Is Satan actually God wearing a mask?
- Thread starter sevenblu
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CottonMouth
Registered Member
Defining Good and Evil would be nice, don't you think? IMHO:
Good: That which doesn't causes harm to yourself and/or others.
Evil: Property a of a "noun" (object, person) or "verb" (action) that willingly causes harm to itself or others.
To me, as a catholic heretic, the devil is a being powered by the malicious intents of humanity. God could possibly destroy, or dissipate the devil, or turn it back to good, but it is the free will that he gave humanity that keeps this evil as it is.
Good: That which doesn't causes harm to yourself and/or others.
Evil: Property a of a "noun" (object, person) or "verb" (action) that willingly causes harm to itself or others.
To me, as a catholic heretic, the devil is a being powered by the malicious intents of humanity. God could possibly destroy, or dissipate the devil, or turn it back to good, but it is the free will that he gave humanity that keeps this evil as it is.
"god" and "satan" are metaphors for an abstract polar relationship of gross depictions (good and evil) of human behavior.
Affirm vs. Detract
Once a mind establishes a goal.. let's say "survival" or perhaps "comfort", the notion (however crude or nonspecific) of affirmation or detraction is implicit regarding interaction with the evironment (including social interaction). This must be one of the most primal of abstract notions, as it arises (at least ever so slightly) even without the added conceptual focal assistance of language.
Bark at the moon. (to threaten threats to survival)
Cuddle with offspring. (in affirmation of survival)
I think this basic component of being is the source of gods and devils.
I'd even guess that evolutionarily speaking, that's why we have a part of our brain dealing with exactly "the spiritual". I dunno though. I'd have to argue that out for a while.
Affirm vs. Detract
Once a mind establishes a goal.. let's say "survival" or perhaps "comfort", the notion (however crude or nonspecific) of affirmation or detraction is implicit regarding interaction with the evironment (including social interaction). This must be one of the most primal of abstract notions, as it arises (at least ever so slightly) even without the added conceptual focal assistance of language.
Bark at the moon. (to threaten threats to survival)
Cuddle with offspring. (in affirmation of survival)
I think this basic component of being is the source of gods and devils.
I'd even guess that evolutionarily speaking, that's why we have a part of our brain dealing with exactly "the spiritual". I dunno though. I'd have to argue that out for a while.
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Dreamwalker said:@ Alain
Perhaps you are right. Well, it is just a matter of perspective
@ SouthStar
Now I see what you mean with the heresy part. Well, I was raised as an
Evangelist. But who cares, if it was catholic I would have reacted the same
way.
I have strength, I created it myself over the years. It´s not like I have to beg for it. If you velieve in yourself you gain strength, just like others who pray to god to gain strength. They only take a more roundabout way.
Yes, but I am asking, from where do you gain this "strength"?
Psalm 121
??? This is a whole other issue, I guess. There IS a reason why God is called our Father; because he is symbolic of the parent.
And if God is symbolic of the parent, he is like a great great great great grandFather... Sure, a grandfather is responsible for the creation of his grandchild, but the immediate parent takes on full responsibility. Because of the "idea" of free-will, God doesn not create children... people create children... So, YES, parents create their children.
And neither have the right to murder their offspring... Only God has infinite wisdom, so if He wants to kill some babies, go ahead. Only He can grasp the reason.
sevenblu said:
I will attempt to clarify things by referring to the Lamb of God. On earth He loved a father named Joseph and in heaven, He loves the Father of lights. (The verb tense I'm using doesn't really matter here)
Here is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines 'create'
1 : to bring into existence <God created the heaven and the earth -- Gen 1:1 (Authorized Version)>
Parents on earth did/do/will not bring children into existence. Even David knew that..
And why do you say that we are God's offspring? We are created to be His slaves whether we like it or not? Now tell me, does that sound like free will to you? That is His edict and we can only thank him for it or suffer discipline and NOT punishment.
Jesus Christ was not created. Human beings cannot create and if you insist in saying they can, I ask you, who created the first human? And if you say God, you have proven my point, God creates humans, not humans create humans.
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A few things in there are just ramble, please ignore.
Let me see Southstar, you asked me where I gained my strength.
Well, years ago I more or less believed in god, due to upbringing, surroundings and so on. And I was rather weak, bodily and mentally. That made it quite easy for others to suppress me. I went to church, I prayed and so on and so on. But it did not really help me, the others kept on having their way with me. I searched for answers why they act like it, why god doesn´t help me and all the other crap.
