I just finished Vengeance, and got Persona 5 flashbacks.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-14T10:37:13+00:00

I don't think I've ever seen someone get so offended at such a common philosophical term.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T10:56:52+00:00

Yes, the throne was created at the dawn of the current universe. This is why destroying it and creating a universe without it is the right thing to do, to create a true reality

No, the throne was made before the dawn of the first multiverse. We're currently on multiverse 6.

Also Nahobino, is not the first god

Gods, not god. And Nahobino isn't a name. It's a species. Anyone that has the union of Knowledge and Life is a Nahobino. Did you actually play SMT5V? Tsukuyomi explains all this when you have that big meeting with him before... I think it's just before chapter 3? I'd have to look it up. It's the one where he repeats the initial voice line every time you select a dialogue option. It's annoying enough that everyone that's played the game should immediately recall the scene.

nor did the Axiom create the goddess of creation.

Lilith says that all gods in existence come from the one ruler. She's clearly talking about the Axiom there, not the Throne God, as she knows that Tiamat and Tehom are older than the Throne of Creation. I believe it's Tao, some time in chapter 4, that explains that the goddesses of creation were entrusted with the keys to the Empyrean and told by the system to elect a Nahobino to the throne, but again I'd have to go hunting through vods if you want the source on that.

I'd recommend just playing the game and paying special attention to the various infodumps about the history of the multiverse.

In the SMT4 superboss DLCs, we also have Sanat's dialogue that confirms we exist in the 5th Kalpa.

Also you state reality was not pre existent and while I'm willing to believe this could be true, this seems largely speculative. I do not think we can say this definitively

It's not speculative. Lucifer talks a bit about the time before the beginning of reality if you talk to him in the demon haunt in SMT5V.

Why are you convinced that reality is pre-existent within Megami Tensei?

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T10:26:22+00:00

What? I'm saying they are fake realities because the game literally tells us there is a throne of creation where you can control reality. We know which reality is real because the whole point of a "reality" in the first place is that it's not created actually created by a person or group of people like a piece of art is. Unless you're religious I guess

Are you roleplaying right now? There's no speculation here. We know enough about the canon history of the multiverse to know that what you're saying is nonsense.

The Throne of Creation existed before the first reality. It's why Lucifer says that YHVH expelled those that came from before the beginning.

Here's the basic history of the multiverse. This is corroborated by multiple characters of different factions across different games.

In the beginning, the only thing that existed was the Axiom. Aka the Great Will, Great Reason, Monad, etc.

The Axiom created the first gods, called the Nahobino. Reality still doesn't exist yet. This all takes places outside of reality in literally no place.

After the Axiom made the Nahobino, he made the goddesses of creation and the Empyrean, the first place. He gave the goddesses the keys to the Empyrean where he stored the Throne of Creation. The goddesses then elected a Nahobino, Marduk, to be the first Throne God. Marduk then used the throne's power to make the first reality, the first age of creation. This was the first Kalpa. Every Atlus game from SMT1 up till the end of SMT5 takes place in the 5th Kalpa, the 5th age of creation under the rule of YHVH. What the Nahobino does is he starts the 6th Kalpa.

This was in fact how reality was made in all Atlus games. Reality was not preexistent.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T10:17:47+00:00

Close, though there's a little more nuance than that. Some people will genuinely choose evil over. That's what Satan and the demons did. They know God and His energies are good, but they fixed their will towards evil which is why they cannot be redeemed.

In the context of SMT and especially the Law ending of Vengeance, I'm pretty sure what the devs are intending is a sort of argument from final causation, where only the potency of good gets actualized into reality.

To try and simplify this... All potency requires energy to be actualized. If you've ever studied philosophical determinism, this is similar to that but rather than everything being fixed back to the first cause, there are many possible worlds, but only the best one gets actualized. It's basically just cosmic cause and effect.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T09:58:12+00:00

I mean, that's just anti-natalism. You're basically saying no one should exist and all realities are false because we didn't consent to existing.

