No Satan

by jgnat 54 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Shanagirl
    Shanagirl

    It seems pretty obvious to me. Satan, the Devil, The Great Dragon, is Jehovah, Yahweh, Yaldabaoth, the evil god with lots of different names who

    is misleading every religion and all of mankind. Christ and his Father in Heaven will correct the error of this Yahweh god.

    Revelation 12:9

    American Standard Version (ASV)

    9 And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him.

    Shana

  • smiddy
    smiddy

    Judaism is so strictly monotheistic that the rabbis resisted the temptation to characterize anyone other than God with authority. Rather, God is the Creator of both good and evil and it is up to mankind to choose which path they will follow.

    So God the creator of good and evil leaves it up to humans to choose which path they will follow , with consequences or benefits , depending on which choise they make . ? What about Job chap.1 where Satan in heaven challenges God over Jobs faithfullness ? Is God arguing with himself ? or am I missing something here .

    smiddy

  • Xanthippe
    Xanthippe

    When I read the title of this thread and the op I really thought it was going to be about what theologists and philosophers call The Problem of Evil hence my earlier comment. Some people do evil things, there is no Satan. As Jgnat says humans are quite capable of being cruel and vile and committing atrocities. Soap operas say it all, people with angry screwed up faces yelling at each other and giving each other what for. Everyone wants revenge for their pain. When they have machetes and machine guns it really is a blood bath. We have to give up on the idea of revenge and let this world grow up.

  • Pacopoolio
    Pacopoolio

    The Christian idea of Satan completely destroys the idea of a benevolent, multi-omni God as described by Jws and some Christian subsets.

    As anyone that has done even the slightest study on psychology knows, "Free Will" is a perceptive illusion. We only "feel" like we are in control of things because we don't have the brainpower or history to trace all of our mental influences.

    In reality, people are "programmed" based on two things:

    1) Our biological makeup, and
    2) How that combines with what we are exposed to through life

    Because no person has no control over their biological makeup and (especially) their early exposure, they cannot have true free will because of this. The person we become is out of our control. We only "feel" that we do, because once our base makeup is formed, internally, it "feels" like we have choice from within. If a brain or computer was powerful enough, it could accurately predict any choice we would make by factoring in our biology + the stimuli we receieved (ie. an all-knowing God would be able to predict this).

    According to JW and some Christian mythology, God created an angel that "chose" to go against God.

    However, God created (a) that angel's makeup, and (b) the environment that angel was placed into, so there's no avoiding the fall is directly God's fault, since he made the angel exactly what he was. There is absolutely no way around this.

    This was something I brought before parents and the elders when I was a teen and still attending before I "faded." The conversations basically went:

    "You accept that people are a combination of their environment and their biology, correct? We aren't blank slate souls all born into the same conditions - our "person" is formed by our brain chemistry and our environment, right"

    - Yes.

    "Who created the brain chemistry and bodies of Adam/Satan?"

    - Jehovah

    "Who created the environment?"

    - Jehovah

    "So how could they sin?

    - They had free will and chose to!

    "But you just said that their decisions are based on aspects out of their control, as they are determined by creative and environmental factors!"

    - *Strains to think. Gets mad. * What you're saying God is imperfect now?! He gave us all free will!

    "-YOU- just said that. You admitted it two seconds ago! What other magical factor is there that exists outside of what was stated that causes us to be what we are?!"

    - We have free will! (Shuts conversation down)

    ...it was one of the most highly frustrating things, even as I was a kid, and one of the first times I noticed cognitive dissonance in action.

  • cofty
    cofty

    We have to give up on the idea of revenge and let this world grow up. - xanthippe

    Steven Pinker shows in his book "The Better Angels of our Nature" that it has been the process of giving up our right for vengence to the justice of the state, that has led to the safest period in all of human history.

  • Laika
    Laika

    Steven Pinker shows in his book "The Better Angels of our Nature" that it has been the process of giving up our right for vengence to the justice of the state, that has led to the safest period in all of human history.

    Which, interestingly, is the position the Apostle Paul advocated 2000 years ago. I always knew he was a great thinker!

  • caroline77
    caroline77

    I have had many discussions on my doorstep with JWs about Satan and get the feeling that they worship him as a sort of god, like Molech etc. They say that he has supernatural powers and that God had to make a sacrifice to him in the form of Jesus suffering.

  • WTWizard
    WTWizard

    It should be blatant that Satan is not evil. Anyone that remembers how Genesis 2 and 3 went knows who had to issue the death threat, and who was trying to put knowledge in the hands of the human race. Why did joke-hova not want us knowing good and bad? Could it be simply because that thing intended for us to be slaves? And who was it that tried to extricate us from that slavery? It is as blatant as day and night, right in the beginning of any LIE-ble anyone has handy, or even if one has to look up that damnation book online.

    Joke-hova is the one that needs to make us afraid. It is joke-hova that threatens damnation as a punishment for disobeying. It is joke-hova that wants us to not explore our souls, the universe, and the astral. It is joke-hova that throws temper tantrums when it doesn't get its way. How many peoples did Satan conquer, unprovoked, simply to provide a bogus messiah with which to enslave the human race? Did Satan purpose "a people" that is to take control of "the nations" with the purpose of creating communism, and then blame the other side? That whole LIE-ble blatantly exposes joke-hova as the real communist, not Satan.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    exWTslave, thank you for summarizing my revelation so nicely! Xanthippe, I appreciate your efforts to refocus the OP.

    cofty, most interesting. Haidt offers that the pressures of civilization has been been civilizing humans for many generations now, selectively preferring our tamer brethren.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    For example, William Muir's experiments with group selection in chickens, has resulted in lower aggression and higher yields.

    https://ag.purdue.edu/ansc/pages/bmuir_res.aspx

    Basically, we all do better if we all get along, and this shows up genetically within a few generations.

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