I did substantiate it. Granted, it was only one paper, and not completely conclusive, but unsubstantiated it most certainly was not.

And I think blaming technology and progress for the Holocaust is silly. Sure, technology helped make the Holocaust far more widespread and devastating that it would have been earlier, but technology didn't cause the Holocaust. As for the atom bomb, its certainly scary as hell, but when in history has humanity restrained itself from using a means of causing destruction for sixty five years?


How so? Progress has meant that any atrocity is more quickly reported and the resulting public outcry forces much quicker resolution. Progress has, very recently, allowed the public to successfully oust dictators, even when they had the backing of the United States. Where in the past can you point to an equivalent of Tahrir Square?

And how can you make a claim we don't treat each other better? We only have anecdotal evidence of how people treated each other in the past. For much of the past, records of crime rates don't even exist, for us to make any definitive statements. What we do have is a comparison of various countries today, on the basis of how advanced they are, and how their people live, and are allowed to live.


This is supposed to be a real rebuttal of my point?



But that's not the situation in Martin's world. It is a world where many gods seem to exist and some seem to be actively engaged in the world.


Seem to exist. We don't know if they actually do. Take Arya's actions. I don't see any signs of her actually worshiping the Faceless God. She's using his temple to learn how to assassinate, so she can later go out and take revenge, something that is directly prohibited in his religion. When she kills the insurance guy, she justifies it by saying he had robbed many people of their money, but she is not supposed to need that! If it should turn out the Faceless God was real, and his disciples were indeed doing his will, it still doesn't change the morality of Arya's actions. She killed to learn, and to be allowed to stay, not out of any desire to do the word of a god she felt was real.