are Red and which aren’t.

This is how we are able to work together as any form of collective as opposed to all being utterly isolated.

I call this 'World Views'. We all have a World View. They are all completely individual to us. How I see the colour Red is independent to me. My eyes may be less colour receptive then yours. So we see the world differently.

In order to work collectively we need to have a 'Shared World View'. These are things that we can all agree on. IE, What shape a square is. Which way is up. What hot and cold are. What day of the week it is. These are all in our Shared World View.

So how does something get into it? The answer is measurement. And science is the crucible in which we measure everything. And in order for something to be in that Shared World View I need to measure it and understand it's properties. Then, you need to measure it independently and agree on those properties. In fact, anyone needs to be able to measure it and get the same properties. In other words, when we all (or the vast majority) agree on what Red is (with measurable methods, not just making it up and agreeing to agree) then Red goes into that Shared World View.

'Faith' is a brilliant tool. It allows you to claim something is real without needing to measure it. Furthermore, you can use it to challenge anyone who tries to undermine it with logic and reason "Where is your faith!" A fantastic tool used by the clever and controlling to control the foolish for millennia.

Gods need faith, because they are not measurable. They will never exist in the Shared World View until they can be measured and classified by anyone, no matter how many people 'believe', no matter how many religious buildings you build, no matter how many people you kill as heretics.

It is possible that may happen in the future. Science is also different to faith in that it is fully ready to say "Oh look, we are wrong about X. We need to change our ideas". Science evolves through measurements. Theories are created and tested.

Don't confuse Science with Faith.


EDIT: slighty less ranty

The primary issue with this entire issue is that, people are arguing how likely it is that the Vanu would converge from a bunch of scientists to become a religious movement that worship the Vanu as gods and who's darkside is "Join us or die."

That's to bad. You might as well ask how the TR's leadership somehow figured it would be an AWESOME PR move to maintain complete lock-down on the colony on Auraxis despite the conditions that made that a needed and justified move - the period when they were crammed into the few spaceships left functioning before they landed on this hell-hole of a planet - ending when they landed, and STILL KEEP IT GOING FOR HUNDRED OF YEARS ONWARDS.

Remember, it's been a few hundred years since planetfall according to the calender in the lore, it's not like we all just got here, the fleet-conditions ended a long, long time ago, but a government that had everyone's best interest in mind somehow kept everything uber-tight for all this time? Yeah, sure. Because not one leader in the TR government after the first generation that landed saw fit to change this situation and ease up on the restrictions once everything was blatantly proven to be fine, the planet was fully explored, and so on?

Chalk that up to the darkside of the TR according to LORE. That's the important part.

Might ask why the NC's leadership managed to fool so many into thinking they had the people's best interest in mind in spite of their unethical business practices, the extremely thick and unhelpful bureaucratic conditions, their tendencies to hire and assist blatant terrorists and so on, if not for "lore said so" - pretty much any sane individual would look at what the corporate leadership of the NC DO, not just what they SAY, but nooo, the NC's grunts, being a mix of mercs, former pirates, corporate thugs and enforcers, traitors from the TR military and a good deal of naive idealists, all seem to think the NC's really all about "being free" rather than establish the NC as a new Oligarchic ruling class for Auraxis.

And to go full circle, that's the same way the VS rank-and-file don't seem to get that their leaders are effectively establishing a Theocratic ruling class complete with high-priests and acolytes and mere servants in the faith, and not just the "we want to evolve humanity with the help of Vanu tech" as they claim.

None of the 3 factions are "good guys" and this is supported in the lore. For all the positive aspects of the different factions, they have their down-sides, and they don't always make sense. In fact, NONE of the darksides of the 3 factions make much sense to me.

The VS' theocratic leanings, the NC's oligarchic corporate tendencies, the TR's blatant authoritarian ways, none of these make much sens in context of the situation.

The last time I made a response like this it was an NC player trying to state that the NC was the out-right "good guys" of the setting, because ::reasons:: and obvious biases. Same is true here.

Now I've responded to this 9-page debate about how the VS is the supposed good-guys and how their religious overtones don't make sense. Well, in closing, I'd like to point out that not everyone that claim to be or is proven to BE a scientist is always a rational and logical person. There are many creationist "scientists" out there and many genuine, educated and skilled scientists still profess a belief in God, even evolutionary scientists who have all the evidence before them, yet they still prefer to think that God made everything by creating the big bang, and then evolving life on the planet as evolution makes clear.

Scientists are people too and people can be flawed and foolish, in spite of a high intelligence and good reasoning skills. There is no solid basis for "the VS' scientists just would not do this!" They could, and according to lore, they did.

Deal with it.

Well, humans have always walked a fine line between a simple philosophy and religiosity.

It doesn't take much for some folks to step over the line or become so entrenched in their belief system that it eventually becomes dogma.

Human nature also likes to put things in order by and large, likes to establish hierarchies, and to anchor their belief by establishing a focus for that belief.

For instance, the term "Papa Vanu" could have gone from a tongue and cheek personalization of Vanu technology to a real representation, an incarnation of the belief in the value of that technology to human kind over time. A way of putting the "god approved" stamp on their ideology.

Sometimes that belief system becomes so entrenched that the believers may think those that do not subscribe to their way of thinking need to be "saved" from themselves. It is for this reason that many people have been condemned or military operations started.