Well, I withdrew myself from society to some extend and in the resulting loneliness I began to think. As I may have stated, I came to the conclusion that there is no god. Anyway, neither belief nor disbelief gave me strength. Why should it? I came to the conclusion that not the other people are the core of my problem, I am. I did not believe in my capabilities, nor in my personality. When you are weak of mind, the belief in god does not make you strong, perhaps it makes you think you are strong, living in a community with other people, believing that one day you will stand in front of god and he will judge you. Then, when you have lived your life according to christian ideals, you will gain entrance to heaven. I suppose this notion gives some people a feeling of reassurance that can turn into some kind of strength.
But since I gave up religion, you could say I was falling, my weak self could not hold me and all those others bullying me did not help much.
Well, someday I hit the rock bottom of my mind, I was pretty down, nearly suicidal. To keep it realtively short; as I stated earlier I came to the conclusion that my present state was entirely my fault. I chose not to be such a miserable wimp anymore, praying to gods mercy living my live in humility and suppresion. The best choice to accomplish this change was , in my eyes, to face the problems head on. It wasn´t easy, but I kept on because I never wanted to be weak minded and bullied any longer.
Well, I was successful, it was not always easy or painless but I acted out of desperation. Through this actions I discoverd selfesteem and I found out that my mind was only weak because I believed it to be weak. I found strength in the deepest parts of my mind. And that is where it comes from.
Anice quote that is, but you would find strength if you stop looking up to the
heavens and start looking for it inside yourself. For the strength you find in yourselfef is not an illusion.
Well, years ago I more or less believed in god, due to upbringing, surroundings and so on. And I was rather weak, bodily and mentally. That made it quite easy for others to suppress me. I went to church, I prayed and so on and so on. But it did not really help me, the others kept on having their way with me. I searched for answers why they act like it, why god doesn´t help me and all the other crap.
Well, I withdrew myself from society to some extend and in the resulting loneliness I began to think. As I may have stated, I came to the conclusion that there is no god. Anyway, neither belief nor disbelief gave me strength. Why should it? I came to the conclusion that not the other people are the core of my problem, I am. I did not believe in my capabilities, nor in my personality. When you are weak of mind, the belief in god does not make you strong, perhaps it makes you think you are strong, living in a community with other people, believing that one day you will stand in front of god and he will judge you. Then, when you have lived your life according to christian ideals, you will gain entrance to heaven. I suppose this notion gives some people a feeling of reassurance that can turn into some kind of strength.
But since I gave up religion, you could say I was falling, my weak self could not hold me and all those others bullying me did not help much.
Well, someday I hit the rock bottom of my mind, I was pretty down, nearly suicidal. To keep it realtively short; as I stated earlier I came to the conclusion that my present state was entirely my fault. I chose not to be such a miserable wimp anymore, praying to gods mercy living my live in humility and suppresion. The best choice to accomplish this change was , in my eyes, to face the problems head on. It wasn´t easy, but I kept on because I never wanted to be weak minded and bullied any longer.
Well, I was successful, it was not always easy or painless but I acted out of desperation. Through this actions I discoverd selfesteem and I found out that my mind was only weak because I believed it to be weak. I found strength in the deepest parts of my mind. And that is where it comes from.
Anice quote that is, but you would find strength if you stop looking up to the
heavens and start looking for it inside yourself. For the strength you find in yourselfef is not an illusion.
Dreamwalker said:
This sort of attitude, in Christianity, is recognized as heresy. Since I happened to have gotten myself a brand spanking new Encyclopaedia Britannica
, let's see what it has to say:-------------------------
The belief that humans are justified before God by grace through faith separated the first Protestant reformers from the Roman Catholicism of their day. And despite the subtle differences that arose in the various Protestant church bodies, devotion to this teaching has been central to Protestantism throughout its history.
In the 16th century concern for “justification” (the act through which God grants a sinner grace or makes a sinner righteous) was related to the desire, often expressed in language drawn from the courts of law, of finding oneself on good terms with God. Aware of its shortcomings, its ignorance, its sin, and its guilt, humankind saw itself standing before a bar of justice presided over by God. Without help, individuals could expect nothing but God's wrath and condemnation. This meant that they would perish everlastingly, and their present life would be full of torment. Yet the Bible also presented humankind with a picture of a loving and gracious God, who desires happiness for all. The question then was how could individuals be sure that God would reveal his gracious, and not his wrathful, side? How could they have the confidence that they were included in the positive loving action of God?
The teaching of the Reformers becomes most intelligible when contrasted with Roman Catholic doctrine (e.g., sin, grace, atonement) as the Reformers understood it. In the Protestant view, late medieval Catholic teaching held that individuals were returned to God only when so much grace had been infused into their souls that they merited God's favour. God could not accept someone who was unacceptable, but he could impart something that would make humans acceptable. This something was grace, and its flow depended upon the merits of God's perfect Son, the man Jesus Christ. The church, according to medieval Catholicism, in a sense controlled the flow through its sacramental system and its hierarchy.
