Who Believes in the Devil? (Page 4)

duncan124:
Images are just images, and if they are photoshoped then they are less real.

Bush did lead the US in to a meaningless war and destroyed the media that was needed to report what was really going on.

The meaningless and destructive use of power to alter images, and to talk about them endlessly, is wrong.

The Christian main frame is after you die you live on in either Heaven or Hell and rewriting what bad leaders have done must be some sort of living in Hell without the landlord!

lori100: This video shows a shirtless George Washington statue in Satanic baphomet pose ....it started with the first president in America apparently....---------

Zanjan: "Evolution" of satan?? Evolution requires an upgrade to "better". I'd say that was a devolution.

The maxim 'A rose by any other name is still a rose' figures here. The perspective is the same; the old human view of the world becomes more embellished and twisted with time - that ancient serpent keeps on writhing.

An evolution would be a clean new look, one that lacks the trappings and pitfalls of the old..

Satan is nature - one's lower nature that prevents one from rising above their base instincts. Nothing wrong with nature if one is an animal but man wasn't meant to be just an animal.

Man has two natures (the lower and higher); thus, man has the power to rise above his self. If this sense of Self (ego) isn't absolutely clear in pictorials, nothing else is going to enlighten.

The clueless will always be with us.

duncan124:
I don,t think that is the conclusion that Deuces video intends.

It would seem that Satan was first a part of Gods plan and that mankind slipped downwards as its numbers grew.

duncan124:
The fact that the Book forgets most of humanity -at the time of writing- and never mentions the Chinese, South Americans, the UK or Norway should be considered when they talk about an all powerful anti-god.

Zanjan: First there was darkness. If there was no darkness, where would the light break into?

Maybe in a rock song called "I'm a mammal; worse than an animal'

duncan124:
The video argues that satan was a word for a harmful angel. It is recognised that people sometimes do things which are counter to what they intend and which produce a negative result.

At the start of the Book satan was just a description of a way of behaving.

Zanjan: "satan was a word for a harmful angel"

The video is wrong. Angels don't do harm, not even the Angel of Death (Grim Reaper)

Satan can be an adversary but one that's easily put down, when one knows how. No matter how you dress it up, there's a word for people do things which are counter to what they intend - they're called a "fumbler".

orkanen: Is Satan a subject you spend time on?

Zanjan: Dungeons have bars on the lid; when satan's ugly hands reach up and clench them, I walk over and stand on its fingers. Approx. 3 seconds, unless I feel like jumping on them.

ghostgeek: Zanjan earlier pointed out that Lucifer is not a fallen angel. She's right. There is just one mention of Lucifer in the Old Testament, Isaiah 14:12 "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" On this reference has been built the Christian notion of the Fallen Angel, Satan, the Devil. There is just one problem, the original text was referring to a fallen Babylonian king who had persecuted the children of Israel. Taken out of context the reference to Lucifer could indeed imply an angel who had fallen through pride, but the chapter in which it appears is clearly referring to Babylon. In reality the name Lucifer comes from Roman astronomy where it was given to the morning star, the planet Venus, which appears in the heavens just before dawn. So there would appear to be no Devil working to ensnare humanity in evil.

Zanjan: Well, Babylon, the great example, is gone. Who shall we point fingers at now? Eeenie, meenie, miney, mousekateers.

ghostgeek: In the end we will have nobody but ourselves to blame. As it should be.

Zanjan: Well, I won't have to worry about that particular evil hahahah - if God had wanted to test me with money and temporal power, He'd have made me stinkin rich by now. I must have passed that one somewhere along the line.

Toss a coin for next evil -> gambling VS wine bibbing?

duncan124:
The video also mentions the problems with there being only one God in the Books plans and the reasonable suspicion is that what it calls Satan was already known and potentially everywhere else already. In other words there was more then one God in the Book.

For centuries Christians hunted for witches and demons and attacked people who they supposed were connected to such things. For hundreds of years it was a main thing.

Not only does doing Good lead to Good things, doing Bad leads to bad things and those who do bad should be hunted down as they might be possessed the Christians thought.

lol not suspension!

Zanjan: "Not only does doing Good lead to Good things, doing Bad leads to bad things"

Such a simple recipe, one could follow it with their eyes closed.

Once again, fanaticism sets aside the ten commandments to pursue something more dramatic - paranoia haunted the world then as it does now.

duncan124:
People born today have no connection to the past why should a good God punish them for what others have done?

Clearly the threat of Satan is the norm.

Zanjan: The past doesn't get dropped; in fact, the opposite is true. People are far too attached to their traditions, history and roots to let that go.

Schools and universities everywhere teach us that we are part of our cultural pantheon. This information is necessary to understand where mankind came from and how it developed to its present stage. Besides the entertainment value, no one escapes those moral lessons.

The past is as easy to learn as it is to ignore.

Perhaps you meant to say people of today can't relate to the past, that's a different matter - you're talking about conditions. I can't relate to living in India or Somalia; despite news reports, one still has to go there and be with the people to understand their current situation.

duncan124:
I meant Satan fits in to the concept of there being two or more gods while at the same time the Christian ideas are unclear.

Zanjan: Christian ideas have been unclear for nearly two millennia. Most people were illiterate, depending on others for explanations; the 'others' were anyone handy amongst friends around them so they became easily misinformed with whacky ideas.

Today, that still happens; although most are literate, they're too lazy to study and not curious enough to verify. Of course, there are the newbies - we give them a bit of grace for the first couple of years. It takes time to become knowledgeable through practice.

I well-remember my conversations with those of my parent's generation; most came from a Christian background and are now dead. When I asked them why they did 'such and such' back then, they'd say "Well, it was the war, you see, and we did things one doesn't usually do in peace times." That was their excuse - it was wartime. My son once said to me it was because TV hadn't been invented yet.

I think most people today accept monotheism - that God is One God; they just don't understand how that *oneness* works. This is why they've unwittingly leaned on their false gods, using terms like "your god" to mean the perception you have of God in your mind.

Satan therefore, becomes the figment of a demi god, due to the perception it has a lot of power to control and overwhelm the helpless. 'Not my fault- the devil made me do it', is an attempt to disassociate from their leader. Likewise, "God told me to do it" is escapism.

ghostgeek: Satan is God's Agent provocateur, Lucifer is a misunderstanding, that only leaves the Watchers as evil little dudes. The trouble is, the Bible has little to say about them, just a bit part in Genesis: "That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose." To get the full story you have to go to the Book of Enoch. That's where you can read about angels, the Watchers, falling through lust for human women. So yes, there are fallen angels, 200 in fact, led by Samyaza. There is just one problem, both the Christian Church and the Jews ended up condemning the Book of Enoch as false. So no bad angels. The only conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that there is no Devil.

Zanjan: Correct, no devil - just evil.

The days of the scapegoat are over, not that people wont still try it.

deuce916: But you said you had a devil in you.

Zanjan: No I didn't - I said IT was in the dungeon.

deuce916: You said it was in you.