RuneScape Forum Archive | Praise be to Saradomin!

Jul

2013

Derack

Posts: 3,066 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Roland Lyons said :
Androme said :
Based Thank you brother RL

In fact even if he wasn't a god, I frankly don't care. Let's examine the creatures born as gods, or who are gods.

The Elder Gods are just Nikocado given god powers, they do a mukbang of the entire universe every million years or so.
Zaros is an emotionless robot that has to use a control aura to get people to follow him.
Seren in the polar opposite but in the worst way, she's an over-emotional wreck who inadvertently made the elves into slaves.
Mah was just an idiot
Xau-Tak is ???????????? I dunno man I did Pieces of Hate and Curse of the Black Stone, he's kind of creepy and weird and I don't like him. Or it for that matter.

Saradomin? He's a MAN and the greatest of our species. Pray to him as such, do NOT compare him to filthy god-creatures. He is more, he is a HUMAN.
And that's one of the problem, HUMAN, Sara is just another arrogant one and as such will make the same mistakes as every other human will's as it does.
Diffirence? To much power and followers; which will pave the road to damnation, on his road to a so called Utopia.
How much blood, lives, and morality is he gonna dirty him and his followers hands for such?
Calling his deeds and actions virtues is ridiculus, is it really something you really want to build on the ruins of countless bodies of those who fought? Or those who have no desire?
No, Saradomin is just as foolish as those other so called God's and their believes.

It's nice to have dreams, but you gotta have to be realistic here. No empire will ever last, last longer then some, but never as such.

Yes, i know it is hypocritical from someone like me, butt, doesn't make my words any falser then someone who turns around that puts their fingers in it's ears and refuse to aknowledge it.

In Mah's deffence, it's not her fault that she was born/turned into what she was.

"If you believe you can distance yourself from the harm you cause, you're deluding yourself. You're not some mindless tool. You're accountable. Your actions will catch up with you eventually." -Jedi Master Jun Seros; Swtor Bounty Hunter storyline.

06-Mar-2021 15:28:58 - Last edited on 06-Mar-2021 15:29:28 by Derack

Dan-i-el

Posts: 84 Iron Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The whole point of a set of ideals is to improve people and the society they live in.

Any single individual who claims to know better is either lying, manipulating you, or genuinely misguided.
The Zarosian empire may have been started by Zaros, but it was the collective effort of every single individual within it that accomplished the scientific and magical feats, the unmatched prowess at warfare, the advanced materials, hygiene standards, etc.

Saradominists who value their ideals over even Saradomin himself, tend to achieve far greater things than blind zealots, the same applies to fellow Zarosians, Serenists, Zamorakians, Bandosians, Armadylians, Sliskeans, Brassicans, Marimbons, and so on.

Afterall, you said it himself, Saradomin is only Human. ALL humans make errors, he is just as fallible as you or I.

This is why I choose Zarosianism over Saradominism, Zarosian churches actively saught to teach, mend, organise, research and discuss with other followers, whilst praying.
So far, Saradominist churches show little of this, maybe a few, but they are exception rather than the rule.
In that regard, I can respect Serenists, Bandosians and some, some, Zamorakians, as they usually exhibit varying degrees of this also, just not in a way i agree with, e.g., smashing somebody with a BGS, whilst certainly amusing, is not exactly what i'd consider the pinnacle of philosophy, or Serenists are too naive and will ultimately get harmed by a bigger fish if they do not learn the ways of war.

06-Mar-2021 15:54:06

Dec

2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Dan-i-el said :

This is why I choose Zarosianism over Saradominism, Zarosian churches actively saught to teach, mend, organise, research and discuss with other followers, whilst praying.

You're painting the Zarosian church in a rather bright light. Is this supported by any textual evidence? The last time I seriously inquired into the nature of the Zarosian empire's institutions I contacted Mod Jack. This is what he wrote.

"Laws were enforced by the church, which was the same thing as the civil bureaucracy. By the late empire Zaros trusted its running to the human leaders and Azzanadra, but even Azzanadra could only personally supervise a tiny fraction of it.

Like any human institution, I'm sure corruption and inefficiency were tremendous."
A bit bleaker than you've presented it, no?

Furthermore, your comparison between the Saradomonist church and the Zarosian church is really misleading. For the Zarosians, the church is synonymous with government. The church makes all the laws. Per Mod Jack:

"The church was responsible for culture, ideology and civil government within the boundaries of the empire, but with culture well-established and the population growing, the demands of civil government took more and more of its time"
Of course, the Church sought to "teach, mend, organize, research." That is what a government is supposed to do.

Contrarily, in Saradomonist empires there is often a significant enough separation between church and state. Usually, there is a monarchy and an independent church. It's not the church's job to do those things, it's the monarchy's. The type of things you've described requires money and resources. How is the church supposed to do anything like you've described in large-scale when taxation fills the coffers of the monarch?

