Is the Devil really evil?

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Satan's actually pretty cool, just ask Milton.

Milton? Who's Milton?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton

He wrote Paradise Lost. It chronicles the fall of man. Satan is probably the most interesting character in the work.

Dante Alighieri's Satan is pretty interesting as well. Rather than a supernatural being able to roam the world making good people do bad things, Dante depicted Lucifer simply as the most punished of all the souls. He's frozen in ice at the center of Hell, transformed from someone just a little less perfect seeming than God Himself into a restrained wild animal devoid of personality and completely powerless. He also appears to not have the free will that places humans above all other Creation. It's the ultimate punishment for trying to take over Heaven.

Regarding the original question beginning this thread, I had expected a discussion of Gnosticism.

Fascinating concepts.

No one much talks about the Gnostics anymore, or even seem to be aware of them. And because of that every time I see the word lately I first read it as, "Gnocchics" based on context and instead think of the offshoot of the Pastafarians...

Here's my favoirte meme of 'good guy Lucifer' (or in other words 'good guy Satan/Devil')



Oh the irony...

There's a voice within that leads you toward learning the hard way on certain things - that's pretty much what It or He is, one's personal ha satan.

The word satan has been very misunderstood. Its been taken from the bible and pinned into a variety of deities, any deemed bad by rumors of christians. Even in the bible it mentioned many dieties and satan very little. These deities that the bible spoke of have their followers, but they are not the satanists who believe the idea its ok to be bad basically, or the kids that wear black or hang out in graveyards who dont know what they think. As for the occults of the many names in the bible of imparticular deities, (such as baal, molag, lucifer, beelzibub, etc.) they dont see what they do as evil but they might see child sacrifice or rape as a good thing. Lucifer for example translates to "The bringer of light". Or as lucifer was related to Venus, satan was related to Saturn which lead to later mistranslation.

Last edited by Magi on 03 Jan 2016, 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Then again so does Yahweh in the Bible (so long as it's not his chosen People) so that might not be much of a defining feature.

The whole Lucifer thing is also a hot mess when one considers that it's also mentioned twice in Revelation - once as the gift to the overcommers in the church of Thyatira (the gift of satanism? makes perfect sense...) as well as describing Jesus himself in Revelations 22 as the bright and morning star.

Synchretism is one of those things where hypocricies, hair-pin turns of logic, and blatant double standards can get hammered down to sit quite well together. Another great example is Deuteronomy 18 being strongly against pagan magical practices and how few of the famous OT prophets and kings apparently paid attention to that chapter of the Torah.

Oh yea lucifer was called the morning star also.

Same thing.

Mercury, and Venus are both "down hill" from the earth in the Solar System (closer the Sun than we are). So they both hang out near the Sun in the earth's sky, and thus are seen at dawn/dusk. Thus both are called the "mourning star".

Somewhere along the line the translators screwed things up so badly that "the Prince of Darkness" got the name "bringer of light"(Lucifer),and "the light of the World" (Christ) ended up NOT being called "the bringer of light" even though thats exactly what he is supposed to be. Go figure.

???

Exactly. Christ is the "mourning star". Ergo Christ is "Lucifer" (the bringer of light). But we never call him "Lucifer". We call his nemesis "Lucifer". Why is that?

I see both God and the Devil as being Neutral.

Angels are a kind of Lawful Neutral, while Demons are a kind of Chaotic Neutral.

It's only mankind that have the power to be truly good or wholly evil, and or a bit of everything in between.

At least those are my humble thought's on the matter.