Understanding the human gods

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@Lavith.8930 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

This article

says they brought humanity to Cantha, but it never says where they arrived on the planet from another world. We

know

the Six and humanity are not native to the world, and not only does the

Orrian History Scrolls

say they arrived on the world at Arah, but so does

the Seventh Reaper

.

As I said in

my prior post

, there's a lot of other suggestions to colloborate the notion that the Six arrived at Arah, brought humanity to the world there, then moved them elsewhere. Nothing has so far debunked or implied against the Orrian History Scrolls, nothing suggests they are "more myth than reality".

So I'd appreciate you don't pronounce something as fact unless you have a source.

That same article says they first appear in Cantha ... So ...(By the way i can't argue a lot cause english is not my native language, sorry about that, truly)"Timeline786 BE: The Gods Arrive, and They Brought Friends

The Six Gods first appear in Cantha, bringing humanity with them.

Like gardeners starting a new patch, they transplant human beings to this lush new world, working the soil and tending their seedbeds to ensure the new crop will take root, spread, and thrive."

So they came in Cantha first, they're not native to the world so they obviously come from another one.I'm not sure if i totally got what you said if not I apologize.

"First appear in Cantha", as in "the first time they appeared in Cantha" and not "they first appeared in the world at Cantha".

Nothing about that sentence suggests they came to the world at Cantha, just that 786 BE is when they arrived at Cantha specifically, for either god or humanity. While we have multiple other statements saying they arrived on the world at Arah, and suggestions that they arrived in Cantha via boat from across the sea (per my aforementioned post with a dozen quotes).

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:In my opinion the "gods" as they are now (I don't speak here about the gods from the start of the game - they were credible as gods) behaves as a bunch of slavers. Very powerful, very wise and old, herding the human cattle from pasture to pasture, searching a place with no predators. Because if they find predators they are unable to protect the herd. Or they don't want? I don't know. But wandering from place to place is not something a god should do.

Many Asurans seems the gods as just extremely powerful mists entitys that only pose of Gods.

Well that's what they are, they're not omnipotent and didn't create the world. They're not infallible either and can be killed so they're not truly immortal.

Depends on how one defines a god. Eekasqueak is pretty easily using the monotheistic definition of god, but if we look at the hundreds of polytheistic faiths in our own world, the Six Gods are pretty darn close to those, such as the Olympians, Asgardians, etc. Very few of those god pantheons created the world, are unkillable, omnipotent, and infallible - hell, most older religions pretty much put the blame of natural disasters and everything wrong with the people and world on the gods' failures or punishments.

If we're talking about the Abrahamic "one perfect god" then yeah, they don't match, but if we compare to any polytheistic faith, then they match. In that context, the main things that define god would be: Living in a higher plane of existence, the power to mold and create life, some relation to the world's nature/elements (e.g., sea, animals, thunder) or humanity's personalities/cross-culture similarities (e.g., war, honor, justice), and dominion over the souls of the dead. In which the Six match all four primary attributes.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Omnipotent gods will be lore problematic because of question "why they just wipe all with a thought?".

Then basically they just they have immaterialised this in "the mists". The creator and the ruler of all is the mists itself. since "the mists", its a thing not a person, with a certain chaotic nature, there is no problem dealing with a self-will that would have power over everything.

However, from the little I read of GW1, it seems to me that the mists in GW1 were presented as less chaotic, having an oracle and entities that would take care of its "order" and the gods being some of these entities.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Lavith.8930 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

This article

says they brought humanity to Cantha, but it never says where they arrived on the planet from another world. We

know

the Six and humanity are not native to the world, and not only does the

Orrian History Scrolls

say they arrived on the world at Arah, but so does

the Seventh Reaper

.

As I said in

my prior post

, there's a lot of other suggestions to colloborate the notion that the Six arrived at Arah, brought humanity to the world there, then moved them elsewhere. Nothing has so far debunked or implied against the Orrian History Scrolls, nothing suggests they are "more myth than reality".

So I'd appreciate you don't pronounce something as fact unless you have a source.

That same article says they first appear in Cantha ... So ...(By the way i can't argue a lot cause english is not my native language, sorry about that, truly)"Timeline786 BE: The Gods Arrive, and They Brought Friends

The Six Gods first appear in Cantha, bringing humanity with them.

