How do you teach an angel to be good?

>How do you teach an angel to be good?
Gee I don't know OP. How do you teach someone something that they already intrinsically know?
>inb4 didn't read the rest of OP's post, I did and found it to be wanting

I think he's talking about making an angelic being in a non-divine way. An artificial angel, if you will. See .

I know, I just don't care. The entire premise sounds retarded.

It's actually an interesting question. Can we create artificial life more virtuous than we are? How would you do it?

I'd say it's pretty easy, as parents have been doing it ever since there were kids; every generation tries to raise their children to be a little bit better than they were. Yes it's on a different scale, but as a whole the concept has been proven sound.

"I understand you'll be confused by the nature of humanity. After all you are charged with protecting them and yet you see them do all these horrible things to each other every day."

"I can assure you it's not a contradiction. In a way it's like a parent that protects their children but has to be hands off in a way. You're purpose is to protect humanity from the horrors they cannot fight. While not all humans are honorable there are those who are and will fight the fight that they can."

"In spite of their failings, humanity, and you are worth every ounce of your existence and both deserve protecting."

>It's actually an interesting question.
Yeah, if you're retarded.

You're going about it backward. Just find a 100% pure good being and slap some wings on it.

Finding someone that good might actually be the hardest part. I mean, wings and holy magic? Sure why not.

100% good being? Wew lad.

Except in this case the child never grows up. Nothing ever gets any better. The handful of good humans can selflessly help all the evil ones survive and continue to do evil, or they can try to fight evil only to take its place. If the lot of them all died, what would be lost? Nothing at all. Each one would go to an appropriate afterlife, and everything would be set right. Injustice only exists in mortal life, therefore mortal life is inherently unjust.

Heres the thing, I'm actually worried a 100% good being would destroy existence, or at least try to, I mean at least if people like Kierkegaard and the like are to be believed when they say that just by living we are sinning.

>like, lets say you created a being that looks like a human with wings and lots of holy magic.

I don't think you understand what an angel is

It's not a person with wings on their back

It's a being created by and for a god to exert their will in other realms. They know how to behave because of their inherent, direct connection with said god. Anyone who needs to be taught how to act is not an angel, but just another follower of the religion

Kierkegaard was a Christian, so of course he believed that simply existing and breathing was a sin. What is good must be good FOR someone, it must be life-affirming rather than life-denying. Someone who claims that universal extinction would be good is so far up their own ass that they've somehow become worse than any selfish person without realizing it.

Angels are inherently pure and good by nature. In most settings, they are goodness and light incarnate. They shouldn't need to be taught how to be good. That being said, you could give her additional knowledge about the nature of
man and whatnot through your own pepersonal experience, in an effort to further guide her.

Hope this helps, Sorin. Good luck raising Avacyn again.

That's rather depressing. I don't think outside of some sham you'd ever hear or see anyone say that the world is fair and just. But then again does the deer decry life because it was caught by the wolf?

The workings of mortals are the working of mortals, the task of the angel is to protect mortals from things only it can deal with but being that it was made by mortals it's also prone to our faults and idiosyncrasies so it has to be taught to understand that, even though humans do bad things, humanity as a whole is not evil and is worth protecting.

I hate to say it. But this all depends on the setting, for all we know there are no angels at all, and that's why OP needs help creating one in the first place.

Anyways going the drone with no free will route might actually be the safest or at least putting a shit ton of rules to stop the usual angel purging all the lands of sin shenanigans that always seem to happen.

Depends how you look at it, it could be said that whatever is good for somebody is bad for somebody else, like when you eat an apple your taking that apple away from other people who could possibly need it and vice versa, that life is an endless cycle of greedy consumption and is inherently evil, your also not accounting for the spiritual side of things, you see I believe that this "100% good being" wouldn't just be satisfied with destroying the material world since it would see the worlds of both heaven and hell, (at least as how they are traditionally portrayed) the very concepts and rules of them as being unjust in some way and would proceed to destroy them as well leaving nothing other than pure oblivion.

I think the train of thought I'm following here is saying that a 100% good being doesn't actually exist and if it did it would be extremely dangerous for a number of reasons.

He better fucking do it.

