Should We Make Profiles For The Divine Comedy?

[CloverDragon03]

Assuming that any written word would come remotely close to the "real thing" is contradictory to the point of religion. It's called faith. You can't tier it because it's not fiction. When you put pen to paper a story of God interacting with fictional characters, you have removed autonomy from him. You have created an entity that is bound by an author. Do you really believe so little of the true Christian God?

Say it with me now,

M E D I A
L I T E R A C Y

If anything, I'd say the quickness to claim "media illiteracy" to anyone finding this potentially offensive is very, very reductive

You're also completely missing the point here. It's about, to quote a Commandment, taking God's name in vain. I don't think it's wrong at all for Christian users to find the idea of power scaling something so intentionally close to Him in nature offensive. And genuinely, the fact that you tried to spin that on me as "believing so little" of the God I believe in is the absolute most insulting part of this thread. Please do not do that again, and if you insist on doing so, please do not engage with me any further on this thread's subject matter

 

[SamanPatou]

I think the fact that this needs to be done and that the actual Powers and Stats section does nothing to suggest a fictional interpretation is very telling, as opposed to other "God" profiles that are very clearly fictional even in their justifications and such

This is your mistake here, because Dante wasn't a profet or a messiah, and never had the intention to write a religious text, so everything contained in the profile is indeed a fictional interpretation written with the exact intention of being such.

 

[CloverDragon03]

This is your mistake here, because Dante wasn't a profet or a messiah, and never had the intention to write a religious text, so everything contained in the profile is indeed a fictional interpretation written with the exact intention of being such.

And my point is that this is far too close to the real deal to be valid to index imo, compared to other "God" characters we index

 

[SamanPatou]

You're also completely missing the point here. It's about, to quote a Commandment, taking God's name in vain. I don't think it's wrong at all for Christian users to find the idea of power scaling something so intentionally close to Him in nature offensive. And genuinely, the fact that you tried to spin that on me as "believing so little" of the God I believe in is the absolute most insulting part of this thread. Please do not do that again, and if you insist on doing so, please do not engage with me any further on this thread's subject matter

We have literally all sorts of blasphemy and mockery of christianity as a whole on the site tbh, and the Divine Comedy is suddenly the problem here?

 

[KingTempest]

If one of the issues is that users may mistakenly take it as a profile for actual Christian God, then what we can do is add further clarifications and information to make it clear that this is not the case.

The sandbox's name is called "The One" so that's a choice, or just "God (Divine Comedy)"

 

[SamanPatou]

And my point is that this is far too close to the real deal to be valid to index imo, compared to other "God" characters we index

"Real deal" isn't even a thing as, without getting too political, there are a million different interpretation of God in real life, both among the three main abramitic religions and even within them and all their different currents, which we can count in the hundreds even simply within christianity, so claiming that there's a "real deal" is already extremely wrong. Then you go out to any form of religion based on gods, energies, spirits of nature, spirits of ancestors etc.. and see how the "real deal" of the universe is ultimately so varied in the greater perspective of mankind as a whole.
Divine Comedy God is also based on a representation of god from 700 years ago with many of its points not even been acknoledged by the current Roman Catholic Church, tbh, and even just reading a bit of it already tells you how different it is from what is generally taught.

 

[KingTempest]

"Real deal" isn't even a thing as, without getting too political, there are a million different interpretation of God in real life, both among the three main abramitic religions and even within them and all their different currents, which we can count in the hundreds even simply within christianity, so claiming that there's a "real deal" is already extremely wrong. Then you go out to any form of religion based on gods, energies, spirits of nature, spirits of ancestors etc.. and see how the "real deal" of the universe is ultimately so varied in the greater perspective of mankind as a whole.
Divine Comedy God is also based on a representation of god from 700 years ago with many of its points not even been acknoledged by the current Roman Catholic Church, tbh, and even just reading a bit of it already tells you how different it is from what is generally taught.

And this profile directly tackles the Christian interpretation of God, primarily the non heretical teachings of God taught by the early Christian church which hasn't changed or been tweaked by mainstream Christian teachings from back in the 2nd century all the way to the 21st, tackling concepts such as the trinity and the incarnation to its core, even a core part of the profile being the "form" which is just a copy and paste of the teachings of the "ousia", the "essence", the "being", etc.

