[TrisakAminawn]

You guys got two more in without the site alerting me, so I thought it'd just been Wolven. I'll go on. Is anyone actually reading these things?

Most of the concept of Satan is a medieval construction, more or less, so if he's God then we invented the person 'God' really is several millenia after the Israelites started sacrificing animals to him, and a millenium after the person whose virtue/sanity/gullibility is called into question by that theory was killed by the Roman Empire. Not that it's not a fun theory, anyway. ^^

Door-Shadow-Man need not be either God or Satan. Free your mind from the paradigm! It is a force, posessed of a consciousness and vicious sense of justice, and some measure of sadism and pride. Could be a lot of things. (Is this my FMA quota for this post?)

An unchurched Catholic, Wolven? Well, you have shed the most dangerous part of religion, but I don't yet know why, without the church community, you wish to believe these tenets. Does it make you feel better, somehow?

Science is big money when you sell something made scientifically, or you apply it to war. ^^ Most science grants in America are military funding. Scary stuff. Priests should not have too much power, but a priest without temporal power is not a very imposing entity. Sigh.

If you take Adam, Eve, and the Serpent out of the Eden story, you're left with a garden and the person who made it. ^^ Good job on 'it's not an apple,' and on general literal-Bible awareness. I respect Christians who actually know their scriptures, but apart from picking out common fallacies, what do you know them for? For instance, Eden. What do you take from that story? The fact that if you reach out for knowledge life will become much harder? The idea that disobedience will be sternly punished, or that God wants to see what humans will do when tempted, or that in achieving adulthood we must sin and be punished for it, or...?

Granted a religion that's too tidy doesn't accurately reflect the world, my trouble with Christianity is that if you hold the deity to any standard of human morality, he comes off terribly, and if you exempt him from such earthbound analysis by reason of godhead then how can any moral dictate associated with the religion hold any force? Either way, I see no compelling reason to trust or follow such an entity. Most of all to trust. But I welcome your opinions.

I'm also late for dinner.

[Ninya]

Wolven~ Woohoo, common ground! I'd never heard of those examples from the Bible, but it sure shows how any text that's been translated that many times is no longer something that can be taken word-for-word; only concepts would really survive the process. I've always wondered if the original was well-written. Other than Homer's epic poems, I can't bring to mind any older text that is still being read. Maybe the Bible used to rhyme; I wonder if we'd know.

Actually, the very reason I bothered to sign up was because I just had to join the conversation. I've been reading from the site for a while, but never had a reason to make an account before. ^_^


Trisak~ Actually, I can think of a pretty good way in which the shadow-being and God are identical. As you pointed out, the shadow gave Ed something for a terrible price. God made the fruit-which-we-tend-to-call-an-apple, and by eating it and gaining knowledge (the exact thing that Ed got out of his exchange) Adam and Eve paid the terrible price of bring kicked out of Eden. By the way, there's Al and Ed and Adam and Eve; I wonder if that was intentional. Also, I still expect we can narrow its identity down to God or Satan, if nothing else than that it would fit the mangaka's style. The story is full of allusions, biggest of all probably being the Amestris-Germany one. The shadow, as well as the exchange in general, is very symbolic. I don't see why the being would claim to be God, setting up the whole allusion, and then just be revealed as someone unrelated to that story. You mentioned that the characteristics of this being were more likely to be found in an "old fashioned god," but that doesn't change that in this story, God could just be based off the older gods.

I still hold that agnosticism is atheism. My reasoning is this-- If you don't know if God exists, you do not have faith. This automatically means you are an atheist. Agnosticism, accepting the possibility of a higher power, is a denomination of atheism.

As far as Alchemy being a science, you have to recognize that it is approached as a science, and functions based on scientific theories. Alchemists get government grants to study alchemy, anyone can become an alchemist (unlike in most stories about magic), and many connections can be made between alchemists and doctors (aside from simply the fact that alchemy is sometimes used in medicine). Standards of morality are very important in medicine, and many doctors in Germany during World War II violated these basic principles, just as alchemists have in Amestris. As far as Alchemy having symbols, science, religion, and politics all have these. By the way, we have no idea why gravity exists, but that doesn't make it magic anymore than not understanding how alchemy works makes it magic.

