What does Satan represent?

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People want to consume something to make them feel better because they live in s**t and squalor. How shocking.

An all seeing all powerful being does not take risks. Risks are for people uncertain of outcomes. God, by definition, cannot be uncertain. Also a perfect God is totally aware of the nature of the creature He designed and what the outcomes of its nature. He cannot escape responsibility.

The name Satan means "accuser", such as the prosecuting attorney in a court.

It mean adversary or accuser in Hebrew

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan

ruveyn

I thought it meant accuser in Hebrew. Or am I thinking of Latin word from which we get the English word "devil" and Spanish word "diablo", which basically means "one who throws across". Oh well, sorry to be confused about this. I should probably reply when I am more fully awake.

It also means accuser. I updated my post. Read it again.

ruveyn

It also means accuser. I updated my post. Read it again.


The satan (accuser or adversary) was not an agent of evil. His role was to point out the potential for evil in men.

ruveyn

I didn't quite get the same message. When the god of the bible says that he's a jealous god and to have no other god before him, I see the author telling the reader to take "all" or "none" of the advice in order to make the advice work.

Some millenia later after lots of misinterpretations, god comes off as a control freak and his followers didn't help the image at all.

If you think of the bible in terms of subjective truth, as in not believing it to be a fact but advice, for all we know, this was an accumulation of the best advice they had back then inter played with ancient history.

In my opinion satan is just a label attached to things that seem appealing, but ultimately lead to greater unhappiness. I remember making a big mistake on the job and really getting grilled about it. I had some friends who told me I wasn't wrong and that my supervisor was being an A-hole. I decided to take their advice because it was less offensive to me. By the same logic that couldn't blame me for sub-par performance (which had a negative impact on other people) , they mistreated me and caused me a lot of misery, where as the guy who chewed me out taught me a lesson that would prevent future unhappiness on my part. To me, satan is that undeserved break or shortcut that'll make you wish you hadn't taken it.

And my name means "god's gracious gift"; it doesn't inform my character anymore. Similarly, the name stopped informing the character of "Satan" in the Christian mythos...which if you were to consider it from the Jewish perspective, it's merely saying saying that something is a temptation, not a personification. Unless I'm mistaken, they didn't really have angels and demons and such; that was added with the Christian lure.

Do you think people have free will? I do. I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. I quit in 1962 and have not smoked any since. 48 years.

ruveyn

this thread flew off the rails as soon as people started referring to the bible as an authoritative text. Thats not going to work, you cant comprehend the nature of the creative spirit through any single book (that realization has to come through you) and you cant even begin to comprehend the nature of satan until youve had a glimpse of the creative spirit yourself. That would be like trying to understand cancer without knowing people are made out of cells.

Reading books can assist bringing you to an ephipany, but youd have to have been on the cusp of realising it on your own anyway. Youll only get this from integrating many different personal experiences from your real life and recognising the patterns that form. A book might prompt you to join up the dots in this way, but its the end result - if you take the book as a starting point your allready lost. So, logically a 2000 yr old book is going to be of limited use in this respect, as there wont be as much you can relate to your personal reality. And thats assuming the book is intended to aid you in that process anyway. The bible isnt.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJP24MzCD0[/youtube]

Last edited by psych on 03 Sep 2010, 7:57 am, edited 3 times in total.

An all-knowing God with INFINITE wisdom CAN take risks because He sees ALL POSSIBLE outcomes. God knows what CAN happen. In creating a human creature in His image, God included certain of His powers. The most significant endowment due to its role in the fall of man is that of choosing to do good or evil. God has no less the same capacity, the difference being that God only does good. Adam had a choice. God knew this inherently meant that man could also possess the potential for evil. But man wasn't made in such a way that he HAD to do evil.

The Tree represents that choice. God's creation would not be perfect without all possible choices and all possible outcomes. You can't grant freedom to do good OR evil without there being something you shouldn't do. The Tree itself was not evil. The choice to disobey God WAS. God did not set a trap; Satan (the Serpent) did. The evil of disobedience was made worse by the fact that neither the man nor the woman accepted responsibility for their actions. The initial consequence was acquiring further knowledge of good and evil, whereas man only knew good prior to the Tree and was thus incapable of committing sin. The second consequence was future responsibility for all actions, good or evil. Having knowingly and willfully disobeyed God, they realized the shame of what they'd done when they became aware of their nakedness, since outward nakedness is not a sin if there's nothing inwardly sinful to hide.

