@PUBLIQclopAccountant  
I think I said this earlier, but there’s nothing to worry about. Somehow, Derpy will miss.

They can just teleport, silly ponies.

Democracy…  

 
My butt.  

Celestia and Luna are gods.

@bico-kun  
Do you know there are possibly adherents to the Abrahamic religions in this comment section? Bigot.

Ah! The Prance Revolution! Good times.

@bico-kun
 
Oh brother. You know, you should be able to reply in a discussion like this without writing a whole book on the matter. If you have to get that verbose about it, maybe you’re trying a little too hard.
 
Additionally, your comments about God, as opposed to the mythological characters we’ve been discussing until now, are baiting an entirely different kind of disagreement.

@Millennial Dan  
“No, it isn’t. The idea of the sacred/holy is not what you’re defining it as being. There’s an intrinsic notion of separation between the mortal and the divine that you’re neglecting.”
 
Which you’ve still neglected to define as anything other than arbitrary.
 
“There is simply no reason to think it’s different for them than how it basically was for Twilight and Cadence.”
 
Except they’re still very different from Twilight and Cadance. It can be inferred that Celestia and Luna have always been what they are, while Twilight and Cadance became what they are. There could be other explanations for the differences that wouldn’t directly contradict canon, but that doesn’t negate the possibility of this as a reasonable explanation in the context of this fictional universe.
 
“First of all, magic hasn’t raised anyone from the dead in MLP.”
 
Not explicitly, no. Even so, when I hear Sombra’s backstory, I get the impression that Celestia and Luna basically disintegrated his body. Only magic allowed him to live on as basically a shade while the Crystal Empire was in some kind of time warp. It seemed very much like he was slowly coming fully back to life, kind of The Mummy style, as he invaded further. That’s one way to view it, and it’s not necessarily wholesale out-of-the-blur resurrection, but it’s close enough that it wouldn’t be inexplicable if it happened. I’ll address the second point further on.
 
“And let’s not talk about DBZ, it’s chock full of silliness that doesn’t make any sense.”
 
Gods in general don’t really make sense, that’s why they’re only found in fiction, so I don’t think that’s a good argument. DBZ is a valid fictional universe with a view on gods and the afterlife that actually isn’t too far off (though with some obvious artistic license) from actual Chinese and Japanese mythology. It just inserts some added “magic” in there that shows my point clearly that magic has no practical difference from divinity. I can see why you might not want to talk about it, though.
 
“No one yet has demonstrated any ability in MLP that is truly supernatural in that context.”
 
Funny that you use Feeling Pinkie Keen to make this point, because I think you’ll find in that episode that one pony demonstrated exactly that, since it was the whole point of the episode. Furthermore, your concept of supernatural is very modern. “The supernatural” was, in fact, thought to be measurable and quantifiable. It would have to be, really, or else it effectively wouldn’t exist. Which is why people have shifted views on that, of course, because all that magic stuff can’t be measured in real life, so to avoid admitting error people just say you can’t measure or detect it even though it’s logically impossible for that to be the case if it effects reality. Of course, that was one of the problems with FPK, in that Twilight became the Straw Skeptic, but… eh, you can read any old skeptic’s opinion on that anywhere. Point being that your own citation refutes your claim. Also, I should point out that Twilight’s claim that magic was quantifiable boiled down to “magic only happens when you intend for it to happen and not on its own.” Presumably, the exercise of any god’s abilities would be intentional and thus fall into Twilight’s definition of magic.
 
“They’re not the arbiters of moral law…”
 
Gods generally don’t have to be. Socrates’ dialogue with Euthyphro is a good example of why the gods cannot logically arbitrate morality. Besides, they are rulers, so one can assume they make laws concerning morality in their kingdom.
 
“…they don’t have any say in spiritual matters…”  
That’s not really known. You claim that Tartaros is on the same physical plane as Equestria and thus cannot be relates to the afterlife, but recall that the actual Tartaros was also in the same physical plane. Many mythologies had the underworld literally and physically underneath the world, and given that in Equestria the sun, moon, and stars literally all revolve around the their world I see no reason to think the Classical view of the underworld isn’t also the same. Luna apparently has some form of dominion over dreams, as well, which is often connected with the spirit world.
 
“…and their finitude is more than apparent.”
 
Still not an argument against godhood. Like I said, established gods are born and die in myths. Heck, the Norse could not only be killed with mistletoe darts (Baldr) but could even die of old age if they didn’t eat their magic apples, which is why they were so desperate to get them back. Again, you seem to be under the misconception that the only valid interpretation of what makes a god is from Abrahamic myth when there are a lot of others.
 
“They may be powerful (although Celestia hasn’t really done much to prove that), but they’re not set apart. Other unicorns can raise the sun and moon; they did so before the sisters ever came along, and they could do it again if the sisters were gone.”
 