Issues concerning when we as humans began to believe in Satan and God doesn't make it any less likely to be a Satan-made hoax. It simply means that his trickery is quite intricate.

I don't really understand what you were saying about indoctrination and the atom. It's just common sense that molecules must be made up of something. Naming that stuff is just like naming a newfound star. The name can't be wrong if you're the first one to give it a name. Details about the structure of the atom might be more questionable if not for the fact that we have been able to see the atom. If teaching children about atoms is in any way indoctrination, then so is teaching them geography.

By the way, I know the Manga Viewer is very out of date, but this site doesn't seem to have FMA up at the moment, (wait, nevermind, I found it) and Manga Viewer is the only other site I know through which I can easily link right to one page.

[WolvenLordSoulReaper]

Excellent Posts, one and all!! Unfortunately, current duties keep me from responding to this right away. I will attempt to get to it later however. Most exquisite!!

[Ninya]

Originally Posted by WolvenLordSoulReaper

Excellent Posts, one and all!! Unfortunately, current duties keep me from responding to this right away. I will attempt to get to it later however. Most exquisite!!

I look forward to it ~

[Flash Master]

My word! May I just say that I am truly impressed with all of your posts. They are truly a treat for the mind! Without false modesty, I must say that my post will pale in comparison but please bear with me.
First off, isn't it truly strange how those two things which are so far apart are usually mirrored images of each other? Pleasure, pain. Good, Evil. Life and Death. Apples and oranges, ..... God and science? the universe itself cannot survive without these perfect balances. Okay, mabey apples and oranges but that would be a tasteless existence wouldn't it? Anyway, the problem with many scientists is that they are able to explain why and how a fish swims or a baby cries and yet many of them overlook the sheer beauty of the act or the concept itself . I find it amazing that a person, ( my personal beliefs not withstanding) can look at any part of the world, ugly or beautiful, and not believe in something greater than themselves?
On the other hand, how can a person claiming knowledge of a higher power, spend so much time looking for a way to reach that higher power and yet not realize that it is all around them?
Religious people seek God through prayer, scientist seek God through knowledge.
I have my own belief of God and a great love of science. Isn't science merely a way of reaching out for something greater than yourself? Seeking what you cannot understand? Whether you are religious or scientific, it is when human error starts to interpret the eternal and attempt to harness it's power, spiritual or scientific, for personal gain, that is when wars, cults, and hatred have found their expansive birthplace. It is not religion OR science that cause wars and unrest, it is mankind's arrogance.
Yet it seems the biggest mystery to scientists is the human brain and spirit. Why are people always searching for something?? Where does the spirit go when it dies? Some questions may never be answered in this life, whether you believe in a god or not. Equivalent exchange does exist in this life or the next.
In reference to the Garden of Eden, I believe many people overlook the true meaning of what God did. It was not about the apple, the sin or the snake. It wasn't even about Adam or Eve. It was about choice. God did not put that tree there to test them or set them up for failure. He put it there to give them a choice. Whether they ate from it or not was not the point, rather how they would choose. God would always love them whether they ate of the tree or not. Free will.
Sorry, I am rambling. Anyway, to the point. Edward did not believe in a god, not because the option was not there but because there was too much at stake. Alchemy and Al were the ONLY sure things in his life. His father left early. His mother was taken from him. The military used him. He was young when these things happened so he clung to the only thing he was sure of . Alchemy. In his eyes, it was HIS fault, his error which caused Al's body to be taken and his failed attempt to bring his mother back. Religion had never been a factor because he was not exposed to it frequently and even still, would he put Al's life at stake based on a small hope or belief? So he mastered alchemy and yet he still could not find anything to use in exchange for a human soul. Much like real life.

