To understand God you must understand Satan...

originally posted by: Incandescent
So Iblis was sentenced to eternal hell for failing to bow to Adam and wanted only a "temporary reprieve" so he could prove that those made from fire are more worthy than those made from mud?

At least we now know fairy tales are not confined to the Judeo-Christian traditions...

Judaism doesn't condemn Iblis/Satan to eternal flame. In Judaism, Iblis/Satan is meant to test god's firstborn children, the Israelites, by god order. Eventually he will be deposed to Sheol and destroyed permenantly. Not sure if Judaism's Satan applied to the gentiles, tho.

a reply to: EasternShadow

My post was directed at enlightenedservant. I forgot to use the "reply to" function.

Thanks for the sincere reply, but I believe all that stuff is nonsense.

a reply to: Incandescent

In that case, you're free to believe what you want. We're also free to believe what we want. But your response had nothing to do with the point of this thread, which seems to imply that there has to be some cosmic morality balance in the Universe.

a reply to: throwaway115

In Plato's Cratylus there is a discussion about how names can be "disguised" by altering a letter or two and Kabbalists (some of whom openly embrace Platonic ideas as being related to Kabbalah) say that it is “blasphemy” to correctly pronounce the name of God so this would suggest to a rational person who is willing to question such a prohibition that God's name is actually disguised. (In English this prohibition is often illustrated by the spelling God as "G-d".) In Judaism the name “Samael” is associated with the “accuser” known as “Satan” while the name “Samuel” literally means “name of god”, so this appears to provide a clear explanation why it is blasphemy to correctly pronounce god’s name because it identifies God with Satan. (This actually provides only an allegoric explanation since “Samael” is still a metaphor. The true name of god would not be a metaphor and this is the name that is really not supposed to be spoken.) The fact that Talmudic and post-Talmudic literature regards this Samael as being “good” as well as “evil” only adds to the suspicion that Satan and God are metaphorically linked. (This also supports the idea that "Santa" is a "satan" and the lumps of coal that are given to "bad" children are actually more valuable than the gift wrapped items given to the "good".)

The "as above, so below" concept can also be understood as referring to allegory with literal words providing "eternal life" while hidden meanings reside in the underworld. The "above" is a "mirror" or "shadow" of the "below". Correctness also allows us to connect the "rib" (which in Hebrew is expressed as "tsela") which was taken from Adam to create the "life giving" Eve with the Hebrew word "tsel" which means "shadow".

While many Christians would naturally be shocked to learn that they have been worshiping Satan, it should be noted that Satan really is not "evil" in the literal sense because he simply represents hidden knowledge.

I'd be reckoning, that the Hebrew verison of Satan would be similar to a crown attorney representing the crown or kingdom. Similar to how Egyptians would beleive their God would place there heart on a scale, weighed against a feather.

Gods the scale, Satan's the feather, the heart the soul?

I think there was a similar beleive in a ancient culture too, but I think it was Mercury(can't recall) vs Saturn, where as Saturn would destroy or devour that was rejected by Mercury for example.

If the feather was heavier then the heart, well...

I still don't know how Jesus has anything to do with the Easter Bunny, or being a pisces when he was said to be a Capricorn.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

You are of course free to believe what you want. But it is depressing to see people take fairy tales so seriously that they are willing to commit violence and destruction because those beliefs, they believe, justify their actions.

If the God turns out to be real, if would be absolutly gutted! Because that means God is as primitive, ignorant, arragont, big headed, hateful, and hurtful, just like us as a whole.

But to be honest, I believe there is no chance what so ever that God is real. When you look at stories from the bible, or korarn, it is quite obvious that it was written by primitive man, and not the word of God.

But hey, as long as you are not hurting anyone, or pushing this fantasy on anyone else, then it does not bother Mr what you believe in.

originally posted by: Incandescent
a reply to: enlightenedservant

You are of course free to believe what you want. But it is depressing to see people take fairy tales so seriously that they are willing to commit violence and destruction because those beliefs, they believe, justify their actions.

People have used and will continue to use any justification to commit violence and destruction. It's naive to pretend that religion is the cause; humankind's innate desire to harm others is the actual cause. People commit violence over ethnicity; over "the crown" of their country; over flags; over preferred economic systems; over pipelines & energy contracts; over gang colors; over imaginary lines on a map; over family names; over grudges that began before they were even born; over annoying neighbors; over post-Thanksgiving sales; over cutting someone off while driving; over stepping on someone's shoe; over jealousy, pride, love, heartbreak, lust, and greed; etc.