Like gardeners starting a new patch, they transplant human beings to this lush new world, working the soil and tending their seedbeds to ensure the new crop will take root, spread, and thrive."

So they came in Cantha first, they're not native to the world so they obviously come from another one.I'm not sure if i totally got what you said if not I apologize.

"First appear in Cantha", as in "the first time they appeared in Cantha" and not "they first appeared in the world at Cantha".

Nothing about that sentence suggests they came to the world at Cantha, just that 786 BE is when they arrived at Cantha specifically, for either god or humanity. While we have multiple other statements saying they arrived on the world at Arah, and suggestions that they arrived in Cantha via boat from across the sea (per my aforementioned post with a dozen quotes).

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:In my opinion the "gods" as they are now (I don't speak here about the gods from the start of the game - they were credible as gods) behaves as a bunch of slavers. Very powerful, very wise and old, herding the human cattle from pasture to pasture, searching a place with no predators. Because if they find predators they are unable to protect the herd. Or they don't want? I don't know. But wandering from place to place is not something a god should do.

Many Asurans seems the gods as just extremely powerful mists entitys that only pose of Gods.

Well that's what they are, they're not omnipotent and didn't create the world. They're not infallible either and can be killed so they're not truly immortal.

Depends on how one defines a god. Eekasqueak is pretty easily using the monotheistic definition of god, but if we look at the hundreds of polytheistic faiths in our own world, the Six Gods are pretty darn close to those, such as the Olympians, Asgardians, etc. Very few of those god pantheons created the world, are unkillable, omnipotent, and infallible - hell, most older religions pretty much put the blame of natural disasters and everything wrong with the people and world on the gods' failures or punishments.

If we're talking about the Abrahamic "one perfect god" then yeah, they don't match, but if we compare to any polytheistic faith, then they match. In that context, the main things that define god would be: Living in a higher plane of existence, the power to mold and create life, some relation to the world's nature/elements (e.g., sea, animals, thunder) or humanity's personalities/cross-culture similarities (e.g., war, honor, justice), and dominion over the souls of the dead. In which the Six match all four primary attributes.

Actually, all of those polytheistic religions you mentioned do have the gods playing a part in the creation of the world. Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc.. The human gods in GW2 come off largely as aliens with a lot of power and not gods.

[ThatOddOne.4387]

They are still Gods. Just because you think they don't classify doesn't make it true. They are stated to be Gods by the creators of the universe, therefore, they are Gods.

What different races view them as is irrelevant, they would be wrong. Nor is what they actually are relevant, powerful Mist beings or whatever. They are most certainly Gods relative to anything else in the GW universe bar the Elder Dragons. They are unique and operate by their own rules clearly separate from other rules.

Your views are perfectly reasonable for characters in universe to believe, but with us as outside observers of the story we can use the multitude of evidence and hindsight available to us to categorically state that yes, they are indeed Gods.

[perilisk.1874]

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc..

I sort of wonder whether the very small allusion to Balthazar having his father's head references a similar conflict in the history of the Six. Maybe in their world Ymir/Cronus won.

[Oglaf.1074]

@ThatOddOne.4387 said:They are still Gods. Just because you think they don't classify doesn't make it true. They are stated to be Gods by the creators of the universe, therefore, they are Gods.

What different races view them as is irrelevant, they would be wrong. Nor is what they actually are relevant, powerful Mist beings or whatever. They are most certainly Gods relative to anything else in the GW universe bar the Elder Dragons. They are unique and operate by their own rules clearly separate from other rules.

Your views are perfectly reasonable for characters in universe to believe, but with us as outside observers of the story we can use the multitude of evidence and hindsight available to us to categorically state that yes, they are indeed Gods.

They’re like most non-Abrahamic religions’ gods. The Norse, Egyptian, Greek etc pantheons all have gods that are beings on a higher “power level” than humans. They can be killed, have children and all those other “mortal” concerns.

Which stands in stark contrast to the Jewish/Islamic/Christian god who is so overpowered in contrast to everything else in the mythos.

In view of this, the GW2 gods definitely fit the definition of gods for the vast majority of religions out there.

[Genesis.8572]

@"Arden.7480" said:Why do we even need the gods?

