According to C.S. Lewis (who was certainly making heavy use of his poetic license), Satan (and the rest of the devils) try to tempt people into hell so that they can feed off of their souls, which as one would expect is a rather unpleasant process from the point of view of the damned soul.
Well said!
This got me thinking; Would God punish us more/harder than Satan? I’m thinking he would because we have a chance to be forgiven and we have free-will. Free will is something I’m not so sure that the Angels have…
Particularly since it wouldn ever end. I mean, you are already dead and in hell - you can’t be emptied any more than you are. But they can suck you dry for all eternity.
Ick.
Depends on who you ask. According to Christian thought though, all of God’s spiritual creations have free will. Its sort of a package deal.
I don’t know who coined that phrase or whatever but it’s not in the Bible, that I know of, and I’ve read the whole thing.
Ok.
Basically, we have heaven, eternal paradise and whatever else
Then we have hell. Most things seem to view it as a place of eternal torture and whatnot.
Alright.
So, the idea behind hell I’d think would be false.
(I’m not religious, I spent my childhood in church and around 12 decided to NOT believe in any religions and currently think its all nonsense)
At any rate, IF there is a Hell, and IF God himself created it as some weird kinky torture place, WHY?
Is not God said to be all forgiving?
If he created Hell as a place of Evil (Hey, Torture and such is Evil by Bible Terms, face it), does this not make him Evil and UnForgiving?
Alright, now that we have that first part across, lets get into my ideas about hell (Taking the place might exist, the scars of church are still with me unfortunetly, and if I ever have kids they will not be forced to go thru that crap as I have).
Heaven is a place of eternal paradise. God is there, your friends, and whoever else.
Hell, on the other hand, is a place for anyone who doesn’t want to go to heaven.
So, basically, heaven is where you can do gods work or something, be with him and whoever else.
Hell, to me, would them be a place where you go if you don’t want to go to heaven.
Basically, all forgiving, I’d imagine god being as…
You can come here, my child, or go your own way.
Not then, this is all my opinion, but it’d seem logical with god. Wouldn’t it? Or, if he created some ‘hellish’ place like that, then I’d say hes no better then lucifer himself, in terms of being evil.
So, now that THIS is out of the way, let me go to a new subject on the aspects of God.
Personally, I could NEVER imagine anyone or anything being either completely good or evil. It just does not seem possable. We all are on the middle area. Good, Evil, and Neutral. We’re Neutral. So, if a god created us neutral, would he be good, evil, or neutral himself?
If hes good, why not make us good?
If hes evil, why not make us evil?
Now then, if hes an evil god, why not make us good, and make us suffer?
But thats beside the point.
God seems to be all forgiving and whatnot, but does this mean, being a good god, that he cannot also be evil? Gods Wrath. Term had to come from somewhere.
At any rate, when you get down to it, the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales stolen from other cultures to make a nice book thats good for reading but little else.
What do you remember before your birth? What was there before? Nothing.
What will be after your life? What is there to see or do? Nothing.
BUT, if you believe in the bible and other stuff like that, where are these so called ‘Gods and Goddesses’?
They ONCE were suppose to show themselves often, or tell their stories to mortals or whatever, so where are they now?
I’d say they got bored and left. Hell, all eternity, whoops, this is lame, instead of improvising it all over and over like I have been, why not let it go for a few thousand years, go elsewhere, make a new world and make it better, and come back whenever to see if anything of interest has happened.
Thats what I’d do anyways. You have all eternity to live, well, seems pretty damned boring to me. Damn, I’m only 19 and I’m already bored, glad I don’t have eternity before me.
The saying is “better a free man in Hell, than a slave in Heaven”.
It means that, no matter how comfy you are under a totalitarian regime, you’re still a slave; better to suffer the consequences of protecting one’s freedom. It doesn’t really make sense in theological terms, since Hell isn’t a place where your rights are respected; it’s a purely secular saying.
Nope, the saying is:
And, as MEBuckner pointed out in the third post after the question of the phrase’s origin arose, it comes from Milton’s Paradise Lost. He even linked to it, and gave the range of lines where it could be found in that long poem.
Sorry, no particularly deep 20th century secular or political thinker coined that one. Someone might have borrowed it, but the original is pure Milton and pure poetry.
Do you ever bother to read other people’s posts? MEBuckner answered that the quote was from Milton’s Paradise Lost right after the question was posed. Yet you come in a day later and say you don’t know (big suprise :rolleyes: ) and then have to slip in that you’ve read the whole Bible. It’s clear that you’ve read the Bible as you constantly club people over the head with it and quote it ad nausem, usually out of context.
Why don’t you try paying attention for a change.
I’m going to steer away from the “pop culture” religious view of Satan and sort of talk about the Buddhist and Hinduistic views of Satan and hell for a bit. 
Maybe this would sort of explain the confusion?