Your comparison makes as much sense as trying to compare the entirety of 12th-century catholicism with a 21st century baptist church.

06-Mar-2021 18:52:44 - Last edited on 06-Mar-2021 19:19:26 by Cthris

Dan-i-el

Posts: 84 Iron Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The comparison shows that the Saradomonist church takes taxes for it's priests alone, Zarosian temples took taxes as they were the government, in turn, actually putting something back to the community, rather than a blessing with some holy water, which ultimately is of little value compared to say, the forums held by Zarosians where various magics could be taught, Lowerniel Drakan for example attended these and taught Blood magics to the various inhabitants.
This in turn also shows your words only reaffirm me, of course the Zarosian church, as essentially the state government, would have been in charge of education, public health, etc, especially since one of Zaros' top aims in the intial stages of the empire was to establish high literacy rates, something even some modern kingdoms cannot boast, although that is improving.

Besides, that wasn't exactly the point I was trying to make, It's that Saradomin's church doesn't practice what it preaches.
Zarosianism is effectively about trying to push potential. That was accomplished, it invented many things modern Gielinorians now take for granted, even something as basic as sewers comes from Zarosian innovation.
Saradominism on the other hand seems to focus on the God, not the people in the religion. To them, only Saradomin is a God, to them, only Saradomin is the wisest.
That is objectively not true, no one man is the wisest, even Zamorak has the wisdom to value the wisdom of his followers more so than Saradomin does.

Zarosians do not and never have cared about being goody two shoes, nor do we pretend to be, hell I'd practice necromancy if Jagex allowed me to, being lawful good isn't in our MO, it is in Saradomin's though.
Saradominists on the other hand actively deify a man who thinks ripping wings off an objector is a wise move, when in fact any wise person knows that's how you start an insurrection, whilst proclaiming to be the light of the world.

06-Mar-2021 21:37:38

Dec

2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Original message details are unavailable.
The comparison shows that the Saradomonist church takes taxes for it's priests alone
The Saradomonist church doesn't take taxes. Tax, by definition, is state revenue. The church, as an organization distinct from the state, cannot tax the populous. Its also non-sensical to think that the church, primarily based in Asgarnia, would have the capacity to tax the neighbouring kingdoms of Al Kharid, Misthalin and Kandarin.

Original message details are unavailable.

This in turn also shows your words only reaffirm me, of course the Zarosian church, as essentially the state government, would have been in charge of education, public health, etc, especially since one of Zaros' top aims in the intial stages of the empire was to establish high literacy rates...
Literacy: Yeah, Zaros desired for the entire empire to be literate, but according to Mizzach's memory, the church only taught 20% of humans knew how to read and 10% how to write because it a waste of time. I'm pretty sure that's an abject demonstration of how corrupt and ineffective the "church" was.
Public Health: "

Per Mod Jack

"The conventional interpretation of this passage was that what was broken was the lunatic's contribution to society, and so efforts focused on finding productive work for them, typically unpaid work in workhouses or on clerical labour teams …Nabor was given a grant to establish and maintain a "sanitarium" in which to imprison and, ideally, heal the disordered... The church were unwilling to give any but the most disturbed lunatics to the sanitarium as the harmless ones provided a source of cost-effective labour."

The "Church" used mentally ill people as slaves . The Church didn't even want Nabor to try and heal the harmlessly sick because it would deprive the church of free labour. Public health was clearly not a concern.

Not to mention, how you skipped over the parts where Mod Jack said the Church was tremendously corrupt.

06-Mar-2021 23:03:24 - Last edited on 07-Mar-2021 02:35:24 by Cthris

Dec

2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Original message details are unavailable.
Besides, that wasn't exactly the point I was trying to make, It's that Saradomin's church doesn't practice what it preaches.
But neither does the Zarosian Church. According to you, “Zarosianism is effectively about trying to push potential” (which, for the record, I think is a very baseless claim because we have no idea what Zarosian church services were like or the specifics of what was taught. I’m pretty sure Zarosianism is “do whatever Zaros says”, but I digress). Even if you’re right and this is what Zarosianism is about, the fact that the church didn’t want to help the mentally ill to become healthier cause they preferred them as slaves shows that they are hypocrites. How is slave labour helping people reach their full potential?

Besides, Enakhra’s memory shows that a lot of Zarosian higher-ups believed that the Zarosian empire was limiting their true potential and making them stagnant--again showing that the Zarosian Church is just as hypocritical as the Saradominist church you gripe about. Also, this doesn’t even include Mod Osborne’s long made comment in a lore podcast that one of the reasons Zamorak rebelled against Zaros was that Zaros had ways of limiting his power.