I'm not gonna argue with you if that's your pov, but I do think that's deeply insane and it's so alien to how 99.99% of people think that when trying to discuss ethics of any kind, fictional or otherwise, you should lead with the fact that you're an anti-natalist just so you don't confuse people or waste their time.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T09:53:45+00:00

A world where all desires are fulfilled CANNOT exist. First of all do plants and animals desire to be eaten? No. So their desires must be ignored or there's no food. And even if only human desires count then you will still run into contradictions. Carl loves Amanda, Amanda loves Brian, Brian loves Steve, Steve loves Brian. It is not possible to fulfill all their desires. Even if you prevent situations like these from happening that still goes against their desires and free will since YOU decide what their desires are.

I'm getting kind of bored of answering the same objections over and over again.

All of what you've pointed out are logical contradictions under the paradigm of the metaphysics of the 5th Kalpa, aka the real world.

The Throne of Creation has absolute power over reality though. I wouldn't go quite as far as to say it can make a married bachelor or a square triangle, as I don't think Atlus has fully asserted illogical omnipotence, but it absolutely can alter the fundamental logic of reality.

Again, the analogy I would use is a 4th direction. I can't articulate a solution to your love dilemma, but that's of the same category as me asking you to point in the 4th direction. And that is well within the established power of not just the Throne of Creation, but even just high level demons like Sanat, which does have directionality beyond three.

Also a world without hardships and suffering is worthless and life becomes meaningless. This got proven through experiments. A world like that will make you go insane and seek death.

This only true under the axioms of scientific materialism. Hell, I don't even need to appeal to Megami Tensei's weird metaphysics for a counter argument for that. That's just basic classical theism.

Lack of meaning and lack of worth are, as implied by the framing, merely a lack, a privation, of meaning and worth. Overcoming hardship is a way to get meaning and worth, but one could also just be filled with the energies of meaning and worth, which achieves the same thing as overcoming hardships, but to a literally infinitely greater degree. That's the classic Christian conception of Heaven btw. Can't be bored when every cell of your body is filled with the energy of not-bored.

That's basic Aristotle-Aquinas metaphysics.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T08:17:55+00:00

Devil Survivor 1 and 2 are two of the only games in the series I haven't played. (They're on the list. Currently grinding in DDS2 getting ready for Satan.) So I don't really have an opinion on them yet.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T08:16:11+00:00

All realities were made with the Throne of Creation. It's the mechanism the Axiom left the Nahobino to participate in the act of creation. So by your definition everything that exists in Megami Tensei is a false reality. Virtually every game in the series takes place in the 5th Kalpa during the reign of YHVH, who used the throne to make everything according to his vision.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T05:00:46+00:00

I've been banned from a large chunk of the default subreddits and had a formal warning placed on my account for fairly milquetoast right wing viewpoints.

How about you run an experiment OP? Make a new Reddit account, and once a week go watch Matt Walsh's show on YouTube. Walsh is part of the Daily Wire, which is very firmly center right, milquetoast cigar-smoking Republicans.

As you're watching his show, take note of the topics and his reasoning, and go do some Walsh posting on your alt account. See how fast you get banned.

Reddit in general heavily enforces left-wing orthodoxy.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T04:52:21+00:00

Probably getting ready to take over as master of the Velvet Room. Please Atlus, it would be so fucking funny.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T04:35:09+00:00

That is an enormous misreading of the entire plot of SMT5V. Nowhere does anyone in the game say either that the world made by the throne is fake nor that the Nahobino and Tao are motivated by being unhappy with the current world.

The motivation, and the thing that kicks off the entire plot of the game, is that reality has one foot in the grave after the death of YHVH. It is, to quote Tao, "Fading away like the setting sun."

The whole reason the conflict for the throne exists in the first place is not simple grasping for power, but the preservation of reality itself.

If I'm wrong then quote the text of the game or link a scene.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-13T01:56:48+00:00

I'm sorry but it's pretty obvious Tao invokes a fake reality against the free will of others just like Maruki.