And soon, too.

Oh, and Sorin? This time try not to be such a deadbeat dad, ok?

Angel is a divine messenger, a conduit for God's will, that's what the word means. In a setting where this is not the case you don't have an angel, but a winged person or whatever.

Actually, the whole Sorin thing seems somewhat influenced, or at least paralleling, a Jack Vance's story (T'sais?), though it has a more stupidly grimdark ending. I suppose also reversed since in Jack Vance's story, the created being was imperfect and saw everything as abhorrent from the start, having to try and learn how to not be a huge asshole without any preconceived notions of just what "good" is.

In Jack Vance's story, she kind of figures it out and is rewarded by getting her brain fixed so she can live happily ever after with a ranger husbando, where in Sorin's case Avacyn started out okay but went downhill and had to be put down like a rabid dog.

Well, even the definitions of "god" isn't uniform either, even IRL. What we see as the norm of definition is actually just another construct, one of many different constructs from which to derive meaning, and without context all language is meaningless sound without thought or reason behind them save for the most basic emotional queues which can be inferred from tone and vocalization.

In all honesty, I'd say it's not a matter of programming, but a matter of teaching. Shape the experience of the construct by giving her experience to draw upon, which color her own perspective lens and represent an intuitive understanding of the world around her. Show her both the good in the world, the evil, the corrupt and the pure, what can happen and what can be done to help. She must have the freedom to make her own mistakes and suffer her own tragedies from which she can gather her own experience, and she must be given the tools for her own accomplishments and triumphs.

She must also have an anchor and a great capacity for self reflection; a center from which she can orient herself and a means of understanding when she strays too far from that very ideal. And above all else, she requires a confidant, an advisor, a mentor, and teacher. A father, essentially.

You can keep humans as pets if you want, but if you don't discipline your pets and then deny it when they bite, you're a shitty master.

You can't just tell your kid that you eat people, your dad invented eating people, and you only had her so that could she could preserve the population of people for you to eat.

You just have to spin it the right way. And hope that she still loves you on account that you're her father.

>teach an angel to be good

You don't. Angels start out pure and incorruptible, and they stay that way.

>and they stay that way
Ahem

I've always been a fan of the idea that angels aren't taught; they're made with knowledge and opinions fully formed. Its the little experiences afterword that are different for every angel that makes them different from their classes.

In other words; angels are good because when their god made them they chiseled "Protect the squishy pink chemical bags" into their brains. Alternatively, they chiselled "You're really fucking awesome" in their brains and that's how you get lucifer.

If you're talking about the equivalent of just giving a human wings and super powers, then just have them raised by good people. Good begets good.

Just cast cloudshift, she'll be fine.

Honestly, pushback from her on that note is probably a sign that you've actually achieved her goals. She's become so much a child of justice that she's unwilling to condone the eating of people. At that point, Innistrad has found its protector when she's no longer willing to tolerate the injustices of her father.

Which is exactly what happened and he killed her for it.

True enough, though that's not because she was taught, and more because she was programmed.

For a vampire who is ageless and immortal, Sorin doesn't seem to understand the long game, and that programming can go wrong without regular debugging. A system like that needs a reset button or needs to be built completely self-sustaining even in the face of outside forces.

Basically, I'm taking issue with Sorin's design philosophy, as he goes about it willy-nilly without really understanding the implications of building a person. I mean, the guy can troll the universe, but you can't really trust advice about life from a guy with no pulse.

Yeah, she's pretty much a normal person with some programming such as the inability to see him as what he is but when she realised what she'd been doing that broke because it ran counter to her purpose. Her programming is probably what gave Nahiri the in the rape her mind in the first place too, if you mess with the 'perceive Sorin as good' program you can turn that into 'perceive all non-angels as monsters'. Sorin is shit at everything he does, Avacyn was like his one major success and he fucked it up by ignoring Nahiri for months while she built cryptoliths and then used them to ruin his plane.