Even if all religions disappeared overnight, we'd still have just as much violence and destruction simply because humans are violent and destructive.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
Even if all religions disappeared overnight, we'd still have just as much violence and destruction simply because humans are violent and destructive.

If Islamic terrorism disappeared, there would be far less trouble in the ME especially and arguably around the world as well.

a reply to: Incandescent

BS. The current problems in the Middle East stem from conflicts over economic and political rivalries, land & mineral rights, foreign invasions/occupations/coups, etc.

The GCC & Iran are competing over energy deals and regional influence; they just use religion as a pretext. Turkey & the Kurds are both Sunni majority yet they still fight over land rights and claims of sovereignty. The Shiite majority countries Iran and Iraq fought a nearly decade long war over nationalism and border rights. The Saudi coalition is still fighting in Yemen to reinstate Yemen's president who'd resigned after his own political party stopped supporting him (the Houthis are allied with many Sunni groups and they took over afterwards). Israel's been stealing land and mineral rights from the Palestinians for 70 years. The current Syrian war is over competing pipelines, Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea, weakening one of Iran's strongest allies in the region, crushing Israel's longtime foe and Hezbollah backer, etc.

Going by your logic, the current US-Mexico border/immigration/trade tensions must be because of Christian extremism. After all, both countries are Christian majority. And it must also be a re-ignition of the multi-centuries long beef between Protestants and Catholics since most US Christians are Protestants and most Mexicans are Catholics. Of course anyone who's actually familiar with the situation here knows that the border/immigration/trade tensions have nothing to do with religion. They're instead rooted in everything from maintaining a cheap labor pool, concerns over job losses, and concerns over assimilation & the refusal to assimilate, to xenophobic bigotry, the desire to escape countries with extremely exploitative labor conditions, the pursuit of the "American Dream", attempts to smuggle cheap illegal goods into the US because they can be resold for astronomically higher prices here, etc.

Those mercenary/terrorist groups are used as foot soldiers in wars where powerful countries don't want or can't afford to have "boots on the ground". They're also used to rally public support for military interventions. They're also used as organized crime cartels that kill for hire, traffic humans for cheap slave labor, funnel illegal contraband and stolen goods across borders, etc. They even blow up mosques and launch criminal operations during Ramadan. Calling them "Islamic extremism" would be the same as calling the Mafioso, Camorra, and Latin American cartels "Christian extremism" since they operate with many of the same tactics, including the notoriously Catholic cartels that have beheaded and blown up people all over Mexico during its recent drug war.

This is a very vague thread.

And why Lenny and Carl? Besides being "brown" and "yellow", they are exactly the same at the emotional level. Hardly captures the oppositeness of yin and yang.

Whereas I do agree that being able to tolerate negative experiences and also be able to think about them is an important dimension of psychological health, I also want to emphasize that fetishizing trauma - or pursuing negative experience as a reward in itself - is absolutely and fundamentally destructive to the self.

People always go into things ignorant of the consequences. Wisdom, more or less, is being able to logically deduce the relationship between certain types of actions and certain types of consequences from said actions. Being able to do this - to 'be wise', is, paradoxically, something that tends to come after we've suffered and come to finally learn what to do to prevent suffering.

The issue is always early life development. How we experience information - what we feel as we hear or visually observe something - triggers a process in our unconscious non-verbal memory which categorizes the experience in a certain way; and if the estimation is a bad one, it's bad because your system has learned from a past experience that this 'cue' produces this 'effect'. Your feelings, therefore, are never meaningless, but always quantitative expressions of the qualitative relationship between your mind-body and the world around it.

Alas, as usual, my words are probably too enigmatic sounding to most people. This is because feelings and the unconscious are basically the same thing; yet, with personas and identities and the pleasurable feelings of pride and the negative feelings of shame (as in accepting being wrong in front of what your body feels to be an opponent) identity states and the observing mind are virtually "stuck" together in most peoples minds - the 'metacognitive' dimension where they experience themselves responding and then consciously evaluate the rightness of the responding, is not a skill a person is born with, but must develop. Furthermore, if one has encountered many threatening i.e. hostile social environments, your amygdala is far too large to tolerate taking in 'everything' there is to know about the self. Suppression, dissociation, and denial of personal responsibility for actions done to the self or others, prevents them from knowing themselves.

All in all, hypocrisy, especially a religious hypocrisy where 'doing wrong' is a "sacrament" (as crazy as that sounds), as in ancient Gnosticism, Sabbateanism etc, is to more or less turn your normal functionality into the opposite direction - to go against the grain, in the direction of stress, entropy, and disorder, and basically expose yourself to something too terrifying for your present ego-obsessed consciousness to appreciate.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

That's true though. The Mafioso, etc, they are an expression of western spirituality, even if it may seem on the outside to be a 'totally secular' organization, it's roots in Sicily indicate that its fundamentally aligned with a 'left hand path' spirituality.

