What's so bad about Satan? (page 6)

Krystal

Robhic! I never really sat down and compared the two but when u think of it, Satan doesn't sound so bad after all! LOL

Thanks for the interesting point of view!

He (Joseph Smith). . . observed that Satan was generally blamed for the evils which we did, but if he was the cause of all our wickedness, men could not be condemned. The devil could not compel mankind to do evil; all was voluntary. Those who resisted the Spirit of God, would be liable to be led into temptation, and then the association of heaven would be withdrawn from those who refused to be made partakers of such great glory. God would not exert any compulsory means, and the devil could not; and such ideas as were entertained [on these subjects] by many were absurd.

sonnyboy

I like the character Satan much better than the character God. Who'd Satan ever murder?

Didn't he supposedly kill Lot's family? Not that I believe in all that mumbo jumbo...

Qcmbr

OK Straw poll

Who loves Satan more than Jesus?

dorayakii

daystar: That's not what he said. He told them if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad, they would be like God in knowing good or bad for themselves rather than having to be told by God what is to be judged good and what is to be judged bad. Also, by the way, they also would not die. Hmm, sort of a lie there.

He simply said, "you will be like God knowing Good and bad"... and they became like God knowing Good and Bad, it's quite clear... Let's have a look at who's lying and who's telling the truth...

Here is the Gen. 2: 16 plus the entire chapter 3 of Genesis... What Jehovah-God said is written in red italics, what the serpent says is written in red bold, and what the outcome was, is highlighted.

Genesis 2:16 16 And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. 17 But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”

Genesis 3
1 Now the serpent proved to be the most cautious of all the wild beasts of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it began to say to the woman: “Is it really so that God said YOU must not eat from every tree of the garden?” 2 At this the woman said to the serpent: “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. 3 But as for [eating] of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘Y OU must not eat from it, no, YOU must not touch it that YOU do not die.’” 4 At this the serpent said to the woman: “Y OU positively will not die. 5 For God knows that in the very day of YOUR eating from it YOUR eyes are bound to be opened and YOU are bound to be like God, KNOWING good and bad.”
6 Consequently the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something to be longed for to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them became opened and they began to realize that they were naked. Hence they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.
8 Later they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden about the breezy part of the day, and the man and his wife went into hiding from the face of Jehovah God in between the trees of the garden. 9 And Jehovah God kept calling to the man and saying to him: “Where are you?” 10 Finally he said: “Your voice I heard in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid myself.” 11 At that he said: “Who told you that you were naked? From the tree from which I commanded you not to eat have you eaten?” 12 And the man went on to say: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me [fruit] from the tree and so I ate.” 13 With that Jehovah God said to the woman: “What is this you have done?” To this the woman replied: “The serpent—it deceived me and so I ate.”
14 And Jehovah God proceeded to say to the serpent: “Because you have done this thing, you are the cursed one out of all the domestic animals and out of all the wild beasts of the field. Upon your belly you will go and dust is what you will eat all the days of your life. 15 And I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.”
16 To the woman he said: “I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy; in birth pangs you will bring forth children, and your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.”
17 And to Adam he said: “Because you listened to your wife’s voice and took to eating from the tree concerning which I gave you this command, ‘You must not eat from it,’ cursed is the ground on your account. In pain you will eat its produce all the days of your life. 18 And thorns and thistles it will grow for you, and you must eat the vegetation of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
20 After this Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she had to become the mother of everyone living. 21 And Jehovah God proceeded to make long garments of skin for Adam and for his wife and to clothe them. 22 And Jehovah God went on to say: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take [fruit] also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite,—” 23 With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden of E´den to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 And so he drove the man out and posted at the east of the garden of E´den the cherubs and the flaming blade of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the tree of life.

So what happened? You will notice that the outcome (as stated from the very mouth of Jehovah-God himself) matches the statement of the serpent, but contradicts the statement of Jehovah-God.

Adam and Eve became like "one of us" (like God) in knowing Good and Bad. Ok... the serpent told the truth there...

What next? The scripture implies that Jehovah-God put them out of the Garden of Eden in order for them to stop eating of the Tree of Life. So, they would not have died naturally, it was Jehovah-God who sentenced them to death, death was not a consequence of eating the fruit, but a consequence of Jehovah-God's dishonest action. When you read verse 22, it almost sounds like Jehovah-God was worried that they would eat of the Fruit of Life, like as if he had to act quickly in order to ensure that they would die... and he also throws a tantrum at Adam and Eve, placing upon them extra curses, so, the serpent told the truth there as well... If the serpent had meant, "if you eat the fruit then God will not kill you", it would not make sence, because even Eve wouldn't have been stupid enough to believe a serpent that says, "God will not kill you" than God who says "I will kill you"...

Another problem that comes up with the statement of Jehovah-God, is that it is quite clear that the "day" that he said they would die on, was a literal day. Why? Well because first of all, he says, "IN the day", a very specific statement. Secondly because of what happens as soon as they eat the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Bad, they're eyes are opened... in that very day, the effects of the Fruit are felt, so any death, should have also occured on that very day. A third reason is because of the Hebrew expression "ql mwt". From a cursory glance at the semantics of this phrase it seems to me that a more accurate translation would be, "you will utterly die" or "you will completely perish" and not, "you will positively (begin to) die" as the NWT would have us believe. It obviously does not take 1000 years to "completely perish" on the day you eat a fruit.

