The Orzhov only serve the public good when and if it suits them. They couldn't care less if people actually approved of them or not, but they're smart enough to know when and how to turn events to their advantage.
Their thinly-veiled indifference to the suffering of others is what makes them quite nasty.
And again you ignore the several good Orzhov introduced. If you're going to make a point, it's not very convincing on your part to demonstrate blatant denial.
All guilds have "thinly-veiled indifference", even the Azorius and the Selesnya.
The Orzhov actually strike me as being one of the most evil guilds, mostly because they show the public one facet of their guild, and the rest is this murky, ominous side, with promises of eternal slavery and torment.
Except that several orzhova actually do believe in what they preach, and several are even downright benevolent (you should read the story "The Good Pontiff"; it shows good Orzhov better than anything).
"Guilds exist in layers". Not a single guild is entirely good or evil, because they're composed of many people and internal factions with different ideas and concepts.
You're not really getting this argument for credibility concept, apparently.
Sp you endorse this hypocrisy?
So going back to the original question: why should we take these people seriously again?
Depends on whereas you treat other religions seriously. If not, you don't need to. If you would, it'd be an hypocritical statement.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, the wording is a bit strange, but it seems like both statements are ones I would agree with.
I'm basically stating that greek pagans both didn't universally endorse debauchery and that ultimately it wasn't a relevant part of the deities. Zeus was prayed to as a protector and judge, not as a rapist.
No, I said some traditions distanced themselves. You cannot apply this to all of them.
Yes, but there is a large increase of those that do in posterior decades.
They would be exceptions to the norm. Sacrifices were very much a major part of religion in antiquity, and Zeus' rampant debauchery a commonly accepted part of Zeus' character, as well as the character of all of the gods.
And in turn, Helios Megistos and Apollon became more promenient than him in non-rural worship, being more "ethical" deities.
But the tapestry of Christianity is rich and textured, and there are many elements of it that do deserve to be taken seriously. And the same is true of the actual pagan cultures of the pre-Christian world. When neopagans produce philosophy on the level of Aristotle or Aquinas, or art on the level of Homer or Handel, they will earn the respect they crave. Until then... they're just another brand of fundie.
Your definition of "fundie" seems very loose. A fundamentalist is a christian adhering to the five fundamentals, and now synonimous with insane conservative. Sufice to say, I'm not seeing any neopagans rallying against human rights.
But even if what you describe were the case, should you really be surprised by it? Most people (in the West) are Christian. Their bias is entirely to be expected. If our society were majority Wiccan, we would no doubt see the same hypocrisy in reverse. People will be people; they will always view clubs to which they belong more favorably than other clubs.
Yes, but when christians are considerably less severe in judgement to other religions...
And, heck, it can even be argued that Christians objectively have a better explanation for God's behavior than most other religions, because that behavior was all before Christ, and Christ's sacrifice was a transitional event.
I would make a long text explaining why it doesn't make sense from the Bible's perspective, but I'm just going to say that pagan deities are very dynamic and evolve, to the point that the romans reffered to their religion as "the living one" in part to how cult was modified with time.
As to God being genocidal, first of all, he was the tribal deity of the Jewish people in a time when ethnicity and religion were the same word in a time of particular savagery.
If anything, it makes his worship even less justified, as Yahweh represents an intertwining of politics and religion that is not reasonable in the modern world.
Which is my point. I would argue that the evidence points to no pagan deities existing, and you would argue that the evidence points to no deities existing. Either way, we're going to agree that there's no evidence for the pagan deities existing, just like there's no evidence for fairies existing, just like there's no evidence for talking snakes existing.
The Sun exists. That's more evidence than for any other deity, especially the judeo-christian god.
It would be if I accepted your statement that there is a lack of evidence. Clearly I don't, else I would be an atheist right now.
And many people would argue that there is evidence for pagan deities. Yet, for some reason, only your "evidence" is acceptable.
People seem to take talking snakes, sky fairies afraid of iron, angels and demons seriously, so why not?
I don't know anything about Norse Reconstructionism, but Wicca just seems to me to be a religion that borrows heavily from Christianity, dresses it up in the trappings of Britain's pagan past, and then attempts to claim legitimacy by saying it's authentic to pagan tradition. Except for the part where (A) it isn't at all authentic to pagan tradition, and more importantly (B) we should be very thankful it isn't.
Wicca is not a centralised religion: while the original gardenian strand was very christian-ish, most modern versions are at best pseudo-Hinduism, and more commonly either highly misinterpreted western occultism or Dianic strands.
Dude, everyone makes fun of the Greek gods and their depraved ways. The Greeks made fun of the Greek gods and their depraved ways. There were entire traditions that rejected Homer and claimed he was suffering in Hades for telling lies about the gods because there's no way that gods would be that depraved.
Indeed, but the problem is that people assume that the greek gods' insane behaviour was both widely accepted as a manifestation of "ancient barbarism" and that it was intrinsinc to their nature. As you yourself put, posterior writers distance themselves from said portrayals and several esoteric sects even went as far as disregard traditional things like sacrifices in favour of very familiar spirituality, instead of simply embracing Zeus' shapeshifting rapes.
Are you trying to claim that no one has ever raised a moral issue with regards to God as he's described in the Old Testament?
While people as far back as ancient jews condemned Yahweh's behaviour, most people are very willing to ignore his monstruousity, whilst condemning other gods for much less severe deeds.
Of couse there's always arrogant intolerant people, but I have the impression that non-abrahamic/vedic (aka Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, et cetera) religions are at best not taken seriously or very much hated.
The two main "pagan" branches, Wicca and Norse Reconstructionism, have quite a lot of bile spit at them by the media. The former are appearently all imbecile teenagers or attention whores according to nearly every show in existence, while the latter are invariably depicted as either white supremacists or outright satanic.
