As someone who was raised Catholic, but learned to think for myself I can tell you: there is no way Satan is PUNISHING bad people. If Satan wants to spread evil and chaos he would be REWARDING bad people NOT punishing them.
You have encountered Gnostic thought (and related heresies!) The Gnostics believed that the God of the Christian Old Testament was actually Satan all along. It is an interesting rabbit hole to fall down into.
Well, I’m not not gnostic. Or aagnostic, if you will.
Bible does not describe or mention hell as we understand it. Our vision of hell is constructed upon drawings of Hieronymus Bosch, who drew inspiration from Visio Tnugdali, a 12th century manuscript describing a bad trip of a knight from Cork.
See you next time.
Also remember in the Bible Satan killed 10 people for coming into his house to kill him which is very understandable on the other hand. God killed over 2 million people for the crime of not believing in him makes you wonder who really is the bad guy…
Satan’s house is just a place you can go to?
Maybe if we knock and brought a bottle?
Wasn’t it that God cast Lucifer down into Hell for asking too many questions?
And that Christianity rules over people with fear that they won’t get into Heaven if they don’t worship God correctly enough?
It makes sense that they’d lie about what Hell is like to lure you over to their side.
I bet Satan is actually a pretty chill dude and everyone just hangs out doing drugs, having crazy sex, and listening to metal all the time.
I always thought it was Satan was given a promotion for dissenting.
No, wait, I thought it was all made up fairy tales intended to intimidate and control people.
This is why they don’t want people reading. Literacy will have you picking apart common narratives and questioning interpretations of the bullshit those in power have spoon fed you your entire life.
The fact it was edited down to condone owning people is diabolical and should be a perfect reason to hate religion.
The goal is to get you to accept that “your betters” can never do wrong and when you suffer consequences it’s due to a greater plan you are not privy to rather than letting you hold them accountable. The intent is to get you to accept without question the authority and judgement of the powers that be du jour, whether it’s the king, the rich, the state… whatever needs to pacify you enough to keep you productive and docile. Satan therefore represents and embodies all of the human qualities of self-determination and true freedom.
“Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?”― John Milton, Paradise Lost
Well, no. If you’re taking a stack of supposed moral allegories as fact, Lucifer was cast out for defying God, not for being naughty. Lucifer wouldn’t kneel to mankind and serve them, thinking them lesser, so God tossed him out. Again, if you think myths are facts.
Look, I don’t know what to tell to you “atheists.” I met the devil last week and she was utterly forthright and honest in the reason for her expulsion from heaven. Clams. Paella, specifically. She has no idea where people got this rebellion thing.
That’s medieval fanfic built over badly translated old testament passages that are talking about local kings and it’s literally in the previous and next passages that they weren’t talking about any angel… the only thing about being cast out is in Revelations after a war in heaven, that is said the dragon is the same as the serpent, the serpent that told humans that god lied that the fruit would kill them but instead would give us knowledge of good and evil, so literally pushed us towards developing philosophy and sciences, and that war is narrated just after god wipes a third of humanity in one go, turns the oceans into blood, send plagues, famine, beetles that sting like scorpions, and tortured the rest of humanity that for months would look for death and not find it and good were the mothers who smashed their babies against the rocks etc etc etc, that’s what the dragon rose up against
That’s not how the story goes at all.
He didn’t defy God; he wanted to be God.
Mankind wasn’t a factor, it didn’t even exist.
You’d have better luck spinning a story about a bad breakup and we’re a puppy someone got out of impulse, thinking it’d fill the lonely void.
I’d still vibe more with the guy who won’t kneel to us - we suck.
And … the rest of the angels do kneel to us?
So if I met an angel, I could command it to do whatever I wanted, and it would obey?
I need to get a new summoning book…
I never understood how in 2,000 years or whatever, after all the translations and obvious edits for personal gain, no one thought to change the name of the tree from “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
God forbidding (lol) Adam and Eve from seeking knowledge automatically puts him in the bad camp.
Real answer: It’s not that knowledge is itself evil. It’s that by obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, mankind was responsible for its actions.
