I've been pretty disappointed in the online Shin Megami Tensei community for a while and a friend recommended me this place, so I'm going to try and start something here.
It seems that in recent years the most common interpretation of Megaten seems to be a power fantasy for fedora
wearing reddit atheist where they get to kill god and stick it to those dumb conservatard christians. /suicide
I have to ask, have any of them ever played the games?
I have not played SMT5, so for all I know Lucifer is a spotless hero in that game. Persona 5 certainly seemed to be heading that way by making the protagonist's final persona be Satanael, a rebellious angel which in catholic myths has been conflated with Lucifer, Satan, and Baphomet.
Every time a christ-like figure is presented in the series, it is defined as a hero of the people, no ifs and no buts. Examples include Persona 3, Strange Journey, and both versions of SMT4 where both of the protagonists are described as messiahs.
This misconception is likely based on the fact that yahweh the tetragrammaton is often a villain in these games. But the thing is, yahweh is often associated with yaldabaoth, who, in gnostic doctrine, is an entity that deceives his followers into thinking he is the one god.
Yaldabaoth even appeared in persona 5 as the final boss, but of course it makes no sense because he's being fought by satanael, an angel that in gnostic doctrine actually served him, but I prefer to pretend the latest games do not exist because Atlus is now a corporate entity free of creators or artists or anyone with any shred of dignity making dating games for lonely weebs /kiwif
Point is the LAW faction is not christian, it's the hebrews. In the game's mythology, it is the messiah's role to end the tyranny of yahweh through self sacrifice, like christ forming a new covenant with all of humanity through crucifixion. SMT4 reveals that this happens on the behest of the great will/reason, which is the actual driving force of the universe, in other words the one true god that is worshiped by christians and by muslims as allah.
In the actual games, yahweh is no different than the other daemons, djinns, archons that the hero fights and recruits. It's not the one true god, which cannot be interacted with or fought in any of the games. In the true demon ending of SMT3 Lucifer does try to rebel against the great will of the universe, but secret fights with hitoshura in dds make it clear that the attempt has failed.
The interpretation that megaten is an anti-christian power fantasy is nonsense. It would actually be much simpler to infer that the game is antisemitic. But it seems that the so called fans of the series have no interest in mythology or religion whatsoever.
To my knowledge the only time some discourse happened around megaten and antisemitism is when this blogpost was making the rounds.
https://eirikrjs.blogspot.com/2017/06/jjcat.html
The idea that people have is that these are games where you fight side by side with lucifer against god. Lucifer is never shown as a hero in any of the games I played. He is a deceiver who dangles the promise of freedom to manipulate events to his advantage. How free is the CHAOS faction really if it has one supreme ruler? CHAOS faction is a return to pagan idolatry which lucifer uses for his own ends. Humanity is not free.
This is all born from out of context interpretations of Milton's Paradise Lost, namely of the one quote "it's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" which was meant by Milton as a manifestation of lucifer's sin of pride.
That he believed himself all powerful when he was not, which is why he is also sexually impotent.
Paradise Lost is a christian text where lucifer is shown as the supreme sinner, who condemns himself to hell by denying himself, god and his role in the cosmos. But of course online discussion is now dominated by post modernist college graduates who believe in death of the author, so any text can mean anything that's convenient to their subreddit that day. /suicide
If anything SMT could only be interpreted as pro christian as there is no bad example of the messiah or the actual true god unless you count the hippie in persona 3, but that was probably meant to be antichrist as the hero is crucified at the end as the true messiah.
Every other religion gets at least some villains, even Buddhism since matreya is a smug asshole in apocalypse.
I've been pretty disappointed in the online Shin Megami Tensei community for a while and a friend recommended me this place, so I'm going to try and start something here. /imgay
It seems that in recent years the most common interpretation of Megaten seems to be a power fantasy for fedora /pimp wearing reddit atheist where they get to kill god and stick it to those dumb conservatard christians. /suicide
I have to ask, have any of them ever played the games?
I have not played SMT5, so for all I know Lucifer is a spotless hero in that game. Persona 5 certainly seemed to be heading that way by making the protagonist's final persona be Satanael, a rebellious angel which in catholic myths has been conflated with Lucifer, Satan, and Baphomet.
Every time a christ-like figure is presented in the series, it is defined as a hero of the people, no ifs and no buts. Examples include Persona 3, Strange Journey, and both versions of SMT4 where both of the protagonists are described as messiahs.
[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/91KxOiGEgvU/hqdefault.jpg[/img]
This misconception is likely based on the fact that yahweh the tetragrammaton is often a villain in these games. But the thing is, yahweh is often associated with yaldabaoth, who, in gnostic doctrine, is an entity that deceives his followers into thinking he is the one god.
[img]https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Persona-5-Royal-Yaldabaoth.jpg[/img]
Yaldabaoth even appeared in persona 5 as the final boss, but of course it makes no sense because he's being fought by satanael, an angel that in gnostic doctrine actually served him, but I prefer to pretend the latest games do not exist because Atlus is now a corporate entity free of creators or artists or anyone with any shred of dignity making dating games for lonely weebs /kiwif
Point is the LAW faction is not christian, it's the hebrews. In the game's mythology, it is the messiah's role to end the tyranny of yahweh through self sacrifice, like christ forming a new covenant with all of humanity through crucifixion. SMT4 reveals that this happens on the behest of the great will/reason, which is the actual driving force of the universe, in other words the one true god that is worshiped by christians and by muslims as allah.
In the actual games, yahweh is no different than the other daemons, djinns, archons that the hero fights and recruits. It's not the one true god, which cannot be interacted with or fought in any of the games. In the true demon ending of SMT3 Lucifer does try to rebel against the great will of the universe, but secret fights with hitoshura in dds make it clear that the attempt has failed.
The interpretation that megaten is an anti-christian power fantasy is nonsense. It would actually be much simpler to infer that the game is antisemitic. But it seems that the so called fans of the series have no interest in mythology or religion whatsoever.
To my knowledge the only time some discourse happened around megaten and antisemitism is when this blogpost was making the rounds.
https://eirikrjs.blogspot.com/2017/06/jjcat.html
The idea that people have is that these are games where you fight side by side with lucifer against god. Lucifer is never shown as a hero in any of the games I played. He is a deceiver who dangles the promise of freedom to manipulate events to his advantage. How free is the CHAOS faction really if it has one supreme ruler? CHAOS faction is a return to pagan idolatry which lucifer uses for his own ends. Humanity is not free.
This is all born from out of context interpretations of Milton's Paradise Lost, namely of the one quote "it's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" which was meant by Milton as a manifestation of lucifer's sin of pride.
That he believed himself all powerful when he was not, which is why he is also sexually impotent.
Paradise Lost is a christian text where lucifer is shown as the supreme sinner, who condemns himself to hell by denying himself, god and his role in the cosmos. But of course online discussion is now dominated by post modernist college graduates who believe in death of the author, so any text can mean anything that's convenient to their subreddit that day. /suicide
If anything SMT could only be interpreted as pro christian as there is no bad example of the messiah or the actual true god unless you count the hippie in persona 3, but that was probably meant to be antichrist as the hero is crucified at the end as the true messiah.
Every other religion gets at least some villains, even Buddhism since matreya is a smug asshole in apocalypse.
[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uEkUu1KnV2A/sddefault.jpg[/img]
