"G-d. Singular. Although there is some debate over whether the Destroyer is a god and whether we should consider ourselves dualistic.

"Anyway, G-d doesn't really do anything any more. It wrote the laws of reality and set the world in motion and sustains it with new... Energy? There is a specific word for this, but I don't know if you have it. We call it negenturopi. The machinery of the universe mostly ticks on without us. However, it requires occasional, systematic intervention to prevent it from breaking. This is why we follow the commandments.

"The original book of the commandments was given to an older people by the... Translation lacking. 'Small-god'? The small-god Nashi. Nashi recited it before a crowd and dozens of families bore witness to him, so there's that evidence. This was about seven thousand years ago. After that, they kept the commandments and transmitted them for generations. Many calamities befell them, and yet they kept surviving, with a few well-placed miracles. With time, they grew to conquer their neighbours and build an empire where this was the religion of everyone.

"Then invaders with a new religion came and wiped out the empire. Nashi returned to us and guided one of the many tribes that had been in the empire - the Zifarti - to a group of hills. There they hid and repulsed invasions with the assistance of Nashi. Since then, those hill people have had to sustain the universe themselves, as all the other tribes were forcibly converted to a new religion that viewed ritual observance as idolatry. We are the guardians of the last light of Nashi's revelation, and it's up to us to grease the gears of the universe."

"So... you have not seen any evidence that your god exists, and no one currently alive has, but there are stories that Nashi existed, and Nashi claims to be a small god. Okay."

"Look. It is totally possible that we're wrong. And what if we're wrong? We have created an institution of cooperation and fellowship that gives people meaningful lives. There are societies that have gone the "Let's tear down our churches and force everyone to be an atheist!" route. It ends poorly. I know several non-Zifarti atheists. They're good people. However, I don't want to be one of them. Even if I saw proof that my beliefs were wrong, I'd keep following the law, because doing things that connect me to my community is meaningful for me and is meaningful for my neighbours - and if, per chance, they aren't meaningful to G-d - well, too bad."

"Societies built on lies don't end up fair and just and beautiful, they end up creating more structures of power that can be used to wrong people."

"Which you know because you've done a randomised controlled trial of several societies of equivalent wealth and demographic balance, building a few on lies and a few on truth, correct? I'm sure that when reading through your libraries, I'll find out about the dozens of civilisations you built from the ground up on different principles. I mean, you're so focused on evidence that I bet you have tons to support that claim. You'd never decide that my entire culture was broken a priori, would you?"

"You people drink blood, most of our sociological literature you'd consider inapplicable anyway!! I do have hundreds of societies with documented mythologies and beliefs in various gods and practices, and all of those are a lie, and yours sound exactly the same."

"Great. And how many that didn't? Who was happier and more just? How much so? According to what measures?"

"Very few, because people are stupid and immediately decide there are gods around no matter how nonexistent the evidence. Anyway, if your gods don't exist, they don't exist. How can you keep living a lie just because it maintains social harmony?"

"Why should we not celebrate certain holidays independently of belief? Suppose it doesn't affect the continued existence of the world, and everyone participating knows this and consents to be involved in it. How would this be bad? Under what system of morality is consensual participation in a holiday a bad thing?"

"Lots of choices that people make voluntarily are bad. What a limited idea of goodness, you have, if there is nothing at all to say about peoples' choices except that they are not technically coerced!"

"What does matter, then? If consent and happiness aren't what goodness is built on, what is it built on?"

"Truth. If I'd be happy not knowing about any of the injustices in the world, they'd still be there. If I thought spinning in circles on alternate Elenyas made the world keep moving, it still wouldn't be true. If I'd agreed to have those things wiped from my memory so I could enjoy them more, I'd still be leading an impoverished life, compared to one where I pursued those joys that arise from things that are really true. 

Justice. I can imagine a series of events or a series of choices constructed so that everyone consented to, and was happy about, being denied opportunites that their superiors got, or that were reserved for a different kind of person, or that they inherently had no right to. This would be worse than a world where they believed themselves the equal of any other. 

Individuality. Whenever there's a Way That We're Happiest, there's tremendous pressure to do that. You said yourself that you regard anyone who lives their life differently as a worthless freeloader. Variation in human needs and experiences should be celebrated, and even the voluntary choice to conform and forget whatever pulls you in your own diverse direction is not good."

"What is truth for, exactly? Is it not to allow you to perceive the world correctly and, thus, make better decisions about it? If I want to practice my religion just as much whether or not I believe it to be true, what is the value of learning whether it's true or not? Sure, I have a general interest in having more true information, but true information about the situation in your world seems more valuable to me than knowing whether my religion is true, because one influences my preferred actions and one does not. Thus, I should really be devoting more time to that.

"What is justice for, if not to promote a happier world for everyone? What things are just or unjust? Is inequality unjust, independent of how well people are doing? If so, isn't a world where everyone is equally poor better than one where everyone is unequally rich? I disagree.

"What is individuality for, if not to allow one to pursue the things that make them uniquely happy? We should have the freedom to choose different foods, because we have different dietary needs - I drink blood and you eat plants. The most fundamental requirement of individuality is choice. So, if I choose to make myself part of a community and follow its rules and participate in its rituals, then that choice must be respected. To say 'you can't make these choices, because they aren't individualistic enough' is the height of hypocrisy."

