Nightline Debate: Does Satan Exist?

[six7s]

That's understandable. I tell this story by speaking in the third person and then from the first person as an Earthling, then the first person of an other-world inhabitant. Not really all that happy with it, but don't really want to write a book.
This is the same story I was telling in a couple of other threads. I just changed it from being an objective view of describing it, to a personal subjective telling of it.
It is my way of trying to answer one of those problems about God, specifically why God allows evil to exist. The way I explain it is that Satan is restricted, at present, to this one planet. He has been allowed to continue to prove that his system only leads to bad things and we would have been better off without him ever getting involved. It's pretty much gotten to a point where the results can be calculated and the test ended. The idea is that the spirit of rebellion will end with the final judgement against Satan. Meanwhile, there are people on other planets who are going to wait for the results because long ago, when Satan was Lucifer, he was allowed to travel freely and many had heard his message and may be wanting to accept it, if it seemed to work out the way he claimed it should.

No, I did not invent this concept of us being a showcase for the alternative to being obedient. You can see KK's comment where she says that Satan is an example of what not to be. The theory I am advocating just takes that a step further by saying that Satan is an example, for everyone, not just people on this planet who are suffering the ill affects of disobedience.
What I was talking about earlier concerning inventing devils has to do with making Satan in the image of people we want to be persecuted. I do not think I am doing that. Unless I am demonizing free willers'. I am about sick of hearing this everywhere, more than I can remember anyone ever talking about it in the past. I do not think it is a good thing to imagine we have free will. Adam and Eve had free will and traded it for something else. They learned to tell the difference between good and evil, but not how to be able to always do the good. God has to give us the desire to be good, meaning we are not saved by our seeking God, but by God seeking us.

Dear Ethnikos,

Thank you for taking the time and effort to reply to my questions

Alas, I have no idea what you mean

Do you?

Yours sincerely
six7s

 

[TimCallahan]

Since the world is a mix of good and evil, let me posit three possible alternatives:

1) God (or the gods) is not all good or is not all powerful and is thus not abe to banish evil.

2) God is a being beyond such concerns about good and evil. These are largely human constructs. God (or the gods) is only marginally concerned about the human race. Evil exists becccause God isn't all that concerned with human well-being

3) There is no God. The first cause is not a creator god, but rather the universe itself.

Let me also point out that, with your still unresolved conundrum, you imagine a world of threat, run by an inimical being. YOu are therefore doomed to having a seige mentality. In fact, the re is no threat. The world is indifferent to us.

Ethnikos: I still don't hae an answer to these questions. What is your response?

 

[TimCallahan]

We become adopted as sons through Jesus, who is the true Son. When you believe in God and His Son, you are not ruled by the spirit of Satan. Jesus was sent by God to bring the truth to us and to complete a victory over sin and death. Our faith in him bonds us to Jesus, and the acceptance the Father offers him is shared by us. This status of acceptance gives us the right to share in God's Spirit that Jesus gives us to be better people. We have a better ability to resist the traps of the sinful world and are no longer under Satan's authority.
We should not use our status as sons of God to judge others because we should see ourselves, as we were before we were saved, in the ones yet to find it. Instead of hating them, we should love them because God loved us before we knew Him.

Okay, you still haven't answered how humans, as God's creations, would be the sons of Satan.

 

[Ethnikos]

Ethnikos: I still don't have an answer to these questions. What is your response?

I thought my answer was included in post #295.
I was not trying to avoid answering it, just not wanting to be redundant.
I am not sure about where you get this question from and how authoritative it is. For example it makes a statement about God having to be "all good and no evil", according to the modern understanding of God.
Do you have some sort of proof that this is correct?
I do know there is a small minority of people who suffer a form of insanity that makes it impossible for them to accept that God kills people. I have run into them at church, where you can argue all day long with them and no matter how good your evidence is, they will not believe it.
I hope none of those people ever make it into policy making positions in the church. Obviously, God is capable of all sorts of things that seem terrible to us and could be classified as "bad" if you like. God destroys who He wants and allows what He wants to allow, for His own purposes. You can be like the people in the book of Job who want to complain about God, but it turns out in the end that God knew what He was doing, all along.
Or you can believe that bad is the normal condition of the universe and just do whatever. That just makes things worse. We need to believe that no matter how bad things are around us, to not be bad ourselves. It has to matter what we do. If it takes the belief that God will bring us back to life in order to judge us, then why fight it? It might not work for you. Do you have a better motivation for not just being a wretched monster, since how could it make any difference?
Sorry about being boring and repeating myself because I am sure you have seen my explanation before. God may have looked at a possible universe and worked it all out in His mind, how it might work out. Simulations to test ideas about the best way He could make a universe. It just may be that a universe that is designed to accommodate free will and an infinite potential for the intended inhabitants is, by design, guaranteed to fail at some point. So He could either not create it, or go ahead and deal with the consequences when they come up.
If you read the Bible about the creation, you see that God does not make a couple of animals, here and there. He creates tons of them, after their "kind". What kind? Did He already have a pattern somewhere of all the different species of plants and animals, where it was no work to produce them? Just order up so many of all these pre-designed things.
Take this concept a little further and how about God not just making a planet with plants and animals and people. Why not tons of planets, with all the life forms on them?
If you can accept that, then what if all these other planets that did not fall, for whatever reason, were interested in what happened to this planet? God could just erase us, but that would not be much use as a lesson study. If things just seemed to be going along happily, despite there being a people in rebellion, it might be looking too inviting and not such a bad trade-off.
Satan has to be the main target of an in-depth analysis of what happens when people follow someone who leads them away from following God. So the devil is bound to destruction for being the instigator of rebellion and responsible for lost souls. Souls being lost has to be an outcome because of the general disarray of things, as an affect of the corruption of the world by sin. Defective people have to result as a proper demonstration of how bad things are at every level. You can not just have one part unaffected, while everything else is so messed up. If everyone was to be saved in the end, then there are no real consequences to rebellion.