Buddhism is a polytheistic religion (even though for me, it’s more of a science and a way of life) where there are many Gods for all occasions (i.e. kitchen god, living room god, mountain god, sea god, etc… sort of like Greek Mythology). The Satan version in Buddhism isn’t bad, however. All Gods are good, and that includes the God that rules the underworld. The Satan version of Buddhism is there to punish the bad, but in a more sadistic way, yes. He coincides with all the other Gods (especially in heaven). He’s like the police… the heaven gods send the bad people down to the underworld so the Satan-police can deal with them. Does this make any sense? That was the way I was taught growing up (my parents are hardcore buddhists).
So I take it the Jehova’s Witness perspective of hell being description of non-existence isn’t really all that popular? 
I’ve always enjoyed that interpretation most of all. God doesn’t torture people (indeed, that’s about the most vile thing I’ve ever heard) who don’t go to heaven, they simply snuff out of existence.
They had their time.
This whole topic reminds me of I joke I heard. It goes like this:
An Enron CEO dies and goes to hell. The devil comes up to him to explain the rules. He says, no need to be afraid, Mr.CEO, Hell isnt realy a bad place. The CEO says “What do you mean?” So the devil says ,“Well do you like to get drunk?” The CEO says “Hell yes!! I love getting all smashed up.” THe devil replys “Well good then , you will love Mondays around here. You can drink all you want and not get a hangover.” Then the devil asks, “Do you like drugs?” The CEO says is the pope catholic?" The devil says “no, but if you like drugs you will love Tuesdays around here. Do all the drugs you want because you cant O.D. , your already dead!” The CEO says “Great!! What else is there?” The devil says “Well Wednsday you get to have sex with all the women you want. Just ask and they are all yours.” The CEO says “WOW! Thats a whole lot easier than dinner and a movie any day.” The devil then asks"Do you like getting poked up the ass?" The CEO says,“Absolutely not , thats disgusting!!” Then the devil says , “Well you are sure gonna hate Thursday then.”
Does it make the devil evil , or just a sadistic prankster?
Geez, ThunderBug, the post just above yours already pointed out that I’d answered that question.
Do you ever bother to read other people’s posts? Why don’t you try paying attention for a change? 
So like, basically everyone is Satan’s bitch?
Neutral would be Purgatory. If you’re Catholic, that is.
I think that Satan would be Warden Glynn on OZ, btw.
In Islam, Satan and his demons are as terrified of hell as mortals are and dread being sent there.
I’ve wondered the “why would he torture sinners?” thing since I was a kid in Sunday school. I was amazed when my teachers, all of them adults who really believed this stuff, had never even wondered “what is Satan’s motivation? Why does he hate humans?”, because it sure ain’t in the Bible. When I looked it up (long before the Internet) and told them “He was ordered to bow to and serve humans and he refused”, I thought I’d scored a major coup, but they reacted with a “that’s nice, Jon, sit down and let’s talk about Samson’s haircut and play with our crayons”. At the time, it seemed to me that hell would be almost a reward he’d give to those humans who’d help him give the finger to God.
My favorite depictions of hell
in comic books: SANDMAN (especially the “duel” and Dream’s defense of himself)
in literature: PARADISE LOST (of course; especially the descriptions of Dis and Pandemonium)
in movies: GHOST (simplistic, but effective)
on television: BLACKADDER (the Abp of Canterbury episode, whence Edmund convinces a dying noble that he really would prefer hell (eternity of rape, pillage, looting, etc.) to heaven (eternity of singing hymns, nature walks with God, watering potted plants, etc.)
Well, this thread discusses whether Satan can be forgiven, since he has been cast down even from the Pit into the Outer Darkness.
What if, in the beginning, all of the Elohim were equal in power, rather like an autonomous collective with harps and halos. Now, one angel decides He’s better than all the others and wants to be King. Another powerful angel opposes his coup de-tat, but She is overthrown and banished along with all of the “Rebel Angels” who followed her. Now who looks like the bad guy?
I’m curious as to how someone can claim that Satan is just another inmate in Hell, and yet blame and accuse him when people do nasty things on Earth? Why not blame Hitler or your Uncle Ernie(the one who died in a bank robbery shootout shouting “F__k you, coppers, you’ll never take me alive!”). Either Satan holds a special position of power in Hell with the special abilities that go with the position, or everyone that has ever been sent to Hell has these special abilities and we are surrounded by evil ghosties, or people should take responsibility for their own actions and quit blaming outside influences for their own faults and foibles.
But this puts to the lie the claim that when we die and go to Heaven we will have no desire to sin and will want to do nothing more than worship God. If an angel with a supposedly higher moral code and deeper understanding of all things God-like can get bored, angry and rebellious, what’s going to happen when a few billion(or million or thousand, depending on how restrictive your religion is-ymmv) human individuals go through the Pearly Gates?
I’m just I’m just Satan from the block.