Plato's goal was to demonstrate the socratic method, so his works are heavily biased towards it. Before Plato set feather to parchment, Sokrates (or whoever used his teachings) had already won whatever argument was about to be written.
Alivaril isn't Plato, so relying on Jade's protagonist status or authorial bias will backfire.
The thing is, the method works independently in real life, too.
Trying to win a debate by "alpha strike," with a big infodump of reasons why you're right, is a high risk/medium reward strategy. Trying to win a debate by sounding out your opponent and making sure you have a clear idea of what they're saying before trying to prove them wrong is considerably lower risk.
Considering he doesn't credit Solomon, who created an entire world, as a god, I doubt he truly has criteria with which he would be satisfied. Since he might demand an equally massive feat (i.e. creator god) or retort with "shouldn't you know", this option sounds like a dead end.
I mean, this,
separately, is a fair point. However, I'm not proposing that we say "define divinity for us, and I will perform a feat that proves I match your definition."
What I'm saying is that if his definition is 'unreasonable' * then we would need to dispute his definition in order to argue credibly for being a deity. If his definition is 'reasonable,' we can either confirm that Jade matches the description through performing a suitable miracle, or at least
assure him that we do. We need to pursue entirely different strategies depending on what he thinks a god is.
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*(e.g. if he says a god must be like the Abrahamic God, with omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, or a combination of the above)
Instead, I'd start with the nature of mana:
[] Divinity means shaping mana and the world through collective belief.
Despite the characteristics of each color, mana isn't sentient and needs to be guided to do anything but follow its nature. A mage relies on his will alone to do this. A Magi is aided by the Rukh, adding their will to his own. A god is similarly aided by the belief of his followers. Thus, in essence, divinity is the ability to use worship to impose your will on mana and the world.
Of course, there are common divine powers. People believe that gods hear prayers, so I can. They believe in an afterlife, so I can create one. They believe that gods don't need a mortal body, so I don't. They believe a fire goddess to be immune to any and all fire, so I am. They believe her to wield even the fire of stars, so I do.
Hm. Some problems with that.
Firstly, it may well be
factually untrue to claim that (for instance) her fire immunity is a consequence of people believing that a fire goddess is categorically immune to fire. It's certainly untrue to say that our independence of a mortal body is a consequence of Jade being a goddess; that's a consequence of Kyuubey. I wouldn't want to lie to Terry here.
Secondly, the argument as you present it implies that a god is
only and merely a vessel for the will of their worshippers. This in turn opens us up to the question the Stoics would ask, which is "okay, so how does that give you any special standing or status that a mage doesn't have?" After all, if divinity is the ability to shape mana and the world through the act of
others' will, while magecraft is the ability to shape mana using
one's own will or perhaps the affiliation of the Rukh, then how is a god any different from a mage except as a matter of degree? We would in effect be conceding Terry's point.
Remember, Terry's basic argument is "okay, a very powerful mage may claim to be a god- and in fact this happens all the time. And a very powerful mage can do the kinds of things a god can do. So how does your claim to be a god mean anything more, or anything different from, what it would mean for you to claim to be a very powerful mage? I say you're not a god, just a very powerful mage, and what do you say to that?"
...
Our answer needs to contain
either a credible argument that his definition of "a god" is overly restrictive,
OR a credible answer to the question "what have you got that a very very powerful mage couldn't have?"
Either way, to do that we need to know what he thinks a god even is, in the first place, or he can lead us around in rhetorical circles quite easily by moving the goalposts or just by us not knowing where said goalposts are.
[X] Skip ahead and ask him what would fit his definition of divinity.
