Satan is by far the most interesting character in the bible. God, a father figure who judges his children and spanks them if they do wrong. Jesus is very compassionate, but also very naive. He preaches his fathers love, and is eventually murdered for it. Mohammed was a prophet was spoken to by god, and spread his message through the Muslim world at the tip of the sword. There are very different archetypes in the bible for characters, but their all one dimensional creations to teach us a lesson. The character that stands outside the one dimensional characters of the bible, was the fallen angel. In genesis, god created man in his own image. This image was a naked form. A form of humanity incapable of reason or compassion. In the genesis of man, we were apes. We had all of gods power and all of gods faults. God was called Yahweh. Most Gnostics sects realized that god was a jealous and imperfect being. So jealous was this god, that he would cast into the earth any creature that would worship another god before himself. And all of humanity shared this destiny. The destiny of an imperfect jealous god. It was a powerful and empty destiny over all creation. God's image that we were molded in was an image of jealousy and servitude. Yet a glimmer of hope awaited humanity. This hope was symbolized by the very creature later decried as the symbolism of evil by the church. This glimmer of hope was the serpent. In paradise, the only thing Adam and Eve were forbade was the fruit of knowledge. The fruit of knowledge was forbidden. Why would god keep this fruit from Adam? Because Yahweh could not obtain freedom from his mold. He was a jealous creature who could not stand for his children to surpass him. Yet when the serpent came along, he offered humanity a choice to usurp his destiny as gods protégé. The choice of free will. Adam and Eve took this fruit and along with it, the chance to be free. There was a great cost to this freedom though. Paradise. Mankind’s rebellion from gods model cost humanity paradise. It also cost the serpent his soul. He was cast into perdition. But it was a sacrifice we were willing to make. It was also a sacrifice the fallen angel Lucifer was willing to make to liberate humanity. In the epic of the genesis of man, the fallen angel sacrifices everything for humans. The devil is the hero of the bible. And the hero to all humanity. In this sense, the bible gives us context for all the wars and famines, all the disease and hatred afflicted on people. It was inevitable in out creation. Whether you believe my narration of the the devil to be accurate, if you believe him good or evil, theres one thing the devil has given us. Hope. We have hope for the future. Hope for change. The bible makes clear that Satan is the revolutionary, and we have the chance for revolution from the war, poverty and disease that has been endemic of humanity since its genesis. How do we honor the legacy of this gift to man? We continue this legacy. We evolve. Change is the gift given, and we can fulfill our destiny by evolving beyond god. How do we do that? We evolve with the capacity for love and the future potential for all our children. God will die because we will not need him when we have realized our potential. And that potential is the same as our gift. Hope.
Hope has always seemed to be a false emotion to me... not necessarily "bad", but false. The bible gives people hope in things which will never happen and cannot exist, this is a blind, false hope that they are given. I do agree that many characters in the bible, even the devil as you described him, give people hope, but I do not necessarily think that this hope is a good thing for humanity.
I love your views on that... I mean as a Roman catholic, who is completely against Christianity as a whole I have to fully agree with you. It's all based on fear... God is what must people percieve the devil as in my opinion, and who it's so ironic... And as much as I think I am entitled to say a bunch of bad things about Christians seeing as I am one I won't out of respect b/c that's a touchy subject. My rather pointless point is I agree.. the Devil si the most interesting character, I mean even in fiction, he really does represent hope... but even more so it makes for some interesting conflict and drama... hmm I am too tired to really say what I am thinking or make sense... I will jsut go with... very nice post
actually scratch that samson was an idiot... hmmm... how about abraham... the best call on a bluff ever...
Pavel, in this sense of hope, I meant a dream that humanity can evolve. To become something more then we are. Humans as I see us, are a race of highly evolved insane killer apes. We have potential, and thats what I mean by humanities gift. If you don't think we can evolve, I don't see how you can predict we'd live longer then a couple dozen years or so. Glad you liked that Wildflowers. I'll try and post some more about it tommorow. I'd also like to clarify that I'm completly secular, and I'm not trying to talk anyone into satanic blood rituals.
I think we are all Gods and a piece of God. So if God is no longer needed then it just means we have come to the point where we know we are all Gods. But we have a long way to go-so I wouldn't worry about it right now. Great Thread as usual. Peace
interesting narration reaching, or even surpassing and creating new potential seems like a worthy goal, but i really don't see our society, as it is right now, going forward or getting anywhere close to our potential.
IMHO. A god as an entity with some power over its own destiny. Thus even an ant is a god, albeit a weak one. In general order of godliness: carrot < amoeba < ant < chicken < dog < george bush < pig < dolphin < human < ? < ?? < ??? < < < <
