Who is the epitome of Evil, God or Satan?

Who is the epitome of Evil, God or Satan?

Though shalt place no one above me. Satan did not as he followed God’s instructions with Job. He was firmly under God’s control.

Many have jumped through hoops to make anyone other than God the most evil in existence yet scripture says that God gets the Gold star in all categories. Even as the most evil. After all, he is said to have created the concept of law. The Word. All Goods and Evils. The first divisive tool for social manipulation and control.

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God is said to have just about all attributes that man has been able to imagine.
God has been reduced to our wish list. Including the creator of an everlasting hell to entertain our more hateful wishes.

God is still ashamed of what he has wrought as in the days of Noah.
Mythical Noah the is. Even after using genocide to reboot his systems. Strange. Another failure. God, if he were real, seems to have two messages for us.
Do as you are told and do not think too much. Hence faith to drive away logic and reason.

As the epitome of Evil, Satan runs a poor second place to God.
Have we put the blame for creations evils on the created, Satan, when it was God, who, as the epitome of Evil, shirked his duty of taking responsibility for what he as God sowed.
That also would mean that Bishop John Spong was right and God is guilty of child abuse by putting the responsibility for his works on Jesus.

Do as I say and not as I do is God’s policy.
I also would argue against his policy or rewarding what he calls rebellion. I E. Giving Satan dominion over mankind and rewarding Cain with a kingdom for murder.
Not a good thing for the law maker to do.
Two stains on his Gold star.

Is God the epitome of evil?
Is that the moral lesson of the flood myth?
What does that say of the literalists who follow Noah’s God and think that genocide is good justice?

Regards
DL

Satan is only depicted as evil bcause he does not obey "God's" laws.

God designs the law himself, therefore it is only by his word alone that dictates what and what does not constitute "evil". He himself is above all laws he makes, but in his world, every other entity must abide by his laws. Those who do not are considered evil, and therefore lesser, than God.

Evil is a way to ensure that all other beings are seen as being lesser than God. This is to reinforce God's superiority.

But I am not completely sure of what you ask here. Be you asking on a philosophical level, or are you an actual believer, or do you seek to analyse the Christian mythology as one would to a fable of Aesop, for instance?

(Keep in your mind that I am not a church attending religious person, so bear with me.)

According to the bible, God is one nasty piece of work.

Stone your children to death for talking back. A-OK by God's "word".

Slavery is also OK.

Good luck if you want to get into heaven and your not Jewish(Do Christians ever bother to read Leviticus?).

God - according to the Bible - is in some serious need of therapy.

S&F

Satan is the bad guy.

Satan is shown as being evil due to his questioning the almighty power of God.

Free thinking is the enemy of faith, questions have no place in a universe ruled by an omnipotent/omnescient being.

God is the ultimate 'big brother' control device. He knows what you are thinking. He knows what you have done. If you question his authority to do so, or if you do not do precisely as he says, you are damned for eternity.

If evil is the act of questioning, of using our minds and common sense to discern the truth from fiction... than I am evil. Very evil, in fact.

Think about it... how many followers of the Abrahamic religions would continue to do so if they didn't fear for their eternal souls? People have been cowed into believing they must be 'redeemed' for NOTHING... all it took was enough 'priests' and clerics shouting at them that if they did not belittle themselves before an all powerful being that has never.... EVER... shown itself that their souls would suffer in pits of fire forever.

Organized religion is the true evil. Period.

reply to post by Greatest I am


Great post!

Remember that there are always other perspectives that unifying the dissonance you may perceive with truth. When one truth seems to be a mirror reflection of another opposite truth, then you are looking at the mirror of its reflection. This means you have rightly divided truth and must make a choice between the two opposing reflections. Good and evil are these two sides of the reflection. One seems as valid as the other in the reflection.

The missing perspective here is that God divided the light from the dark. They are pre-existing. This makes it less a matter of God creating them as a matter of dividing them from each other. If they are mixed, then chaos is present. If they are separate, then peace, harmony and joy can be free from their opposite reflections. This is the work of God--to separate. We are charged with the same task in our own lives. The darkness, when rightly divided, cannot comprehend the light. We are to be the light in a dark place.

LINK

To answer your question, MAN is the embodyment of evil. Apathy and greed allows multitudes of evil to be performed all around with out anyone stepping in to oppose it. And without Opposition, Evil triumphs every time.

If you are asking which is more evil, the person who does it or the prson who created it allowing for people to do it, then the answer would have to be God if he created everything. For anyone to believe otherwise is pure delusion and just goes to show what blind faith will get you.

I believe it wa Bruce Springsteen who once said " Blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed."

Originally posted by Dreine
Satan is shown as being evil due to his questioning the almighty power of God.

Free thinking is the enemy of faith, questions have no place in a universe ruled by an omnipotent/omnescient being.

God is the ultimate 'big brother' control device. He knows what you are thinking. He knows what you have done. If you question his authority to do so, or if you do not do precisely as he says, you are damned for eternity.

If evil is the act of questioning, of using our minds and common sense to discern the truth from fiction... than I am evil. Very evil, in fact.

Think about it... how many followers of the Abrahamic religions would continue to do so if they didn't fear for their eternal souls? People have been cowed into believing they must be 'redeemed' for NOTHING... all it took was enough 'priests' and clerics shouting at them that if they did not belittle themselves before an all powerful being that has never.... EVER... shown itself that their souls would suffer in pits of fire forever.

Organized religion is the true evil. Period.

edit on 8-8-2011 by Dreine because: Additional words.

God does not create duplicity, we do. If we choose actions based on receiving reward, then we are duplicitous. This means we say or do one thing, but really mean another. If we seek good to avoid punishment, again we see duplicity. Good is its own reward. Living life reveals this eventually.