There are millions of different interpretations of God in real life, but Christianity primarily shares a single one, and this profile tackles that single one. That's the argument that he's referencing.

The representation of God from 700 years ago by the church is the exact same representation of God 1900 years ago... by the church, which is the same as the teachings of now... by the church. So with all due respect, this is a nothing point.

It's like me saying there's a bunch of interpretations of Thor then me copying the Völsungasaga's teachings phrase for phrase and saying "it's just one interpretation, there's a lot"

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Yeah, I will back up Tempest on this particular point, because I don't like the whole "This is an old interpretation of the Christian God that isn't taught anymore" thing. The Comedy (And by extension the profile) effectively outlines the orthodox Christian teaching on the nature of God. Period.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

You're also completely missing the point here. It's about, to quote a Commandment, taking God's name in vain. I don't think it's wrong at all for Christian users to find the idea of power scaling something so intentionally close to Him in nature offensive.

Forgive my articulation here, but I believe saying this makes it an argument of ideology.

Like, I believe that everyone is free to practice the faith, just as everyone is free to deny it. The problem arises when one tries to apply their faith upon one who wishes to deny it. That's where I draw the line. The Divine Comedy is an expression of the faith, not the faith itself. If the depiction of God is "too intentionally close" to the real deal, then it might have been the author's prerogative. That is not on us. We just index fictional characters. The Divine Comedy for all intents and purposes, is not canonized as part of the bible, and as such should have no bearing on sacred scripture. Why then, would it be fair to speak of it like it was? If we deny The Divine Comedy on the site, are we not imposing the will of the faith (which many have mentioned it before to be separate from) onto something that it should have no bearing on?

We have to divest ourselves of the notion that this is the true depiction of God. It is not. There is no Church of The Divine Comedy. If us indexing him is taking the Lord's name in vain, then we must rid ourselves of all his depictions; including Narina and Lord of The Rings. We can either lose faith over blasphemy or have faith in spite of it. I choose the latter.

 

[SamanPatou]

You missed by point, I didn't mean the figure of God itself, but rather everything else surrounding it in the Comedy, like Limbo which isn't considered a thing anymore by the church.
This to say, a lot of the cosmology of the Comedy isn't officially recognized by the church, from the very structure of the three planes.

 

[KingTempest]

You missed by point, I didn't mean the figure of God itself, but rather everything else surrounding it in the Comedy, like Limbo which isn't considered a thing anymore by the church.
This to say, a lot of the cosmology of the Comedy isn't officially recognized by the church, from the very structure of the three planes.

I'd argue the cosmology is separate from the character.
Cause the character is 1:1. The doctrine and identity of the character is the same. Outside religious beliefs of the cosmology and other figures are different, but the primary being of worship is a push.

Like if someone were to index Moses I would not care. But God? Nah

 

[CloverDragon03]

I think I'm going to step away from this thread. It's been pretty hard on me, I imagine due in no small part to the subject matter at hand hitting too close to home - given my beliefs. Apologies for any inconvenience caused

 

[LephyrTheRevanchist]

I feel many points are being intellectually dishonest. Nevertheless, I personally am neutral here. I was raised in Christianity (I don't currently hold Christian belief, to be noted), am soon to be engaged to a Christian partner. While discussing this with them and a group of friends, I came to the conclusion we really need to reevaluate a lot of our approaches to these kinds of verses/depictions. It doesn't sit well with me to allow a depiction of God that is frankly downright insulting to faith (SMT), yet would raise so much controversy to accept a verse/depiction that goes on so much detail to the beauty of what God is as part of its narrative.

Still, I believe the controversy is undeniable, and we have deemed this as sufficient enough to disqualify profiles in the past (JttW was almost completely rejected at one point, but left under compromise).

 

[Antvasima]

Well, my impression of a large part of popular Japanese "entertainment" authors, including, but far from limited to, those of "Berserk", "One-Punch Man", "Bleach", "Undead Unluck", "Shin Megami Tensei", "Final Fantasy XIII", and "Record of Ragnarok", as well as those of many transgressive western verses such as "Family Guy", "Preacher", "God is dead", "Spawn", "Supernatural", et cetera, is that they have an extremely obsessive, onesided, and recurrently extremely malicious and dishonest pure hatred of any forms of faith whatsoever, especially Christianity, with "One Piece" being a much more socially relevant, positive, and constructive exception, as it focuses on the real world types of atrocities caused by genuinely evil tyrannical humans with political power, rather than blaming God and faith for everything going wrong in the world.