I’m understanding this as an assertion that gods must be able to do something categorically rather than just magnitudinally different than nongods to qualify. I’m not sure that this is necessarily valid, though. Most gods are really only magnifications of some already-existent thing. Take even YHWH of Abrahamic myth. Humans can be powerful. He’s omnipotent. Humans can know many things. He is omniscient. Humans create a lot of new things. He created everything. It’s all categorically the same but pushed to the maximal (and some would say logically impossible, but it’s fiction so it can have it’s own internal logic). It needn’t be pushed this far, of course. There are many stories in which a lesser being has to take over a divine duty. They aren’t as good at it, of course, but they can handle it for a bit, and generally it requires abilities that are categorically no different than human abilities even if the Hero has a greater magnitude (i.e. demigod Herakles’ raw strength to hold up the sky for Atlas). In the same way, though unicorns could control the sun and moon en masse, Celestia and Luna are the only ones who can do it by themselves. You could say that for a unicorn it’s a… “Herculean task.” Further, there’s still the fact that Celestia and Luna are still very unique. Even with the introduction of other alicorns like Cadance and now Twilight, they’re still at least 1,000 years old and still looking young, while Cadance and Twilight will still grow old and die in the usual time. Why are they so different? Twilight is allegedly better at magic than even Celestia, so what is it that makes the originals so long-lived? What allowed them to wield all the Elements of Harmony between them or even alone when it requires six normal ponies? They could very well simply be something very different from all the other ponies, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to classify them as some kind of gods.
 
 
@Cirrus Light  
Oh, I’ve read it. I wouldn’t say it really indicates anything aside from that they are something quite different from ordinary ponies and even from the modern alicorns, Twilight and Cadance. They were apparently born alicorns rather than achieving the status, and there were or are other alicorns… somewhere. But we don’t know what kind of beings those alicorns might have been or might be, either. Some have speculated that they could be like the semi-divine Maiar of LotR. Which would still qualify them as being candidates for some sort of godhood in most mythologies.

@Millennial Dan
 
@bico-kun
 
Y’all need to read “The Diary of the Two Sisters.” Has lots of relevant info that kind of indicates them being non-divine, closer to Millenial’s point, I think.

@bico-kun  

No, it isn’t. The idea of the sacred/holy is not what you’re defining it as being. There’s an intrinsic notion of separation between the mortal and the divine that you’re neglecting.

There is simply no reason to think it’s different for them than how it basically was for Twilight and Cadence.

First of all, magic hasn’t raised anyone from the dead in MLP. Secondly, Tartarus is shown to be on the same physical plane as everything else, so in this particular story, it’s not related with the afterlife. Magic has no influence on anyone’s soul, and that makes all the difference in the world. And let’s not talk about DBZ, it’s chock full of silliness that doesn’t make any sense.

Not true at all. In the MLP universe, magic follows natural laws, just as everything else does. Twilight made that pretty clear in FPK. No one yet has demonstrated any ability in MLP that is truly supernatural in that context. Magic is quantifiable and controllable, just like any other ordinary forces.

People swear by monarchs too. That sure doesn’t give them divine status. Legends in this case are just historical accounts, that doesn’t bestow divinity. Sombra was not killed until TCE. Discord and Tirek are just creatures with unique magical attributes. The princesses’ manes are tangible, as we saw in Luna Eclipsed.
 
The reason I disagree so strongly is because it seems people only say they’re “goddesses” because they want them to be. But in truth, they’re not different from other ponies. They’re not the arbiters of moral law, they don’t have any say in spiritual matters, and their finitude is more than apparent. They may be powerful (although Celestia hasn’t really done much to prove that), but they’re not set apart. Other unicorns can raise the sun and moon; they did so before the sisters ever came along, and they could do it again if the sisters were gone.

@Millennial Dan  
Which is what, exactly? You just say that in order to qualify as a god in any kind of fiction, they must have the quality of “sacredness/holiness,” but that’s an entirely non-useful concept in this case. Sacredness or holiness is just another way of saying “like a god,” so all you’re really saying is that “they can’t be gods because they don’t possess godness.” That’s circular logic, for one, and there’s also no way for you to know that they don’t possess any divinity which could be the cause of their as-yet unexplained features. We don’t know how they were born, who their parents were, why they live as long as they do, if they age, or if they are capable of actually dying.
 