When Jesus says in John 3 that, "You must be born again," I perceive that He means that there is no option. He gives two choices in this rebirth: either you are baptized back into the water of the material world, or you are reborn into the spirit. Luke 10 gives the key to allowing the spirit birth. A person must love God and others. This is a change in nature away from pride. Duplicity is gone since it is replaced with a seeking heart that recognizes truth. God's divine plan and His divine justice demands that you be given the opportunities to amend your sentience. Judgment happens to each man after death, but the soul then resides in another body. You must be born again.

Hebrews 9 gives you the order of events. Death, waiting, salvation, final judgment. A final judgment implies previous judgments. Most people only read v. 27 to imply that we are not reborn into this world. They fail to read on.

27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,

28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Who is waiting and for what reason? When is the final judgment? It is after the 1000 years of peace when we are face to face with truth, apart form the previous evil that invaded our existence. As in the flood, the evil will be plucked away. Who was taken in the flood? Who will be taken in the next judgment below?

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Originally posted by rcanem
To answer your question, MAN is the embodyment of evil. Apathy and greed allows multitudes of evil to be performed all around with out anyone stepping in to oppose it. And without Opposition, Evil triumphs every time.

Man may be the embodiment of evil for all his worldly desires, but the gods were the ones who put it there. They created the tree from which we ate then punish us for disobedience, just as they punished Satan for his.

But what purpose did the tree serve if not to test man?

reply to post by rcanem


The tree's purpose is irrelevent as it, and we, are pawns in thier sick little game. What matters is the fact that they (the gods) held the knowledge of good and evil. Good being obediance to their laws. Evil being being the knowledge that their laws don't need to be followed (i.e. Us and Satan). They created us, in their image, and expected us to follow according to thier laws. Evil really becomes a matter of opinion depending on who's side your on.

reply to post by amaster


This is true, one might be doing what they percieve is right and others may look on it as evil, it IS all in the perception. However we were given free will to make our own choices, and so far we have made some pretty poor choices throughout history.

reply to post by rcanem


Have we? Or has everything we've done up to now all been a part of the gods design?
All they've done is plant the seed and watch it grow. How much wrong has been done in thier name?


Right or wrong in the eyes of man,
The gods look on with writhing hands.
To watch with joyful enthusiasm,
At the amusement of creationism.

reply to post by amaster


I agree wholeheartedly there, the atrocities done in the name of god and religion is mind blowing, the crusades, and the inquisition are just a few, you have no argument from me on that point. However I still like to feel that I do have a choice in the actions I take from day to day and it is my choice alone whether I do good or evil. At least from my perspective of course.
The ancient Greeks used to have stories of how the gods would meddle in the lives of mortals, maybe they were closer to the truth than we realise. Reguardless, at the end of the day you have to look back and judge for yourself how you did. (I'm not going to do it for you.:lol

reply to post by rcanem


You are most certainly given a choice. You may choose to do whatever you wish, be it good or evil. Only man will judge you, and he is not perfect. Where we go beyond that is anyones guess.

Originally posted by DeepThoughtCriminal
Satan is only depicted as evil bcause he does not obey "God's" laws.

God designs the law himself, therefore it is only by his word alone that dictates what and what does not constitute "evil". He himself is above all laws he makes, but in his world, every other entity must abide by his laws. Those who do not are considered evil, and therefore lesser, than God.

Evil is a way to ensure that all other beings are seen as being lesser than God. This is to reinforce God's superiority.

But I am not completely sure of what you ask here. Be you asking on a philosophical level, or are you an actual believer, or do you seek to analyse the Christian mythology as one would to a fable of Aesop, for instance?

(Keep in your mind that I am not a church attending religious person, so bear with me.)

I am a religionist but do not believe in Bible God.
I read the bible as myth only.
It has some wisdom but in no way represents a real God.

I just resent most Christians saying that God creates all things perfect, yet they see a completely imperfect reality.

They give God the credit for the good but will not have him take responsibility for the evil.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by OccamAssassin
According to the bible, God is one nasty piece of work.

Stone your children to death for talking back. A-OK by God's "word".

Slavery is also OK.

Good luck if you want to get into heaven and your not Jewish(Do Christians ever bother to read Leviticus?).

God - according to the Bible - is in some serious need of therapy.

S&F

edit on 8/8/2011 by OccamAssassin because: (no reason given)

I tend to agree. So do many of his followers.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by Malcher
Satan is the bad guy.

So why did God create him.
He knew what Satan would be and become.
Right?

Further, are you comfortable putting Satan above God when it comes to evil?
You break the first commandment.

Regards
DL

Originally posted by Dreine
Satan is shown as being evil due to his questioning the almighty power of God.

Free thinking is the enemy of faith, questions have no place in a universe ruled by an omnipotent/omnescient being.

God is the ultimate 'big brother' control device. He knows what you are thinking. He knows what you have done. If you question his authority to do so, or if you do not do precisely as he says, you are damned for eternity.

If evil is the act of questioning, of using our minds and common sense to discern the truth from fiction... than I am evil. Very evil, in fact.

Think about it... how many followers of the Abrahamic religions would continue to do so if they didn't fear for their eternal souls? People have been cowed into believing they must be 'redeemed' for NOTHING... all it took was enough 'priests' and clerics shouting at them that if they did not belittle themselves before an all powerful being that has never.... EVER... shown itself that their souls would suffer in pits of fire forever.

Organized religion is the true evil. Period.

edit on 8-8-2011 by Dreine because: Additional words.

We are on the same page.
Well said BTW.

Regards
DL