Is there a god?

[wickedglee]

Something occurred to me today:

The town of Silent Hill is presented as an entity in and of itself. It is inherently evil, but it is a reactionary evil, manifesting nightmare creatures and environments in response to outside stimuli. This is best characterized in Silent Hill 2, in which the town responded to James' feelings of guilt, remorse, and even sexual frustration by creating Pyramid Head, Maria, and sexy nurses.

Which makes me wonder...is there a god? The cult worships Samael, a demonic deity who strives to remake the world into a hellish nightmare. Certainly the cult wasn't always around, and while I don't know the full extent of the order's history, it stands to reason that it was either a religion brought to the town by a group of people, or else created to explain the supernatural nature of the town by its inhabitants.

Whichever is the case, it's certainly possible that the cult gave birth (pardon the expression) to the concept of this deity. Silent Hill responds to people by manifesting inner demons and subconscious desires and fears; isn't it possible Samael is yet another creation spawned by the evil of the town?

What this boils down to is a simple yet intriguing question: Which came first, the cult, or the god?

Discuss.

[blacky]

The order doesn't worship Samael, the only menction of Samael was when Dahlia described the mark Harry was seeing around town as 'The mark of samael' which she said was being created by Alessa, who she described as a demon that spirited away cheryl

Which of course is aload of bullshit. Dahlia just said that to demonize Alessa in order to get Harry to pursue her and capture her. the thing Alessa was actually leaving about was 'Seal of Metatron' which is a Seal of the cult which surpossingly repels demons, since alessa was trying to stop the birth of the God.

The thing to remember about the order is that it's actually in seprate sects, that worship their own varaitions of a God, there's The sect of the holy woman, the sect of the holy mother and sect of Valtiel. i haven't played Homecomming all the way through so I am not sure if there was another cult in that one.

All the Gods in the three main cults have been manivestated in some way or another, The God you are asking about comes from the sect of the holy woman where the belief is that a God will be born from a woman and will lead the faithful to some kind of paradise. Note that this God has been formed twice and it's appearance is based on the mind of those that formed it.

So I think these manivestations are really the town's work and arn't the real deal, this may also apply to the other sect's entities, The holy mother which Walter tried to bring about and the angel Valtiel which appears in SH3

[wickedglee]

Whoops! I guess I wasn't paying as close attention to the first game as I should have. I took Samael to be the name of the god. But my original question still holds, since these gods seem only to manifest themselves in Silent Hill.

[Valtiel]

I see the God of the town as something that was created through the worshipping of the cult in Silent Hill along with the special... powers that surround the entire town.

The way I see it, the powers of the town help manifest imaginations from the deep subconsciousness and creates physical bodies for these, or maybe even just creates them in an alternate dimension. Thus, this God that we've seen several times have been an ever growing entity that was created through the new faith that helped establish the Order.

As mentioned this God is only the god of one of the three sects that make up the Order. These other sects might have an entire different God that exists in an alternate world.

This theory I have here isn't fool proof. It is clear that the powers of the town has been around from before settlers came to the American continent. Perhaps this God has always been here, and only truly been given a "face" when people started worshipping it.

[SHSP]

The topic is going a bit over my head, lol! But if I can contribute, I heard somewhere that the town of Silent Hill was "in a constant battle over good and evil".

[chilnak]

Warning: unmarked spoilers!!

Warning 2: LLLLLOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!! I summarize (sort of) in the last paragraph.


My theory is this: the power of the town was originally neutral, and was slowly tainted by the cumulative effects of the horrible things that kept on occurring there after it was settled by the European colonists.

It had been considered a sacred place by the Native Americans, and they may have made pilgrimages there to have a real life version of a vision quest, or to perform holy ceremonies, but they probably never made any permanent settlements in the region. The manifestory powers of the area reflect what is in the minds of the people who visit there, but the natives probably did not visit in sufficient numbers or for a long enough duration to have any lasting impact on the neutrality of Silent Hill's power.

Once the colonials settled the region, however, the history of the region just gets bloodier and darker as the years go on. The power of the town is certainly mnemonic, retaining echoes of information and effects caused by the people who influence it; with so much misery and suffering occurring there over the years, the "mirror," so to speak, got dirty.