Even Kormir- not directly- said that the Commander and his gang need no gods, because they are the gods.

Lol. Who cares about the gods, screw them.You seem mistaken. Humanity's worship of the gods is not about 'need' but about the veneration of their powerful patrons, teachers, and guardians. Humanity found their teachings and guidance vital for their formative period in the world, and possibly before. The Gods are essentially humanity's more pro-active Wild Spirits. Human worships the Five/Six because they choose to.

"God" is an incredibly loose term, whether one applies that historically, religiously, anthropologically, or even linguistically. Religions and faiths have applied this term variously to things such as local nature spirits to cosmic beings of immense power. No one in the Guild Wars Universe doubts that the Five/Six are "gods" apart from really the Just-Born-Yesterday Sylvari.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Lavith.8930 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

This article

says they brought humanity to Cantha, but it never says where they arrived on the planet from another world. We

know

the Six and humanity are not native to the world, and not only does the

Orrian History Scrolls

say they arrived on the world at Arah, but so does

the Seventh Reaper

.

As I said in

my prior post

, there's a lot of other suggestions to colloborate the notion that the Six arrived at Arah, brought humanity to the world there, then moved them elsewhere. Nothing has so far debunked or implied against the Orrian History Scrolls, nothing suggests they are "more myth than reality".

So I'd appreciate you don't pronounce something as fact unless you have a source.

That same article says they first appear in Cantha ... So ...(By the way i can't argue a lot cause english is not my native language, sorry about that, truly)"Timeline786 BE: The Gods Arrive, and They Brought Friends

The Six Gods first appear in Cantha, bringing humanity with them.

Like gardeners starting a new patch, they transplant human beings to this lush new world, working the soil and tending their seedbeds to ensure the new crop will take root, spread, and thrive."

So they came in Cantha first, they're not native to the world so they obviously come from another one.I'm not sure if i totally got what you said if not I apologize.

"First appear in Cantha", as in "the first time they appeared in Cantha" and not "they first appeared in the world at Cantha".

Nothing about that sentence suggests they came to the world at Cantha, just that 786 BE is when they arrived at Cantha specifically, for either god or humanity. While we have multiple other statements saying they arrived on the world at Arah, and suggestions that they arrived in Cantha via boat from across the sea (per my aforementioned post with a dozen quotes).

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:In my opinion the "gods" as they are now (I don't speak here about the gods from the start of the game - they were credible as gods) behaves as a bunch of slavers. Very powerful, very wise and old, herding the human cattle from pasture to pasture, searching a place with no predators. Because if they find predators they are unable to protect the herd. Or they don't want? I don't know. But wandering from place to place is not something a god should do.

Many Asurans seems the gods as just extremely powerful mists entitys that only pose of Gods.

Well that's what they are, they're not omnipotent and didn't create the world. They're not infallible either and can be killed so they're not truly immortal.

Depends on how one defines a god. Eekasqueak is pretty easily using the monotheistic definition of god, but if we look at the hundreds of polytheistic faiths in our own world, the Six Gods are pretty darn close to those, such as the Olympians, Asgardians, etc. Very few of those god pantheons created the world, are unkillable, omnipotent, and infallible - hell, most older religions pretty much put the blame of natural disasters and everything wrong with the people and world on the gods' failures or punishments.

If we're talking about the Abrahamic "one perfect god" then yeah, they don't match, but if we compare to any polytheistic faith, then they match. In that context, the main things that define god would be: Living in a higher plane of existence, the power to mold and create life, some relation to the world's nature/elements (e.g., sea, animals, thunder) or humanity's personalities/cross-culture similarities (e.g., war, honor, justice), and dominion over the souls of the dead. In which the Six match all four primary attributes.

Actually, all of those polytheistic religions you mentioned do have the gods playing a part in the creation of the world. Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc.. The human gods in GW2 come off largely as aliens with a lot of power and not gods.

For the Norse... somewhat. They still had raw material to work from, and we know the Six performed some reshaping of what they found when they arrived. Probably not as significant as turning a giant into a world, but neither are creating something out of nothing. Additionally, only the oldest of the Aesir were involved in the actual act of creation - the younger Aesir (including Thor and Loki) and the Vanir were not.

