So you don't believe in the devil

a reply to: Astyanax

I am all for alternative views. Are you?

If they make sense yes. You only see Job as some how being
abused by God with no interest in the deeper meaning of what
was going on between Satan and God. Satan was wrong about Job
because God knew him better. It's also a lesson for us that no
matter what happens in this life be faithful to the Father because
the next life is the one we need to care about. This is hardly the
world God intended I can tell you that. You choosing to see God
the way you want to from such a puny perspective doesn't work for
me and it will never work for you or anyone else. But ya I'm
going with there is a God simply because it makes more sense
then there not being one by mega zeros behind the power of one.

But that's just me.

I forgot to proof read sorry[

a reply to: Astyanax

Finally, on the subject of those who allegedly worship Satan. They must be damn fools, because if the Devil exists God does too, and in the world He made He's always going to win, and when he does they're scuppered. What sane person would do that?

They aren't sane but those people do exist. You can see touch and
smell em.

The book of Job.

Satan clearly thought Job was righteous because he had a lot of wealth and good standing. Take it all away and you will lose him, Satan told God, and God was God.

Job held onto the wisdom and understanding God gave him.

a reply to: NoCorruptionAllowed

Satan doesn't have full control over this world, only some influence.

Even if Satan did exist, the question of how much influence he has is irrelevant to the discussion. The question is why he has any at all. And your attempt to explain is pure, unadulterated gibberish.

Can what you believe in or profess to know save you, or save others? What does your version offer to anyone?

I don’t profess to believe in anything. I have said so several times in this thread. And I don’t see any need to be saved, either. Saved from what? The vengeance of a God whose very existence I doubt? How ridiculous.

People are shown these two choices and can choose.

I have already debunked the free will argument. Why bring it up again?

a reply to: Astyanax

I have already debunked the free will argument. Why bring it up again?

I don't remember this! How do you debunk free will?

God had to give Satan his do time because to squash Satans
rebellion would leave him looking like a tyrant to the rest
of the host in Heaven. What don't you get about that?

a reply to: Astrocometus

You only see Job as some how being abused by God with no interest in the deeper meaning of what was going on between Satan and God.

I regard the suffering and abuse suffered by a helpless mortal at the hands of an ill-tempered, cruel and sadistic deity to be of far more significance than a bet between two equally disreputable supernatural powers, neither of whom seem to care a hoot about the poor creature whose life they are conspiring to destroy. So yes, of course, I’m more interested in the abuse than in the alleged theological implications of some ancient folk-tale full of absurdities and contradictions. Any decent, humane soul would be. Guilty as charged, Your Honour.

The next life is the one we need to care about

Looks like you need to read the Gospels as well as Job. Remind yourself again that Jesus said absolutely nothing about that wonderful ‘next life’ of yours but was utterly and totally focused on teaching people how to live in this one.

You choosing to see God the way you want to from such a puny perspective doesn't work for me and it will never work for you or anyone else.

My ‘puny perspective’ has served me admirably for over a quarter of a century, just as it has served and serves countless others. Among those others have been some of the greatest thinkers in history: Buddha, Lao Tzu, Epicurus, Socrates, Seneca, Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein. More to the point as far as I am concerned, it has liberated me from the chains you and your fellow-sufferers are so obviously and pathetically burdened with.

Still, freedom has its burdens, too.

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

− Bob Dylan, ‘Ballad in Plain D’

The ‘chains of the skyway’ are the moral obligations every free mind must shoulder − and which people like yourself go to all the trouble of inventing gods and devils to try and avoid.

***

I don't remember this! How do you debunk free will?

‘To attempt to answer it through 'free will' is to ignore all the misery and suffering humans do not create − starting with the reality that all species prey upon other species, causing inevitable suffering to the prey.’ Here

***

Those people do exist. You can see touch and smell em.

Oh, Satanists do exist. A tiny handful of nutzos. From what I’ve read or been told, most are social rebels whose religious ‘beliefs’ are a kind of protest against convention and respectability. Some are perverts or tearaways who use their Satanism as an excuse to indulge in taboo sex, illegal drugs and general mayhem. Both groups are refugees from Christianity who obviously still believe as firmly in God, Heaven, Hell and all the other gobbledygook as you do; their protests and defiance would be meaningless, and their misbehaviour savourless, if they did not. The only difference between them and kooks of the Christian persuasion is that the Satanists have chosen the opposite side − usually for childish reasons that are largely psychological in origin.

The actual Church of Satan, founded by Jimmy Page’s erstwhile friend Anton LaVey in 1966, was a bit more sophisticated. Its members don’t really believe in God, let alone Satan; the ‘faith’ they have embraced is really a rejection of Christian attitudes and morality. Like Nietzsche, who called it ‘slave morality’, they believe that Christianity is hypocritical and psychologically debilitating. From Wikipedia:

Members do not believe that Satan literally exists and do not worship him. Instead, Satan is viewed as a positive archetype embracing the Hebrew root of the word ‘Satan’ as ‘adversary’, who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment, humanity's natural instincts — which Abrahamic faiths have wrongly suppressed. According to High Priest Peter H. Gilmore, Satan is ‘a name for the reservoir of power inside each human to be tapped at will.’ In LaVey's book, The Satanic Bible, the Satanist's concept of a god is described as the Satanist's true ‘self’ — a projection of his or her own personality, not an external deity. Satan is used as a representation of personal liberty and individualism.

