Tolwyn saying Black Lance may pray in Price of Freedom

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PenderMillsap

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In the novel Wing Commander: The Price of Freedom at the Axius base in his speech Admiral Tolwyn tells the Black Lance personnel may pray. I was wondering if Tolwyn was encouraging prayer as a way to get the Black Lance to not be a totally evil bunch of soldiers. Benedictions are positive prayers and Tolwyn might've wanted the Black Lance to pray as a way of maintaing good order and discipline - a way to counter the negativity done by delivering the DRT canisters.
 
Kinda like the good christian commander who ordered an entire villiage slain because "God will know his own"? (forget his name) Or indeed, any of the crusades?

Sorry, not trying to be antagonistic, just pointing out that prayer doesn't make people less evil. :)
 
The Black Lance probably didn't think of themselves as evil.

EDIT: Praynig would be odd more due to their "survival of the strongest" doctrine, which really doesn't fit most religions. Such emphasis on genes and race is more likely be linked to strong materialism.
 
I'm currently taking a class where things like this are very common in warfare. The class is "Medieval Warfare and Tactics," basically we are reading a lot of the old histories in the world (History of the Franks, The History of Ottonian Germany, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, etc...) and a common thing for the author (who is usually some kind of church official) to point out is the role of pray and mass on and before the battle. Many times during descriptions of battles phrases like "and then the divine hand of god" "through divine intervention" etc are used to try and make the person described sound more holy and justified in there evil actions.
 
crusades = attempt to recover jerusalem from muslims who had forcibly taken the land over. the only ones who got slaughtered were the crusaders themselves.

nobody seems to be able to get the crusades right
 
As far as the Black lance are concerned, they are still humans... Its possible that many of them still needed to be convinced that there actions were "right". I don't remember the quote and don't have the book so it's also likely merely used as a metaphor.

On another note, the black lance are essentialy a quest for a perceived perfection... In itself a religous notion. The Bible deals with mans fall from perfection into sin and death and then outlines the course God has prepared for mans redemtion and eventual return to perfection and everlasting life.. The black lance however seek to acheive "perfection" through genetic manipulation. It's quite likely that some feel they are finishing Gods work...
This is despite the fact that, on a theological level, they would really be opposed to God's sovreignty, just as Satan, Adam, and Eve sought To be like God and have power for themselves that justly didn't belong to them.
 
In the novel Wing Commander: The Price of Freedom at the Axius base in his speech Admiral Tolwyn tells the Black Lance personnel may pray. . . .Tolwyn might've wanted the Black Lance to pray as . . . a way to counter the negativity done by delivering the DRT canisters.

I’m having trouble finding the quote. All I have found so far is this: “You may cry for the ones who must be neutralized, just as I do, but you must deliver the canisters.”
 
That's interesting, Dund, but I don't think that applies here. The Black Lance are more like 20th century revolutionaries than medieval fighters. Specially when you can cleary see "DARWIN IS RIGHT" written all over Tolwyn's speech - it doesn't matter if it's a bizarre interpretation of it, like the one given by, say, communists or objectivists. I mean, he even says its the "primary universal law". As far as we can say, the ideology of the Black Lance is materialistic.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't allow their troopers to pray, or even attempt to manipulate it to their goals.
 
Don't want to be incendiary but it appears that almost everything to come out of America has to crowbar some religious stuff in there somewhere. Almost every American film and book I had seen lately has some reference to needing to pray, including documentaries e.t.c. I get the feeling this book is no different, maybe it just caught up with this whole 'we must bring god into everything' mentality.

There is more religious fundamentalism coming from America than anywhere else at the mo
 
Wow, Climber, that's gotta be the dumbest thing I've read today... and that's saying a lot, given that I've spent the morning reading internet commentaries about the US elections.

As for the topic at hand, it seems, more likely than not, to be a reading error. Nemesis posted the quote as saying "cry" not "pray", and I distinctly recall it being "cry" as well. It would be easy to misread "cry" as "pray", though, and this is most likely what happened.
 
Delance said:
As far as we can say, the ideology of the Black Lance is materialistic.

And that’s certainly supported by Tolwyn’s speech where he notes in the beginning that it was a computer analysis some twenty years before that verified the superiority of the Kilrathi: “We programmed hundreds of variables and thousands of scenarios. Hundreds of millions of credits were spent to simply build the hardware we’d need to do the study. The machine’s results confirmed what we had secretly come to believe: that the war, as we fought it, wasn’t winnable without a miracle. The Kilrathi, with their superior genetic structure and focused society, would bring to bear greater and greater resources and withstand the tribulations of protracted war better than our spoiled race. The fittest species would survive, and it wouldn’t be us.”
 
I will really ignore the crusades reference...
And "cry" seem to be much more logic, because, as Delance said, people who twist darwinsm to the furthest and most extreme consequence cannot be the least bit religious. And this particular issue has nothing to do with good and evil.
 
I'm sorry for highjacking the thread, but does anyone know who does the space marines in warhammer 40K pray to. Is it the emperor, and in that case, can he hear their prayers? (Considering that he is the most powerful psycher ever.)

Sorry for highjacking the thread, but genetic manipulation, and praying soldiers just made me think about the space marines.
 
Dyret said:
I'm sorry for highjacking the thread

[impression type="Angel in WCM"]Bullshit.[/impression]

If you really were sorry, you wouldn't be doing it in the first place, or at the very least you'd start a new thread over in the Off Topic Zone, where WH40K would be closer to "on-topic" than it is here.
 
Delance said:
EDIT: Praynig would be odd more due to their "survival of the strongest" doctrine, which really doesn't fit most religions. Such emphasis on genes and race is more likely be linked to strong materialism.


Not necessarily, there are Christian Evolutionists...I don't follow their philosophy but there are some definitely out there.
 
But surelly they don't defend the idea of murdering 90% of humankind in the name of a warped understanding of Darwinism, right?
 
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