I don't know whether the VS view themselves as on a "crusade" or a militaristic "*****" against the other factions, or if they're more insular and just defending themselves from the "ignorance" of the others.

If game-play is any measure of the lore, then I'd say it's the former.

Edit: Wow, j-i-h-a-d is censored!?

I joined VS for science. I got science. Unfortunately, I also got religion.
Heeeeeey, Higby.... How ya doin'?

So.... You gave me a OHK knife, eh?

NC should've been the religious faction

The lore is fine. I can prove it on real life.

Albert Einstein.
One of the greatest physicists in human history.
Did you know he believed in god?

No, not God - I mean god. Something that created the universe. Could be a conscious being or a measurable factor. He often said "god doesn't gamble", which means that there is no randomness in the universe. According to Einstein god is responsible for everything that happens, because somehow he/it created laws of physics which in turn created the universe.

He also believed in souls, but that's a different story.

Seriously?

Good thing you didn't go VS, you wouldn't fit at all.

Science is supreme and exists with or without human presence. It's not a human construct, we just observe it and try to understand it.

And please, PLEASE, do not ever compare religion and science again.

Wishful thinking IMO.

I don't understand how anyone can look at all known facts and think there's any such possibility TBQFH.

Bible belt

One of the founding members of the Vanu Sovereignty explicitly says that the Vanu aliens were not gods, just aliens with advanced technology. He says this to his TR private sister, someone who doesn't even agree with him.

Sigh... how can you even claim to be VS and not even know what science is?

You can find the simple definition of science here, reproduced below:

So science is knowledge... or an area of study... or a subject of study.
Can you have knowledge without people around being able to know?
Can you have an area or subject of study without people around studying it?

Science is entirely created by humans, for humans. Science does not exist outside of our heads at all. Those natural phenomenon that are out there would easily exist without human science.

I mean I don't know what's the point debating the topic of science with you when it is abundantly clear that you have no idea what the topic of debate means.

Little do you know.

The study of science would not exist without concious intelligent beings...

but the science is there, in action, with or without observation.

Physics worked long before we studied it.

The STUDY of physics requires an intelligent being to observe. PHYSICS ITSELF is immutable and exists regardless of observer

And Religion is about the origin of that conscious intelligent being, or some other unanswerable question. Only the most stoneheaded zealots still argue against evolution or other scientific theories, Religion at it's core concerns itself solely with matters that are by their nature unprovable. However, just because something isn't measurable or unprovable doesn't mean it has no value or shouldn't be considered, because there are things to support Religion out there, they simply can't be studied or examined. Feelings, Experiences, Coincidences, and the like are so deeply personal that they can't be quantified but still drive people to make decisions.

Just yesterday driving home there was an interesting NPR segment on color and subjectivity. If you're interested in these things (and it sounds like you are) you can listen to it here. Or maybe you heard the same segment which is what inspired your post.

If you listen to that radio segment, you'll see why simple "measurement" does not make color. In other words we can't say that the color Red is light with x wavelength. The color Red does not exist outside of our own individual minds.

I would argue that your concept of a "Shared World View" does not exist in as concrete a form as you believe it does, weakening your argument.

I would further propose the religious deities can be measured (at least with as much certainty as anything can be measured). A religious person would simply ask you to look at everything around you, the trees, the stars, and that the power to create those things would at least be a minimal measurement of the power of whatever deity they've picked. Measure it in joules, calories, mass, whatever. You may not know the upper limit, but doesn't that frequently happen in science as well?

If your position is that religion is immutable and does not change, then I feel that you are quite incorrect. Religion is a human creation (as is science) so it changes when humans feel that it ought to be changed. Just take a look at Catholicism today, with that new Pope running around who has a very different view on economics and homosexuality. Or the most recent militant interpretations of Islam. Human thought on religion and spirituality evolves just as it does with science.

Now you're getting it. Physics exists whether we are around to observe it or not. But only through human observation can we create science. Physics itself is not and cannot be science.

This is why science is not supreme. Science is a simple human endeavor to understand the world around us. If humans were to go extinct tomorrow, science would disappear in a flash. Science is no more enduring than any other human creation, including religion. Science cannot exist without humanity.

Unless as Fellgnome pointed out, Labrador Retrievers start working in labs.

And he's only one person in a host of people who were researching the Vanu alongside him. If one person alone is to speak for a full faction regardless of whatever else has happened, then what's to stop a TR or NC player from finding a benevolent TR/NC and a TR/NC speaking ill of the VS.

Should I take the 100% positive review of the TR as gospel as well as the 100% bad about the NC/VS and assume then that the TR are a bunch of faultless "good guys" and the NC/VS are worthless "bad guys" and there is nothing in between?

If you want to ignore what little lore we have and assume on pure faith that VS are purely a bunch of scientists who want freedom to research the Vanu tech they have and nothing more, no religious overtones at all, then your closer to the VS in-universe than you think.

As far as I'm concerned that would be boring as well. A faction that is flawless and purely good and has nothing but perfect justification for everything they do is... just not fun to fight for. My opinion aside, I can say, based on examining all the lore, that luckily this is not the case, making it easy for me to enjoy myself when I play VS, just like I enjoy playing TR, the faction that according to some, is purely bad and has no redeemable factors.