The trouble with this is that it’s play-acting — people who have outgrown faith pretending to be part of a religion. I think that most CoS members are making a political statement with their ‘belief’, like the people who got a statue of Baphomet put up at the Iowa state legislature. They don’t really believe in God, or Satan, at all.

Frankly, I am no more impressed by any of this than I am by the antics of religiose Christians. People need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, not skulk behind religion, philosophy, pop science, conspiracy theory and all the other childish excuses we make for ourselves.

a reply to: Astyanax

We talk about things and give things names because we are to situate things in our reality. We try to gain understanding and bond.

a reply to: Unharmed

We talk about things and give things names because we are to situate things in our reality. We try to gain understanding and bond.

Vous êtes en Belgique. Parlez-vous français? Si vous préférez, envoyez-moi un u2u (billet personnelle) en français et nous pourrons converser plus facilement – vous en francçaise, moi en anglais.

a reply to: Astyanax

I don't see what should've changed.

a reply to: Unharmed

I don't see what should've changed.

What should’ve changed about what? These gnomic little posts of yours don’t convey any meaning. If French is easier for you, answer in French; unfortunately I don’t speak Flemish.

a reply to: Astrocometus

Oh, I just saw this. It’s fabulous!

God had to give Satan his do time because to squash Satans rebellion would leave him looking like a tyrant to the rest of the host in Heaven. What don't you get about that?

So the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible − the Absolute Power over all of Creation, the Alpha and the Omega − tortures Job because he is afraid looking bad in front of his posse? Hahaha!

Your God, friend, is yourself blown up to vast, wobbling size like a flatulent hot-air balloon. So is your Devil. End of conversation − unless you stir yourself to say something intelligent, which going by your form so far would be a genuine miracle.

a reply to: Astyanax

Something coherent is always nice. Thank you.

originally posted by: Unharmed
The book of Job.

Satan clearly thought Job was righteous because he had a lot of wealth and good standing. Take it all away and you will lose him, Satan told God, and God was God.

Job held onto the wisdom and understanding God gave him.

That can work the other way. Very few and far between, but they exist.

There's people who will refuse to pray no matter bad it gets. I mean they both get totally screwed by adversity, but one never sees that hand of god.

Like the antitheistic Job says, "It's is only a sadistic coincidence that my house collapsed and killed my family. Sh*t happens. Same thing with my abrupt horrid pain. For I refuse to see divine intervention or godly will in my existence, and no matter how deliberate this wants to appear, I will not view myself as special enough to be targeted by divinity. I am not the center of the universe."

In this correctly used context, "antitheism" isn't a hatred of God, but a refusal to see a direct deterministic causal influence. It's skepticism to using abstract ideas as a base for religious practice. It swaps faith for the phenomenal.

I'd just be a hypocrite to take that position. Too much adversity superstition here.

a reply to: Degradation33

Like the antitheistic Job.

Throughout the whole of the book, Job continues to praise God and acknowledge his power. His only ‘sin’ is to question why God has picked on him this way, when he has been worshipful and righteous all his life.

He doesn’t say ‘it’s only coincidence that my house collapsed and killed my family.’ He says, ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

And by the way, it wasn’t his house that fell down but his eldest son’s.

You haven’t read the text, you’re just making things up. Vade retro, Satanas.

a reply to: Astyanax

Well, it's not about the text, that's why liberties are taken, it's to illustrake you COULD, contrary to the what the book actually says, invert the character of Job, and the roles of God and Satan, and make it a parable about nonbelievers, which I'd assume is Satan's thing.

Anti-Job says, "The Lord didn't take sh*t, because the lord didn't give sh*t".

Satan says to God, "I bet no matter how much we screw with this guy he won't see you in any way."

I'm bored and I'm up.

Although Satan murders Job's family, kills off his animals and causing a disease on Job, things God doesn't do, he does do what God ordered him to do, not taking Jobs life.

I can see him at the Gathering, Master, Master of the universe, your friend Job, grin, I'm sure he only stays true to you because of his wealth. God didn't think, you silly hairball, can't I just get rid of you, instead he proved something to Satan.

It costed the lives of animals and humans.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

- Isaiah 45:7

God did bring Job a happy life again afterwards, making up for all the time Job suffered.

In the first line of this post I said God doesn't do these things, but the story of Job and the verse in Isaiah prove God does do these things, although Satan does the work, God has a plan.

Satan is also merely a creation and should learn the things of God, not?

All the things Satan does God approves of, but God is Master, and like, with time, no matter how long things are wrong, terrible and bad, when the day comes things became good, you're just having a good day and everything goes well again and you move on with life happily again.

Since with God everything is possible, he could make you a private island in the sky with everything you want. He can make you dead for a while and do anything to his endless opportunities to make things good. There's endless time with God and he could keep you alive endlessly. There's nothing to fear with God and nothing to worry about. He could make you walk around without a head and it would be good.

All things are according his approval so everything is just the play played out. Alive you are with God, dead you are with God. Nothing is worth anything more than God because without God all else wouldn't be here, so, okay, we take all the extras with it. They're simply an addition to God's wonderful activity.

Everything is a wonderful play.

a reply to: Unharmed

All the things Satan does God approves of, but God is Master

And, therefore, ultimately responsible for everything. If only to himself.

Everything is a wonderful play.

Who is the audience?

Surprise me.

a reply to: Astyanax

You can repeat the same question over and over again until it becomes obnoxious.

a reply to: Unharmed

Sorry, no surprise there.

See you around.

a reply to: Astyanax

I'll take it.