Okay, this is my first posted question, but I’ve been lurking a while. Be gentle.
Avowal- I’m an atheist. Have been since I was twelve. I find myself debating with christians occasionally, so I try to understand why they think the way they do.
I’ve been trying to understand christianity. I was raised a christian- Church of Christ was the flavor. All my life I was taught that Satan is evil, he wants to do evil, and he wants people to do evil things. Apparently, he wants people to be evil so that he can get them into hell when they die, so he can torture them for eternity.
But why? What’s in it for Ol’ Scratch, anyway? What’s he gonna do with a soul? Why’s he want to torture people- 'cause he, himself, is evil? Then why torture people for emulating him?
If he’s doing it 'cause God makes him do it, doesn’t that mean that Big Daddy actually condones evil, and encourages it?
This is a common misconception. Satan is not going to torture anybody. He himself is going to be thrown in the lake of fire along with his demons that left Heaven with him.
There are a few thoughts on this. Mine is that he does not like God and in a way I think he is jealous of Mankind(God’s creation. So he feels like it is triump to turn away as many humans from God as he can.
God does not encourage evil. He truly loves his creation and the Devil truly hates them.
If you have any further question, please ask away and like I said welcome to the boards.
Having rebelled and having been exiled from heaven, the evil one now chooses to gather as many people to himself as possible to 1) defy God by getting lots of people away from God, 2) hurt God by drawing people to himself and away from God whom God would have preferred to have brought to heaven (assuming God mourns lost souls), 3) demonstrate that he is still powerful (for what that’s worth, since he lost).
Now, many Christian denominations have rather different views on the subject. (Everything from Satan being one of God’s agents who is just testing people for God and who does not drag them to hell to hell being a temporal location so neither God nor the evil one really give a hoot.) The scenario I originally described is the general description of the most frequent Christian thoughts on the subject. There are lots of variations within Christianity and the other “sister” religions (Judaism and Islam) don’t even follow those scattered Chrisian beliefs.
Satan rebeled against God because Satan thought he was ‘better’ then God. God cast out Satan, and Satan is still bitter about it. Satan wants to hurt God but can’t do it directly so he will hurt something that is very dear to God, namely God’s children (us).
He wants to keep God away from his children.
But, you reply, why doesn’t God (being God and all) just get rid of the evil one all together so we can be with God. That’s were the whole free will thing comes in. God has given us the ability to do what we please within reason and the laws of the universe (you know like - Thou Shalt Not exceed the velocity of light in a vacuum).
Okay, okay. That all seems internally consistent. It all seems to make sense, except the punishment thing.
God wants us to have free will. God wants us to come to know him, or worship him. Satan (Lucifer) didn’t worship him, and is being (or going to be) punished. Humans who don’t worship God get punished.
So the decision is; Worship Me, be happy forever. Don’t worship Me, suffer eternal torment. But hey, it’s your choice!
Uh, not much of a choice there. Seems like the deck is stacked against us mere mortals.
Here’s an analogy- Give me all your money, or I pull the trigger on this gun I’ve got pointed in your face. But remember, whatever happens is your choice!
Also, if God hates sin, and doesn’t want us to choose it, but we have to be able to choose it, why’s he let Satan have so much power? Seems to me that if he just went ahead and locked up Satan in hell, or destroyed him, thereby making it harder for Satan to tempt us mere mortals, then that’d be a bit more fair. Letting Satan keep his ability to influence humans while he’s supposedly being eternally punished for his past actions seems like a tacit approval of evil, to me.
As far as my beliefs are concerned, I don’t think Satan directly influences anyone. I don’t buy that whole “sold his soul to the Devil” crap. Basically, if you choose to do bad, you will go to hell. Satan is not forcing you to go to hell. So if you are a horrible person, you go to hell to burn with Satan. Having his own sort of place, Satan effectively governs hell. I’m not going to go into a deeper thing, but free will from God means just that…free will. God nor Satan can tell you what to do. It’s all up to you. Heck…Jesus had second thoughts about going through with the crucifixion!
