excreationist
Married mouth-breather
I meant the writings of Joyce Meyer were the main reason behind the topic. Sorry I wasn't paying enough attention to what you were saying.
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Is Satan being present in many places at once Biblical?
- Thread starter excreationist
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DBT
Contributor
The book of Job has him 'going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it,' which doesn't suggest omnipresence....and satan presenting himself to God and obeying His directions on how to deal with Job, there is no hint of a rebellion, or having been thrown down from heaven.
Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
Is it OK to ignore thread topic and just plug a movie? I speak of course of The Third Miracle: It gets only 6.5 imdb points but is on my personal Best 100 List. Raise your hand if you've seen it; otherwise rush out and watch it!
In The Third Miracle a priest (played by Ed Harris) questions his faith, but then regains it. Is it "wrong" for an atheist to enjoy and recommend a film which celebrates miracles and faith? Heck, I enjoy Godfather without endorsing crime!
(Spoiler: In this fine film, there is an actual
Devil's advocate arguing at an ecclesiastical court.)
DBT
Contributor
Given an omniscient God, a cosmic court where souls are put on trial and judged would have to be a farce, a theatre for the lost, giving hope to those who never had a chance, where God knows the outcome before the play even begins.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Learner
Veteran Member
Funny enough there was a sermon I heard. The preacher said (paraphrasing) " We can't blame satan all the time (direct influence). 'He can't be everywhere at the same time'. It's those snares you got to watch out for that he's laid and left all about.
Elixir
Made in America
God was there when satan’s snares were laid so he knows where they are. If he is omnibenevolent, we shouldn’t have to “watch out” for any of it.
I know god is really only benevolent about some things, and has a pretty short fuse about others, so at the end of the day, you just have to trust in god that god isn’t going to let you fall into Satan’s trap, and if he does, he’s getting back at you for something you did before. After you fall into Satan’s traps enough times you qualify for unending torture in the Mar-a-Fuego, if you know what I mean.
So whatever you originally did to piss god off was probably a bad mistake. I’ve heard that you can appeal the case, and if you are contrite enough they might reduce the penalty to having to listen to harp music all day every day while sitting on and watching clouds with religious morons. All day. Forever. And ever. Until you are begging to be back home in the Mar-a-Fuego, enduring only physical discomfort from the fahr.
bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
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Isn't that Trump's gaff in Florida?
Learner
Veteran Member
The snares and traps is the 'knowledge' of how to commit sin and over indulgence of it
As in Satan's ultra understanding of the human anatomy. What entices us. Our weaknesses for example is addiction, hence the strong emphasis on sexual depravities and what have you in the bible.
We can do quite well harming ourselves and each other on our own. Once you're down satan pounces, as the scripture goes.
You see it's an age old method of satan to get man to cause these dilemmas himself. Satan was the accuser after all!
To feel the physical world and smell the flowers and natural air through our senses and nerve endings is a GIFT!
Unfortunately the traps as mentioned above is spun from the 'knowledge to sin' - getting humans strongly addicted, being enticed or dazzlingly bewitched, if you will.
(Not only Satan, Azazel one of fallen angels taught man the art of war in Enoch etc.).
Through atheist eyes I see you have a different narrative. Yours being foreign to me... but interesting.
At least we can have a conversation highlighting each perspective.
Elixir
Made in America
WTF? That doesn’t make any sense.
Whatever it is, a tri-Omni being would know it - if it existed, which it doesn’t.
Projecting Satan from the depths of your own ignorance of how survival instinct controls your thoughts and actions, doth not a convincing case make.
And theists wonder why others often consider them weenies …
Don’t lie, “Learner”. You don’t see ANYTHING through atheist eyes, because you are thoroughly brainwashed. If you ever got a glimpse of how your religiosity appears “through atheist eyes” you’d probably die of embarrassment.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Job 1
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
Just one of God's wayward sons.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Just saying...perhaps the alleged supernatural invisible entity isn't omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient but instead omni-anal. If you then look at your query or for that matter the logical problem of evil or consider things like "are we in a simulation" an omni-anal god might do some things like that....just to cross all t's and dot all i's. But it still wouldn't address things like the flood and genocides, anger, jealousy and allegedly being pure love. So I'm going to say the next trait is some kind of mental illness. Due to contradictory nature, you might think bipolar, but since we're talking about a supernatural powerful being, I'm going to step it up a notch to omni-polar. Given the alleged entity is alleged to also create the Universe and do supernatural things, you'd have to also add omnipotent. So, there you go: omnipotent, omnipolar, and omni-anal.
So where does that leave Lord Lucifer? He's probably a metaphorical part of the whole. I mean, if god is deliberately testing humans' free will, then the Morning Star is redundant. The worst moral atrocities were committed or allowed by god anyway. Satan is an insignificant afterthought. It's not that he's omnipresent, he just shows up by coincidence like a plot device in narratives to have a separate role.
But really, who cares? It's all fake anyway.
Elixir
Made in America
Silly stupid theists, and students of silly stupid theism.
That’s what the brightest of those students routinely conclude.
Learner
Veteran Member
Of course you'll say it don't make sense to you. When you ignore or omit the aspect of what theists understand regarding 'free will'. What we get from ideas like yours is a confusing foreign out-of-context narrative theists don't recognise.
Are you relating this "weenies" reference from the biblical contrast of 'love your enemies, love your neighbours as your self' etc & etc.?