The colonials incorporated elements of the native religions in the area to the predominantly christian religions they brought with them. They would have, like wickedglee said, incorporated new details into their beliefs to accommodate the actual supernatural potential of the area. These beliefs create expectations, which the town fulfills (possibly in very abstract ways,) which creates more expectations, which the town fulfills (more specifically), which creates stronger expectations, so on and so forth. As time goes on and the power of the town gets darker, the expectations become colored with fear, which twists the power of the town even more, and creates more fear. As the final flavor, you can also add the power hungry opportunists who always show up to profit off such a situation. The religion slowly becomes a scary Native American version of fire and brimstone and no mercy and you better do this, this and that to earn protection from the Lovecraftianly horrible nature of true reality that exists JUST OUT OF SIGHT. The faithful believe in god (or rather several, depending on which sect they belong to) then god they shall have.

The towns power is quite dark by now, and molded into more specific forms of manifestation that fit the expectations of the now quite ordered and solidly established religion. The town's manifestations include things like supernatural powers possessed by some of its inhabitants (people like Dahlia, Alessa Claudia, and Walter.) Enter Dahlia, who, being both an opportunist and a true believer, gets tired of waiting for god and decides to take the initiative. She implants her deity in embryonic form (as she expected it to be by the precepts of her faith) into her daughter Alessa, who has very powerful abilities manifested to her by Silent Hill.

An interesting aspect of the town's power, it seems to me, is that once it has made a manifestation, that manifestation supports itself. It does not need to be sustained by the town in order to continue to exist. For example, the powers that Alessa or Claudia possessed, while created by the town, were REAL, and could be used anywhere in the world. I imagine if Heather ran away to Chicago, Claudia would have found her there and we would have played through an evil version of the Sears Tower.

That being the case, Alessa's power (more powerful than Dahlia realized?) ended up interacting with the town's power in SH1 resulting in it spiraling out of control and growing more powerful by several orders of magnitude (and gaining the ability to create entire alternate dimensions of reality.) EVIL SUPERNATURAL GROUND ZERO

Which leaves Silent Hill in the state it is in for the various games in the series. Whew! Ran out of steam!

So I guess I'm saying I agree with most of you in that the gods in the game are not real in that they did not participate in the beginning of time or anything like that, they were manifested by Silent Hill. As such, though, they are real because once created they don't rely on the towns power for their existence. However, they don't last very long, because each time one shows up, that particular game's protagonist show up and kills it. ;D

So they are not always hanging around, waiting to strike.

[AlexY]

Jun 8, 2010 9:31:38 GMT chilnak said:

So I guess I'm saying I agree with most of you in that the gods in the game are not real in that they did not participate in the beginning of time or anything like that, they were manifested by Silent Hill. As such, though, they are real because once created they don't rely on the towns power for their existence. However, they don't last very long, because each time one shows up, that particular game's protagonist show up and kills it. ;D

So they are not always hanging around, waiting to strike.

Yeah, I always figured that. If there really was a godlike entity it would be far more prominent and consistent throughout the series.

[wickedglee]

Wow, chilnak. I tossed the ball out there, and boy howdy, you ran with it! I agree whole-heartedly with your summation. *sage nod*

[chilnak]

Jun 9, 2010 2:28:22 GMT wickedglee said:

Wow, chilnak. I tossed the ball out there, and boy howdy, you ran with it! I agree whole-heartedly with your summation. *sage nod*

Thanks! I thought it was a great question that doesn't seem to pop up very often. Always a good time to think deep thoughts.

[blacky]

Just had a thought, mabye there isn't a clear answer and it's up to interpretation, but to go even further mabye konami did this purposely to make us question if a God really exists in real life? the question can easily be applied to reality, is there a God or is God an human invention? mabye that's the point Konami was trying to bring up

[Valtiel]

@blacky: But there exists a god. It's name is Cthulhu. And he's awesome.

But seriously, I think you might have something there in what you're saying. I guess there is some religion criticism hidden in Silent Hill that makes the player question what is right and wrong about it to some extend.