For the Greeks... not so much. The world is Gaia - the Olympians were not the creators of the world, but the grandchildren of it.

Similar observations apply to other mythologies. For instance, Egypt has multiple origin stories, but some of the most well-known Egyptian gods - Osiris, Isis, Set - post-date the creation of the world. In Chinese myth, Pan Gu died, and while in some versions there was a dragon, tortoise, qilin, and fenghuang present to help, by and large the deities of the Chinese pantheon were not involved in the creation. And so on.

One could argue that descendants of the creator would presumably have inherited the ability to create, they just don't need to any more... however, the Six do appear to be able to shape realms in the Mists. We can't rule out the possibility that they have the capability to create a world, it would just take an impractically long timescale to do so (which, for the record, does not disqualify divinity: some creation myths have the act of creation taking thousands of years, and the gods presumably didn't have that long when they evacuated humanity).

Bottom line, it would be hard to create a non-arbitrary definition of 'god' that certainly excludes the Six while not also excluding some major gods from real-world pantheonic religions.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Lavith.8930 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

This article

says they brought humanity to Cantha, but it never says where they arrived on the planet from another world. We

know

the Six and humanity are not native to the world, and not only does the

Orrian History Scrolls

say they arrived on the world at Arah, but so does

the Seventh Reaper

.

As I said in

my prior post

, there's a lot of other suggestions to colloborate the notion that the Six arrived at Arah, brought humanity to the world there, then moved them elsewhere. Nothing has so far debunked or implied against the Orrian History Scrolls, nothing suggests they are "more myth than reality".

So I'd appreciate you don't pronounce something as fact unless you have a source.

That same article says they first appear in Cantha ... So ...(By the way i can't argue a lot cause english is not my native language, sorry about that, truly)"Timeline786 BE: The Gods Arrive, and They Brought Friends

The Six Gods first appear in Cantha, bringing humanity with them.

Like gardeners starting a new patch, they transplant human beings to this lush new world, working the soil and tending their seedbeds to ensure the new crop will take root, spread, and thrive."

So they came in Cantha first, they're not native to the world so they obviously come from another one.I'm not sure if i totally got what you said if not I apologize.

"First appear in Cantha", as in "the first time they appeared in Cantha" and not "they first appeared in the world at Cantha".

Nothing about that sentence suggests they came to the world at Cantha, just that 786 BE is when they arrived at Cantha specifically, for either god or humanity. While we have multiple other statements saying they arrived on the world at Arah, and suggestions that they arrived in Cantha via boat from across the sea (per my aforementioned post with a dozen quotes).

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:In my opinion the "gods" as they are now (I don't speak here about the gods from the start of the game - they were credible as gods) behaves as a bunch of slavers. Very powerful, very wise and old, herding the human cattle from pasture to pasture, searching a place with no predators. Because if they find predators they are unable to protect the herd. Or they don't want? I don't know. But wandering from place to place is not something a god should do.

Many Asurans seems the gods as just extremely powerful mists entitys that only pose of Gods.

Well that's what they are, they're not omnipotent and didn't create the world. They're not infallible either and can be killed so they're not truly immortal.

Depends on how one defines a god. Eekasqueak is pretty easily using the monotheistic definition of god, but if we look at the hundreds of polytheistic faiths in our own world, the Six Gods are pretty darn close to those, such as the Olympians, Asgardians, etc. Very few of those god pantheons created the world, are unkillable, omnipotent, and infallible - hell, most older religions pretty much put the blame of natural disasters and everything wrong with the people and world on the gods' failures or punishments.

If we're talking about the Abrahamic "one perfect god" then yeah, they don't match, but if we compare to any polytheistic faith, then they match. In that context, the main things that define god would be: Living in a higher plane of existence, the power to mold and create life, some relation to the world's nature/elements (e.g., sea, animals, thunder) or humanity's personalities/cross-culture similarities (e.g., war, honor, justice), and dominion over the souls of the dead. In which the Six match all four primary attributes.

Actually, all of those polytheistic religions you mentioned do have the gods playing a part in the creation of the world. Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc.. The human gods in GW2 come off largely as aliens with a lot of power and not gods.

For the Norse...

somewhat.