It seems to me you portray some ignorance to the conceptual Christian doctrines which contrary to your posts illustrates instead the strong emphasis to avoid harming others i.e. by committing unselfish acts - the biblical emphasis, putting others before yourselves, which isn't quite the "survival instinct" you'd expect when it's purely for 'ones own self preservation' - the instincts commonly known in the atheist world as "survival of the fittest".
I'm talking about YOU (and your likers). Through YOUR eyes as you think or prefer to see as descriptions in the bible.
Elixir
Made in America
O mighty seer through The Eyes of Others, is it not now time to forewarn of the wrath of the benevolent Creator!?
I never pretended to be an expert on your superstitions. They’re stupid.
masterpeastheater
Junior Member
The Satan thing in the bible is actually quite vague, but the way evangelical talk you would thinks he's just as omnipotent as God himself.
Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
Ezekiel 11
18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable
things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence.
19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you;
and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an
heart of flesh:
20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them:
and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Also see:
Ezekiel 11:18-20
Ezekiel 36:25-7
Jeremiah 24:7
Jeremiah 31:33-34
Jeremiah 32L38-41
Hebrews 8:10-12
Hebrews 10:15-17
If as per Bible, God can eliminate our ability to sin, and does not, all moral
evil is God's fault and not ours, and original sin is not either. after mark 16
the Great Commission, God could act to put his spirit, his laws and commands
in the hearts of all mankind. A god that could do this as per Bible and does
not is an evil God.
These verses are among the most ignored verses of the Bible. All good
atheists should know them.
18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable
things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence.
19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you;
and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an
heart of flesh:
20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them:
and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Also see:
Ezekiel 11:18-20
Ezekiel 36:25-7
Jeremiah 24:7
Jeremiah 31:33-34
Jeremiah 32L38-41
Hebrews 8:10-12
Hebrews 10:15-17
If as per Bible, God can eliminate our ability to sin, and does not, all moral
evil is God's fault and not ours, and original sin is not either. after mark 16
the Great Commission, God could act to put his spirit, his laws and commands
in the hearts of all mankind. A god that could do this as per Bible and does
not is an evil God.
These verses are among the most ignored verses of the Bible. All good
atheists should know them.
ideologyhunter
Contributor
(Genuine question, not snark)
Am I wrong, or do a lot of pastors in the mainstream, "softer" Protestant denominations, i.e., Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, not preach about Satan at all -- or do so only when Satan comes up in one of Jesus' sayings in the scripture used that Sunday? I haven't attended a worship service in 50 years or so, and thus I really don't know from experience. And, is Satan a big deal in Catholic services?
Subjective sense, on my part: the evangelicals and the Baptists keep Satan alive, but the other denominations seem to soft-pedal him (I started to type Him) because it seems a bit silly to go on about the devil.
(Now back to snark) Pretty much in the same way that, if I were a pastor -- huuuuge stretch here -- I'd steer clear of the sillier Bible stories, like the striped sticks determining the color of the lambs' coats...Zipporah using foreskin blood to chill God's bloodlust...the battle where Moses holding up his hand changed the outcome...you know, the cuckoo stuff.
Am I wrong, or do a lot of pastors in the mainstream, "softer" Protestant denominations, i.e., Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, not preach about Satan at all -- or do so only when Satan comes up in one of Jesus' sayings in the scripture used that Sunday? I haven't attended a worship service in 50 years or so, and thus I really don't know from experience. And, is Satan a big deal in Catholic services?
Subjective sense, on my part: the evangelicals and the Baptists keep Satan alive, but the other denominations seem to soft-pedal him (I started to type Him) because it seems a bit silly to go on about the devil.
(Now back to snark) Pretty much in the same way that, if I were a pastor -- huuuuge stretch here -- I'd steer clear of the sillier Bible stories, like the striped sticks determining the color of the lambs' coats...Zipporah using foreskin blood to chill God's bloodlust...the battle where Moses holding up his hand changed the outcome...you know, the cuckoo stuff.
Politesse
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I was raised Lutheran (ELCA), and later pursued ordination within that body. I can confirm that Satan does not play a significant role in the daily life of this tradition, and in the absence of any real church teachings, individuals tend to vary widely from one another in their beliefs on the matter. But this rarely reaches the pulpit. "The devil" is often brought up metaphorically as a sort of figure of temptation and plays a role in some of the scriptural readings that are part of the ordo, but is very seldom talked about as though he were a real person or a major part of the cosmology of the church. The most important instance of Satan in the liturgy, that I can recall at the moment at least, is that when a child is baptized their parents pledge to "Renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways", or in the case an adult baptism, the baptized will do this themselves. In historical times, there was a dramatic section in which the pastor touched his fingers to the child's lips and ears and said "Ephphatha, that is, Be thou opened. But thou, devil, flee; for God’s judgment cometh speedily". But that mini-exorcism is no longer a part of the rite.
And in any case, baptism is held to resolve the matter effectively. For a mainstream Lutheran, to place too much emphasis on Satan or to portray him as any sort of real threat to a Christian who has already been baptised would be to doubt the grace of God and the efficacy of baptism, two of the most fundamental Lutheran philosophical concepts. If there is a Satan he has no power over the saved, and could never have. God's grace is sufficient, as the Scriptures put it, to "cover a mutlitude of sins". Or presumably the influence of a demon, however notorious that demon might be. We may fall short of the grace which was gifted to us, but we are not its source and have no power to rescind or lose that salvation.
My experience of the German unified churches has been that their attitude is fairly similar. Ditto Presbyterianism. I understand that Satan and Hell are much more common topics of conversation among the Lutheranism's conservative American splinter churches, the Wisconsin and Missouri Synods, but I am not certain what their official position on him/it might be in specific terms.