Another suspicious thing to note, is the very names of the two trees that were placed in the Garden of Eden. One was called the Tree of Knowlegde of Good and Bad, and the other was called the Tree of Life. If the Tree of Life gives life, then what does the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad give?... Fundamentalist Christians would have us believe that the Tree of Knowledge would give death, as a stark dichotomy to life. The problem for fundamentalists, is that the very name of the tree suggests that it was for aquiring knowledge which is something not inherantly bad. So they try to ignore the real meaning of the chapter (that a malevolant Jehovah-God wanted to withhold Knowledge and Life from humans, but that the benevolant serpent encouraged them not to be bound by ignorance). They then impose an entirely un-natural meaning to the text (that humans rebelled against a benevolant Jehovah-God, and followed the lying decieving serpent by trying to usurp Jehovah-God's sovereignty).

It is clear that there is something more behind this story. It was obviously first written by a serpent worshipping civilisation (NOT devil-worshipping) and the Elohim, (the gods) were the evil/lying element in the story. When Yahwehism took hold in Israel, the Elohim of Genesis were manipulated to fit into the concept of Jehovah-God. The serpent was vilified as the evil element, but the text-manipulator was not able to hide all of the elements of the original underlying story.

Incidentally, serpent worship is recorded elsewhere in the scriptures, when Moses turned his staff into a snake (he initiated this magic trick, not the Egyptians)... and when the Israelites were to look up at the copper serpent that Moses had constructed. During King Josiah's reformation, all elements of that serpent worship were destroyed, and the Hebrew scriptures were revised, to make it look as if serpent worship had never taken place as a state-religion. Snakes were vilified, and "haSatan" which once was a character or trait of Yahweh, gradually became an angel doing the will of Yahweh (as he is still considered in Judaism), then finally an angel who rebelled against Yahweh (as he is view in Christianity and Islam). Finally "haSatan" was equated with the snake in the account of Genesis. (I'm sure Leolaia could explain it much more articulately that me!)

For the Gnostics the 'fall' of Adam and Eve more of a redemption, and the serpent in the Garden of Eden becomes a heroic, salvific figure instead of the adversary of God and the malevalent tempter of humanity. According to them, the Bible is the proaganda of the evil Jehovah-God, who wants people to worship him and be trapped in a cocoon of ignorance and hate, instead of being free. Eating the fruit of Knowledge is the first act of human emancipation from cruel, oppressive powers, and the first step towards ceasing to be ruled by animal instincts and to be governed instead by the pursuit of knowledge, logic and reason. The negativity of the human condition for them is that Jehovah-God has removed the Tree of Life from our reach, so we have the capacity to be think for ourselves and have freedom of spirit, but after 70-80 years, this logical and reasonable being with such great potential, has to die...

tetrapod.sapien

OK Straw poll

me! jesus is limp anyways... so? satan got proud of himself because he was smart and beautiful? wanted to be a god? sounds about right to me! man, you xians are so backwards... TS

NYCkid

A belief in Satan and Jehovah or in other words a struggle between evil and good has it's roots in paganism. But more importantly, it removes the need for individual responsibility. Satan makes us do bad things so we need Jehovah or <insert your favorite name of God here> to help us do good. Since the Hebrew Bible says humans were created 6000 or so years ago and Satan deceived them and placed humans on a course of evil and death, then God has to step in for their salvation (nevermind that God didn't feel need to step in at the time of the Adam and Eve were deceived but allowed 6000 years of human suffering).

My mother keeps blaming Satan for deceiving her son. I keep telling her to not give a fictional creature so much credit and allow me to take responsibility for my own life.

Way back when, someone had to attach a meaning to bad things in order to make sense of them. Interestingly there are some in United States are now blaming God for bad things. God is mad at the United States for whatever, and caused the Hurricanes the terrorist attacks.

It's really laughable.

Regards,

NYCkid

tetrapod.sapien

Jehovah or <insert your favorite name of God here> to help us do good.

that would be tetragod thankyou. but, please no requests for helping you do good. being a saint isn't all it's chalked up to be anyways. ergo my liking of da satan da debil.

ts

robhic

QCMBR asks:

OK Straw poll

I don't know that I would use a term like love for either. I don't know them, I've never met them so how could I have even a passing infatuation, much less love for them? No, I'd say respect, which is earned, would be my closest feeling (if you can have feelings for mythical, fictional entities). And even then it could only be in regard to their actions (as written thousands of years ago by some primitive goat-herders).

Jesus is given credit for doing some nice things and being a stand-up kinda guy who hung out with prostitutes. I respect that. Satan is given credit for being conceited (so what?), reasonably non-violent and certainly has committment to his beliefs; i.e. his continual (again, so they say...) dogged determination to get man into trouble and piss off jesus and his also-mythical, fictional counterpart, jehovah. Gotta respect that, too.

Satan sounds like a prankster, jesus a pacifist and jehovah a homicidal, genocidal, mysoginistic egotist. What would you say?!?!

I'm all for letting "money talk and bullshit walk" by having some kind of steel-cage, winner-take-all, ultimate fighting challenge and let's see who puts up and who shuts up. Let's see if jehovah is so tough without thousands of manipulable Israelites to do his fighting for him.

I'm waiting...

And I will not worship someone named tetragod. OK?

Darth Yhwh

Well, I've been doing some reading the past two days and I have to say that Satan doesnt seem like all that bad of a spirit.

What's so bad about Satan?

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