They still had raw material to work from, and we know the Six performed some reshaping of what they found when they arrived. Probably not as significant as turning a giant into a world, but neither are creating something out of nothing. Additionally, only the oldest of the Aesir were involved in the actual act of creation - the younger Aesir (including Thor and Loki) and the Vanir were not.

For the Greeks...

not so much.

The world is Gaia - the Olympians were not the creators of the world, but the

grandchildren

of it.

Similar observations apply to other mythologies. For instance, Egypt has multiple origin stories, but some of the most well-known Egyptian gods - Osiris, Isis, Set - post-date the creation of the world. In Chinese myth, Pan Gu died, and while in some versions there was a dragon, tortoise, qilin, and fenghuang present to help, by and large the deities of the Chinese pantheon were not involved in the creation. And so on.

One could argue that descendants of the creator would presumably have inherited the ability to create, they just don't need to any more... however, the Six

do

appear to be able to shape realms in the Mists. We can't rule out the possibility that they have the capability to create a world, it would just take an impractically long timescale to do so (which, for the record, does not disqualify divinity: some creation myths have the act of creation taking thousands of years, and the gods presumably didn't have that long when they evacuated humanity).

Bottom line, it would be hard to create a non-arbitrary definition of 'god' that certainly excludes the Six while not also excluding some major gods from real-world pantheonic religions.

Osiris and Isis came after Ra, who did create life in the world and was somewhat literally the sun. Odin killed Ymir, the rest of the Aesir were his descendants, there's nothing saying that referring to the six as not gods is any less correct in universe as referring to them as gods, in universe. It's ambiguous enough that Asura referring to them as just powerful entities isn't really incorrect, in the end it's purely an argument of semantics.

I'd still argue against the worship of them being a good thing though. I'm of the opinion that power corrupts and they're not to be trusted because of that.

[Michram.6853]

Gods are the ones that shape the world as they please, they make huge decisions that have a massive impact to the world.

They have a will to either kill or save the dragons, villains etc.

It fits to the Tyrian gods and also to the Commander and his gang.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@"Eekasqueak.7850" said:Actually, all of those polytheistic religions you mentioned do have the gods playing a part in the creation of the world. Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc.. The human gods in GW2 come off largely as aliens with a lot of power and not gods.

Some, yes, but not all. "Creating worlds" is not a prerequisite for being a god in polytheistic faiths, which is what I was saying, but some gods were capable of creating worlds. These were usually primordial gods that represent the very foundation of the cosmos, and almost every one is slain to create the world, or the gods were literal children of the cosmos/world.

The Six do not seem to be primordial gods, the only known "entities" to fill this role in the GWverse would be The Mists, though it's not exactly a living thing.

[ugrakarma.9416]

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@ThatOddOne.4387 said:They are still Gods. Just because you think they don't classify doesn't make it true. They are stated to be Gods by the creators of the universe, therefore, they are Gods.

What different races view them as is irrelevant, they would be wrong. Nor is what they actually are relevant, powerful Mist beings or whatever. They are most certainly Gods relative to anything else in the GW universe bar the Elder Dragons. They are unique and operate by their own rules clearly separate from other rules.

Your views are perfectly reasonable for characters

in universe

to believe, but with us as outside observers of the story we can use the multitude of evidence and hindsight available to us to categorically state that yes, they are indeed Gods.

They’re like most non-Abrahamic religions’ gods. The Norse, Egyptian, Greek etc pantheons all have gods that are beings on a higher “power level” than humans. They can be killed, have children and all those other “mortal” concerns.

Which stands in stark contrast to the Jewish/Islamic/Christian god who is so overpowered in contrast to everything else in the mythos.

In view of this, the GW2 gods definitely fit the definition of gods for the vast majority of religions out there.

also the thing of each one have a domain is a very politheystic signature.

[ugrakarma.9416]

edit: wrong post.

[Trancer.7950]

Did the old gods bring the Skritts with them or not..?

[ThatOddOne.4387]

No.The only race they brought to Tyria were humans. Forgotten and Dwarves worshipped the Six or at least Dwayna and Grenth in the Dwarves' case.So they weren't and aren't "human only".

[Rognik.2579]

@Trancer.7950 said:Did the old gods bring the Skritts with them or not..?The skritt were down in the depths were the asura. When Primordus rose, both the asura and skritt were chased to the surface.