It's also a sport to make fun of the Greek gods and their "depraved" ways, while the genocidal abrahamic god gets scott free.
But there is one thing you forget. Magic isn't about stories. magic is about cards. I believe there is still plenty of room to make cards about a bleak horror setting, like Innistrad (yes Innistrads happy ending will be reversed). and as said innistrad was extremely popular, so innistrad part II will come (my guess in 5-6 years).
<Congratulations, you just embodied everything bad about the Magic fandom.>
If they want more bleak horror though, there's plenty of other planes to set it in.
Infraction for Flaming. It's fine to disagree with opinions, but you can't attack people directly like this.
~kaburi
Gorgons were originally animalistic deities in mythology, so they by nature (hurr hurr) are somewhat associated with Green concepts.
In MTG, most gorgons are indeed Black because of their witch-like nature, but Golgari gorgons tend to sincerily apreciate the larger cycles.
As for Vraska specifically, remember that her original motivation was a twisted sense of justice. That's normally White, but it can overlap with Green.
Honestly, I'm not sure why people are even bothering to entertain a person who doesn't even understand how the burden of truth operates, and that is narcissitic and appearently sociopathic enough to assume 1% of the world's population isn't religious based on emotional responses instead of a so far mostly accurate world view.
Besides, you know, freeing the saviour of the plane (accidently, but still, it was in her best interest, so it's not like she was bothered by that), but she didn't do anything to warrant a position as an antagonist.
The only thing that might count is her threatning Thalia and co, but they were in her way and it worked for the best anyways.
As for villains, you also forgot Okagachi, most of the Kamigawa kami (seriously, only the Green Kirin was unambiguously good; others, like Katachi, were outright demented), and Lieut. Kirtar.
There have been many ideas for alternate guilds. For example, one "official" example was suggested by Mark Rosewater, that said that, instead of the military, the Boros could easily had been an anarchic terrorist organisation.
And again you ignore the several good Orzhov introduced. If you're going to make a point, it's not very convincing on your part to demonstrate blatant denial.
All guilds have "thinly-veiled indifference", even the Azorius and the Selesnya.
Except that several orzhova actually do believe in what they preach, and several are even downright benevolent (you should read the story "The Good Pontiff"; it shows good Orzhov better than anything).
Sp you endorse this hypocrisy?
Depends on whereas you treat other religions seriously. If not, you don't need to. If you would, it'd be an hypocritical statement.
I'm basically stating that greek pagans both didn't universally endorse debauchery and that ultimately it wasn't a relevant part of the deities. Zeus was prayed to as a protector and judge, not as a rapist.
Yes, but there is a large increase of those that do in posterior decades.
And in turn, Helios Megistos and Apollon became more promenient than him in non-rural worship, being more "ethical" deities.
Your definition of "fundie" seems very loose. A fundamentalist is a christian adhering to the five fundamentals, and now synonimous with insane conservative. Sufice to say, I'm not seeing any neopagans rallying against human rights.
Yes, but when christians are considerably less severe in judgement to other religions...
I would make a long text explaining why it doesn't make sense from the Bible's perspective, but I'm just going to say that pagan deities are very dynamic and evolve, to the point that the romans reffered to their religion as "the living one" in part to how cult was modified with time.
If anything, it makes his worship even less justified, as Yahweh represents an intertwining of politics and religion that is not reasonable in the modern world.
The Sun exists. That's more evidence than for any other deity, especially the judeo-christian god.
And many people would argue that there is evidence for pagan deities. Yet, for some reason, only your "evidence" is acceptable.
Can you spell "hypocrite"?
People seem to take talking snakes, sky fairies afraid of iron, angels and demons seriously, so why not?
Wicca is not a centralised religion: while the original gardenian strand was very christian-ish, most modern versions are at best pseudo-Hinduism, and more commonly either highly misinterpreted western occultism or Dianic strands.
Indeed, but the problem is that people assume that the greek gods' insane behaviour was both widely accepted as a manifestation of "ancient barbarism" and that it was intrinsinc to their nature. As you yourself put, posterior writers distance themselves from said portrayals and several esoteric sects even went as far as disregard traditional things like sacrifices in favour of very familiar spirituality, instead of simply embracing Zeus' shapeshifting rapes.
While people as far back as ancient jews condemned Yahweh's behaviour, most people are very willing to ignore his monstruousity, whilst condemning other gods for much less severe deeds.
The two main "pagan" branches, Wicca and Norse Reconstructionism, have quite a lot of bile spit at them by the media. The former are appearently all imbecile teenagers or attention whores according to nearly every show in existence, while the latter are invariably depicted as either white supremacists or outright satanic.
It's also a sport to make fun of the Greek gods and their "depraved" ways, while the genocidal abrahamic god gets scott free.
<Congratulations, you just embodied everything bad about the Magic fandom.>
If they want more bleak horror though, there's plenty of other planes to set it in.
Infraction for Flaming. It's fine to disagree with opinions, but you can't attack people directly like this.
~kaburi
In MTG, most gorgons are indeed Black because of their witch-like nature, but Golgari gorgons tend to sincerily apreciate the larger cycles.
As for Vraska specifically, remember that her original motivation was a twisted sense of justice. That's normally White, but it can overlap with Green.
Flame warning.
WHAT!?
Besides, you know, freeing the saviour of the plane (accidently, but still, it was in her best interest, so it's not like she was bothered by that), but she didn't do anything to warrant a position as an antagonist.
The only thing that might count is her threatning Thalia and co, but they were in her way and it worked for the best anyways.
As for villains, you also forgot Okagachi, most of the Kamigawa kami (seriously, only the Green Kirin was unambiguously good; others, like Katachi, were outright demented), and Lieut. Kirtar.