Clearly, the Zarosian church is not very good at pushing for greater potential.

Anyways, I agree that the Saradomonist religion is pretty hypocritical, tyrannical and stupid. But don’t pretend the Zarosian church was anything other than an instantiation of fascism.

06-Mar-2021 23:06:12 - Last edited on 07-Mar-2021 03:24:38 by Cthris

Jul

2020

Dennorak

Posts: 4,414 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

It's funny because, in a lot of ways, I think I could argue Zarosians are even bigger blind zealots than Saradominists are.

At least Saradominists are aware of what their god is actually trying to accomplish and how he plans to accomplish it. Do Zarosians even know what Zaros plans to do? How he plans to do it? At the end of the day, Zarosians just have blind faith that Zaros is going to do something good for them without having a clue what he's actually working on.

At best, only his inner circle is kept up to date and even that inner circle seems to barely know anything of his plan.

Zamorakian Lorehound, Flame of Chaos member, Bilrach enthusiast

07-Mar-2021 21:44:34 - Last edited on 07-Mar-2021 21:44:59 by Dennorak

Dec

2020

Sepulchre

Posts: 3,525 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Sir Tiffy Cashien: Well, in simple terms, we're better! Any fool with a sword can manage to get into the White Knights, which is mostly the reason they are so very, very incompetent, what? The Temple Knights, on the other hand, have to be smarter, stronger and better than all others. We are the elite. No man controls us, for our orders come directly from Saradomin himself! According to Sir Vey Lance, our head of operations, that is. He claims that everything he tells us to do is done with Saradomin's implicit permission. It's not every job where you have more authority than the king, though, is it?
Player: Wait... You can order the King around?
Sir Tiffy Cashien: Well, not me personally, I'm only in the recruitment side of things, dontchaknow, but the higher ranking members of the organisation have almost absolute power over this kingdom. Plus a few others, so I hear...

Cthris said :
Contrarily, in Saradomonist empires there is often a significant enough separation between church and state. Usually, there is a monarchy and an independent church. It's not the church's job to do those things, it's the monarchy's. The type of things you've described requires money and resources. How is the church supposed to do anything like you've described in large-scale when taxation fills the coffers of the monarch?
Peeks head through tear in background.
Are you sure about that? A

World Guardian

must learn to find

Balance

in themselves.
Only then can they

Control

themselves and forge their own

Fate .

09-Mar-2021 20:46:16

Hguoh

Posts: 7,581 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

To be fair, Sepulchre, we did just find out that Sir Vey Lance and most of the Temple Knights were actually Zarosians in deep cover just pretending to speak directly to Saradomin. And it is well established in lore just how much power the Zarosian church wielded over their empire.

That said, it should be slightly worrying that a primarily Saradominist kingdom would be willing to be so subservient and/or vulnerable to a theocratic organization's control simply because said organization claimed to be the most Saradominist/to be the best Saradominists/nobody is more Saradominist than them.

At best, it at least shows no inclination for separation of church and state. At worst, it shows a proclivity to actively remove any such separation.

09-Mar-2021 22:18:32

Dec

2023

Cthris

Posts: 5,206 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Sepulchre said :

Are you sure about that?
I did say a separation between church and state, not a separation between religion and state. That is, I was specifically talking about the institution of the church, not Saradominist faith and state politics. Although I do realize I made a tiny slip up when I said the church was primarily based in Asgarnia--I was making the assumption that Entrana was part of that province, but upon reflection, I've got no reason to believe that.

Anyways, the Church, with its hierarchal order of priests and nuns, is spread all around Gielinor, with the head priest being found on Entrana. Since the Church has monasteries in many different provinces, but a number of them seem to belong to the same organization in which the church of Entrana heads, it is reasonable to assume that all these churches belong to a distinct organization from any one provinces' government. It would, after all, be silly if Al Kharid, Misthalin etc. allowed the Asgarnian state to have such an intimate relationship with its citizenry--not to mention the one between Aeonisig Raispher and King Rolad

Of course, Faladorian politics are heavily influenced by Saradominist faith, but that isn't the same as the church being the head of the government. On paper at least, the monarchy has the final say on laws. Although in practice this is challenged. First, the lastest quest revealed grave tidings for King Vallence. Secondly, Saradomin's return to Gielinor changes some things. Are the white knights more loyal to the crown or to Saradomin. If the king was to make an order that contradicted Saradomin, who would listen? It is entirely possible that Saradomin will absorb both the kingdom of Asgarnia and the Church of Entrana in the days to come, thereby destroying the previous distinction between church and state. But right now I am comfortable with saying that there is a "significant enough" distinction between the two.

09-Mar-2021 23:55:27 - Last edited on 10-Mar-2021 06:28:31 by Cthris

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Praise be to Saradomin!