"Angel" and "celestial" aren't synonyms dude. if we're talking D&D, an angel is solely a kind of celestial or intrinsically good being in a mere one and a half editions (3.5 and 5e)

Humans turn to evil for generally 2 reasons:

1. Sociopathy etc. Sociopaths are severely lacking in mirror neurons, which makes them both VERY bad at learning and very bad at empathy. Depending on whether their mind had something analogous to mirror neurons, being "good" would either come fairly naturally to it, or the creature would be a sociopath with learning disabilities.

2. Survival, and survival instincts. The other reason humans do "evil" is either to survive or on the basis of survival impulses. Our survival impulses tell us we need more control and more resources, quite reasonably, but whatever survival instincts a created being would have are arbitrary. Even pleasure and domination have obvious origins in the survival instinct.

To teach a being to be "good" you need not so many survival instincts that they will be utterly selfish and mirror neurons so that they can both learn from others and learn to relate to them. Just let them interact with people through trials and travails.

Shit, looking at it how you described it, Avacyn basically went full HAL 9000.

For context HAL 9000, the murderous AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey, went mad because he had orders that directly contradicted another part of his programming. The military was aware of the presence of the Obelisk (an alien artifact) and placed protocols and files in HAL's memory about it, top secret stuff with the highest levels of classification. The crew found out about the files, and in their attempts to access them, or shut down HAL and access them, HAL started murdering them to stop them from reading or tampering with the files, as his programming demanded.

For anyone thinking about creating people in the future, you might want to take into account the terrifying implications of inflexible programming when taken to their logical conclusions. Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" also has some cases of this as well.

>I don't think you understand what an angel is

You don't understand what an angel is either.

Its a fictional being, with parameters dependent on the conversation. In some pieces of fiction, angels are presumably created by God, although the Bible is never remotely clear. In other pieces of fiction, the premise is in the opening post, "lets say you created a being."

Basically, you failed your reading comprehension roll, want to try again? Y/N

>Depends how you look at it, it could be said that whatever is good for somebody is bad for somebody else, like when you eat an apple your taking that apple away from other people who could possibly need it and vice versa,

I feel its worth mentioning that in, say, real life, the problem isn't "not enough food" but "not efficient enough distribution." There is far more than enough food to ensure everyone has plenty, what is lacking is transportation and distribution, and the majority of what you pay for food is in transportation costs.

Any definition that doesn't even apply to the one you're thinking of (Judaeo-Christianity) is pretty retarded, dude.

Lucifer and his fallen angels are described as angels, never as demons, in the Bible. They are messengers and conduits of nothing. Their origin is also mysterious: presumably created by God (who is said to have created all things iirc), but there's no telling from the Bible alone whether it was around the same time the world was made or a few quadrillion eternities prior.

Does Sorin even have to kill people to feed?

Sorin does, because he forgets to feed so often that by the time he realizes he needs to, he drains a whole person. Other vampires don't need to do it, but they tend to over eat.

In many cases, sociopathy is undiagnosed because the sociopath in question was raised in an environment of caring and affection. While they display sociopathic traits and even have similar brain patterns to other sociopaths, they still are capable of love, caring, treating others with respect, and being a generally non-asshole human being. And many are generally very smart, though the learning disability could apply more to learned socialization than factual book-learnin'.

It could be that sociopaths could be normalized to "normal" human socialization while still in their pliable, formative developing years, and carry that with them for the rest of their lives.

Of course, I'm not hugely studied in the areas of sociopathy, but as I understand it, the presence of sociopathy is not an indicator of malice or malicious intent, just as being "normal" isn't a guarantee that you'll be a good person.

Jesus Christ Sorin, get it together.

>the presence of sociopathy is not an indicator of malice or malicious intent, just as being "normal" isn't a guarantee that you'll be a good person.

"Malicious intent" is giving sociopaths too much credit. Its more that they are too dull to get a good understanding of others past the most shallow level. As its both a combination of a learning disability and an extreme character flaw, they have a very, very hard time not repeating the same mistakes forever, before you even factor in how sociopathy is defined even more by a lack of self control, patience, and planning abilities than it is by how they treat people (ergo: your average human being is closer to being a sociopath than Hannibal Lecter, who most assuredly has better self control, planning, patience and understanding of others than most people).

The sociopaths that have superficial charisma perceive others through their reactions. They are shallow, manipulative people who seek to coast through life by pushing people's buttons.