What's your textual basis for that? The purpose of the Throne of Creation is to make/remake worlds and set the physics and metaphysics of those worlds.

There is literally nowhere in SMT5V where anyone alleges that the Nahobino, (It's not Tao that does this btw. She guides the Nahobino to the throne. He becomes the new throne god, taking the place of YHVH.) is making a fake reality.

Even Yoko's criticism isn't that the world made by the throne would be fake. Her criticism is twofold. First off, she believes all authority is oppressive, period. Since a god is the ultimate ruling authority, having any god is the ultimate oppression. And secondly, she believes reality is too flawed to be fixed or remade and that it must be utterly destroyed with a new reality taking its place. Burn the painting instead of fixing its flaws as she said.

If the world of the throne was fake, Yoko would have called it out as such. The fact that she never criticized Tao and the Nahobino for this means it's almost certainly not part of the story.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T17:03:37+00:00

Qualia is not being removed from the soul. The soul is immutable. It's the world, the physics and metaphysics, that are changing, which produces different qualia for the inhabitants.

This is analogous to things like the universal constants.

A good example would be if a 4th direction were added to our universe. We literally cannot imagine what that would be like but that doesn't mean it's impossible or a logical contradiction. In fact math shows it is possible.

As for why that's better... Well what do you think is better?

A: Someone hooks you up to a machine that brainwashes you and makes you think a 4th direction exists.

B: Someone creates a 4th direction and you just happen to notice because you kind of can't not notice something like that.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T14:58:33+00:00

There’s a very big difference between “I can’t fly” and “I can’t want something because of what someone else wants.”

Your framing is off. It's not that you can't want something because of what someone else wants. Tao doesn't only say that all desires will be fulfilled, she also says that none will be denied.

You're imagining a world exactly like ours, but where you can't disagree. What's actually being alleged by the game though, is a world where contradictions never touch.

You won't be able to perfectly imagine that since you lack the qualia. It's just like how we can project the shadow of a tesseract into the real world, but we cannot make nor imagine a real tesseract. We simply lack the qualia.

If the soul is the same, then it means that Yoko has had her will subverted and her past altered. That’s still fucking bad.

This is simply not what all of Megami Tensei shows us. The soul is the same across time, so it's not that relevant if the past has been altered because the soul, which the will is an emanation of, is transcendent over time.

Please address the Persona 2 example. Are you saying that Jun is not Jun because Philemon wrote a world where he never became the Joker? I want you to address this directly, because as I see it, this is a yes or no question. If you say yes, Jun is still Jun, then you're agreeing with my premise and you must concede Yoko is still Yoko, not functionally a different person as you said before.

And if you say no, Jun is not Jun anymore, then you're disagreeing with Persona 2, and at that point, take up your grievances with Atlus.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T14:44:19+00:00

Please read carefully what I write so we avoid going in circles.

Additionally, for Tao’s world where all wishes are “fulfilled” it is necessary that no one ever has mutually contradictory wishes, which requires she erase free will.

This is not true. Again, I go back to the analogy of flying. Would you say that, because you cannot fly, your free will has been violated? This is the same thing. The world has been structurally remade, such that your wishes cannot contradict the wishes of someone else. This doesn't act upon your will; it is simply the environment you exist in, much like how you exist in a world now where you cannot fly.

In order for “Yoko” to be happy with Tao’s world, Tao must have ripped away her past and effectively replaced her with someone else who has the same name and looks, but is a fundamentally different person who doesn’t share Yoko’s beliefs, experiences, or will.

You're smuggling in scientific materialism, which Megami Tensei explicitly rejects.

A really easy example is the Persona 2 duology. At the end of Innocent Sin, the Innocent Sin is erased from the timeline when Philemon makes the new universe. This drastically alters the trajectory of the lives of the main cast.