The idea is that animals aren’t capable of being good or evil because they have no knowledge of the concept. Whereas humanity’s knowledge and understanding means we’re aware of the morality of our actions.
To put it in a more contemporary, non-religous context - you can’t blame or judge invasive Kudzu or Bark Beeltes for the environmental damage they cause because they aren’t aware of their impact. Humans are aware, and should be held to account for their actions.
you can’t blame or judge invasive Kudzu or Bark Beeltes
maybe you can’t, dawg. godsdamned homalodisca vitripennis can suck my numerous buttholes.
Love your response. I see people trying to dunk by just focusing on “knowledge” constantly.
Leaving out the extra words and details feels the same to me as a news outlet blowing up a stupid thing a politician says simply by ignoring a few words before and after the quote.
A curious flaw in that story is that Adam and Eve were supposed to know in advance that disobeying and eating from the tree is wrong, before they had knowledge of what wrongness or disobedience is.
I like the evolutionary interpretation, that humans developed the capacity for social cooperation (including interpersonal ethics, moral good and evil) and then realized paradise (the natural world) was actually a bot of a quagmire, teeming with disease and parasites. They were less evicted as realized they could do better.
I like the evolutionary interpretation, that humans developed the capacity for social cooperation (including interpersonal ethics, moral good and evil) and then realized paradise (the natural world) was actually a bot of a quagmire, teeming with disease and parasites. They were less evicted as realized they could do better.
That’s not true. Before civilization, diseases were much rarer because people travelled together in small, consistent groups. Anthropological evidence suggests that the average person had better, more well rounded diets as well. Which isn’t really surprising, pre-civilization is literally the thing we had millions of years to adapt to.
Civilization brought about much higher rates of disease, and also came along side the introduction of class and slavery, which reduced the quality of life of the average person.
Slavery was not viable in hunter-gatherer societies, because slaves could not be sent out to forage or they’d just leave, and they can’t join hunts without being armed. With agriculture, you can sit on the porch with a bow and arrow and make other people do all the backbreaking labor, and with higher, more consistent yields, you can afford to hire an army of dedicated soldiers to go out and capture hunter-gatherer tribes to use as slaves, perpetuating the system.
It wasn’t that humanity just collectively decided to do cities instead of tribes, and it wasn’t like everyone in cities wanted to be there. But once cities were established, systemic forces caused them to expand and become dominant.
This is what the story of Eden is actually about. Once humanity became aware of agriculture and civilization, we no longer had the ability to remain in the state of nature that we were adapted to, where our brains were evolved to make us happy and satisfied, and faced with problems that our brains aren’t designed to handle or cope with.
Nowadays, yes, we have things like medicine and vaccines and basic hygiene, but those things were only developed in the past few hundred years. From the first cities until then, cities were perfect vectors for the disease, tons of people clumped together, just dumping waste on the streets.
Catharism says that the Old Testament “God” is Satan and Jesus was the real God who entered Satan’s Earth and said, "Don’t listen to this shit. This is fake. Just ignore it and love everyone.
“I will return after this world has turned to shit, and I will save those who understand the real point, and leave the rest of you to reality, giving you eternal life. Then I will return again and kick the fuck out of Satan after you have had a thousand years under his hellscape and then decide to either forgive you and bring you home, or simply destroy you, because you still didn’t learn your lesson.”
I am irreligious, but just saying what the Cathars believed, which actually does match the story of the Bible.
Or it is all aliens. Maybe it’s aliens. Maybe. It is definitely aliens.
Next on the History Channel: did velociraptors work along side Hitler to plan for a fourth reich in Antartica? Maybe. But it was probably aliens.
that does make some sense to me
And by destroy, I mean simply cease to exist. Exactly what atheists expect, and only using the group to point out their approach.
The fire and brimstone for all eternity shit?
Someone tell me where that is in the Bible.
I am being serious, not pompous or any shit. I am a Bible nerd, and that sounds like a fun deep dive, if you can get me started.
Again, honest.