I think my favorite example of a fictional sociopath is Counselor Troi, whose empathy powers cover for her lack of real empathy; in the episode where she loses her powers, she gives the classic sociopath spiel of perceiving others as nothing more than things, than holographic projections.

Which is exactly the reason why she needs to return, cleansed of madness. Because she is finally free of any and all artificial programming Sorin placed in her mind. She is her own being, wholely seperate from her creator/father. In short, daddy's little girl has finally grown up. She HAS TO return as a paragon of justice, peace, mercy, retribution, and divinity. She's both the protector that Innistrad wants, and the one that it needs right now.

>needs to be built completely self-sustaining even in the face of outside forces.
That's what Avacyn meant when she said she was made imperfectly and Sorin's plan was flawed. She was not perfect, and therefore could become corrupted, and therefore could be turned against her own people, beings she has sworn to defend, like a cheap tool. That is ultimately why she condemned Sorin as Innistrad's greatest evil. He created her.

This thought process of hers is actually pretty tragic.

>Sorin is shit at everything he does
So he really IS the new Urza. Fuck.

If the MtG story pursues that line of thought, and brings her back somehow, it could be a very engaging character arc about a creature finding her way to humanity independently after having been programmed for a specific purpose and succumbing to internal programming contradictions which led her to become a monster. Redemption through character growth in an attempt to find out just what "good" is.

That last part, attempting to find out what "good" is, could actually work.

In the most recent UR, she kept asking herself "An angel is made of goodness, but is goodness made of an angel's acts?" Basically, questioning herself and the nature of good. So it could work.

An involvement with some characters we haven't seen in a while would be great in conjunction with such a storyline.

Namely another construct, a certain silver golem, of an otherwise shitty planeswalker ()
who himself had to find humanity on his own as well.

With the loss of the entire plane he created, he could simply carry on as before, fixing a broken toy as perhaps one of the few things he can do to give himself meaning in the face of all the suffering he is responsible for and will be with the rebirth of Phyrexia. But this broken toy has a journey of her own to undertake, and a lesson of her own to impart, and maybe two broken constructs can find some semblance of solace in remedying each other's psychic wounds.

That would be interesting. Though I'm not sure if we'll be Karn for quite some time, to be honest.

And lets face it, as much as we want her back, Avacyn is probably perma-dead.

Probably. There's an opportunity for real character growth and an in-depth philosophical exploration on the nature of good and evil, a basis and central motivation for a character arc that looks very promising, as well as tying in an old favorite to the situation, allowing for great personal moments and character depth and growth through their interaction. Seriously, two creations of similarly autistic creators, neglected and ultimately forced to confront their sentience and the nature of humanity, ultimately making some kind of fuckup and being responsible for suffering on an incredible magnitude through their actions, now trying to help each other find their way back to the light.

But WotC seems into killing characters for cheap thrills and artificial drama. Still salty from Elspeth as it's clear they threw that in for shock value. Seems like needless, shocking death is all the rage with the kids these days what with the game of thrones and the rap music and all.

>Still salty from Elspeth as it's clear they threw that in for shock value
Me too. And the excessively grimdark tragedy of this plot is getting to me as well. It could be good, if they used it as a means for real character growth, but as it stands, I doubt they will do that and we will just end up getting a permadead Avacyn, a super sad mad dad Sorin, and an empty hole in my heart.

Yeah, Avacyn's death is most likely a contrived reason for Sorin to get more SSMD and turn Innistrad into a lovecraft story.

Honestly, I feel like it should be the other way around. Avacyn is otherwise an empty vessel, little personality of her own since she's a construct, and a great opportunity to develop one through her growth as a being with free will in striving to become something of her old self. Sorin, on the other hand, is a character that works better static. He's a millennia-old vampire, anathema to life and growth, and has a very severe and brutal personality, being reasonable only because it's the logical thing to do and trolling people because he's a dick. That's a fleshed character and trying to stuff character growth into someone who's kind of seen and done it all in millennia of unlife is kind of a mistake.

Drugs, hypno-indoctrination, the bonds of Brotherhood and Honour, and faith in the holy Emperor of mankind.