[Ninya]

Heh, welcome to the debate~


I find it funny to think about those balances you mentioned, and how they must always be in balance. There are so many stories about restoring this balance through support of "good," but it all makes me want to write something in which the balance must be restored through the strengthening of "evil."

Don't think that scientists don't find beauty in their work. Talking about all the wonderful patterns made by nebula, however, doesn't fit into a scientific report. Documentaries and text books aren't media meant for expressing beauty, that is what poetry and art is for, and there is nothing which says that a scientist cannot also be an artist, analyzing photosynthesis as a job and painting the flower as a hobby. Of course, scientists are not known for their hobbies, so I can see how the mistake could be made. The job looks past beauty, but the people do not.

This goes the same for believing in something greater than oneself-- just because I do not believe in God does not mean I find humans to be greatest. Simply the size of the Universe dwarfs us, and we are merely one cog in the living machine that is Earth.

And plenty of scientists do not seek God in any way, it is one of the careers most chosen by atheists. Many doctors don't seek anything grand and majestic-- they just want to patch a kid up, and find the simple pleasure in that.

As far as the "biggest mystery to scientists" that you proposed, in my mind the question is totally cut and dry. I do not wonder where the soul goes because I have seen no proof of the existence of the soul. The human brain is an extremely complex computer, with an incredible amount of data being put into every decision based on all of the senses and passed experiences of the organism. No two of these machines is the same, since evolution and personal experience causes each to adapt differently, and this is why one question posed to two machines may receive a different answer. However, it is still all input and output. Our feelings of searching is a mechanism which encourages invention, a skill which has greatly improved our ability to survive. Of course, this is the explanation with the art left out, and I could go on all day about how intricately humans interact and learn from their surroundings, but I'm playing scientist right now, and as scientist the art must be done separately.

Of course, it is in this mindset that I look at the Garden of Eden and conclude that God set us up for failure. We, the complex machines, can do only as we are designed to do. Therefore, the creator is the source of all errors.

Even ignoring that logic, I see no way for a being which loves us to torture us eternally for any reason. I cannot possibly comprehend that.

[Gawain]

This is Trisak. Gawain is logged into this computer and I'm bad at computers, so I'll leave it like that. My last post also didn't turn up here even though I logged in, so I'm suspicious.

Oh, well. Flash, it's not that people always ignore that interpretation, it's just that there's conflicting evidence. Like the really, really brutal punishment meted out after the free will was exercised. Now, it can then be read 'as the choice had been made for freedom, they must be free to suffer in a world that did not protect them, entering adulthood from childhood' but even that would be only a rule made by the Gardener, and using an analogy from the present world to prove that the old world had to become this one is the same kind of backward thinking that proves lemmings commit suicide to lessen population pressure because they've been seen going off cliffs during mass migrations.

Oh...hah...Ninya, you've got a perfect example of restoring balance that way in Star Wars, ya know? Anakin brought balance back to the Force, as prophesied; the trouble was, the imbalance in the Force was that there were several hundred Jedi and no Sith, then one and two Sith. He and Sideous cut it down to two each. >> Geek example, but this is a geek site.

Alright, time to rewrite my old post, only shorter. (Stupid site.) I disagree with Ninya's statement that nothing other than God or Satan would fit Arakawa's style. Actually, I can't imagine her pinning it down to something so tepid. Her discussion of 'God,' as I said, usually focuses either on the absence of God's protection or the weakness inherent in relying on God to fix things for you, with a detour into hubris. It wouldn't suit the story to grab a weird, nasty character who only bothers you if you come to him first, and say 'This is the source of the universe.' If Door-Shadow-Man had just said 'I am God,' then it would definitely have to be resolved, but what it said was that one of the things humans called it was God, and then listed quite a number of other things. Including Ed. Hey, maybe it's Ed's Jungian shadow-self! (JK)

The world is so fantastic and beautiful that in some people who observe it closely its complexity demands a Watchmaker and in some people its force and wonder of existence precludes the need for a Watchmaker. You could say the people who don't require an explanation they can understand are more spiritual. (Kind of like telling the person you love you don't have to hear about their past because who they are now is enough.) Then there are people who don't think it needs thinking about one way or another. Ed is one of them. He is extremely practical. The most unpractical things he does are helping people like the coal miners out of sentimentality. He's so practical he doesn't even spend time wondering about the connection between Father and Hohenheim. On the other hand, he has done the musing he expressed to Rose... This is so incomplete, but I have to go take my road test.