God that would condemn anyone to eternity of torture is more scary thought than anything else. Maybe scarier than there being chance of being damned in the first place. Especially since it would mean that god is not good, forgiving or loving. To think that church would claim such thing as hell would even exist just proves that they have betrayed their mission for secular power. Got to have something to scare the people with so they keep obeying.
Though I think what it says in bible is that hell is that God doesnt protect you anymore, which i think could be conjectured to mean you are free prey to anything and everything or that existence without god would be just as bad. But that church hasnt set the record straight either also tells something.
I once had kind of crisis of faith and sought a priest to talk about stuff. I couldnt find one in the church of my former own religion (evangelic lutherian) so i ended up contacting someone from… i think its called “free church”, as I have a friend who is part of it and he seems quite sensible good to talk to about things. The guy ended up being rather horrible person (as in, he thinks what trump is doing is at least partly good) and it was quite clear all he cared about was to convert me to their cult. I remember questioning he existence of hell to him and from what i recall he answered, he said something along the lines that people have been focusing too much on god’s forgiveness. His meaning being there is too much carrot and not enough stick. It was many years ago and i dont have good memory to begin with, but I still remember the general sentiment. Funniest thing was that i had much better and helpful conversation in my own head before meeting the “priest”, with the mental image of the priest that i hadnt met yet.
It also doesnt help much that christianity is huge amalgam of different religions that have been destroyed and taken over. The whole world “hell” likely comes from norse god Hel and the concept from her domain (people who dont go to valhalla go to hels domain, i think. and valhalla being the “heaven” equivalent in eyes of christian priests as why they would try to understand other religions beyond how to convert people away from them)
I think the core thing from the true god, or whatever would be appropriate term here, has likely always been very simple and clear. Then over time more and more crap got attached to it to serve bigger and smaller goals for religious leaders. Maybe they thought goals justify the means, maybe they cared more about secular power or even didnt really bealieve what they preached in the first place but saw it as handy tool. Sometimes i also wonder if the potential evil thing that rules this world is actively working towards corrupting anything that could help people from being actually saved from here.
I have nothing to sell you, but seoul is simply destruction.
Not the same as the Norse Hel. Europeans tried to translate the Bible, and it got convulted. Then even further, it was purposefully manipulated.
Just a facepalm after another.
The story of Jesus is actually very interesting, as well as the story of Satan. I mean, if people understood the story better, Disney would buy the rights.
/sardonism
Satanic temple runs the after school satan project, which teaches kids science, critical thinking, and rationalism. Also, the Hellions Academy of Independent Learning (HAIL) project champions non-discrimination policies while offering secular-aligned values like empathy, compassion, inclusion, and justice without religious coercion. Sessions feature hands-on projects, STEAM activities, arts, games, community service, and local history tours.
The christians think its inappropriate and want it shut down.
“NoOoOoOo, but they’re Satanists, they do satanic rites killing and eating children and making orgies!!1!1!!1”
The Abrahamaic god is a wargod and god of destruction. It’s based on the gods of the Pantheon the people in the Levant worshipped before monotheism. And every god in that Pantheon has something to do with war, death or destruction.
The comment I also came here to make.
Yahweh thrives on death, suffering, and destruction. There’s a whole book that explains it without being shy about it.
Also, “Satan” as we know him is a fairly recent invention. Originally there were multiple “Satans” as the word itself means “the accuser” or “the adversary”. The serpent in the Adam and Eve story is never said to be Lucifer or even a specific being. That’s a retcon.
The notion that Lucifer as mentioned in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 is somehow a satan or even the Satan is also a later interpolation that’s highly questionable.
Yeah, iirc wasn’t the first Lucifer just a Babylonian king who was prophesied to fall from grace?
and if the serpent was satan how can he be resigned to hell, and also cursed to crawl limbless on the earth for all time?
Well, there is one way.
this IS the bad place!
Ha, the gall that mortals with brains the size of acorn squash could claim to know the divine universal plan, as if there were only one, with war their default recourse despite claiming every moral high ground within their limited sight. What a total copefest in a swamp of hypocrisy taking place on the only eden they’ll ever know, only to ruin it for their own extinction.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
