(April 12, 2017 at 10:22 am)Chad32 Wrote: I'm kind of meh about that. We've been told Satan as evil. Though the fact that we're told this by people who worship a mass murdering psychopath makes me feel that may not be accurate. Of course one evil being can still call another being evil, and be correct, but the devil's main crime seems to be not wanting to worship Yahweh, whose actions would be considered horrifically evil by a modern audience, if it was committed by anyone else. That makes the devil more relatable than god. The story of the devil is an interesting one, but since it's entirely one-sided, we can't get a good answer. Of course Satan and Yahweh are likely fictional characters, so in the end it doesn't really matter, anymore than analyzing Gandalf and Saruman.
No that is a trap, the devil didn't just say "I don't want to follow you" he is still a character that gets you to do his bidding and you STILL end up under his rule of torture as set up by God. It is still a rigged bet. The "I don't want to follow you" isn't about denying existence in that story, it is meant as "I defy you" having nothing to do with the devil using anymore reason and logic or objectivity than the God character. BOTH are selfish narcissists as characters only that one has more power than the other.
Neither are moral characters. It isn't merely likely they are both fictional, they flat out are both fictional.
I told you where our species morality comes from, and it is in our species, not old books of myth. Just like there is no Yoda or Darth Vader battling to compete for followers.
That was then, this is now. It was understandable humans made bad guesses as to heaven and the underworld but those motifs of good vs evil existed long before modern monotheism even in prior polytheism. There is no evidence of either regardless.