To the Reformers the Roman Catholic sacramental system seemed to be part of an ongoing transaction between humankind and God. Catholics would attend the mass, bring offerings, show sorrow, do penance—which might involve self-punishment or compensatory good works—until God became gracious; the church and its clergy mediated the transaction. The Reformers believed that such an arrangement could easily be misused and was without scriptural foundation. It was this vision of Catholicism that helped inspire the Protestant leadership to rebel and to define justification in other terms.
The terms for this Protestant teaching came from the Bible, especially from the New Testament and even more so from the writings of St. Paul. In St. Paul the Reformers saw a religious hero and thinker who had experienced a spiritual quest similar to their own. His conversion signified a radical turning and a free acceptance of God's favour “in Christ.” This meant that in faith a person could be so identified with Jesus Christ that when God looked at him, he saw instead the merit that Christ had won through his self-sacrifice on the cross. God looked at the sinner and saw his perfect Son, not the sinner. He could, therefore, declare the person righteous, or “justify” him, even though the person was still a sinner.
According to this interpretation of Paul's teaching, grace was not infused in the sinner to the point that he or she became acceptable and pleasing to God; instead, while the individual remained a sinner, God accepted him favourably and justified him. Christ's death on the cross was then the only “transaction” that mattered between God and humanity. The sacraments reinforced this relationship and brought new grace, but no pretense was made that the human subject had achieved satisfaction before God or had earned enough merit to inspire God to act.
In the Reformers' view the new situation provided freedom. Whereas Catholics were bound to strive to achieve enough good works to please God, the Reformers taught that believers stood before God completely freed of this duty and from the enslaving pride that went with the notion that the believers had achieved or at least had substantially cooperated in their own salvation. This left the Reformers with a serious question, one to which their Roman Catholic opponents regularly referred. What had happened in this teaching of justification and freedom to the biblical emphasis on good works? Jesus himself, in theSynoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), was constantly preoccupied with the effort of making people better, of having them bring forth “good fruit.” Even Paul shared such concerns. Had the Protestant movement slighted these concerns in its desire to free human beings from the necessity of merits and good works?
The literature of Protestantism is rich in its answers to such questions. The Reformers were virtually unanimous: good works could not bring one salvation, yet they inevitably flowed from the forgiven heart and were always the consequence of the justified person's life. The law of God was not a path human beings walked as a sort of obstacle course or road map to God but rather a means to measure human shortcomings and judge them. A gracious God acting through his Gospel brought human beings back to him.
The Reformers believed that God viewed human beings in two ways. The justified person, in God's eyes, was so identified with Jesus Christ that he or she shared Christ's perfection. The same person, when seen by God apart from Christ's sacrificial work, remained a sinner. The difference came through God's gracious initiative; nothing that a person did started the process of his or her justification. To many in subsequent generations, this was a pessimistic and gloomy view of human potential. The will was bound; apart from God's loving activity, no good works would satisfy God. Indeed, the phrase total depravity was sometimes used to demonstrate the extent of sin and to describe the debased condition of humanity. Even good works, piety, and religiousness were without value apart from justification by grace through faith. On the other hand, the justified sinner could be described in the most lavish terms as one who could be “as Christ” or even sometimes “a Christ.”
Those who have heard this Protestant teaching outlined through the centuries have regularly seen the difficulties it raises insofar as the portrait of God's character is concerned. Protestants never came up with logically satisfying answers to the resultant questions, though in general they were convinced that their teaching was supported by the Bible. A central question was begged: If everything depended upon God's initiative and yet the majority of people are not saved, does this not mean thatGod is responsible for creating humans only to have them suffer and is he not guilty of the worst kind of cruelty by being the sole agent of human damnation?
Protestant leaders answered this question in several different ways. Some said that whenever people were saved, it was to God's credit; whenever they were lost, it was their own fault because they refused to hear the Word and accept the gift of grace.Others, especially Calvinists, emphasizing God's sovereignty and initiative, taught “double predestination,” which asserted that God predestined some people to be saved and others to be damned. Some theologians argued that God predestined humans before the fall of Adam, and others saw it as a new act of God consequent upon man's fall. Non-Calvinist churches wereusually less systematic and less logical in their soteriology (the theology of salvation), teaching “single predestination.” They shared the Calvinists' affirmation of God's total responsibility for human salvation, but they tended to be silent or to relegate tothe area of mystery the issue of how God could be responsible for salvation but not damnation. In general, Protestants believed they were more successful at preserving the teaching of God's sovereignty and human helplessness than they were at making his character attractive to all. To overcome this problem they stressed God's love of humanity in sending his own Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer on its behalf.