>little personality of her own since she's a construct
To be fair, she is shown to have a personality prior to SOI. She even shed a tear for Vronos. Her personality was simplistic, since she was a paragon, but she does express opinions and emotionally react to the plights of the innocent.

>That's a fleshed character and trying to stuff character growth into someone who's kind of seen and done it all in millennia of unlife is kind of a mistake.
I wouldn't mind if Sorin got more development, just because I never object to character growth. Maybe having to kill the last piece of himself that was remotely human could prompt some kind of growth, for better or worse.

For example, her favorite place to go and be alone is high in the mountains of Stensia.

When was that said?

In an UR article. The first SOI one, I believe.

Is this a My Life as a Teenage Robot thread in disguise?

It was the second. That article wounded me, it had quite a lot of development for Avacyn, like that she's not really emotionless she's just flawed thanks to how she was made, she doesn't understand the point of showing emotion but she still feels it, they basically held up a big sign saying 'Avacyn is a person and she really genuinely feels good about helping people' then they proceed to subject her to horrifying mental torture for months until she gives in and is forced to butcher the people she cares about. This shit is so grimdark and tragic, if they don't find a way to make this good development for Avacyn without the restrictions of her retarded father then this block will have had no redeeming qualities story-wise except for everyone mocking Jace's fashion sense.

Yeah, I don't think people quite realize how horrifying or intense Avacyn's brainwashing was. Basically, for those who don't know, she heard a constant buzzing in her head. Just an even, unchanging tone. It was loud enough that it blocked out all prayers (normally she hears every prayer on Innistrad, even
the ones not directed at her) and superceded her own thoughts. Then, some force (propably Nahiri) just kept injecting the same phrase over and over again in her head; "The seed of man is rotten." The end of that story section shows her flying high into the mountains trying to escape the voice in her head. This was her existence for a whole year. It slowly wore down her own will and drove her mad. But she fought it as long as she could. It was really quite horrific.

>That article wounded me
Same. Along with the last one.

Mmmaaaaybeee?

My Life as a Teenaged Angel

>she doesn't understand the point of showing emotion but she still feels it

...autistic Avacyn?

Well, that's what happens when you're creator is autistic too, how often do you see Sorin show emotions other than boredom and mild annoyance?

Thereby making the situation even worse than before he got involved. That makes no sense. But it is the logical conclusion of slave morality.

A perfectly good being would understand that someone's always going to be miserable, and that's fine as long as someone else is happy. A perfectly good being would do what it takes to be personally happy, or, if that is impossible, to find someone else who is capable of being happy and work to advance and maintain that happiness. One well-lived life is worth any amount of suffering, because it is the only thing of real value that exists.

Nobody is perfect, though, and expecting anyone to be perfect, even a god or angel, is setting yourself up for disappointment. Blaming somebody else for your own flaws is classic projection.

And the sad thing is that they could have made her fall make sense rather than be entirely due to somebody else making her evil with magic. She is in charge of protecting the nastiest, pettiest, most disobedient race of ingrates in the multiverse. Again and again they do things that they should know will ruin them, and every single race of monsters on Innistrad is in one way or another the product of their sins. Her empathy for her people could have led her to forcibly transcend her previous limitations and start more aggressively protecting her people from themselves.

For example, zombies show up in a town again. Someone is summoning them or sewing them together like they always fucking do, but nobody's talking. Old Avacyn would have been limited to the honor system and politely asking the offender to come forward. New Avacyn can start taking heads until the problem is solved.

Avacyn was literally insane when she accused Sorin. And in her mind, for the 1000 years she had lived, she and her angels were perfect, because that was part of what being an angel meant (to her at least). But you're right; nobody is perfect. I think, in part at least, Avacyn blaming Sorin was part of her trying to come to terms with the fact that nobody is perfect.

And again, y'know... the whole madness thing is also a big deal.

I would have accepted it as a flaw in her balance programming, after AVR things get too good for the humans so she turns on them to keep the balance. Then Sorin would be justified in unmaking her, she's flawed and he fucked up when he made her, it would still be his fault but at least it would make sense.