Same thing with Islam, and indeed, with Judaism too (see Sabbateans).

It's human. People just need to stop this sloppy assumption that specific ethnicities are evil, and start recognizing that certain situations make evil people i.e. being born as an 'elite', and being exposed to elite culture, in a deeply economically split socioeconomic system, will create a left-hand path spirituality i.e. an inversion of normal, sane human reasoning, where the 'attractor', or underlying motive, is to pursue the interests of the self.

Individualism and communalism are the two poles of human perceptual understanding. We're both physical individuals, and yet have minds that are constructed by social processes. The traumatized mind "feels" the truth of the former way more than the latter, even if the latter cognitively penetrates his logic system and makes know the rightness of the logic of the latter, and the wrongness of the logic of the former.

Yet, the 'truth' for many minds (still not very developed, because the 'mind' can be grown through love) is what they feel, and if what they feel is hatred for the other, and love for 'feeling good', feelings will become the be-all-end-all of their reasoning processes.

What you write about Islam is true. Yet isn't Islam full of terrorists? Yes - but the terrorism is more a socioeconomic and cultural phenomenon than Islam. Correspondingly, the "sword" of Matthew 10:34 meant much more in the middle ages and the renaissance than it means today, for no bigger reason than because the western world is socioeconomically well off. Apparently, material wellbeing is an important element of a general all-around-wellbeing.

Judaism too. Have you read the old testament? But similarly, the trauma of the "galuth" - the exile - or the destruction of ancient Judea, transformed the Jewish interpretation of the TaNaKh into a totally different thing.

But back in the day, when the book was written, you can bet its sociaffective connotations were different from todays.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Yet isn't Islam full of terrorists? Yes - but the terrorism is more a socioeconomic and cultural phenomenon than Islam.

No, it's not "full of terrorists". There are more than 1.8 billion of us. If even 5% of us were terrorists, then you're talking about more than 90 million active terrorists, which would set the world ablaze.

To put that in perspective, the CIA in 2014 claimed that the number of fighters that ISIS could muster in Syria and Iraq was between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters (HERE). That's out of more than 55 million people in Syria and Iraq, which is around 0.06% of their combined populations (remember, ISIS/ISIL stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Levant"). And that was supposed to be an alarming number because that estimate had actually increased from earlier estimates of 10,000 fighters.

Al Qaeda's global numbers were just as dismal, with their peak membership numbers ranging from 51,200 to 73,500 fighters (HERE). And those are global numbers, making them around 0.004% of the global Muslim population. 0.06% of a population and 0.004% of a population hardly qualifies as "full of" anything.

Now if you said that Wahhabism has inspired a lot of terrorist groups, then you'd be onto something. Because Al Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, Al Nusra Front, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, etc are Wahhabi-inspired groups. But Wahhabis make up a minute fraction of Muslims and most other Muslims oppose them. Here's a paragraph from a good wikipedia article to get you started about them (HERE):

The majority of Sunni and Shia Muslims worldwide disagree with the interpretation of Wahhabism, and many Muslims denounce them as a faction or a "vile sect". Islamic scholars, including those from the Al-Azhar University, regularly denounce Wahhabism with terms such as "Satanic faith". Wahhabism has been accused of being "a source of global terrorism", inspiring the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and for causing disunity in Muslim communities by labelling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates (takfir) and justifying their killing. It has also been criticized for the destruction of historic shrines of saints, mausoleums, and other Muslim and non-Muslim buildings and artifacts.

And here's one of the listed criticisms of them from other Muslims (from the same article):

That historically Wahhabis have had a suspicious willingness to ally itself with non-Muslim powers (specifically America and Britain), and in particular to ignore the encroachments into Muslim territory of a non-Muslim imperial power (the British) while waging jihad and weakening the Muslim Caliphate of the Ottomans

And for all of the publicity that Wahhabi groups get in the West, the vast majority of their victims are other Muslims. They blow up mosques and shrines, advocate suicide bombings, and are always conveniently willing to be the "boots on the ground" in Western backed proxy wars like Libya, Chechnya, Afghanistan vs Russia in the 1980s, in Yemen right now, in Syria against Assad, etc. And of course, their powerbrokers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are conveniently huge purchasers of Western defense contracts, with Wahhabi dominated Qatar even having Western troops stationed there to prop up their royals.

a reply to: enlightenedservant


I may have meant that more rhetorically than literally.