 

[rollickingsunshine]

I was concerned as soon as Chopra called Freud a "great psychologist."

 

[stevea]

I refuse to get involved in this silliness except to say that KK really tied this thread in knots.
Where is the "Don't feed the trolls" sign ?

 

[TimCallahan]

Ethnikos: in response to your last post, all I can say is, "So much vrerbiage, so little substance."

As to the idea of God being all good, consider Genesis 18, where Abraham asks God not to kill the righteous with the wicked. At the end of verse 25 Abraham asks, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" This is but one verse of many I can easily find, but I wouldn't think I'd have to argue with a Christian that the biblical concept of God is that he is good.

What you seem to be proposing is this: We are too messed-up, sinful, stupid or finite to really comprehend God's plans and to thus realize why things are as they are. Thus, what seems to us like evil or God standing by and letting evil work its will or God deliberately creating a powerful supernatural focus of evil, i.e. Satan, is actually the just working through of a divine plan. However, we are at the sme time expected to act ethically and morally and will be judged if we fail to do so - even though we're too depraved to do this. But God, being merciful, has offered us undeserved salvation, if we will only accept it. Yet, it's already predestined as to who will or will not accept salvation. However, we are still responsible for refusing God's offer of salvation, for which we will not simply be erased, but will be sent to hell for eternity (see Romans 9:14 -24). All of this is part of God's boundless and perfect love for us.

Did I miss anything?

 

[Ethnikos]

However, we are still responsible for refusing God's offer of salvation, for which we will not simply be erased, but will be sent to hell for eternity (see Romans 9:14 -24). All of this is part of God's boundless and perfect love for us.
Did I miss anything?

I have to disagree with the eternal hell thing. Other than that, it looks like you have it boiled down pretty well. So, just the substance without all the verbage.
That is not some punishment that goes on forever. There is a spiritual prison which is just us not being able to be alive. Even that is done away with at the final judgment. I suppose it is difficult to get that image out of yor mind once it is put on you. I remember being a very young child and being taught that if you lie, you will go to hell. That sort of thing sticks with you. You seem capable of making an examination of the hell concept, or just do like I did and retranslate the verse. I think I put it in the "teachings" thread. The one about the lake of fire being a purifying fire. It destroys all the evil.

 

[Marduk]

I remember being a very young child and being taught that if you lie, you will go to hell. That sort of thing sticks with you.

that explains a lot, thanks

btw

 

[kurious_kathy]

But in a previous post (# 249)where I asked why God doesn't just smite Satan, you told me God allows Satan to stay in the world to perform his evil deeds to show people what not to become. Doesn't that make God in the very least an accomplice to this evil?

No, I believe he uses Satan to test peoples hearts and minds.

The real matter of importance here is once God opens our eyes to sin we can't help but know we need Jesus. I want to focus on the good more than the bad.

God has promised to forgive us our sins when we ask him too. How do you think someone comes to this point of accepting God's grace? I know it's a supernatural gift that God grants repentance to some of us, but how do you view it? Do you think people can even come to this point in their life without God drawing them?

 

[kurious_kathy]

I have to disagree with the eternal hell thing. Other than that, it looks like you have it boiled down pretty well. So, just the substance without all the verbage.
That is not some punishment that goes on forever. There is a spiritual prison which is just us not being able to be alive. Even that is done away with at the final judgment. I suppose it is difficult to get that image out of yor mind once it is put on you. I remember being a very young child and being taught that if you lie, you will go to hell. That sort of thing sticks with you. You seem capable of making an examination of the hell concept, or just do like I did and retranslate the verse. I think I put it in the "teachings" thread. The one about the lake of fire being a purifying fire. It destroys all the evil.

Uh Oh Ethnikos now I am worried about you, are you saying you do not believe Jesus's own teachings about hell? I would be sure to take him at his word.