Ummm, yeah. Look, there are dozens and dozens of topics in our Great Debates forum for discussing free will, the Divine Weasel, etc.
If this thread is to stay open, I’d ask contributors to limit themselves to factual recitations of religious tenets or theological theories which are responsive to the OP. This is not the place to debate those tenets.
And evilhanz, after that pun, I’m afraid that you are going to find out for yourself whether you are right!
Maybe I’m just being Zoroasterian, but I thought the Second Coming would be a Battle for Eternity and both sides were trying to recruit now, before the rush. Satan, the Lord of Pride (which was his real sin) against the King of the Jews, with billions of souls on each side. Kinda like dual warlords fighting for turf.
Of course, in the Zoroasterian faith things are more interesting. The Final Outcome is not decided beforehand, and each individual soul can, through free will, tip the scales one way or the other. In the Big Three, the fight is fixed and the Kingdom of a Thousand Years will go to the Eternal Underdog (or the Ineffable One for you non-Christians).
That’s the garbled theology of an avowed atheist. I’m probably wrong on numerous points, but I’m pretty sure I got the Zoroasterian stuff right.
That would be my theory as well, but wait a minute–hijacking, but I couldn’t resist–if souls are fighting, and the winner of the battle is whoever’s got the most souls at the end, that would imply that souls can die. If not, what happens to the souls who lose a fight in the Great Battle or whatever? And if so, what the hell happens to the souls that died? They just go back wherever they came from? Cause they’ve obviously already died once. I don’t get it.
In C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters”, the Devil et. al. wanted to increase the number of souls in Hell because the various demons liked to EAT them. I think the whole point of it was that the soul didn’t dissolve afterwards or anything, it’s just that it got to be conscious but absorbed forever in the demon. There were various complaints from the demon in charge that the sinners today weren’t as tasty as the ones of yore, IIRC.
As an atheist myself, I don’t buy it, but the concept is pretty cool!
So why not get rid of SATAN, and just let man be evil on their own? Or does this mean that, without a physical representation of evil, man WON’t be evil (no one to blame the behavior on, so the behavior stops)?
Good question, and I don’t have the answer to it. I believe that our free will and the existance and influence of God and Satan are linked, but that’s just my humble O.
LOL!!!
But seriously Lightnin’, you are looking for consistancy in religion?! Religions have so many holes in thier stories you could drive a fucking bus through them. Well i wish you the best of luck. Lucky me i escaped from the cult of christ years ago…
Not that religion is all bad, i mean if someone is comforted by the belief that there’s an invisible man living in the sky, hey more power to them.
Maybe Satan is taking hostages. Most branchs of Christianity state that God loves everyone and wants every soul to go to heaven. But Satan is tempting people and collecting souls that God wants. At some point, Satan will feel he has enough souls to begin negotiating his own pardon and re-entry to heaven in exchange for releasing all the souls he’s taken.
I saw this exact same situation on Jerry Springer the other day. It was the consensus of the audience that the Satan character (actually named “Jeff”) wasn’t all that.
Maybe, but try to look at it that way. You have a choice on how to live your life. If you follow God’s teachings and try to live a rightous life - this is how (and where) you will spend eternity… If you follow the ‘teachings’ of the evil one and push God away, you can continue to spend the rest of eternity without God.
As to the deck being stacked against us, well if you spend your whole life following the evil one and rejecting God and on your deathbed truely repent and want to come over to God’s side, He’ll accept you.
I’m glad to see someone mentioned “Screwtape”. In particular, you get the most culinary references in the “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” rather than the letters (rather poor dishes like “municipal authority in graft sauce” are on the menu). Both the letters, and “toast” are well worth reading. C. S. Lewis implied that the devil wanted to absorb souls into his own substance, while God wanted have them exist with him, elevated up onto his plane.
In “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, the Stephen Vincent Benet classic, the devil collects them like butterflies.
Of course, H. P. Lovecraft fans know who the REAL eater of souls is.