Relatively speaking, Islam has more terrorists per 100,000 believers (lets say) than Christianity or Judaism combined.

But I already explained what I thought about that difference: it is a function of socioeconomic as well as cultural "entropy".

For various reasons, mostly related to their relationship with the west, the Islamic world has struggled to move out of the logic of the 12th century and into the scientific ethos of the 21st century.

This isn't to say there isn't value or heterogeneity in Islamic philosophy, only that human beings cannot think clearly about how things work without referencing physics, biology, and concepts like 'evolution by natural selection'. Science is fundamentally based in the philosophy of pragmatism, which says that things happen by necessity and as a function of quantitative changes between forces within a field of geometrically structured objects.

I'm not saying Islam is incompatible with a philosophy such as this, but there is much within many societies - both western, Islamic and Eastern - which fixate on abstract ways of thinking which have nothing to do with actual reality, and hence, loses touch with a realistic metaphysics.

Anyways, wasn't disagreeing with you. Just was commenting on how unfortunate it is the way Islam has been represented within the western imagination.

BTW, I think the most relevant categories - because the early life experiences are comparable - is "elite" and "masses" - which produces two antithetical cultures, one based around the "rational ego" in pursuit of power, and the mainstream culture, as usual, built around concern for the other. Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, etc, etc, are all structured by pragmatic realities, and therefore, all human beings converge on the path of least resistance: love and care.

That's my take on it.

a reply to: Astrocyte

You said "Islam has more terrorists per 100,000 believers (lets say) than Christianity or Judaism combined", but who defines a "terrorist"? Because the Christians in the West have killed far more civilians than Muslims have over the last 500 or so years.

I'm talking about the invasions, occupations, and massacres that came with both the Colonialism and Imperialism eras, where European Christians basically stole entire continents while engaging in continent-wide genocides on their natives. Then there were the Opium Wars (the invasions of China during the 1800s) and the wars during the late 1800s' "Scramble for Africa" (where Europe militarily conquered all of Africa except Ethiopia, where Italy lost, and Liberia, which was already a US vassal). King Leopold II and the Congo ring any bells? There were also both World Wars which saw European Christian countries literally killing each other off by the millions.

Even after WW2 ended, the Christian majority US & its Western allies continued killing far more civilians than Muslims did. Or are we supposed to forget the million or so killed when Christian-majority France tried to keep its Algerian colony? Or the million or so killed when Christian-majority France tried to reclaim its Indochina colony? Or the several million killed when the US & its allies jumped into Indochina after France's failure, in what's called the Vietnam War/2nd Indochina war? What's the bodycount of civilians killed in the Korean War by Muslims & then by Christians?

Then look at the constant Cold War proxy wars in Christian-majority Latin America and central Africa. Even today, the Christian majority US and its Christian majority European allies invade country after country and indiscriminately kill civilians in what's literally called "collateral damage" and "signature strikes" which don't even require identifying the targets before bombing them with drones. They've even done drones strikes on weddings and funerals.

So why isn't it "terrorism" when Christian majority mercs & fighters murder and blow people up for political reasons like regime changes? I'd think that the victims of our constant wars would consider us terrorists, right? I'm mentioning soldiers & wars because an invading army's purpose is literally to push political change in the territory that it's invading.

Also, the numbers don't match what you said. I already linked the number of members in the largest and most notorious "Muslim" related terrorist crime syndicates ISIS/ISIL and Al Qaeda. Now let's compare their numbers to the terrorist crime syndicates in some Christian majority countries to get the point across.

The Camorra crime syndicates in Italy alone are estimated to have more than 57,500 members (HERE). And the Crips and Bloods street gangs in the US are estimated to have 30,000 to 55,000 members and 20,000 to 25,000 members respectively. And they're not even the biggest gangs or gang alliances in the US, with the People Nation alliance having am estimated 150,000 members (HERE).

And during the ongoing cartel war in Catholic majority Mexico that started in 2006, just the 2 major cartels alone are reported to have mobilized more than 100,000 foot soldiers (HERE). And they were beheading people; terrorizing businesses and communities; blowing up buildings/cars/people; assassinating politicians and high ranking law enforcement officials that opposed their territorial goals; left mutilated bodies in public places, etc just like ISIS & the other Wahhabi groups I mentioned before. And of course, they're notoriously Catholic, just like the Mafioso.