I think she was mostly herself at that point, the only part of the madness affecting her was the part that caused her to perceive people as monsters which was to her benefit as it allowed her to fight him. If she was still insane she wouldn't have realised that she'd been doing wrong, she would have been talking and thinking differently, acting differently. She didn't act or think like the Purifier did so it was normal Avacyn, she blamed Sorin because his programming is flawed, she has to perceive him as good because he made her and she is good but if she's been doing evil then he must be the greater evil because he made her. It wasn't insanity it was just bad programming.

Probably do an Asimov 3 law type thing.

1. Humans behaving in a good way (as defined by the setting) is your ultimate goal (for reasons defined by the setting), and you should do everything in your power (within limitations defined by the setting) to show them how to behave (maybe also why it's important).
2. Humans are valueable and should be protected. Especially the good ones who can spread their goodness in manner that angels can not. Prioritize the wellbeing of these people.
3. Those who refuse can still come around, but should be struck down when their sinfulness interferes with the good behaviour of the faithful (such as threatening their life or depending on the setting, may also extend to injury or "leading astray").

Skips out on the empathy aspect of it but it creates a functional warden of humanity.

Actual empathy is something you generally need to build off of experiences. If I need the angel to be an empathetic being, I'd probably do so overtime by telling it to try and imagine individual anecdotes from the human's perspective and enforce the notion that a human shouldn't be smitten over something they don't understand. That's going to be made or broken depending on whether the creature is capable of understanding relative perspective. Something human children generally can't do for a few years.

Everyone keeps applying the word "programming" to Avacyn like she's some kind of robot. We've already established that she is a person.

Yes but she does have programming, I like to think of it like a sleeper agent or someone with a chip in their head. She's a person but she does have programming, like how she perceives Sorin and being unable to move past balance and into winning, she is definitely a person but people can have programming.

Or imagine two human nations going to war because they don't have monsters to worry about. Suddenly the biggest threat to humans is other humans. What do you do then? You terrorize them yourself because terror is the only emotion they respond to. You deprive them of their ability to make war by keeping them all broken and starving. Comfort breeds disobedience.

angels aren't "good", they just do their jobs. good and evil require mortality.

Empathy is not something a morally superior being can have. It means sharing the emotions of those around you, even when those emotions are wrong. It means letting an angry mob make you angry, letting the sadness of criminals trick you into withholding justice, and letting those who are happily profiting from sin make you happy. It means being a part of the herd, and a part of the herd cannot rise above it.

Nonsense. You can feel and empathize without allowing those emotions to rule you.

Not the same user, but empathy has it's place. It's good to feel empathy towards a loved one who is sad because they just broke up with their ex or a situation like that.

But in the examples that user gave, the temptation of those situations is a danger and not everyone would be able to resist which just adds to the situation, whether good or bad.

As most things, it has it's situations but it is not inherently one or the other.

It's much easier if you don't have them at all. If something's main virtue is that it can be controlled most of the time, it is something to be gotten rid of. Empathy compromises your reason and dissolves you into the crowd if you let it, and it does nothing at all if you keep it under control. In neither case is it necessary or desirable.

The question then is if they can't really understand other peoples' happiness or anything like that, what motivations and goals can you give them that won't result in the unfeeling robot blindly optimizing it into a dystopia or a horror story?

If your piece of fiction has "angels" which aren't how I described them, they're fucking wrong and can piss off

"Oh look at me, aren't I so fucking enlightened that I'm going to completely disregard diction and convention when they're not handy."

By the way, faggot, religion isn't fiction, because the people who made it thought it was true

There's a difference between understanding people's emotions and sharing them. Just ask any sociopath. They can be extraordinarily good at reading people, even better than normal people, because there's nothing getting in their way, no fear of being unwanted or hurting someone's feelings.

If you're afraid that this experiment will end badly, the answer is simple: limit its power. It can just be like any other limited creature, doing what seems like the best idea at the time. Only in its case it is much better than others at evaluating the best idea at the time.

Is scientology fiction?

Yes

probably

I'd say that assuming the angel does not have the typical properties of a celestial, just try to raise her like you would a normal kid and hope she turns out ok.

Artist might have benefited from ripping off some hentai, her bellybutton is in the wrong place.

Give them a test before they do the job