As such, we would have to get rid of quite a lot of our popular verses if we want to censor all negative and distorted depictions of God, which is not realistic and also too undemocratic.

I do think that the point about that we are, perhaps irrationally, focusing on a more positive, or at least intended to be positive, depiction of God (well, aside from that Dante Alighieri extremely sadistically focused very heavily on eternal torture and degradation for absolutely everybody that he disapproved of, regardless if it was a completely disproportionate punishment or not), rather than depictions that completely condemn any conceptualisation whatsoever of the divine, to likely be valid, but at the same time, for many of our members and visitors this would likely read like we are inserting the actual Christian perception of God into our wiki.

 

[DaReaperMan]

As a Christian myself, go ahead, every Christian I know does not give a shit. Tell the like 3 people who bitch and moan to beat dirt because the majority of us do not give one of these about the matter.

Well, my impression of a large part of popular Japanese "entertainment" authors, including, but far from limited to, those of "Berserk", "One-Punch Man", "Bleach", "Undead Unluck", "Shin Megami Tensei", "Final Fantasy XIII", and "Record of Ragnarok", as well as those of many transgressive western verses such as "Family Guy", "Preacher", "God is dead", et cetera, is that they have an extremely obsessive, onesided, and recurrently extremely malicious and dishonest pure hatred of any form of faith whatsoever, especially Christianity, with "One Piece" being a much more socially relevant, positive, and constructive exception, as it focuses on the real world types of atrocities caused by genuinely evil humans with political power, rather than blaming God and faith for everything going wrong in the world.

As such, we would have to get rid of quite a lot of our popular verses if we want to censor all negative and distorted depictions of God, which is not realistic and also too undemocratic.

I do think that the point about that we are, perhaps irrationally, focusing on a more positive, or at least intended to be positive, depiction of God (well, aside from that Dante Alighieri extremely sadistically focused very heavily on eternal torture and degradation for absolutely everybody that he disapproved of, regardless if it was a completely disproportionate punishment or not), rather than depictions that completely condemn any conceptualisation whatsoever of the divine, to likely be valid, but at the same time, for many of our visitors this would likely read like we are inserting the actual Christian perception of God into our wiki, so I am honestly not sure what our best course of action here would be.

Days gone by without Ant going on a highly controversial rant that invites more flack and whatnot then indexing divine comedy ever does: 0

 

[Antvasima]

Was it really that controversial? I was just attempting to explain my conflicted musings regarding the issue.

 

[DaReaperMan]

Was it really that controversial? I was just attempting to explain my conflicted musings regarding the issue.

Ant. My dude. Every time you rant you use very hard wording on said matters, considering in the first sentence of what you said you had a solid shot at pissing off the entire fan bases of 5 extremely popular works.

The point should always be whether or not the followers of said religion give a damn, and in this case the only ones who might are in their own little cults and are probably not allowed to access the wiki anyway.

Ya gotta understand that usually, it is not the people who follow the religion who care, and it is actually more risky to just piss off entire fanbases with rants that dig in deep with heavy wording.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, as far as I am aware, what I stated seems to be blatantly true, so what am I supposed to say really? I am not censoring anything, as I am antitotalitarian ideologically, but I have been openly honest about what I really think about highly malicious, toxic, and destructive works to the point that I used to feature a long list of them in my wiki user page.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/U...13#Fictional_franchises_that_I_really_dislike

 

[Kachon123]

As a Christian myself, go ahead, every Christian I know does not give a shit. Tell the like 3 people who bitch and moan to beat dirt because the majority of us do not give one of these about the matter.

Speak for yourself and people in your circle. Literally every Christian i've talked to about the matter considers the profile to be incredibly disrespectful. I hope you realize that you can give your opinions without demeaning other non-likeminded people.

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

As a Christian myself, go ahead, every Christian I know does not give a shit. Tell the like 3 people who bitch and moan to beat dirt because the majority of us do not give one of these about the matter.

