Lightning is a Sith Power!!

... or dark side power! Whichever.

... and you know it! So stop trying to tell yourself it could be used on the light side. Jedi Knight Academy must have clouded your vision if you believe otherwise.

Dooku and Palps have used it. They used the lightning force out of anger and hatred to kill. They are sith. Yoda returned it out of self defense.

 

Dooku and Palps have used it. They used the lightning force out of anger and hatred to kill. They are sith. Yoda returned it out of self defense.

*ehem* - let's take a look at another analogy similar to this:

Premise: Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler are evil
Premise: Saddam Hussein is a man
Premise: Adolf Hitler is a man
Conclusion: Therefore all men are evil


Right.

It may very well be that Force-lightning is a Sith-only skill, but the above reasoning is extremely flawed and doesn't support anything other than Palpatine and Dooku used Force-lightning.

-Aunecah

 

Okay. That analogy seems thoughtful, but doesn't make any sense. I'll let others be the judge.

 

So because two people use it that means all Sith use it? And because no Jedi, yet have used it that means they don't. Well how about the two sith that don't use it?

Darth Maul never used it....
Vader never used it even though you can argue he was missing his hands.

 

I didn't say all sith us it. In my opinion only highly skilled sith can use it, just as only Vader can do the grip. Maul wasn't much of a force user. He was more into his saber staff or just had not developed much force power.

You can't argue Vader didn't have any hands to use force with. What did he stick up when he force choked? Granted he might have one actual hand, but what is to stop him from doing it without his hand(s) or doing it with an artificial hand? Luke stacked a whole pile of rocks doing a one hand-stand. Who says they have to have a hand or stick it up to us a force?

 

KfistoRox -

The point of the analogy is to show that you can't generalize the attributes of a group's subset to the whole group. The entire group may or may not share that characteristic, and therefore the arguments breaks apart.

When we get down to it, what you're saying is:

P: Palpatine and Dooku are Sith Lords
P: Palpatine and Dooku used Force-lightning
C: Therefore, Force-lightning is a Sith-only powers.

That doesn't work, because Palpatine and Dooku don't make the whole set (aka, they aren't the only Force-users).

What would work is something like this (and for simplicity, let's assume that the only Force-users are Jedi and Sith):

P: Force-lightning is used only by Darksiders
P: Jedi don't use the Dark Side of the Force
C: Therefore, Jedi don't use Force-lightning (which is what I think you were trying to get at)

OR

P: Force-lightning is used only by Darksiders
P: Jedi aren't Darksiders
P: Sith are Darksiders
C: Therefore, Force-lightning is a Sith-only power.

I hope I made sense this time.

-Aunecah

 

I never said jedi can't use lightning. This is obvious by myself stating that Yoda used it in defense. You are correct to state that I mean the jedi or "light" side do not use it. You're making it all too complicated, but that's cool!

*EDIT*

However, I do believe it is a dark side power. You have to "tap into" the dark side to use it. This is why I call it a sith or dark side power.

 

Okay, KfistoRox. You're contradicting yourself there, unless you're saying that Yoda used the Dark Side of the Force. While we're at it, I always thought that Yoda "reflected off" the Force-lightning thrown by Dooku, not used Force-lightning himself.

Now, onto your premises:

P: You need to tap into the Dark Side of the Force to use Force-lightning
P: Force-lightning can be used by Jedi
C: ????

How does this make it a Sith-only power?

-Aunecah

 

I am saying he used the dark side.

It's a dark side power. Yoda only used it, because absorbing it and redirecting it was the only way to not be baked.

 

I see.

Umm....I don't know what to say.

Why do you think that the Force-lightning is a Sith-only power?

-Aunecah

 

Sure, KFistoRox's line of reasoning is not logically rigorous (any more than Aunecah_Skywalker's counter-example). But I don't think anyone is suggesting that it strictly proves that only Dark Jedi use Force lightning. It does, however, confirm (or lend supporting evidence to) that proposition. The degree of confirmation accorded by the data is decreased by the fact that we are dealing with a very small sample of instances of the use of Force lightning, but it is increased by the fact that we have a rather large sample of uses of non-Force lightning powers by light Jedi (for anyone interested in the philosophy of science, this is like Hempel's white telephone offering evidence that all ravens are black - which it actually does, though to a very small degree by itself).

Note the important difference from the analogy where "Hitler and Hussein are evil" and "Hitler and Hussein are men" is incorrectly taken to prove that "Men are evil". In that case, one would have to ignore millions of data points of the form "x is a man and is not evil" which are not only disconfirmatory of the proposition "Men are evil", but in fact falsify it.

The other important difference between this proposition and Aunecah_Skywalker's "evil men" analogy is that there are what might be called theoretical reasons for thinking that Force lightning might be a Dark Side power, while there are no good theoretical reasons to think that all men should be evil. Force lightning appears to be a profoundly painful sort of attack; in fact one could say that its chief objective is pain; it is easy to imagine that its use depends on anger on the part of the user; and so on. So it is not as though we are taking some arbitrary atribute shared by Dooku and Palpatine and asserting that it is a "Sith attribute" - we are taking an attribute/ability that one can readily imagine is tied to the Dark Side and asserting that it is tied to the Dark Side.

