The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

I think the difference between me and Evangelicals is that they see the discrepancy between the book and reality and assume reality must be what's got it wrong.

Im pretty sure most Evangelicals arent THAT crazy

Depends on the branch. Seventh Day Adventists made their own thing based on the rapture.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Not many readers—orthodox, heterodox, of other religions entirely, or of none—have ever imagined that the book's contents correspond to current observable goings-on. St. John (or whoever one imagines to have penned the book) certainly thought he was documenting something, though, and it'd be intellectually unserious, whatever one's beliefs, to wave off the question of what it was. It's the opposite kind of unserious from what too many Evangelicals have done, but not really better.

edited 12th Aug '14 10:36:30 AM by Jhimmibhob

Was he high? How many people have asked this before?

The island of Patmos, where he was while he wrote Revelation, has some volcanic vents on it. The fumes coming from those can cause hallucinations if you get exposed to them for too long. It's part of how the Oracle from Greek mythology was supposed to see her visions. (And yes, that does mean those women breathing from the vents in the Pompeii episode of Doctor Who are based on an actual thing.)

Other people think he was eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, but Patmos was inhabited at the time, so it was unlikely that he would have been unaware of what the mushrooms did.

Not Three Laws compliant.

And someone decided to make the writings of a guy high on fumes canon

You certainly wouldn't be the first to question if the burning bush might not have been a particular sort whose smoke had...certain effects... on Moses' perceptions.

Divine Revelation or Tripping Balls? Blasphemous fun for the whole family.

Numerous sophomores of all ages. Never caught on in exegetical circles, though.

More seriously, though, Revelation isn't too far out there, compared to some other contemporary writings. It's similar to some other visionary and quasi-visionary works of the time, and I gather it helps to have read lots of them to understand some conventions of the "genre."

edited 12th Aug '14 10:40:15 AM by Jhimmibhob

Considering the descriptions in Exodus make it incredibly likely that Moses' Yahweh was a volcano god, that doesn't seem too far off, especially considering how many vents would be spewing chemicals that cause hallucinations if you linger around them for sustained periods of time.

And again, it was largely the equivalent of political cartoons to admonish the Roman government and figures within, especially Nero.

edited 12th Aug '14 11:56:19 AM by Cyran

"That wizard came from the moon!"

There arent't that many volcanoes in Arabia. there's plenty of volcanic fields and old craters but very few active strato- or shield volcanoes

Who, What, Why: Who are the Yazidis?

Keep Rolling On

Pro-Tip: ‘Expecting The Rapture’ No Excuse To Stop Teaching Homeschooled Kids. Even In Texas.

I avoided them instinctively. They're pretty great indeed.

Waitin' for the rapture? That's a paddlin'.

edited 13th Aug '14 11:39:25 AM by Cyran

"That wizard came from the moon!"

The comments are hilarious. In a good way.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/mummification-started-in-egypt-1500-years-earlier-than-previously-thought-20140813-103ljb.html

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

"Muslims Condemning Things" Tumblr Answers a Question That Should be Obvious

"That wizard came from the moon!"

Well, officially. Unofficially, southern fundies have bled an alarming amount of their worse ideas into the other denominations, and Left Behind didn't help (related: if a fiction series was going to make large swaths of the country seriously humor some toxic theology, could we at least pick something that wasn't smug masturbatory garbage? Hell, go for The Master and Margarita or something).

My grandmother, for example, is nominally Catholic. But most of her paraphernalia is Adventist, and I doubt the Vatican would approve of much of her more detailed beliefs. She straight-up didn't believe me when I told her the Catholic Church formally accepted evolution several decades ago.

edited 23rd Aug '14 6:56:42 PM by Pykrete

Isn't there a theory that the two groups of gods in Norse mythology are actually the product of two differ t cultures merging?

Because I'm a weirdo I'm conceptualizing an epic high fantasy film series about the War in Heaven and Lucifer's fall into Hell. It'd be a mish-mash of elements from all the Abrahamic beliefs and would tie into a whole shared universe where every fable, legend, and myth is real.

