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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6698608" data-attributes="member: 4937">Did we skip Plato in our introduction to Western philosophy course?I didn't give a mere Aristotelian list of what things were Evil.  I defined what Evil was.  It would be evil even if the gods did it and believed it to be right.   Indeed, some do.In like manner, there would be a definition of Good, and not merely a list of proscriptions or prohibitions.  Good would not merely be what the god's loved.  In general, the Gods of Good agree on the ends.  They know what Good is.  They don't however agree on the means.  They don't know how always to be the most Good.  Completely knowing which means would lead to the best ends would require omniscience.   When a Pacifist and a Righteous Soldier argue about how to accomplish Good, they don't generally suggest that the other is Evil or that the other doesn't know what Good is.  They can have the highest respect for one another.   They simply believe that the other is not acting according to the most perfect wisdom.   They believe that one is not yet obtaining to perfection.   The Righteous Soldier almost certainly agrees that the ideal situation is one where all swords are beat into plowshares, and there is never again a need to make war - he may admire the Pacifists commitment to trying to bring about that more perfect state.  He just may think that some surgery is needed before we can get there, and the pacifist is thinking if at some point we don't stop fighting we'll never get there.   But neither disagrees over what is objectively Good.Moreover, the gods of good are all in agreement that they aren't the source of goodness.   None of them are the wellspring from which all goodness flows.   None of them is the embodiment of all that is good.  They all have imperfect understanding.  It's tremendously higher understanding that most mortals, but it's limited nonetheless.Of course, in some sense you are right, in that each god generally believes that what they do is right, including the gods of evil.  So in that sense, there is no easy way for a character inside the system to know which is the more correct approach to life - lawful evil or chaotic good or whatever.  They all have their intelligent and wise advocates.  Each can produce a persuasive argument on behalf of their beliefs.   But those beliefs themselves can be objectively categorized as Good or Evil or Chaotic or whatever.  You might not agree that Chaotic ought to triumph over Lawful.  You might think that Chaos is what is right, and that the villains are the advocates of Law.  And no one would be there to be the ultimate authority regarding whether your judgment is correct.   In that sense, there would be no objective right or wrong from the perspective of the inhabitants of this fantasy space we've created.  Is existence better than nonexistence?  Who can prove it?  Is life better than death, health better than sickness, creation better than annihilation?  You can argue over that.But we don't need a group of pagan polytheistic limited created deities to agree in order to have an objective good, least of all in a world where you could wait a while and objectively measure the results because good is a tangible thing.  "Yep, more good.", or "Sorry, I guess you were right."</blockquote>

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