[Nathan StormRider]

Alright, this is my first post on the site, but I saw this interesting conversation and decided to actually register and weigh in.

My take on the Adam and Eve story is not that mankind was punished for knowledge. Moreover, it's not 'knowledge' that they were punished for obtaining, as a lot of atheists and agnostics like to claim, much as the fruit isn't an apple, necessarily. It was specifically, the knowledge of good and evil. Much as the quote, 'the love of money is the root of all evil' becomes bastardized to, 'money is the root of all evil', the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is bastardized to the tree of knowledge in general.

Ultimately, what ended the life in the Garden of Eden was humanity's desire to become God. Also, its distrust of God, the impulse saying that God only kept us from acting in a certain way because He was afraid of what would happen, and finally, our desire to hide from our mistakes and pass the blame to someone else.

---

In some ways, I would think that Father - and the being at the gate - identify with Satan, not God. God is benevolent, and not capricious or deceitful. God, in the Bible, clearly names the price of disobedience, and often punishes people less than the named price. The Shadow-Figure says, certainly, that there will be a cost, but does not name it until it is due, which is a frequent trait of Satan.

Moreover, the figure does not even give Ed or Al what they paid for, which was the knowledge or the resurrection of their mother.

Ed, upon entering the gates, saw that there were, in fact, two of them... And there is not only a duality between the gates, Xing and Amestris, but also between Father and Hohenheim, the Philosophers of the East and West. We must consider that Father and Hohenheim could be allegories for Satan and either God or Jesus.

If Satan is Father, what are the similarities? Pride was the sin that caused Satan to fall, and also the first Homonculous that Father created, as well as the trait most prominent when he was a new creation. Satan considered himself greater than humans, superior, and felt that humans were weak, immoral trash that God should not value, or treat highly. Satan is also referred to as the Great Deciever, a title that fits Father very, very well. This does, I admit, come out of the tradition of the Church and not the Bible itself.

Satan, it is said, cannot create anything new, but only corrupt that which already existed. Father has no real children. Father's homuncli, while certainly separate beings, do not seem to be a new or original creation, but just bits of himself, collections of the souls that compose his form, gathered by trait into new demonic beings. Additionally, what we saw of the souls that compose Envy shows that they have lost their sense of individuality and form, are consumed by the sin which he represents, and in general are tortured creatures who despise their own existence. Their absorption by the gate, in fact, seems to have released them from an eternal torment, a terrible Hell. The alchemy of Amestris exists out of step with nature, and medical alchemy seems to be more involved with corruption of healthy beings than healing of ailing ones. The one thing it cannot do is resurrect a human being.

Hohenheim, however, has had his own children, who he would give up his life for - and probably will by the end of the series. In fact, he might well give up his life to save the world. The souls in Hohenheim do not seem to be tortured, rather, but seem to exist in an accessible form, still known by nature and by name. They are not, in fact, split off from him. He does not seem to feel that they are in any sort of torment, nor does he seem to feel that he is superior to humans, and in fact loves them even if he does not exactly fit in. The alchemy of Xing, which he taught, focuses on healing and draws from a legitimate, natural source, and not a corruption of the human soul. Hohenheim implies that it could be possible to resurrect a person, but does not state the cost.