Says one is Christian and in the same post purposely swears and goes against the Bible and the ways of Jesus...

 

[Phoenks]

Is there any middle ground? Is it possible that those against this would be okay with indexing if there were some strict rules regarding it? Like banning matches from being made and regulating conversations surrounding these profiles?

The thing I don't really understand is how this profile is inherently disrespectful/offensive on its own. The Divine Comedy God seems to be a pretty faithful and even positive depiction of the Biblical God (Something that in of itself is quite inoffensive), and the sandbox profile list the Divine Comedy God as being "omnipotent," the same as the Biblical text describes the Biblical God. I don't know how that could be inherently blasphemous or disrespectful on its own. At worst the VSBW is indexing an author's idea of the Biblical God as "omnipotent."

But, well, if there is legitimate controversy about it from those that are devoted to this faith, then I don't even know why this is still a debate. You lose far more than you gain by allowing this profile with there being a side to it that really dislikes it being here—and important members that would even leave if it is allowed. And for what? So there's another Tier 0 on the wiki? Seems pointless to me. I mean, Tier 0s aren't even really characters anymore. They are all the same exact, indescribable thing. Their profiles pretty much just exist to look cool.

I mean, I suppose you could bring up some conversation about the standards in general, but shouldn't that be another thread on its own?

 

[DaReaperMan]

Well, as far as I am aware, what I stated seems to be blatantly true, so what am I supposed to say really? I am not censoring anything, as I am anti-totalitarian ideologically, but I have been openly honest about what I really think about highly malicious, toxic, and destructive works to the point that I used to feature a long list of them in my wiki user page.

Ant I might not like Dragon Ball but condemning the entire series because I don't like it is not in the cards, and not because I'm being diplomatic, it's because I genuinely don't feel like I should condemn someone or a work of someone for doing something I don't like, and even if I was tempted to, I have better things to do than rant about a multi-billion dollar seri3s

Speak for yourself and people in your circle. Literally every Christian i've talked to about the matter considers the profile to be incredibly disrespectful. I hope you realize that you can give your opinions without demeaning other non-likeminded people.

I suppose I'll take your word for it on that matter, since I'm not exactly the most hardass person on the matter

And I'll say, if I am in the minority on that matter, then yes, don't allow The Divine Comedy on the site. Simple as that.

Says one is Christian and in the same post purposely swears and goes against the Bible...

Christian does not mean you can't be yourself MOL, I'm not exactly breaking any of the ten commandments by being aggressive

 

[LephyrTheRevanchist]

As such, we would have to get rid of quite a lot of our popular verses if we want to censor all negative and distorted depictions of God, which is not realistic and also too undemocratic.

Agreed. The purpose of me mentioning the alternative was more of a personal observation than a potential standard to be enforced. I disagree on principal with any kind of censorship, even if I disagree with the content.

Still, I believe there could be merit on us making more clear standards for these kinds of grey areas (which I honestly believe the Divine Comedy falls to, as a very explicit depiction of the one true God, when other depictions are bit more disconnected from the doctrines and/or present the faith from an alternate light), but agree with Phoenks we first need to deal with this thread before doing said thread.

 

[LephyrTheRevanchist]

Christian does not mean you can't be yourself MOL, I'm not exactly breaking any of the ten commandments by being aggressive

Says one is Christian and in the same post purposely swears and goes against the Bible and the ways of Jesus...

I will ask for this line of conversation to cease. Thank you.

 

[Antvasima]

But, well, if there is legitimate controversy about it from those that are devoted to this faith, then I don't even know why this is still a debate. You lose far more than you gain by allowing this profile with there being a side to it that really dislikes it being here—and important members that would even leave if it is allowed. And for what? So there's another Tier 0 on the wiki? Seems pointless to me.

Agreed, but I do not think that we can extend this reasoning to censor all currently existing negative or positive depictions of God from our wiki.

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

I will ask for this line of conversation to cease. Thank you.