Currently, on Tyria, only the himans still worship the Six. More used to, all of the allies of humanity. But the dwarves were turned to stone statues by the Great Dwarf, and the Forgotten either disappeared from the desert, or were Branded (and revived) when Kralkatorrik flew south of Glint's lair. So humanity found new allies, who each had their own faiths.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@"ThatOddOne.4387" said:No.The only race they brought to Tyria were humans. Forgotten and Dwarves worshipped the Six or at least Dwayna and Grenth in the Dwarves' case.So they weren't and aren't "human only".

We aren't actually sure that humanity is the "only" race the Six brought to Tyria. The Forgotten came from the Mists, too, and some sources that are now questioned say they were brought by the Six (which makes sense given the Forgotten in the realms of the gods and their stated ancient practices for the Six that seem to date thousands of years). There might have been others - Elonian legends claim that harpies are fallen servants of Dwayna, for example, and at least some centaurs worshiped Balthazar at one point despite the overall centaur culture (turning to?) nature worship (which could, theoretically, derive from Melandru worship).

[Oglaf.1074]

Speaking of which, I wonder if godhood as it relates to the Six is exclusively dependent on a human “host” or if any species can acquire it. Like we kill a god and a hapless Quaggan stumbles into their residual “god goop” - instant Quaggan god!

[draxynnic.3719]

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@Lavith.8930 said:

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

This article

says they brought humanity to Cantha, but it never says where they arrived on the planet from another world. We

know

the Six and humanity are not native to the world, and not only does the

Orrian History Scrolls

say they arrived on the world at Arah, but so does

the Seventh Reaper

.

As I said in

my prior post

, there's a lot of other suggestions to colloborate the notion that the Six arrived at Arah, brought humanity to the world there, then moved them elsewhere. Nothing has so far debunked or implied against the Orrian History Scrolls, nothing suggests they are "more myth than reality".

So I'd appreciate you don't pronounce something as fact unless you have a source.

That same article says they first appear in Cantha ... So ...(By the way i can't argue a lot cause english is not my native language, sorry about that, truly)"Timeline786 BE: The Gods Arrive, and They Brought Friends

The Six Gods first appear in Cantha, bringing humanity with them.

Like gardeners starting a new patch, they transplant human beings to this lush new world, working the soil and tending their seedbeds to ensure the new crop will take root, spread, and thrive."

So they came in Cantha first, they're not native to the world so they obviously come from another one.I'm not sure if i totally got what you said if not I apologize.

"First appear in Cantha", as in "the first time they appeared in Cantha" and not "they first appeared in the world at Cantha".

Nothing about that sentence suggests they came to the world at Cantha, just that 786 BE is when they arrived at Cantha specifically, for either god or humanity. While we have multiple other statements saying they arrived on the world at Arah, and suggestions that they arrived in Cantha via boat from across the sea (per my aforementioned post with a dozen quotes).

@Eekasqueak.7850 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:In my opinion the "gods" as they are now (I don't speak here about the gods from the start of the game - they were credible as gods) behaves as a bunch of slavers. Very powerful, very wise and old, herding the human cattle from pasture to pasture, searching a place with no predators. Because if they find predators they are unable to protect the herd. Or they don't want? I don't know. But wandering from place to place is not something a god should do.

Many Asurans seems the gods as just extremely powerful mists entitys that only pose of Gods.

Well that's what they are, they're not omnipotent and didn't create the world. They're not infallible either and can be killed so they're not truly immortal.

Depends on how one defines a god. Eekasqueak is pretty easily using the monotheistic definition of god, but if we look at the hundreds of polytheistic faiths in our own world, the Six Gods are pretty darn close to those, such as the Olympians, Asgardians, etc. Very few of those god pantheons created the world, are unkillable, omnipotent, and infallible - hell, most older religions pretty much put the blame of natural disasters and everything wrong with the people and world on the gods' failures or punishments.

If we're talking about the Abrahamic "one perfect god" then yeah, they don't match, but if we compare to any polytheistic faith, then they match. In that context, the main things that define god would be: Living in a higher plane of existence, the power to mold and create life, some relation to the world's nature/elements (e.g., sea, animals, thunder) or humanity's personalities/cross-culture similarities (e.g., war, honor, justice), and dominion over the souls of the dead. In which the Six match all four primary attributes.