Yes, there were roughly as many cartel terrorists deployed in Mexico alone during this ongoing war as there were combined Al Qaeda and ISIS members! And the cartel war blew past the 100,000 killed stat around 2013. Yet almost nobody talks about this because it would obliterate the narratives that you repeated.

a reply to: Astrocyte

For various reasons, mostly related to their relationship with the west, the Islamic world has struggled to move out of the logic of the 12th century and into the scientific ethos of the 21st century

Wrong. Wahhabism and the current Mullah dominated Iranian govt are both ultra conservative reform movements that consider mainstream Islam to be too liberal. They're the factions that are stuck in the past, not Islam as a whole. That would be like seeing the Amish & Mennonites and concluding that all of Christianity largely rejects electricity, photographs, etc.

Do a quick google search of "Afghanistan before the Taliban" and "Iran before 1979" and you'll see what I mean. The Taliban is Wahhabi inspired, which is why they allowed Bin Laden, a fellow Wahhabi, to stay there after he was exiled from Sudan. And it was only 1979 when the ultra conservative Mullahs took over Iran, deposed the West's ally the Shah Pahlavi, and pushed their strict religious interpretations onto the population. But they've convinced people like you that they represent the true Islam.

And Wahhabism was only started in the 1700s, but they've also convinced people like you that they represent the true Islam. You said Islam has struggled to move out of the 12th century, yet it's the West who's literally been propping up the Wahhabis who want to keep Islam in the past since Lawrence of Arabia and WW1! The House of Saud made an alliance with Wahhab in the 1700s but stayed a small faction with minimal land until around WW1. The British helped arm them and supported them as they rebelled against the Ottomans, and then helped the House of Saud take over most of the Arabian Peninsula. The West then helped them exploit their oilfields and helped them become the financial beast that they are today.

And now, the West props them up, sells them an insane amount of arms, and fights wars for them in exchange for stable energy supplies, proxy troops, and foreign investment. Western govts literally help them push their ultra conservative dogma all over the world and help them destroy the secular and interfaith Muslim countries that continue to reject Wahhabism. Yet you're blaming Islam as a whole for their actions.

Id rather reign in hell than serve in heaven on my knees

To serve in heaven is to do Battle with demons and archtype evil so that souls may be spared.
To reign in hell you have but to prove that life and all that it is means nothing to you whatsoever.
If this is you.... Good riddance.

a reply to: enlightenedservant

You said "Islam has more terrorists per 100,000 believers (lets say) than Christianity or Judaism combined", but who defines a "terrorist"? Because the Christians in the West have killed far more civilians than Muslims have over the last 500 or so years.

We need to be more clear on what we mean by terrorist, I agree. If by terrorist, we mean a 'popular culture' that appeals to a certain vulnerable sub-group of a particular culture (Islam), we would have to say terrorism is more prominent in the Islamic world than in the western world.

But if terrorist be taken more literally as in "political actions done for the purpose of terrorizing", I am totally in agreement with your assessment of the western world, and their very targeted campaigns to terrorize, in particular, non-western societies - particularly Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Palestinians.

That said, 'right wing' Christian fundamentalism, not to mention the other right-wing spiritual-based fundamentalism, seems to be identical with Islamic terrorism, and perhaps, as we see happening in the west, once the socio-economic playing field between westerners and non-westerner becomes more level, we'll see those cultures gain in prominence, as we're already seeing i.e. the "incel" - involuntary celibacy - which, like Jihadism, seems to be identified with a masculinistic "god" that seeks to eradicate the "other" - always typified or captured by females, short people, etc - basically anything that a power-obsessed self necessarily experiences as "weak" i.e. vulnerable.

All in all, I appreciate your analysis, but my only point, I think, is that socioecomonic factors are the most important parameters in transforming ANY society - regardless of ethnicity, race, etc - into a perverse 'opposite' of what the religion, in its more conventional and popular readings, usually promotes.

On that point, I'll just point out my opposition to religios books in general. I think clear, explicit, and concise conversation between humans is essential to resolving our complex problems.

I think religious allegories add a great deal of problems. Whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, etc, I find a non-causal metaphysics to be an exercise in self-regulation; a habit that we inheirted from our more ignorant ancestors, who did not have teh technologies of the modern world or the vast theoretical system of thought (physics, biology, evolution) to make sense of reality in a realistic way.

They relied too much on wishfulness - what science, in fact, seeks to get rid of, and by doing so, help improve how we think, communicate, and make sense of our social and personal conflicts.

a reply to: enlightenedservant


I'm actually referring to "Al Ghazzli" and the popularity of his thinking relative to Averoes or Avicenna.

There does appear to be a consensus (I learned this view from "The closing of Muslim Mind") that Islam's contemporary problems stem from an emphasis on "revelation", as opposed to 'reason'.