Yee, sorry

 

[Propellus]

Is it really safe to mention that we already have pages like this? Not to say that I necessarily agree with this being indexed if it's too close to the main material

 

[MonkeyOfLife]

Is it really safe to mention that we already have pages like this? Not to say that I necessarily agree with this being indexed if it's too close to the main material

This might even go against Fandom rules? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[DaReaperMan]

Is it really safe to mention that we already have pages like this? Not to say that I necessarily agree with this being indexed if it's too close to the main material

I mean even I don't think we should like... straight up have Jesus Christ being crucified as a picture on a profile, that's a step too far.

The verse seems weird itself, and reads nothing like Christianity, so it might be fine, but that picture should definitely be changed

 

[Antvasima]

I mean even I don't think we should like... straight up have Jesus Christ being crucified as a picture on a profile, that's a step too far.

The verse seems weird itself, and reads nothing like Christianity, so it might be fine, but that picture should definitely be changed

Yes, it seems too controversial.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Agreed, but I do not think that we can extend this reasoning to censor all currently existing negative or positive depictions of God from our wiki.

Just to clarify my point in that regard: I personally have no problem with any of those, as they are not faithful depictions. Not to mention that we (at least in 99.9% of all cases) don't rank them on the religious philosophy of those religions.
The problem only arises if something is so faithful that it just becomes a stand-in for powerscaling religion. I have no problem with disrespectful depictions of deities, as that aren't the beings people believe in anymore. I just have a problem with us essentially having a stance on which religions are how powerful and more powerful than others, as that says something about the actual religions.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

The problem only arises if something is so faithful that it just becomes a stand-in for powerscaling religion.

The previous point I've made can probably add to this, as well. As said prior, you could very well argue that the Divine Comedy falls less under the umbrella of Lord of the Rings or Narnia and more under a similar category as something like the Passion of the Christ. I think we can certainly draw the line between the former two, which are obviously written purely for entertainment, and something that borders on the author's personal reflections on divinity, not simply interspersed in the text, but acting as the lynchpin of it.

 

[Antvasima]

I also think that DontTalk makes good sense here, as usual.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

The previous point I've made can probably add to this, as well. As said prior, you could very well argue that the Divine Comedy falls less under the umbrella of Lord of the Rings or Narnia and more under a similar category as something like the Passion of the Christ. I think we can certainly draw the line between the former two, which are obviously written purely for entertainment, and something that borders on the author's personal reflections on divinity, not simply interspersed in the text, but acting as the lynchpin of it.

In fact: To put this into perspective. The Passion of the Christ is less of a straight adaptation of the biblical text than you might think. It takes elements from plenty of other sources, whether that be Catholic tradition (Not necessarily dogmatic) or this woman's writings. Not to mention some original things that Mel Gibson added to the movie himself (Satan's depiction and presence in the film's narrative is completely original).

Further, a sequel is in the making, too, and it will be focused on the period in-between Christ's resurrection and his ascension to Heaven, and also including portrayals of the Harrowing of Hell and the fall of the angels. If, by chance, Satan or the resurrected Christ display what we'd deem tierable feats in Passion of the Christ 2, are we seriously going to make profiles for it?

In short, proximity to actual doctrine is far from the only thing you may put under consideration. You can argue that the nature of the work itself makes its indexing a pretty unfeasible thing to do as well.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Well, my impression of a large part of popular Japanese "entertainment" authors, including, but far from limited to, those of "Berserk", "One-Punch Man", "Bleach", "Undead Unluck", "Shin Megami Tensei", "Final Fantasy XIII", and "Record of Ragnarok", as well as those of many transgressive western verses such as "Family Guy", "Preacher", "God is dead", "Spawn", "Supernatural", et cetera, is that they have an extremely obsessive, onesided, and recurrently extremely malicious and dishonest pure hatred of any form of faith whatsoever, especially Christianity, with "One Piece" being a much more socially relevant, positive, and constructive exception, as it focuses on the real world types of atrocities caused by genuinely evil tyrannical humans with political power, rather than blaming God and faith for everything going wrong in the world.

As such, we would have to get rid of quite a lot of our popular verses if we want to censor all negative and distorted depictions of God, which is not realistic and also too undemocratic.