The sequence of events is a series of placing the blame on someone/something else to whom fault is not owed. Adam blamed Eve. Who created Eve? God. So the implied fault is on God. Who did Eve blame? The Serpent. Who created the Serpent? God. Once again, the implied fault is God. And because God does not do evil, God does not even tempt with evil, and God is good to allow us a choice to do good or evil, the fault can only lie with us. While God IS responsible for creation and for His own actions, allowing/disallowing things to happen to include the evil deeds of human beings, it is not God Himself who DOES those things. Blaming God is the final culmination of all sin, placing blame where it is not due in a vain, fleeting, futile attempt at absolving ourselves of our own sin.

And we know that it is impossible for one person to absolve himself from sin. Only faith in the resurrected body of Jesus can do that. By crucifying Jesus, man expressed the most profound "blame-shift" possible, and only in the person of God the Son was this finally acceptable. Anyone who has such faith in Jesus gives Jesus the blame, which He has already taken away from us through His death. And by rising from the dead, Jesus shows us that there may be life after physical death if we accept it.

It is unnecessary to say that this "risk," which is only a risk in one manner of speaking--the way I meant it when I first wrote it. Genesis affirms that God knows at accepts all possible outcomes, perfecting His will and providing hope for mankind through the giving and fulfillment of prophecy. Genesis 3:15 says this: "I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." The hope that has been afforded us through this passage is that of the eventual destruction of Adversary in the end. Jesus, being the "seed" of a woman and not a man, represents the fulfillment of the prophecy in our own time because He was broken the hold of the Accuser and sin on us, and we look to the final, future fulfillment of the end of ALL sin at the end of time when Satan will be banished from our presence. God DOES know all possible outcomes, even providing a remedy should we fail.

Choices are not random. They are motivated not only by possibilities but by a fixed series of events conditioned by past conditions. A perfect being is aware of this and knows well what the outcome of any situation will be. Free will is not only nonsense, it is totally undesirable by anyone who must make sensible judgments over how to act. A superbeing who knows and understands all possibilities is also aware of all their probabilities. Risk is impossible with such a mind.

Unnecessary assumption--that just raises the question of what is meant by "sensible." The scope of human perception is limited. I think you and I would both agree on that, though for completely different reasons. If a person is aware of the limits of their perception, then they can understand that certain things which may seem non-sense at first glance given a range of ability at a specific point in time actually can possibly make sense in a different context. This is one major point of scientific, empirical inquiry, in fact, of being able to admit that which we do not know, but nevertheless persist in improving the scope of our perceptual "vision" (using that term loosely, I'm referring to any number of ways of perceiving). We perceive a certain "wrongness" about that which makes sense and yet doesn't make sense. I don't "understand" all that makes gravity work, yet I do recognize that it is an active and present force that keeps me within a safe relationship with the Earth.

For a human being, the ability to venture into the "great unknown" is actually an advantage, not a disadvantage, and discovery very often is the product of thinking and actions which are initially non-sensible; not because we are irrational, but because we know from experience the value of occasionally taking a risk and stumbling onto something that is beneficial. Even in failures, human beings discover as much about what TO do by discovering what NOT to do and learning lessons. This is, again, an empirical feature of scientific inquiry as well. We "think" we know what will happen, but then we are forced to draw unexpected conclusions when the unexpected happens.

Free will, then, is embodied by the mind's ability to inquire, to reason, and to act. It does not exist if decisions can't be made, if choices cannot be had.

Now, are choices random? No. They CAN be, but I would agree with you that in MOST CASES they are not. God can't randomly create man and endow man with the ability to choose; it is a deliberate action. God knows all outcomes. Man chose one contrary to God's will for man. God, in seeing that this was possible, yet leaving the choice up to man to decide whether to do good or evil, ALSO provided a means for man's redemption. The absence of random action does not negate free will.

Can Sand make the concept of justice dance with the number 2? No. But there is no problem because Sand is not all powerful.

The problem only arises because you suppose god is all powerful. This proves that the idea of an all powerful being is inconsistent - just like a square triangle.

Silly word games? Don't forget it is you who brought these ideas up.

To varying degrees.