Does any of this prove that Force lightning is a Dark Side power? Of course not (very little can ever actually be strictly proven). However, it does provide some (I think very convincing) evidence to the effect that Force lightning is a Dark Side power.

 

Of course Force Lightning is a dark side power!
I agree with Aiwendil's reasoning about how this is clearly indicated in the films. There may not be any actual proof about this, but the fact that no Jedi uses it in 5 films is a strong indication. (Yoda only deflects Dooku's lightning).
I also want to point out that this is an extremly powerful ability and not all Siths can generate Force Lightning. In fact one my biggest surprises when I watched AOTC was seeing Dooku generating Force Lightning because until then I believed that only the Emperor was powerful enough to do this. This certainly made Dooku a great villain...

 

You are using falty logic.

You cannot say that Vader is the only one seen using force choke so therefore he is the only one who can do it. If Vader can do it then the other force users can. Whether they actually use it is another question.

Oh and Maul uses the force he is a sith master.

Sidious and Dooku are the only force users we have seen to use lighting. Jedi probably can do it but they don't. Using lighting is probably a Jedi Taboo. I'm sure they can do it they just don't. I'm sure Maul could use it he just did not see the need to.

Seldon

 

Aiwendil: Excuse me but what are you talking about? You do realize that those examples that you sited were supposed to show how KfistoRox's logic is faulty, don't you?

-Aunecah

 

I'm not really sure if it's a sith only power or not, but it seems like if Jedi could use it, they wouldn't. I think it'd be too inhumane for Jedi to use lightning strikes.

 

Aiwendil
Thanks for pointing that out to the crowd.

Darth-Seldon:
.."You cannot say that Vader is the only one seen using force choke so therefore he is the only one who can do it. If Vader can do it then the other force users can. "

Yes I can. There is no one else that does it in the films!! Duh.

Hell if everyone that was a jedi has had the same force powers they would all be unstopable.

 

Hell if everyone that was a jedi has had the same force powers they would all be unstopable.
hmm, that's very true.

 

Well, based on the evidence I've seen, Force Lightning is a Dark Side power. I'm not saying that it's exclusively a Sith power, because I've seen other non-Sith affiliated Force-users (even Jedi) use it in Expanded Universe sources. I say this not because the Sith use it, but because I've seen the circumstances on how they're used ... through the Dark Side. It's used completely out of anger, hatred, and utter malice.
Consider HOW the Force-Lightning is used. In every case that Force-Lightning is used, it is completely for attack. When the Emperor uses it, it's to kill Luke. When Dooku uses it, it's in an attempt to snuff out Yoda.
Oh, and Yoda didn't just shoot Force-Lightning at Dooku out of nowhere. If you notice, he absorbed the energy before it could harm him and redirected it back at Dooku.

 

A_S: I think your purpose was understood, it was just being used to show that it isnt a perfect example of the faulty reasoning, either.

And I don't think lightning is strictly a Sith power, but its uses for anything other than dark are strictly limited, hence we don't see many light-side users weilding the lightning. Dark-side users are more likely to use it because it suits their purposes. And they are are more likely to be trained how to use it.

IMO, Force powers are inherently neither good nor evil - its what they are used FOR and intent behind the use.

 

#1 Vader wasn't the only character in the saga to use Force Choke.

#2 It stands to reason that any Force user can tap into any ability, but philosophically it doesn't make sense for a Jedi to use Force Lightning so we've never seen them do it. Jedi use their powers for knowledge and defense, never attack. Force Lightning is an attack ability.

#3 So Force Lightning can be considered a Sith power by virtue of the fact that a Jedi would never use it. Or maybe Sith is the wrong way to go here. FL is a dark side of the Force power. Anyone who uses it is operating against Jedi ideals and philosophy.

L8r

 

/\ Care to clarify #1?

 

Luke used Force Choke against the palace guards in Jedi.

L8r

 

yoda didn't create the lightning to shoot back at dooku. yoda deflected it.

its like dooku created a baseball, threw it at yoda, yoda caught it, then yoda threw it back.

 

I put myself firmly in the camp of those who think that just because we've only seen Sith using force lighting, doesnt mean only Sith *can* use it.

Its a very agressive power, and as such simply isnt the sort of thing that Jedi are likely to want to use, unless necessary. As such, we only see Sith using it, because only Sith want to use it.

And the force choke is a good example that backs up this observation. Judging by ANH and ESB, one would say that only a bad person can use it (the notion of Sith wasnt really in the OT). However we saw Luke using it in RotJ. Therefore we can interpret this as saying that any person with Jedi powers can do it. The difference is in whether the individual wants to use it.

 

I'd view it as more along the lines of it's inherently evil to use things like force choke and force lightning.