I do think that the point about that we are, perhaps irrationally, focusing on a more positive, or at least intended to be positive, depiction of God (well, aside from that Dante Alighieri extremely sadistically focused very heavily on eternal torture and degradation for absolutely everybody that he disapproved of, regardless if it was a completely disproportionate punishment or not), rather than depictions that completely condemn any conceptualisation whatsoever of the divine, to likely be valid, but at the same time, for many of our members and visitors this would likely read like we are inserting the actual Christian perception of God into our wiki.

Just a minor note, in SMT's case. They actually stated that YHVH was never intended to demonize Christianity or any religion. While there are loose references to a combination of multiple Abrahamic portrayals, he's at it's core an original character who is intended to just be the "Embodiment of Law and Order."

But anyway, Ultima Reality is making good points.

 

[SamanPatou]

is that they have an extremely obsessive, onesided, and recurrently extremely malicious and dishonest pure hatred of any form of faith whatsoever, especially Christianity,

Well Ant, I believe this piece being extremely close-minded and disingenous; aside from you cramming together wildly different materials and only popular one, I don't see why speaking badly of religion is now a concentrate of evil like you say.
Religious satire has been made since the dawn of man, often met with oppressive acts of suppression, and some of those are simply interpretations and critiques of the faith itself.
And one thing might be more sterile depictions like Family Guy and South Park, which do it mostly for shock effect, but should be respected just as well, especially because they play on the other side, i.e. the exceptional and pointless obsession the many americans seem to have with religion, which brings them to being close minded and repressive as well, and as someone who was grown and lived extensively is societies chock full of hypocritical and sufficating catholicism (such as Italy and Poland), that gas done more damage than else, I know something about it.

Then you cram Berserk in there, which is a much more elaborate depiction of the many contradictions and dark sides of western religion that are just plain truth and historical facts, I find it much more for religion itself to have gone to such lengths itself, rather than a piece of art that points them out for what they were, and is ultimately a call out for the physical and intellectual independence of man against any form of authority, divine or man made, with the two historically overlapping in self-righteousness and personal gain.

According to you, even a classical masterpiece such as Paradise Lost (to make an emblazoned and easily recognizable example) falls within the same categories and checks out all the adjectives you wrote about for much sillier operas, as it was even banned by the church for the very same reason, just like many other books, poems, songs, but also monastic orders and etc.. which challenged the established dogma and authority that furthered the personal interest of religious figures and egemonical structures.

with "One Piece" being a much more socially relevant, positive, and constructive exception, as it focuses on the real world types of atrocities caused by genuinely evil tyrannical humans with political power, rather than blaming God and faith for everything going wrong in the world.

Cutting it short, One Piece is honestly a very vanilla and superficial depictions of this and yeah, it's meant as a social critique, but I can name a number of fictional works which do the same in a better and more a congrous way, your lotathed Berserk having a front seat in it.
Still, it's not like One Piece doesn't challenge the notion of religious authority being a mean of oppression, in fact it does it repeteadly, just because it doesn't call out to christianity directly it doesn't mean it's not meant to draw parallelisms with the same policies enacted by it and other parallel creeds that always fall on the same oppressive cultism.

My unrequested and selfish counter-rant is over, sorry or for the derailing, but I felt the need of speaking my mind on this.
Now, to get back on topic.

In short, proximity to actual doctrine is far from the only thing you may put under consideration. You can argue that the nature of the work itself makes its indexing a pretty unfeasible thing to do as well

This, and bowing our heads just because people stop at the surface and do a linear connection between the Comedy and Christianity is an intellectual loss for us, as all the work done here is still done in a purely respectful manner and still draws from a specific source material.
And besides, while the Comedy does intertwine with Dante's personal philosophy, it was ultimately meant to be fictional literature since its very beginning, without any claim of authority in the first place.
And the be totally honest, Dante's own thought and the Comedy itself were rather counter-culturish for the time and he himself wasn't exactly lined up with the pope and the hegemonical church at the time, for both religious and political reasons which, as always, end up covering the same spot.

I'd argue the cosmology is separate from the character.
Cause the character is 1:1. The doctrine and identity of the character is the same. Outside religious beliefs of the cosmology and other figures are different, but the primary being of worship is a push.
Like if someone were to index Moses I would not care. But God? Nah

Well, in this case no, here God and the cosmology are literally the same thing. But this is to point out of this depiction of God is still circumscribed within the boundaries of an overall fictional work, which has to be faced in its entirety and judged as such.

