Thanatos2k said:
The gods tasking you to stop someone else from becoming a god doesn't even make sense. Why don't they just stop him themselves!? Wave your hand, whatever.
Even more nonsensically, if as a god you don't want people to be able to become gods, you definitely wouldn't tell others it's possible. You'd wipe Winker Watson off the map and make everyone forget what he was even trying to do.
So what you're saying is that Sacred 3 has bad writing.
Well Sacred 3 is a mess, however pretty much every question raised here has been answered a number of different ways if various fantasy series and concepts. Thieves World, The Forgotten Realms, and other things have all focused heavily on what it means to be a deity and why the typical fantasy status quo exists, it tends to be something long on the exposition though so explanations don't translate well into media like TV shows, movies, comics, video games, etc... like a lot of complicated ideas don't, which is why people have remained critical of those mediums and how well they
can tell stories compared to good old fashioned books. As a general rule though this unpleasant fellow becoming a god and having unlimited power is something that inherently seems like a bad idea, sure you can analyze this and say "hey we need more information, otherwise it seems like we're jumping to conclusions" but the problem is you don't really want to sit through an hour long presentation on fantasy metaphysics and explaining exactly why this is a bad idea. When say Doctor Strange stops Doctor Doom, Baron Mordo, Dormamammu or others from ascending to higher states of being or gaining/absorbing godlike power, we generally rely on what little see of their character traits for stopping them being a bad guy, Doctor Strange implies there is more to it than simply that, but I doubt anyone want see a 100 issue series of "Doctor Strange lectures on comic book mysticism".
That said the most simple way of explaining why your typical fantasy pantheon doesn't want anyone ascending is simply because having divine power is like having a nuclear weapon. You don't want Bob the Necromancer Lord to ascend to godhood and start playing around with cosmic forces, any more than you want third world countries to have nuclear weapons or highly advanced military forces. In the back story of a lot of fantasy worlds it's inevitable someone plays on this level eventually, and starts screwing stuff up, and needs to be stopped, oftentimes in the back story. Many fallen evil gods, dark lords, etc... in back stories were of course mortals, sometime well meaning ones, who got to that level and wound up screwing everything up.
Another point that comes up is that gods basically have to represent something, being cosmic, universal, forces. Some guy ascends to godhood, and the big question becomes what his sphere of influence is going to be. Is he willing to become a sub-deity under an existing one, or merge himself into a higher power and become an aspect of it? (depending on the concept) or is he going to fight for the throne. While you can say that of course gods by definition don't want to have their own power bases disturbed because they like the racket they have going, there is also the very valid point that nobody wants to see two gods fight over who gets the title/sphere since that spills over into a lot of things and other spheres. If say you've got Neptune fighting Bob The Aquamancer for title of god of the seas, your dealing with massive chaos throughout the oceans in all worlds they rule as they try and destroy each other with water. Aquatic races are going to need to pick a side, and many are going to flee, amphibious ones will probably rise to the surface and start invading the lands held by followers of other gods. As the minions/followers of these two gods start clashing there is of course a war, and your going to get the war god involved, and if they start predictably using storms then of course the air god gets involved, and oh hey... what if different deities whose spheres get crossed into have different ideas on which side to take... next thing you know you have the gods all warring with each other and destroying entire portions of reality, creating power vaccums if any of them die, etc...
In "The Forgotten Realms" the world was nearly destroyed when a bunch of mortals figured out they could become gods themselves, and the first thing they did was decide to absorb the god of magic (since they were wizards) and have their leader (a guy called Karsus) take his place. The thing is they sucked up the god of magic, destabilized all magic in the world as a result, and caused a cataclysm for both gods and men.
In "Thieves World" at a certain point the gods recruit mortals who reach a certain level of power, they had a story or two about this. Of course those gods tend to be a lot less than "ultimate" powers as they are portrayed in other worlds. Basically there is no need to try and steal godhood, you become powerful enough, regardless of which side of the morality spectrum your on, eventually you'll get an invitation.
A few other series have used concepts of micro-spheres as well, oftentimes with humerous intent, where you might have some gorgeous babe who ascends and wants to be goddess of love, but that and most of it's various aspects have been taken, so she gets to be the patron goddess of masturbation or something. Or where some dude who spanks it a lot might get so good at doing so that the gods invite him to be the god of masturbation. Sort of like "The Devil Comes Down To Georgia" except it's not a guitar Johnny B. Good is playing with and the reward is ascension, not a fiddle of gold.
The point here, which I am getting away from, is that something like "Sacred 3" could explain itself easily, but it didn't (like most similar things) and the big question when it comes to mockery is whether you really would have preferred them explaining it. I think back to say "Final Fantasy XIII" and the whole mess of cosmology and world building that was behind what Lightning and her friends were up to, and how little patience people had with that, as few people wanted to read the exposition or explanation as to what was going on and why.
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On a more realistic front, the reason why god doesn't intervene constantly is because if he did that it would remove free will. Basically nobody would ever do anything wrong, or choose to be bad, if they knew there was going to be immediate punishment from on high. If you can't choose to be bad, or do wrong, nobody can ever be good either. What's more with tight control, humanity will never progress.
I think the big problem with religion a lot of people who are anti-religious have, is that they can't really conceive of something as benevolent as god is supposed to be as a concept and/or get tied up in the exact word of the bible (which is just a book which gives some good advice and guidelines). Once you understand that, and the value of free will, it becomes easier to start putting it into perspective.
I'm not a deeply spiritual person even if I am Christian, and not really evangelical at heart, so I'm not the one to really explain this or make a case for it in a real world sense.