Jesus spoke about hell more than heaven because he wanted to make people aware they do not want to end up there! The Emergent churches are guilty of straying from the truth, hell is very real!

 

[kurious_kathy]

I refuse to get involved in this silliness except to say that KK really tied this thread in knots.
Where is the "Don't feed the trolls" sign ?

Oh so only atheists and agnostics are not trolls on this board? What makes you label me a troll when I have been on jref quite a while now?

Just because I believe different than you do does not make me a troll! I think you just want to throw stones at me for sharing my faith with others. I will never quit sharing the truth I know with others. Satan truly does exist but he is defeated FOE! because Jesus beat the devil with two sticks!!

 

[paximperium]

Oh so only atheists and agnostics are not trolls on this board? What makes you label me a troll when I have been on jref quite a while now?

You don't listen, you are unable to understand anything and you preach garbage.

Just because I believe different than you do does not make me a troll! I think you just want to throw stones at me for sharing my faith with others. I will never quit sharing the truth I know with others. Satan truly does exist but he is defeated FOE! because Jesus beat the devil with two sticks!!

And that is a perfect example of how incompetant you are at spreading your "faith" in a board of critical thinkers.

 

[Ethnikos]

Uh Oh Ethnikos now I am worried about you, are you saying you do not believe Jesus's own teachings about hell? I would be sure to take him at his word.

Jesus spoke about hell more than heaven because he wanted to make people aware they do not want to end up there! The Emergent churches are guilty of straying from the truth, hell is very real!

Revelation 20:14
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

Look at my signature, there is another good verse. Hell exists as a holding place until the judgement. Do you think that happens at the end of eternity?
I don't.
I am not part of an emergent church. I belong to a conservative protestant church. I just do not think hell lasts forever and the verse used to support the notion that it does, can be understood to mean that test results of the purifying lake of fire will be remembered forever.
The work translated as torment comes from a Greek word that comes from a test to find the purity of gold or silver. Satan gets tossed into the fire that will burn away whatever is not pure. The smoke goes up while all of Satan is burned up. If Satan was pure, nothing would be consumed, thus no smoke.

 

[Marduk]

The smoke goes up while all of Satan is burned up. If Satan was pure, nothing would be consumed, thus no smoke.

guess you might be interested in the question that Kathy ignored at the end of this post
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4903119&postcount=262

 

[kurious_kathy]

Revelation 20:14
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

Look at my signature, there is another good verse. Hell exists as a holding place until the judgement. Do you think that happens at the end of eternity?
I don't.
I am not part of an emergent church. I belong to a conservative protestant church. I just do not think hell lasts forever and the verse used to support the notion that it does, can be understood to mean that test results of the purifying lake of fire will be remembered forever.
The work translated as torment comes from a Greek word that comes from a test to find the purity of gold or silver. Satan gets tossed into the fire that will burn away whatever is not pure. The smoke goes up while all of Satan is burned up. If Satan was pure, nothing would be consumed, thus no smoke.

No my friend you are twisting the meaning so watch out. Satan and his demons will suffer forever in hell and so will everyone else who dies outside of Christ. Why else does Matthew 10:28 Warn us not to fear the one who can kill the body but to fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell?

Mark 9:43-47 also has alot to warn us of...If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into (AG)hell, into the (AH)unquenchable fire,

44[[c]where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.]

45"If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into (AI)hell,

46[[d]where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.]

P.S. I just conversed with my hubby who understands scripture better than I do and he says you must make the distinction between Gehenna as Hell and Hades is Sheole the holding place which will be gone once people are judged and sent to hell. In the King James they translated everything as hell but if you go back and look at the Greek and Hebrew you will discover there are very big differences. Check that out!

 

[Marduk]

<<<<goes to get popcorn

 

[kurious_kathy]

You don't listen, you are unable to understand anything and you preach garbage.
And that is a perfect example of how incompetant you are at spreading your "faith" in a board of critical thinkers.

Okay Mr critical thinker,
What about all the prophesies fullfilled in scripture?
What about all the archeological evidence?
What about all the scientific proof?
You are really not using your critical thinking skills if you have ignored the things!

Satan is so cunning at his game he has blinded you to the proof that God does exist, but I am praying God will open your eyes before it is too late for you!

 

[Marduk]

Kathy, if all you know about Satan is from one book then you don't know anything do you, do you go around telling your friends that you know all there is to know about any other subject on the strength of one book ?
are you really that arrogant ?

 

[Ethnikos]

guess you might be interested in the question that Kathy ignored at the end of this post
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4903119&postcount=262

What's the question? If I want to know how the pre-judaic proto-satan was defeated?
KK has her hubby to refer to. I have this guy pAthena to refer to as the expert on Satan. He translated some of the texts from Ugarit and found these old mythologies that the Lucifer references in Isaiah came from.
He might have some info on the subject. Go ahead and tell me what it was and I can ask him to make a comment on it and I will post it.