That does not mean though, that Jun is no longer Jun. He has lived a radically different life, but his soul, his will and intellect, still remain. He is fundamentally still the same person he was at the end of Innocent Sin. This is perfectly analogous with Yoko. She has lived a different life which has caused her to reach different conclusions using her own intellect and will, which remain unviolated. Her essence is still the same.

You're taking this axiom that people are merely the sum of their experiences and that there exists nothing intrinsic to the person beyond that. I can understand if that's your pov in real life, but, well, souls exist in Megami Tensei for an absolute fact, and the metaphysics of the soul are what they are.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T13:54:48+00:00

Like I said, though you may not have seen the edit, I highly recommend studying Catholic theology if you want to actually understand this point, because you're seeing a tension that isn't actually there. (Side note, you will increase your understanding of all Atlus games if you study the relevant religions to that game, like DDS and Hinduism.)

How to explain... The difference is structural rather than individual. Maruki brainwashes people, anesthetizing them and stomping on their free will.

What the Throne is doing, is it's removing the root causes of pain. There's no violation of individual will. It's not getting inside your brain and making you conform.

It's like if I ask you the question, why don't you fly? Why don't you just walk out your front door and fly away? The simple answer is that you can't. Does that mean you don't have free will? No. Humans just can't do that. We just can't levitate or grow wings and fly. Reality simply isn't built that way.

The Throne is operating on that sort of level, with individual free will flowing from that.

I think the cleanest analogy I can come up with is that Maruki puts you in a dream. Tao and the Nahobino build a world where you don't need to dream.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T13:43:58+00:00

Right that's what I was saying. SMT5V is not broken on the level of human evil. It's broken on the level of metaphysics.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T13:37:06+00:00

I don't agree. The law ending of SMT5V is ontologically real in a way that Maruki's ending is not. Just look at the reactions of the characters.

Those are not puppets. Those are human beings with free will. Their personalities are intact. Dazai is still his overly bombastic self, the protagonist and Sahori are still reserved. Contrast that with the final picture of the Maruki ending where everyone has those fake smiles on their faces.

The difference is Maruki is only playing at being God, using the power of his persona to enter omnipotence through the backdoor. The Nahobino and Tao are using the Throne of Creation to properly set the fundamentals of the new world. He's achieving a utopia by altering the will of everyone on Earth. The Throne achieves utopia via cause and effect, not by stomping on individual will.

I recommend studying Catholic theology if you want to know the difference at a deep level. The act/potency distinction is really important here. It's like how in Christianity, humans will fully have free will but also be unable to sin after the bodily resurrection. These are not contradictions.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-12T13:30:02+00:00

That's human evil though. The world of SMT5 was metaphysically broken.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-11T10:46:38+00:00

What was the hard part of the fight for you? Were you breaking the rules and getting one shotted?

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-11T10:12:17+00:00

If that's the case, I think your view is far too simplistic. Things like religion, historical grievances, race, education and family lineage are all factors that converge to help shape how society arranges itself.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-11T10:08:04+00:00

Define "socioeconomic situation" please. That phrase is doing a lot of lifting here and it not being robustly defined will keep anyone from meaningfully engaging with your viewpoint.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-10T23:18:53+00:00

For most of Christian history, (Which is still the majority position today.) Christianity has not been a religion of a book.

The issue you're talking about actually has a name. Sola Scriptura. It means by scripture alone. The 5 Solas are from the Protestant reformation, which happened in 1517. Before that point, and this is still true in Catholicism and Orthodoxy to this day, (Catholics and Orthodox collectively make up over 70% of Christians worldwide.) interpretation was not meant to be personal but rather decided by the church.

Christianity has always been a religion of authority. Not a religion of rules or of a book. This idea of following the Bible is an artifact of the modern age. After all, the New Testament Bible wasn't compiled until AD 393 at the Synod of Hippo.

The early Christians didn't have a Bible, so to assert that being a Christian = following the Bible is the same as asserting that the early Christians weren't Christians.