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That is just but a fraction of the whole essay. So you see, it is rather arrogant to believe in one's own "might" or "ability", say, like a worm would in the presence of a fire-breathing dragon.
"And when exactly did "irrational science" give way to "rational science" after the time of David?"
lucky i came accross that post, im an 'expert' on the subject.
David's scientific advisor was actually a female by the name of Irra Tional.
Now Irra was a nice person, but she made a few silly mistakes and blunders, David kicked her out of the job and hired an outlander who was very intelligent. David, out of respect for Irra order the new advisor to take the name Irra as her own, out of respect for the original Irra.
In the outlanders own language, Ir means stupid, so she cut the Ir of and called herself Ra Tional. She was a much better advisor the Irra. All the good scientific advisors took the name Ra Tional, and the bad ones took the name Irra Tional and the two schools of thought were born
lucky i came accross that post, im an 'expert' on the subject.
David's scientific advisor was actually a female by the name of Irra Tional.
Now Irra was a nice person, but she made a few silly mistakes and blunders, David kicked her out of the job and hired an outlander who was very intelligent. David, out of respect for Irra order the new advisor to take the name Irra as her own, out of respect for the original Irra.
In the outlanders own language, Ir means stupid, so she cut the Ir of and called herself Ra Tional. She was a much better advisor the Irra. All the good scientific advisors took the name Ra Tional, and the bad ones took the name Irra Tional and the two schools of thought were born
alain said:
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Living matter is composed largely of proteins, which are long chains of amino acids. Since 1930, it has been known that amino acids cannot link together if oxygen is present. That is, proteins could not have evolved from chance chemical reactions if the atmosphere contained oxygen. However, the chemistry of the earth’s rocks, both on land and below ancient seas, shows the earth had oxygen before the earliest fossils formed.a Even earlier, solar radiation would have broken water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen. Some hydrogen, the lightest of all chemical elements, would then have escaped into outer space, leaving behind excess oxygen.b
To form proteins, amino acids must also be highly concentrated. However, the early oceans or atmosphere would have diluted amino acids, so the required collisions between them would rarely occur. Besides, amino acids do not naturally link up to form proteins. Instead, proteins tend to break down into amino acids.c Furthermore, the proposed energy sources for forming proteins (earth’s heat, electrical discharges, or solar radiation) destroy the protein products thousands of times faster than they could have formed.d The many attempts to show how life might have arrived on earth have demonstrated (a) the futility of that effort, (b) the immense complexity of even the simplest life,e and (c) the need for a vast intelligence to precede life.
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http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeSciences34.htmlA rather long text you gave me as an answer Southstar.
If I understand that correctly you think my views are heretic and my puny mind cannot aprehend god. But from the text I gain the impression that the catholic church has gained insights in god´s nature.
This quote is obviously a parallel to my supposed ignorance, right?
I can accept that I may not be able to comprehend the greater scheme of the universe, it may well be true.
But tell me, when I am compared to a worm, it would be logicall to assume that religion was also founded by worms. Worms whose abilities are the same as mine, and they saw the truth? Perhaps I ,as a worm, am oblivious to the dragon (which would be god) but perhaps it is not there or does not care about the worms.
So tell me, from where did you gain the ability to see my existance and god in such an objective way? Can you do it because you have faith? Obviously
you must have great faith that you and your religion is right, but the founders and members of all religions are just as capable of seing the truth as I am. So tell me, why am I wrong but you are right?
If I understand that correctly you think my views are heretic and my puny mind cannot aprehend god. But from the text I gain the impression that the catholic church has gained insights in god´s nature.
This quote is obviously a parallel to my supposed ignorance, right?
I can accept that I may not be able to comprehend the greater scheme of the universe, it may well be true.
But tell me, when I am compared to a worm, it would be logicall to assume that religion was also founded by worms. Worms whose abilities are the same as mine, and they saw the truth? Perhaps I ,as a worm, am oblivious to the dragon (which would be god) but perhaps it is not there or does not care about the worms.
So tell me, from where did you gain the ability to see my existance and god in such an objective way? Can you do it because you have faith? Obviously
you must have great faith that you and your religion is right, but the founders and members of all religions are just as capable of seing the truth as I am. So tell me, why am I wrong but you are right?
The mask that makes him look like god.
Preacher_X
Registered Senior Member
sargent lard, is your avatar pic really you?
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