Not only that, how do you distinguish between magic and divine powers, exactly? Magic can heal, raise the dead, change age, shrink stuff and turn animals into oranges. Celestia and Luna were even able to lock Tirek in Tartaros, where they generally locked up the most powerful monsters, old gods, and mortals who insulted the gods, and is located in Hades, otherwise known as the afterlife. There’s nothing that could possibly be done that you could ascribe to divinity that you couldn’t also say “nope, that was just plain old magic,” then. You see this kind of problem all the time in other fictional universes. DC’s Darkseid is canonically a god, for instance. Superman is not. Superman can beat the crap out of Darkseid and perform feats far beyond what Darkseid can, and in some possible futures Superman is beyond Physical God and skirts pretty close to omnipotent. So what makes Darkseid a god and Superman not? Same deal in anime like Dragonball. Goku can destroy most of the gods in the universe. The gods usher dead people to the afterlife, but Baba could do that, and Goku is also able to Instant Transmission into and out of the afterlife regardless of whether he was alive or dead.
 
It’s pretty clear that in worlds where supernatural power is available to otherwise normal beings, the thing that makes something “divine” rather than “magic” is simply when it’s done by a god, and a god is simply whatever is declared to be and treated as a god (which is basically true in real life too, of course). The two sisters have legends based on them reminiscent of gods, the ponies use Celestia’s name in lieu of the word “god” (such as “oh my Celestia” or “with Celestia as my witness”), she’s attuned to a particular force of nature, and she and her sister are the only ponies who have been shown to be capable of living a thousand years (Sombra actually having been killed but apparently lingering as some kind of apparition, Tirek being a monster who could possibly have some sort of divine origin like Greek centaurs, and Discord being even more deserving of the label “god” than even Celestia and Luna). And look at their hair. That’s just ethereal. They can be easily interpreted as being considered as similar to Classical gods in the narrative and treated as such in their own universe, so I’m not really sure why you seem to be so dead set against that being even a possible interpretation.

@bico-kun  
Dionysus was the son of Zeus. Automatic disqualification, he had divinity in him from the start. Proof of this is seen in the way that, according to the story, his mother died in the face of Zeus’ manifest power, and he did not.
 
This isn’t a matter of tropes, it’s a matter of the very nature of the divine, in mythological categories or otherwise. As I’ve pointed out in many instances, gods and goddesses, no matter which belief system you select, were intrinsically connected to the spiritual world in the very core of their being. You can’t have a “god” without some mention of metaphysical concepts such as sacredness/holiness. These concepts have absolutely nothing to do with the princesses.
 
Living a long time isn’t enough. We ostensibly can accomplish that with a little science, and the ponies can obviously do it with magic. Having a lot of magic isn’t enough. Any sufficiently gifted unicorn or powered up changeling or centaur or whatever can display that trait. What’s missing is that essential, deific quality.

@Millennial Dan  
I never said it was my belief. It’s a headcanon I may play with in certain stories, but I’m equally amenable to those that treat the two sisters as normal royalty. I’ve written stories based on that premise. But, yes, you’re basically right as to my meaning. The mortality of a being does not rule out categorization of a god. I’m afraid your rebuttal that a being must be “other” in order to qualify as a god is a bit vague, though. Celestia and Luna certainly do seem different from any other ponies; even other alicorns. They are unusually large, have manes and tails that mark them as noticeably different (while this may not seem like much, most gods or other supernatural entities are identified by similar minor-seeming oddities), and they are extremely long-lived and possibly immortal, as opposed to Cadance and Twilight who are, at the moment, said to have normal pony lifespans despite being alicorns. I’m not even sure your assertion that “[t]hey’re not just extra-strong humans” is valid since some gods, like Dionysus, started as human before undergoing apotheosis. The princesses seem to fit most of the requisites for the Physical God trope, in fact. Hel, they’re an example on the trope page. I may be wrong, but it seems like you’re trying to argue that Celestia and Luna aren’t omnipotent creator gods like the Abrahamic concept, though, which isn’t what anyone’s arguing for, here. Their portrayal on the show has always alluded to Greco-Roman mythology rather than Hebrew mythology.

@bico-kun  
Haha, of course not. There’s only one Millennial Dan on the internet, and excepting anonymous posts, I never go by anything else.
 
I think the gist of your position is that Celestia and Luna can be called goddesses because of the existence of “mortal deities” in certain mythologies, is that right? Unfortunately for that argument (flawed as it is), it still neglects the otherness of the divine in any mythology. They’re not just extra-strong humans, they’re an entirely different category of being. This doesn’t apply to the princesses, who are quite obviously ponies who were born and live the same as any other pony.
 
Even back in season one, yours was a shaky belief; now it’s just plain untenable.

@Millennial Dan  
You know, there’s a guy on this blog I frequent who goes by the name of dan4 who makes similar comments about posts he doesn’t agree with when every other person seems capable of parsing and explaining with concision the meaning with little effort. Are you this same guy or is it a coincidence that two Dans seem stricken with the same convenient debilitating lack of reading comprehension?