 

[DarkGrath]

If I may preface: I will not embarrass particular members over this, but there have been a few comments here which I have not been very happy about, particularly comments directed to our openly religious members. Several comments have deviated away from simply impartial and respectful critiques of the topic and closer to badgering or taunting members about their faith. I cannot expect perfection in discussion on such a sensitive topic on a powerscaling website of all places, but I'm writing this preface in the hope that we all make a continuous effort in this regard.

That being said, I have been asked to provide input on this. I was originally going to make a different post on this, but it reached the point of being a bit of a ramble more than a concrete point, so I'll boil this down to something with more direction.

There is a line of inquiry here that I feel hasn't been given the consideration it deserves. Amidst the discussion on the properties of the Divine Comedy itself (i.e.: that it is a fictional work, that it is highly accurate to canonical descriptions of the Christian God, and similar issues), almost every argument has had an implicit premise that I don't think we have agreed upon yet, one which I consider of the utmost importance to resolving broader issues of indexing religious depictions in fiction - at what point is 'religious insensitivity' a reason to not index certain profiles?

This hasn't really been the central question in the discussion so far, but I think it practically needs to be. We clearly haven't reached a consensus on this - some staff have outlined clearly that they don't think it should be a reason at all, while others have gone so far as to change their side entirely on the knowledge of the offense it causes to a subset of our religious members.

I think it's essentially impossible to not draw the line somewhere. For instance - I don't think any of us are arguing that real-world religious figures should be indexed, the main reason being the offense it would cause to members of those religions to index them, as supported by our site rules:

Do not create profiles for deities and other figures from religions with a significant quantity of modern day followers. This includes those described in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Featuring these types of profiles is certain to upset large groups of people.

We essentially all accept that making such profiles would be inappropriate because it would be insensitive to the followers of these religions to do so. But if (to give an extreme hypothetical) a user was a part of an obscure religion that considered cheese to be sinful, and came to us asking that all verses which depict cheese in them should not be indexed on the basis of religious sensitivity, I don't think any of us would begin to argue that this is a substantial reason to not index such profiles. At that point, you may as well dismantle the whole website because some religion/s may find powerscaling to be offensive.

If this is true, then my understanding is that we all draw the line somewhere; for the most part, we agree that some forms of religious insensitivity are 'valid' arguments against indexing, while others aren't. But we clearly don't all draw the line in the same place. I'll avoid pointing out specific examples of my observations as to not put words in other people's mouths, but the important observation here is that we roughly agree on what properties the Divine Comedy has - we agree that it is fictional/not religious canon, we agree that its depiction of God is extremely similar to the Christian God as practiced by certain denominations, we agree that such a profile for the figure would be extremely similar to a hypothetical indexing of the Christian God - but we seem to be stuck against a wall because we don't agree on whether the insensitivity such indexing would cause is a valid reason to not index it.

I think this question carries implications not only for the Divine Comedy, but for all verses with depictions of religious elements. There is always some chance that such a verse will offend someone of a certain religion, but at what point do we say that's not a reason to ban indexing of it? We have to say it eventually, but that's not an easy assertion to make, nor one we see eye-to-eye on. And how we define the point where it is no longer an acceptable reason is, I think, precisely how we will resolve both this discussion and any further questions on acceptable/unacceptable religious depictions. There's three main ideas I have for what line we could draw here, which I'll outline in this block quote.

In my mind, the easiest and most pragmatic way to do this is simply through the rules we already have: that is, we place the line at "real-world religions". We say you cannot index real-world religions because of religious insensitivity, but you can index any and all fictional depictions of real-world religions regardless of concerns over religious sensitivity. This has the simple advantage of being so readily definable in most cases that it shouldn't cause ambiguity, but I hope I'm not the only one who is discontented with such an amoralistic approach to such a touchy question. Something which is so readily definable is rarely comprehensive for real attitudes, as we've seen in this very thread where many feel indexing an accurate fictional depiction would be just as offensive as indexing the real thing.