I would expect that the theology, honestly, of FMA to be a dualism, with Hohenheim being sort of a God - or Good - figure, with Father being Satan or Evil. Amestris, a secular, western society, is in fact ruled by Satan, while Ishibal and Xing, which appear to be nature worshippers, have things in common and derive what alchemy they have from the teachings of the Good side of the duality. It could even be that the difference between the souls that compose Father and the souls that compose Hohenheim are whether they were overwhelmingly good, or overwhelmingly bad.

[TrisakAminawn]

^^ Haha, Nathan, beautiful post! I'm...too fond of Hohenheim, and find him entirely too human to identify him with God, but I suppose he could be something like a particularly pitiful cross of Jesus and the Wandering Jew. (Has to be Cain or the Wandering Jew, and Cain was the murderer.) I hadn't brought it up, but of course there's a system of duality in place. When you have what amounts to good and evil twins, how can there not be? Arakawa has almost everything in twos. I'm not sure it shakes out quite to the Zoroastorianism you're outlining here, but it's close.

Hadn't given adequate consideration in this context to the evil Father ruling the secular nation. You're right. A theocracy only has slightly better safeguards against evil people taking control, but in a secular military dictatorship the top seats are filled by those who will do whatever it takes to get them. (Mustang being the 'good' side of this.) This would be a lot easier to be sure of if we knew more about Xingese spirituality, but...let's see. The other side of the individual strength involved in not leaning on things like gods, that Ed values, is the individualistic insanity of Kimbly, who honors no law. He does honor people who stick to their convictions, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like killing them. Horrible man. So that's 'believing in nothing.' Also bad.

Rose is the dupe of religion, Scar mostly the way doctrine can support atrocity, that Ishbalan elder who tells Scar that revenge is wrong the serene morality it can enable, Ed the rejection of 'god' in favor of self-reliance, Kimbly the moral nadir of all nihilism. It's a pretty well-balanced picture of the effect of religion on human beings, and our need both for something spiritual to rely on and for a healthy ability to evaluate the world for ourselves. But nowhere in the series does God, as God, do anyone any good. Religion of various kinds does some very good things, but the name 'God' only comes up in moments of futility, deception, murder, or cruelty. I could be misremembering. Feel free to prove me wrong on this point.

[TrisakAminawn]

Second post here, I had to go and get the bible from my little brother's room so I could be sure of the order of a few passages--this is a translation from the Hebrew and Aramaic, not King James or anything, but it's also not the flat, ugly wording from the New American translation, so bear with me.

(Also, as regards Eden--this is true, it is 'knowledge of good and evil,' but my examples of readings all used the whole affair as a very broad metaphor, so that didn't matter. 'Knowledge of good and evil' is the significant knowledge...it's what makes us human; without it, what on earth would we be? God lied about it. Remember that. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God said "when you eat of it you will surely die." Genesis 2.17. It was the serpent who told Eve what it would actually do. Now, God probably lied because the man and the woman were like children to him, and to protect them or control them or both he had to tell them something they could understand, as he could not trust their reasoning to follow his on the matter of 'it would be bad if you ate this fruit and gained the wisdom of gods.' But he lied, the serpent did not.

Unless Man was immortal like a God until he ate the fruit that would give him the wisdom of a God, and the Tree of Life was only there in case God decided he wanted to enable a two-step deification process of any of his animal-minded creations...say what? Anyway...

Then there's another valuable sentence. The ejection from Eden is not listed as part of the punishment for disobedience. After he was done punishing, God made the man and the woman clothes, and then said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Genesis 3.22

I find the Adam and Eve myth a complex, well-composed, many-faceted achievement, but it does not pretend that any one of its characters is uniformly well-intentioned or all-knowing. God was afraid of us. He lied, he punished, and then he banished out of fear. That cannot be removed from the story, although it is subtle enough that it does not have to be the most important theme.

There is the distance of humans from animals in knowing good and evil, and the pain and trial that brings, which is also the pain of adulthood and independence, which always seems to the maturing youth to be won forcibly from the parent who wants to control forever, also injunctions like Nathan said against not owning up to our own faults, and perhaps even against shame...there are many things in this myth, but there is not a kind god.)