"Truth is as valauble as happiness and for the same reasons: as a good end, not a means to another one. Likewise justice. You could breed some people to be content with slavery, and happy with it, but you shouldn't do that, because justice matters. And you can choose your rituals, but you can't have communities where people are raised to think that's the choice that'll make them happiest, or that they're obliged to it for false reasons."

"They're all equally valuable? Well, in that case, given a standard measurement of amount of truth, justice, and happiness in a society; would you prefer a society that had truth and justice, but where everyone was unhappy, to one lacking in truth and justice, but where everyone is happy?"

"Truth and justice. Look, maybe your world doesn't have enough injustice - or maybe you're not on the receiving end of enough of it - to understand why someone would feel that way. People, given the choice, do not actually choose to be happy slaves, or drugged peons. Justice matters."

"...Maybe this is due to translation error? 'Happiness' is the closest approximation I could find in your language. In my language, yudamonya refers to the general feeling that you are living the life you want to live, such that you expect changes to it to be unwelcome. I can imagine people for whom large amounts of truth and justice are not required for them to be living the life they desire, and I see no reason why I should tell them their preferred life is wrong. Likewise, 'happiness' is probably a bad word, because I can imagine people who would want pain and adversity in their ideal life. What I don't understand is why you believe that truth and justice are requirements for worthwhile lives - any worthwhile lives. Even if you need them for your yudamonya, surely you can see that this isn't true of everyone?"

"Obviously you could create a being that preferred being a blind, drugged slave; that was legitimately the life they desired. I think creating such a thing would be monstrous, and that the best possible life for all actually existing beings does involve truth and demand justice. Look, we have lots of people claiming that their slaves are happy. They are wrong. Maybe your world is actually full of happy slaves, but I have met hundreds of people who insisted that their slaves were happy and every single one of them was wrong, and perhaps that's because truth and justice actually matter and happiness, any word for it, is not really capturing what makes a good life."

"You're equivocating! You said 'I have met hundreds of people who insisted that their slaves were happy and every single one of them was wrong', which implies their slaves were actually unhappy, and that this was bad. But then you said 'happiness, any word for it, is not really capturing what makes a good life', which is implying that it's not the absence of happiness that's bad! Your argument only holds if it's 'I have met slaves who claimed to be happy and, from my position of oh-so-superior knowledge of what people need, decided that they didn't have good lives'.

"Look, the reason you shouldn't trust someone who says 'my slaves are happy' is because they have ulterior motives. They have every incentive to lie or delude themselves so, as a general rule, anyone who keeps someone in involuntary servitude and then claims they're happy should be disregarded. Centuries ago, my world had ubiquitous slavery. Then the wealthy nations outlawed it and used their influence to suppress it everywhere else. I am certain that this outlawing was one of the best things that ever happened, and improved millions of lives.

"However, at the same time, I know people who voluntarily choose to serve someone else - often a romantic partner - in the role of a slave. I say 'choose' because they decide that this is what they want going in and have the power to dissolve the relationship at any time. They generally claim to be happy, and I see no reason to tell them that they're wrong about their own desires. It's not what everyone wants - I'm pretty sure it's not what I'd want - but it is what some people want, and I respect that.

"For someone who loves liberty, you sure are quick to scorn people when they use it for things you disapprove of."

"You are making arguments that I have exclusively seen used in the service of a malicious and insidious ideology that results in no happiness and no justice and no freedom. I don't believe that the choice you present me with is real, because in pracitce when people insist that they are making it they are always lying. It is lovely that your world doesn't have slavery. Mine does, and I am trying to fix that, and I am disinterested in hearing how under the right conditions actually peopel would voluntarily be slaves. Those people are an acceptable cost of ending slavery, and you would think so to if you'd ever actually encountered it."

"I am totally willing to accept that the set of people who would be harmed by ending slavery is vastly smaller than the set of people who would be helped, and that ending slavery is good. I said it was also good when it happened in my world. If there was a button that made it impossible for people to be slaves, whether they wanted to or not, I would press it. I am just saying that your beliefs are harmful in edge cases, and the reason I care about this is because I am myself an edge case. Both of our moralities say that involuntary servitude is awful, but at least mine isn't adamantly opposed to me saying my prayers. If someone came to you and said 'I agree with 99% of your values, but think you dress indecently', wouldn't you be inclined to argue with them anyway?"

"I don't care if you say your prayers. I care if you try to spread the idea that societies ought to have prayers, or that goodness and happiness spring from people saying prayers. You can say whatever you like, but when you push for it as a good life it's rightly subject to scrutiny."

"Why would I spread that idea? My people made an agreement with Nashi, but no one else did. You can do what you want. I won't object if someone else tries to mimic me, or lie if they ask me what my religion says, but I have no interest in getting other people to follow it. It's the way of my people - no one else's."

"It's the way of you personally, and anyone who finds it personally appealing. Your children wouldn't have to do it?"

"Well, that's kind of a political question, to be honest. My children wouldn't have to do it, if they didn't want to. The children of most of the people I know wouldn't have to do it. The children of about half the Zifartas in my country wouldn't have to do it. However, the majority of Zifartas live in two neighbouring countries, where they are extremely persecuted. Thus, anything that binds the community together and gives it a sense of meaning and individuality ends up being way more important. Children who grow up there would probably face coercion. I'm not saying it's great, but there's nothing I, personally, could do about it."