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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8049480" data-attributes="member: 177">So, you're projecting your own feelings on others?&nbsp; &quot;I do it, so everyone else must also,&quot; is not a sound position to take.Sir Issac Newton wrote his Principia Mathematica in 1687.&nbsp; The human race had been around for about 300,000 years before that.&nbsp; So, go back 150,000 years, and try to explain Newtonian mechanics to the people then.&nbsp; They lack the language to be able to understand you.&nbsp; They lack the mathematics to be able to understand the physics.&nbsp; At the very list, you ahve to start them at kindergarten in reading and writing and work them up to junior high school language and high school level math before they can comprehend.&nbsp; That seemed like a pretty good analogy.The Paladin turns his face to the sky and asks, &quot;Why?&quot; and the gods answer... &quot;You would not understand if you devoted your life to it for your entire span on Oerth.&quot;&nbsp; If the Gods and immortal beings are the &quot;elementals&quot; of alignment... maybe they don't understand.&nbsp; They don't actually need to understand, any more than you need to understand cellular biology in order to eat and get nutrition from a hamburger.&nbsp; For them, adherence to alignment is an autonomous function of their existence.&nbsp; I mean, does a fire elemental understand chemistry and plasma physics just 'cause it's body is made of fire?If the game has mechanical impact to alignment (so, say, 3e), then it can be observed - some things intereact with, say, Protection from Evil, and other things don't.&nbsp; We'd have issues with quantifying it, as the relevant magics are all-or-nothing.&nbsp; So divining the underlying rules may not be possible.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8049480, member: 177"] So, you're projecting your own feelings on others? "I do it, so everyone else must also," is not a sound position to take. Sir Issac Newton wrote his [I]Principia Mathematica[/I] in 1687. The human race had been around for about 300,000 years before that. So, go back 150,000 years, and try to explain Newtonian mechanics to the people then. They lack the language to be able to understand you. They lack the mathematics to be able to understand the physics. At the very list, you ahve to start them at kindergarten in reading and writing and work them up to junior high school language and high school level math before they can comprehend. That seemed like a pretty good analogy. The Paladin turns his face to the sky and asks, "Why?" and the gods answer... "You would not understand if you devoted your life to it for your entire span on Oerth." If the Gods and immortal beings are the "elementals" of alignment... maybe they don't understand. They don't actually need to understand, any more than you need to understand cellular biology in order to eat and get nutrition from a hamburger. For them, adherence to alignment is an autonomous function of their existence. I mean, does a fire elemental understand chemistry and plasma physics just 'cause it's body is made of fire? If the game has mechanical impact to alignment (so, say, 3e), then it can be observed - some things intereact with, say, Protection from Evil, and other things don't. We'd have issues with [I]quantifying[/I] it, as the relevant magics are all-or-nothing. So divining the underlying rules may not be possible. [/QUOTE]

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