I did not intend this to be religious debate. It is very hard to have one within forum rules as I found out on Bethesda forums. 1> No Brahma is not a bull. The wiki link points to a non-existent page. Please search for Brahma on wiki. I could talk on depictions of various entities, but don't want to so that we do not get in deep religious debates here. 2> Atheist argument: Even atheist respect somebody or some concept. Substitute Brahmin with Einstein, Gandhi, Mandela whoever you respect and see if it is jarring. That is the point. If Brahim were to be named as something offensive to a large group, would you support renaming it?
Respect and worship are different things. I'm an atheist. I think Einstein was a great scientist and Mandela a great man, and I respect them. But as long as the use is not outright insulting (say, naming Mandela a chimpanzee would be an obvious racist slur, so that wouldn't be OK), I really don't care, I'd at most find it funny, the way I find funny Richter (an infamous pseudo-scientist of the mid to late 50's in my country) called his cat Epsilon, like the Greek letter most commonly used to depict arbitrarily small values. I frankly don't care if they use their names in non-insulting ways.
I have 6 points to make over the last several posts:
1> Firstly Bethesda surely knows its audience and it seems to be large enough that they would think numbers make something right as opposed to moral arguments.
As much as I dislike Bethesda's games, assuming there is anything wrong in naming a cow "brahmin", that's not on Beth's. It predates Beth's ownership of the IP.
2> I am not sure how many people actually did the exercise about substituting the Brahmin name with a priest of their religion or something they respect honestly without treating it as an opportunity to be witty or support their pre-made conviction.
I did as much as I could, but I have to admit the premise is a bit silly to me. My name is Mario, and I wouldn't be offended by cows in the Fallout universe being called Mario (on the contrary, it would make me another great costume for parties).
Yet your opinion is that your personal feelings should overwrite the expression of others.
Not really, if you want I can flood this with plenty of yes votes to prove that it is not "just" my personal opinion. I understand most of the view points here. I would request that please give a thought to what I have been saying and if you really think more than one person would not think this way, if you really think it would be good to have a something that is against a group of people?
Firstly, you seem to be the only one that seems to be interpreting this as being against a group of people. As mentioned, they are even portrayed in a positive light, maybe even the only beings as objectively positive-only.
Secondly, how on Earth are you Hindu, a religion where cows are sacred, and you are offended because something you kill to eat and stuff has the name of a caste and not by the fact this something you kill to eat is a cow? That for a start sounds rather inconsistent.
Thirdly, and I'm repeating Walpknut here, you are vouching for forcing someone to change the name of something on their fictional world. That IS overwriting somebody else expression, and that IS violating that freedom of expression. Freedom makes you responsible by consequences, not by forcing you not to do things. The only rational consequence here to 'suffer' would be that you don't buy their games because you felt offendeded, and that's it. What you are proposing, instead, is censorship, and if you want to talk offending groups of people, a whole lot of people was killed in my country as a means to censoring their ideas.
1> I am not saying the polls are wrong. I acknowledged that when i said Bethesda knows its audience. Were this audience to be expanded, it would tell a different story.
Eh, don't assume that because people share your demographics they are offended by the same things as you. Some people realize that a name might be just a name, and the only actual Indian people I remember from the Fallout franchise was actually pretty badass. Aradesh was the father of the only actual Republic we know in game, the father of the new world. But it's OK, keep complaining because they chose a name for cows and you decided to feel offended by that choice, and ignore the fact a demographic you share is portrayed in one of the most positive lights out there. Interplay and Bethesda must really hate Indians and Hinduists!
3> Brahmins sustain life: Interesting point, really. Agree that a cow is not shown in a bad terrible way. You can kill it, eat its meat, use its hide, hold cow massacres, have cow jokes, great, no problem. But you cannot do that to a group of human beings. That is the point. (I don't plan to take the cannibal perk
)
Actually, insensitive as it would be, you probably could. In fact, human massacres are pretty much on in the world of gaming. What do you think a war is, if not a human massacre? Haven't you seen any games on war? There's literally like four AAA titles every year.
After the immigration law change in 1960s, US is becoming a multi-religious country, it has many radically different religions, including atheism, which is absence of one ( it is like the numbering system that starts with 0, or None option), as opposed to many derivatives of the same religion. In my humble opinion, we need to be sensitive to that.
There is a difference between being sensitive and taking into account every possible unreasonable cause for people to feel offended. If you go and put your only Indian character to be a goofy idiot, OK, you can rightfully feel offended, because that's probably intentional. They could have made their comic relief in so many ways, yet they chose that. But the cow name, really? You are reading way too much into something that just isn't there.
The religious debate is needed because the original fallout used a religious hum icon, perhaps inadvertently, as a butcher-able deformed animal.
This was not corrected even after Bethesda knew about it at least since Fallout 3 release and did nothing.
So a corrective action should at least be debated. The US debate is here. India debate will start elsewhere since this is mainly a US board.
I am sure you did not read that the cattle was first bred in early 1900.
Even then it gives a legacy of 115 years, the fallout legacy is 17 years, the hindu legacy is 5000 years.
I brought it up in 2015 because this is the first fallout game played.
Bye.
Not that Beth seems to care about plot consistency, but in-game it would be pretty weird that Brahmin suddenly changed their name.
All Br* words are ancient Sanskrit words and according to wikipedia they come from the root "Br".
Does that include Braille and Brasil?
If offending religions sounds rational and logical to you because you are an atheist or because it is done as many times as you pointed by your good examples, good luck and I request you to develop some ethics based value system.
You are being a bit of a hypocrite here. You are the one who started the whole "what would happen if it would be against the major religions of the US?". Well, it was shown, and contrary to what *you* are pointing at, those were actually aimed at the religious figures, and made them the big bad villains, rather than just having a mere naming coincidence. And he showed you what happened: pretty much nothing, the same old "I'm offended by everything" got offended, and everyone else wrote it off as games will be games. I have a friend who is an Evangelist and plays Assasin's Creed, so...
If what we see in Fallout regarding the use of the term Brahma/Brahmin is offensive, I wonder if other companies are being scrutinized for their less tactful use of the same:
View attachment 2512
They should be scrutinized for making shitty beer, first.
laxite,Freedom is more important than people's feelings and the state should never be able to modify or censor anything.
for example,Germany censored Wolfenstein:the new order (the first game of this famous and important saga). The censorship changed the word nazism with "regime",changed swasticas with another symbol and so on. Can't you see how wrong it is? this is like try to make people forget about nazism becose governement and pression gruops are worried that nazism is a too blunt theme to appear in vieogame in germany in 2015. Also censorship treads on the personal freedom and cretivity of an artist/producer and on personal freedom of the consumer who cannot buy something with the money for which he has worked for
Wolfenstein is way older than TNO...
passive
aggressive behavior talking, unlike 
wrong with 
