(August 24, 2016 at 6:18 pm)Whateverist Wrote: I am.  Satan's my inferno daddy.

It's amazing how satan has become the enemy under christian theology. Because if you read about him in the bible the best descriptor is "god's most loyal and effeicient servant, who is shafted with all the shitty jobs".

(August 24, 2016 at 6:33 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote: It's amazing how satan has become the enemy under christian theology. Because if you read about him in the bible the best descriptor is "god's most loyal and effeicient servant, who is shafted with all the shitty jobs".

I grew up fundamentalist christian and so it seemed normal to me, but after having been an atheist for a couple decades, it really strikes me now how absurd christian theology is. Your'e right, any reasonable exegesis of the scriptures will describe the character of Satan in terms nowhere near the current portrait. But theologians don't give a fuck. A villain serves the narrative for dramatic purposes, so there you go. Satan's the badguy.

(August 24, 2016 at 6:42 pm)Gemini Wrote:

(August 24, 2016 at 6:33 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote: It's amazing how satan has become the enemy under christian theology. Because if you read about him in the bible the best descriptor is "god's most loyal and effeicient servant, who is shafted with all the shitty jobs".

I grew up fundamentalist christian and so it seemed normal to me, but after having been an atheist for a couple decades, it really strikes me now how absurd christian theology is. Your'e right, any reasonable exegesis of the scriptures will describe the character of Satan in terms nowhere near the current portrait. But theologians don't give a fuck. A villain serves the narrative for dramatic purposes, so there you go. Satan's the badguy.

They need a bad guy because you can't worship a bad guy. That would make the evil ones who don't worship your god and who you're just about to slaughter people and not talking animals, making their pending deaths murder and thus wrong.

But that idea fails in a monotheistic situation because to have an effective other he has to be exactly as powerful as your guy who as the only god is all powerful. As you can see the abrahamic faiths are fucked royally by the problem of evil.

I can't hate something that I used to be. I can't fault people for believing things I once believed. I can't make fun of anyone for being convinced of the same things I was once convinced of. I can only think differently.

(August 24, 2016 at 7:01 pm)Aegon Wrote: I can't hate something that I used to be. I can't fault people for believing things I once believed. I can't make fun of anyone for being convinced of the same things I was once convinced of. I can only think differently.

I think one's inclination to ridicule religion will depend at least partly on one's early life experiences with it. If you were raised fundamentalist, then the people who occupied positions of leadership in your community were so laughably incompetent and pridefully ignorant (James Dobson, for instance) that it's difficult to make reference to them without involving ridicule.

On the other hand, there are people like my kid's teachers at school who have religious beliefs, and I would feel ashamed of myself if I were to ridicule them for it. But they're not the kind of people that defined the religion I grew up with.

I guess I'm of two minds in this issue: one is that christian theology is very very far from rational, but humans aren't inherently rational, so believing it doesn't make one liable to criticism. The other perspective is that we can learn to be rational and we better had, or the human race is fucked.

(August 24, 2016 at 5:30 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote:

(August 24, 2016 at 2:26 pm)Arkilogue Wrote: Have you looked up Panentheism?

Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God") is the belief that the divine interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical,[1] panentheism maintains a distinction between the divine and non-divine and the significance of both.[2]

---

Have you tried working with an extant infinite substance? A quark-gluon singularity with no external border?

Too many are trying to think of God's personality, which is almost guaranteed to be an ego projection...too few think of the substance of God.

Have you read any Spinozan ethics? If you have you'd understand that I'm pretty much on the money regarding pantheism. Well it's a lot more complex than that as a system of ethics, but the idea of god is essentially as I state it. In pantheism the universe is god and all in the universe are part of god. It does not exist as a separate being and is not conscious in and of itself.

The reason why I speak of god's ego rather than his substance is because it's all we have to go on. The writers of the world's holy books only gave us personality, no substance to be found because, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, wherever you looked he wasn't there. Oh yes, we got a lot of natural processes which were previously ascribed to gods, but guess what, as natural processes we now know no gods were ever involved (unless you're going to try and raise your idiotic notion that processes worked differently than they do now before we discovered their workings).

What? It is complete nonsense to insist that nature isn't of GOD... the creator of nature.

Anyone that tries to pit nature against GOD or science against GOD for that matter is being dishonest with others and most likely themselves too.

In my opinion of course.

Peace

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(August 24, 2016 at 5:46 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote:

(August 24, 2016 at 2:48 pm)popsthebuilder Wrote: It's a shame that you are having trouble getting past your preconceived bias in regard to what GOD is.

It's a shame you don't understand how god can hold three mutually incompatible properties. God being deist, pantheist and theist all tat the same time is as possible as me being hot and cold blooded simultaneously.

There you go attempting to limit the capacities of an omniscient, omnipotent existence.

Not biased at all...

Peace

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(August 24, 2016 at 6:06 pm)Faith No More Wrote:

(August 23, 2016 at 8:45 am)ChadWooters Wrote: I do not hate atheists. I dont even hate atheism per se even though I think many of the ways it manifests itself can be profoundly destructive for people and society just as misguided religion can. I strongly dislike some AF members but I still pray for their well being and for me to learn compassion through them.

No, you don't hate atheists. You just think we're all self-absorbed, wicked tools of Satan that deserve eternal punishment for not accepting your beliefs as true.

You're splitting hairs there.

I would like to state for any confused person atheist or theist or anything in between;

All will be judged by their works.

That being the case; the knowing hypocrite is at much more risk than the perhaps ignorant yet good soul.

And even still, eternal damnation to unbearable torture is not biblical.

The only unforgiving sin is that of knowing misdirection.

If one has yet to learn or be shown to the point of them gaining faith, then that person isn't held accountable for that. Their works, however will be what is placed on the scales and written in the book.

Christians or the otherwise faithful, being of some faith or knowledge, would be held accountable to a higher degree.

Peace

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Did we ever get a punchline to the OP?

(August 24, 2016 at 6:47 pm)Tazzycorn Wrote:

(August 24, 2016 at 6:42 pm)Gemini Wrote: I grew up fundamentalist christian and so it seemed normal to me, but after having been an atheist for a couple decades, it really strikes me now how absurd christian theology is. Your'e right, any reasonable exegesis of the scriptures will describe the character of Satan in terms nowhere near the current portrait. But theologians don't give a fuck. A villain serves the narrative for dramatic purposes, so there you go. Satan's the badguy.

They need a bad guy because you can't worship a bad guy. That would make the evil ones who don't worship your god and who you're just about to slaughter people and not talking animals, making their pending deaths murder and thus wrong.

But that idea fails in a monotheistic situation because to have an effective other he has to be exactly as powerful as your guy who as the only god is all powerful. As you can see the abrahamic faiths are fucked royally by the problem of evil.

So who said the oppositer had to of equal power?

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