@bico-kun  
Sheesh, another virtually incomprehensible comment.

Joke’s on them. Luna can exist in dreams. Celestia can’t.

@Millennial Dan  
I must have imagined using specific examples of gods that were capable of dying in a manner indistinguishable from the way mortals in that religion die and nongods capable of performing a god’s major function, thus addressing the exact issues you brought up as to why Luna and Celestia can’t be considered gods. Or I did and you choose to ignore it to save face, hoping anyone else who happens along will just tl; dr and assume you’re being honest.

@bico-kun  
Oh, funny. I never read that rant of a reply before. The lack of paragraph breaks makes it too unattractive.
 
From a quick scan of the content, it looks like you never did manage to present your case in a manner that was compelling, in logical terms. Ah well.

It’s a good thing Derpy’s the executioner.
 
Pull the lever  
Crowd cheers  
Princesses brace for the cut, squinting their eyes shut  
Sound of blade cutting into wood  
Open their eyes  
“Oopsie!”  
“HOW DID YOU MISS WITH A GUILLOTINE!?”

………..this is a stupid joke. cause since they LET it happen, they would not be executed.
 
not to mention they can crush the gallows with a flick of their horns to begin with.

@Millennial Dan
 
I note you missed the Norse gods, who most definitely could die, for example Baldr and Hœnir, the former of whom had even been made explicitly unkillable until Loki found a way around it, and of course Odin, Thor, Frey, Heimdallr, Týr, and Loki, himself, all explicitly die during Ragnarok. Izanami and Osiris were also understood to be stone-cold dead, with one remaining in the underworld just like any mortal ghost, and the other being resurrected with prosthetic junk. Regardless, both were gods who died. Cronus and his father, Ouranos, did not die, but they certainly bled when they were castrated, several monster races being generated from the spilled blood of Ouranos at the same time as Aphrodite was born from his severed sack. Certainly, these gods all had “spiritual aspects,” but this is no different than any mortal in these religions’ spirits. Recall that in Greek myth Orpheus traveled to the underworld to bring Eurydice back to life, just as Frigg went to bring Baldr back and Izanagi went to get Izanami, though Orpheus came much closer, apparently. Regardless, this shows that both humans and gods had spiritual forms in mythology, and I would assume that both the royal sisters and normal ponies have spiritual aspects as well (in fact, my impression of the climax of MMC is that Celestia and Twilight were supposed to be on some spiritual plane and this was their spirits talking. Really, when discussing the definition of what a god is in the mythological sense, the only constant is that it is like a person but more powerful, long lived through either natural or external means (the Norse gods were only ageless due to their magic apples, for instance), and have some dominion over a concept such as the sun and moon or love. In that context, Celestia and Luna can certainly fit, and whether other unicorns can do their job when working together isn’t really a good argument. After all, the aurae could do Boreas’ job if they all worked together despite being nymphs and not official deities. Given that ponies are all magical, it makes sense that their relationship to Celestia and Luna might be closer to that between lesser nature spirits and gods rather than mundane humans and gods. In any case, there’s no doubt that Celestia and Luna were introduced like classical gods, so if people interpret them that way there’s certainly nothing there to contradict the view and plenty to support it.

@Background Pony #C3EB  
Wrong, smarty pants. You’re using extraordinary leaps of imagination using little more from actual canon than the mere fact that Celestia’s been around for a long time, and that has several explanations to account for it. Even in our own world, a little genetic tampering could make anyone theoretically ageless. So in a world as magical as Equestria, the royal sisters simply aren’t far above any normal pony to attribute the status you want them to have.

@NoodleNugget  
Because whether few or many, only unicorns could do it. And since we know that Celestia’s magic is pretty limited, it would be overkill to assume it took all of them. In fact, since their society was so broken and incohesive, it couldn’t have taken their whole society. That would contradict everything we know about ponies, who devote themselves to their particular “special talents”.

@Millennial Dan  
>That’s entirely made up by you. There’s no reason to believe it took more than just a few unicorns.  
we dont know, it never went into detail. we have to assume one thing or another, and based on the hearth warmings eve episode, it’s safer to assume it took all the unicorns when they are the ones demanding the other races carry their fat tushes  
>Garbage. What have we seen in the show?  
we havent! that’s why you cant be making assumptions because their is no evidence for or against it. It’s a head canon off like I originally stated!  
>You made that up too. You’re injecting so much headcanon into this discussion it’s laughable.  
THAT”S THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DISCUSSION! IT IS HEADCANON! YOUR HEAD CANON IS THAT THEY ARENT, MINE IS THAT THEY ARE. THIS HAS BEEN THE CORE OF THE ENTIRE TOPIC YOU THICK HEADED MERNERNERNER