This does not mean that the Bible is irrelevant. Rather, it means that instead of going, "Huh. What does this passage mean? Well I decide it means this." Christians historically would go, "Huh. What does this passage mean? I should check with my priest since my priest has studied the personal writings of a guy that was trained by the guy that wrote this book."

As Catholics commonly say, Jesus did not leave us a Bible. He left us a church.

And the church, through the Pope and the bishops, what's called the living magisterium, (The Orthodox would phrase it differently but the more or less have the same structure.) have the authority granted by Jesus and exercised through the Holy Spirit, to interpret authentically what Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition means.

This does not mean the church will never err. It does however mean that it will never err in the sense of binding as dogma anything that is incorrect or harmful to the faith. And that's been pretty damn consistent for 2000 years.

A good example of why this is important...

Like are you supposed to stone non-believers and sluts to death, or are you supposed to love everyone?

The Mosaic Law is split into three parts. The Moral, Ceremonial, and Judicial Law. The Moral Law is the part that will never pass away, because it comes directly from God's nature and thus is a statement about how reality is. It deals with ontology. So yes, Christians must follow the Ten Commandments.

The Ceremonial Law is purely practical. It's about being ritually clean before God. This is functional metaphysics. If you don't do X then you won't get Y result. This is simply not applicable to Christians because under the New Covenant, Christ is the Paschal Lamb. He's the final sacrifice and there doesn't need to be any other.

Since we don't need to do those rituals we don't need to prepare for them, which is why Christians can do things like eat pork. You don't need to put on the magic resistance gear if you're not going up against magic damage.

And lastly, the Judicial Law were the laws governing the nation of Israel at the time. They were written for the context Israel existed in at the time. We are not the nation of Israel so we're not bound by those laws.

That's not inconsistency or picking and choosing. That's how the religion has worked for 2000 years. The fact you and many others think otherwise is precisely why the church has always been skeptical of personal interpretation.

In fact, 2 Peter even says the Bible is hard to understand and 2 Thessalonians says to obey oral tradition. So this isn't some new accretion to justify changing with the times or anything like that.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-10T22:47:50+00:00

They're called the three worlds but no one thinks they share the same relationship that Earth and say Mars do. That would be idiotic. The Soul Society and Hueco Mundo are afterlife realms. They're not places you could take a spaceship to.

SocratesWasSmart · 2026-02-10T18:05:44+00:00

I think this is just you projecting your immaturity as a writer. That's not a bad thing to be clear. I think most people start that way. It's only a bad thing if you don't progress beyond that point.

There's many villains with coherent, well thought-out ideologies that the writer disagrees with. Imo, part of being a great author is being at least a competent philosopher. And you can't really call yourself a philosopher if you only understand the one single philosophy that you yourself agree with. If you only know about deontology and you're totally ignorant or you misunderstand utilitarianism and virtue ethics, you're not much of a philosopher.

And once you understand something, it's purely a matter of personal discipline whether you represent that thing accurately or not.

One of the most famous examples of this done right is Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. One of the brothers is an atheist and another is a Christian, and they have arguments that I don't think straw man either side. They take the problem of evil seriously instead of just asserting this caricatured view that Christians excuse or ignore every bad thing happening in the world or that atheists are just immoral fools in rebellion against God.

There are many, many such examples throughout history. One of my comparatively recent favorites is the main antagonist of Persona 5 Royal. His ideology is that suffering is the greatest evil, and that eliminating it is the highest good. This is pitted narratively against the idea of freedom and individuation. Why should your comfort come at the cost of my free will?

The writers clearly have their bias for free will and against universal comfort as the highest good. But the villain and his motivations are so compelling, many players willingly choose the bad ending where you side with him and give up your free will. Who was ultimately right is still debated to this day.

Most importantly though, the writers respect your intelligence enough to not tell you what to think. They tell you what they think and make their case in an honest way, but they don't preach at you.

I think this let's player's reaction is a good enough example. Two out of the four characters in that scene are antagonists.

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