I think there is another broader approach here which may be more agreeable, which is that we should draw the line at "profiles which are insubstantially different from real-world religions". That is to say, you cannot index real-world religions, or fictional depictions of real-world religions which would be nearly identical in indexing to a hypothetical real-world religion profile. However, we would draw the line there and say anything that is fictional and substantially different could be indexed regardless of religious sensitivities. As is obviously relevant to this case: this would ban the depiction of God in the Divine Comedy from being indexed due to the fact we almost all agree this profile would be essentially identical to a hypothetical profile of the Christian God. Previous discussion makes me think this would also probably ban Journey to the West, but I don't know the verse well enough at all to say. I feel this is closer to the general consensus value that I have seen in this thread thus far, and I personally like it - it avoids the issue of someone making a profile for a highly-accurate but fictional depiction of a religious figure as a subterfuge for indexing the actual religious figure. But it comes with its own difficulties. It is more ambiguous than the previous suggestion (what qualifies as 'substantially different'?), and perhaps more importantly, it would likely sometimes require us to debate over what hypothetical religion profiles would look like to define what does and doesn't fit the criteria. I don't think this is as much of an issue as some people have argued it to be - to me, I think it would usually be obvious if a fictional depiction would be overly reflective of the real world religion by seeing if it, say, directly quotes the religious texts or is essentially a direct retelling of the religious story, and that it therefore shouldn't require discussion more controversial than the alternative of allowing such profiles to be indexed. But it is still such an obviously questionable line of inquiry that I feel it should be given due consideration.

An even broader approach would be to draw the line at "profiles which are generally intended to depict the actual religious figure instead of a fictitious conception of them". That is to say, you cannot index any verse which depicts a religious figure with the intention to depict them as if they were the actual figure, but that any verse which is simply the figure in name with lacking allusion to the religious canon can be indexed. This approach would rule out profiles for verses like the Divine Comedy, but as mentioned earlier in the thread, it would likely also rule out verses like LotR and the Chronicles of Narnia, while not ruling out verses like, say, Shin Megami Tensei. I don't really like this approach, for so many reasons, but I felt obligated to mention it given the theme in previous discussions.

If this were up to nothing but my own sensitivities, I would probably advocate for the first approach. In the vein of what SamanPatou has said, I don't really feel any sense of objection to such profiles so long as they are simply fictional verses with fictional figures that resemble religious ones. But then, I'm limited in my perspective here. I'm not religious - I don't feel a discussion like this as a matter of personal offense, and I know my sense of objection could very well be different if I was a follower of any religion encapsulated by these changes. With this in mind, I believe the second approach - banning real-world religion profiles and fictional profiles that would be nearly identical to real-world religion profiles - is probably the most tenable. I can't argue for any foundational moral statement on whether a theist "should" feel offended by profiles for fictional religious figures that would be nearly identical to profiles for the deities they worship, and I don't think I'm going to convince the people who feel that insensitivity isn't a valid reason to avoid indexing such profiles. What I think is simply that it's the closest thing we have to a compromise solution. Under such a rule, I would argue we'd not be very restrictive on what profiles could be made (that is, we wouldn't be ruling out a whole lot), while still ultimately capturing the things that may be more 'obviously' insensitive to followers of religions on our site.

So, to cut down the long post into the question it was actually supposed to answer - I think it's accurate to say I disagree with allowing the Divine Comedy profiles on the site.

 

[SamanPatou]

Not going super in depth because I'm lacking the time rn, but I want to point out that we already have profiles that go very in depth with and strongly reference mixed real world religious references, even more than what the Divine Comedy does, such as Unsong and World of Darkness of which, while lacking knowledge, I can clearly see the intention and purpose.
I also just found out this profile for Krishna that could be potentially controversial for the same reasons and probably other high tiers have swooped under the radar so far. Mind you, I'm not arguing their deletion, quite the opposite, but that Divine ComedyTM God isn't even at the top of the offensive scale.
Also, we're being quite hypocritical by minding the sensibility of only the christian community, as if other equally valid religion couldn't be offended by what I mentioned here and in a previous post of mine listing things that did generate an actual real world turmoil.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you greatly for your in my mind very sensible analysis, DarkGrath. I also think that your outlined second (compromise) solution seems like the most workable for our purposes.

 

[Damage3245]

Given that there is a significant split between approval votes and disapproval votes, a compromise solution does seem like the most promising outcome to accomodate both sides.