Elaina doesn't care nor should you.

 Just need it for a meme. 

Random Creative Exercise

 

Random Region

Political Situation

         Humanity 

          The Last Human States, on the West Bank of the Great River Arm, are in a state of disarray. Comprised of heavily fortified and mostly autonomous fortresses, villages and towns what's left of the once great Human nations in the region are under constant attack, raids and threat of annihilation by The Great Greenskin Confederation comprised of various Orc, troll and goblin tribes. The former heartlands of the Human states have become a perpetual battleground. 

          The last great Greenskin push had been two decades ago and had overrun multiple Human states and was stopped on the river banks by the Coalition of Human States after a serious of bloody and pyrrhic victories. The Greenskin tide had retreated leaving destruction in their wake with few scattered human settlements and bastions remaining inland as the Coalition promptly disintegrated. Inland remnants now have to contend with constant Greenskin raids for plunder or tribute of produce and slaves, as well as the still somewhat secured states on the riverbank who in their decadence are vying for influence between each other as much as trying to support the inland remnants that are holding most of the Greenskin raids from reaching the river banks. 

          The Great Greenskin Confederation 

          In the swamps to the west lays the Confederation of Orcs, trolls and goblins commonly referred to in the human states as Greenskins. The arrival of humanity had pushed the Orcs and Trolls who once roamed the plains of the West Bank deeper into the swamps where due to the shortage of resources they declined in a state of perpetual warfare. Constantly raided for slaves by the humans the tribes kept fighting one another supported different human states which policy of sowing dissent among the Greenskins had kept them a minor threat. With the escalation of infighting between the Human States so did the brutal slave raids into the swamps escalate. 

       The increases of warfare and fractionalization of the different Human States as they fell further into decadence many Greenskin warbands and even tribes found a livelihood as mercenaries for the humans. These warbands would often conduct slave raids alongside the humans against rival clans. On one such occasion in the Barony of Abeas, a whole tribe that was accepted by the humans as Foederati(a common practice for border Human states) after being decimated by rival tribes was prepared to conduct a slave raid alongside their human suzerains. Instead, the approaching human force attempted to enslave them instead, seeing them as an easier target. In a stunning turn of fate in the resulting battle, the Greenskin tribe won killing the baron of Abeas in the process. It then proceeded to rampage in the Abeasian countryside as it followed the running human forces. This or as it would come to be known as the first Greenskin push would escalate as the spoils that the tribe gathered let to other tribes even former rival to join in the scouring of Abeas. In time the Greenskin threat would only increase culminating in the last Greenskin push under a war chief who managed to unite an unprecedented number of Greenskins in a loose confederation of tribes and decimate the smouldering human states.  

          Now it is the humans who have to contend with almost constants raids. It is the humans who are enslaved and killed in mass. It seems only a matter of time before another Greenskin push attempts to decimate humanity once and for all. 

                                                                                             Carthago Delenda Est....

Second Critique of the existence of God

Overview and comments on Thomas of Aquinas. 

In his work Summa Theologiae(1265–1274) Thomas of Aquinas presents and then proceed to refute two of the common critique for the existence of God. This is the second......

Critique 2:

God is not needed to explain that which can be explained by nature or human will and reason. 

The second critique is derived by following the logic of Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a favorite paradigm to approaching problems by many scholars. What it boils down to is:

If a few causes fully account for an effect don't seek anymore. 

          This paradigm favorite, especially among philosophy scholars, does present a sizeable challenge to God's existence. Why would one need to involve God in explaining something as benign as making porridge or the existence of the sunflower? A porridge, after all, is created and distributed by and for man. Thomas of Aquinas splits these into two categories: Those that are natural(plants, animals) and those that are contrived by humans(cloths, machines, etc). He answers this critique in the following manner:

“Natural causes act for definite purposes under the direction of some higher cause so that there facts must be referred to God as a first of all causes”

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“In the same manner, a contrived effect has to be referred to a higher cause than human understanding and will for these are changeable and cease to be.  And all changeable things require a first cause.” 

Comment:

          In order to answer this, he resorts to another favorite method that neatly follows after Occam's razor. He simply increases the level of abstraction. It's not the event of making a porridge that's important it's the idea to make one. Thomas concedes that in an individual framework of a specific event you don't need to bring God as an explanation. He also points out that no matter how much human will and reason or nature can explain events at some point their explanatory power ends. That is where God is. He is the fundamental cause of every process.

          For example the concept of survival of the fittest. The question that Thomas would ask is what dictates that the fittest are those to survive? Evolution? OK, but what logic does evolution follow and even if it's random what allows it to be so? Same with contrived effects. You made the porridge because you were hungry, but why were you hungry, etc. By increasing the level of abstraction one question at a time its inevitable to reach a dead end. An initial cause that we can't explain and according to Thomas of Aquinas that's where God is.

          What I enjoy about Thomas's refute of the second critique is that by following his logic it's inevitable to make the distinction between nature and contrived effect meaningless. This in term would conflict with the Christian idea that man is somehow different or special compared to animals in the eyes of God. That is, in order to reach the point where God is you inevitably pass through natural explanations.  That way although not disproving the existence of God with his answer Thomas of Aquinas covertly critiques the idea that humans are somehow more special than any other being or object for that matter. Mind that I'm not pushing some nihilistic view here. For us, the life of a person would always (for most at least) carry a higher value than that of a wolf the same way that a human carries little value to a wolf in comparison to his own life. What I'm saying is that Thomas of Aquinas's logic refutes the idea that somehow a human would be more valuable to God than a wolf....

                                           
                                                                                                              Carthago delenda est.....

First Critique of the existence of God

Overview and comments on Thomas of Aquinas. 

In his work Summa Theologiae(1265–1274) Thomas of Aquinas presents and then proceed to refute two of the common critique for the existence of God. This is the first......

Critique 1: 

It seems there's no God. If from two mutually exclusive things if one of them exists with not limit, the other would cease to exist.

The first critique is pretty straightforward and bases itself on the fact that God is perceived to be infinitely good. If the good derived from God is infinite it should remove all evil. But we know and see that evil exist which would mean that God doesn't.

Response: 

The response of Thomas of Aquinas is based on Augustine’s argument: 

"Because God is supremely good he will not permit any evil in his works unless he is sufficiently almighty to bring good even from evil”.

Thomas says:

“It’s a mark of the goodness of God that he permits evils to exist and draws from them good”

Comment:
What Thomas boils the argument down to is that God is good beyond our conception. So much so that he can allow for the existence of evil for the express purpose of bringing good trough it. In many respects, the logic that Thomas follows is that without darkness there's no light. As people wouldn't be able to comprehend what is light without the opposite. So in order to bring good to the people and for them to able to comprehend it evil is necessary and thus allowed by God. To that end, the critique doesn't disprove Gods existence.

                                                                                                         Carthago delenda est...