Actually, all of those polytheistic religions you mentioned do have the gods playing a part in the creation of the world. Slaying Ymir for the Norse, the Titans for the Greeks which the gods are offspring of, etc.. The human gods in GW2 come off largely as aliens with a lot of power and not gods.

For the Norse...

somewhat.

They still had raw material to work from, and we know the Six performed some reshaping of what they found when they arrived. Probably not as significant as turning a giant into a world, but neither are creating something out of nothing. Additionally, only the oldest of the Aesir were involved in the actual act of creation - the younger Aesir (including Thor and Loki) and the Vanir were not.

For the Greeks...

not so much.

The world is Gaia - the Olympians were not the creators of the world, but the

grandchildren

of it.

Similar observations apply to other mythologies. For instance, Egypt has multiple origin stories, but some of the most well-known Egyptian gods - Osiris, Isis, Set - post-date the creation of the world. In Chinese myth, Pan Gu died, and while in some versions there was a dragon, tortoise, qilin, and fenghuang present to help, by and large the deities of the Chinese pantheon were not involved in the creation. And so on.

One could argue that descendants of the creator would presumably have inherited the ability to create, they just don't need to any more... however, the Six

do

appear to be able to shape realms in the Mists. We can't rule out the possibility that they have the capability to create a world, it would just take an impractically long timescale to do so (which, for the record, does not disqualify divinity: some creation myths have the act of creation taking thousands of years, and the gods presumably didn't have that long when they evacuated humanity).

Bottom line, it would be hard to create a non-arbitrary definition of 'god' that certainly excludes the Six while not also excluding some major gods from real-world pantheonic religions.

Osiris and Isis came after Ra, who did create life in the world and was somewhat literally the sun. Odin killed Ymir, the rest of the Aesir were his descendants, there's nothing saying that referring to the six as not gods is any less correct in universe as referring to them as gods, in universe. It's ambiguous enough that Asura referring to them as just powerful entities isn't really incorrect, in the end it's purely an argument of semantics.

I'd still argue against the worship of them being a good thing though. I'm of the opinion that power corrupts and they're not to be trusted because of that.

Gods are powerful beings here.

Like you say, it really is an argument of semantics.

In the world of Tyria, the word "god" is the word that is used to denote the Six and beings considered to be similar in nature to the Six. They're essentially the yardstick which defines what a 'god' is. If it turns out that they don't have properties that you believed they had, do they stop being gods (in which case, what do you call them?), or does the term 'god' simply mean something different to what you thought it did?

Cats, for instance, have been associated with all sorts of supernatural properties in history, but as we've determined that they don't have those properties, we don't stop calling them cats.

Even outside the world of Tyria... at the bottom line, the gods behave like and have the properties of pantheistic deities. Maybe they didn't create Tyria, but most pantheistic gods weren't involved in the creation of the world either, and given that we don't know much about their predecessors except that some of them have predecessors, we can't say for sure that they don't have world-creators in their ancestry. Otherwise... they certainly have more power than all but the most heroic mortals, and each one embodies and has dominion over a concept.

Whether they should be worshiped... that's another question. Honestly, I get the feeling that most of the gods have reached a point where they think that humans should outgrow worship and stand on their own (the second part having been explicitly stated by ArenaNet). They'd probably still like to be respected, but worship per se might not be something that the majority of the gods even want any more.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

@Oglaf.1074 said:Speaking of which, I wonder if godhood as it relates to the Six is exclusively dependent on a human “host” or if any species can acquire it. Like we kill a god and a hapless Quaggan stumbles into their residual “god goop” - instant Quaggan god!

Dwayna and Melandru have wings (allegedly Abaddon too, before his fall), and Abaddon's predecessor was supposedly a spider, so I think there's a pretty good chance of non-humans being able to get the role. There's still the question of whether a blessing from the other gods is needed, though. I'm not sure a hapless passerby, human or quaggan, could get the gig.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@"Aaron Ansari.1604" said:There's still the question of whether a blessing from the other gods is needed, though.

The GW1 PC seems to think so, despite them and Kormir believing it was mere words when the blessings were given.

"In the end, the god's gift to Kormir was indeed integral to our victory."