So first question what are the different beliefs about Satan? Apparently in some versions Satan is actually God's biggest devotee?

Stand Fast, Stand Strong, Stand Together

In the bible there's some confusion as to the whole satan thing. The translation of his name is something akin to opposer or tester. The bible never really states that he's evil but that he tests the worthiness of others. Jews essentially see him as God's dedicated troll.

Paradise lost paints the picture of a man-child lashing out in impotent rage at god. Satan in that story is very charismatic and makes some good points for the rebellion in heaven but it really comes down to him feeling jilted for not being chosen as The Son.

It's been awhile but I think in Dante's inferno he's treated as a betrayer. That he was an angel that left the path and was punished for all eternity. Outside of the clever punishment and general atmosphere Dante's inferno isn't too influential on Satan, however.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

*shrug*

I can't say much with certainty in regards to his role in Christianity or Islam (By which I mean I haven't confirmed my knowledge, not that I don't know anything), "Satan," is kind of an enigma in Judaism. The word means, "Adversary," but it shows up in a variety of places, and it's entirely possible that they're not all the same person.

I suppose Judaism interprets him as God's exceptionally tough love. Being a divine messenger doesn't make him our friend, or so the interpretation goes. As such, he's always been sort of a negative figure in Jewish folklore—as best I can tell, anyway—which may have led to the word changing in meaning at some point before Christianity came around.

And then there's the Book of Job. In which he seems to be more or less a friendly rival to God. Not an enemy, not a subordinate, a friendly rival.

And no, I have zero idea what the ramifications of that are. I'm a theophobic (At least, I hope it's an irrational fear) agnostic, and it still creeps me out.

edited 7th Sep '14 10:28:42 PM by Rem

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

That's true in the case of the Old Testament, I think, at least insofar as I remember. But the New Testament explicitly describes the devil as evil, for instance in John 8:44:

But to be honest, the whole topic of the devil is a bit of a mess, I think. There's all sorts of interpretations, up to and including "the 'devil' is only a metaphor for the possibility of committing evil".

I think that St. Thomas Aquinas had an interesting perspective. He argued against the standard idea of the devil attempting to overthrow God, because the very notion of a creature "becoming God" makes no real conceptual sense to him.

In his framework, God's not some being with phenomenal cosmic powers of ultimate overpoweredness, he's the foundation of Being itself. A creature overthrowing and replacing the Creator would be a little like a character of a story overthrowing and replacing the author: the problem is not that the author is stronger or has magical powers, the problem is that he does not really belong to the same category of being — everything that the character can do or think is confined within the scope of the story, which exists only because of the author's will, while the author her/himself is under no such restriction (they may add a self-insert in the story, sure, but they are not confined within it).

The devil, being an angel, knew this perfectly well; and therefore, Aquinas argues, he could not possibly have attempted to become God. He could not even have desired to exist independently from God, because — again — the notion of existing independently from the ground of all Existence is inherently nonsensical.

What he desired was to become like God, to be "as God according to likeness"; but this is not intrinsically sinful, and it is actually meritorious in itself. Aquinas speculates that the devil's fall was due to him desiring to become "like God" in a wrong way, for instance by having, as his ultimate end and beatitude, something that he could in some sense gain with his own forces rather than a freely given and completely undeserved divine gift:

According to Aquinas, at his heart the devil is not some kind of rebel fighting against legitimate authority in order to get what he does not deserve. His problem is pretty much the opposite: he wants nothing except his due, except than what he's deserved because of his own nature. He is — or wants to be, at least — the ultimate "self-made man", so to say; and he'll stew in his own unhappiness for all eternity rather than having to give thanks and accept as a freely offered gift that Joy he was created for.

edited 8th Sep '14 2:56:31 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Holy shit Carc is back

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Hi! Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Let me tell you about Homestuck...

Seriously though my first thought about this was that you could go the Inglorious Basterds route and have the rebellion actually succeed and it turn out "God" was Lucifer all along. *Cue M. Night Shyamalan*