Since we've gotten told to stop talking generally about religion twice in the Homosexuality and Religion thread and were told that, if we want to talk generally about religion, we need to make a new thread, I have made a new thread.
Full disclosure: I am an agnostic atheist and anti-theist, but I'm very interested in theology and religion.
Mod Edit: All right, there are a couple of ground rules here:
- This is not a thread for mindless bashing of religion or of atheism/agnosticism etc. All view points are welcome here. Let's have a civil debate.
- Religion is a volatile subject. Please don't post here if you can't manage a civil discussion with viewpoints you disagree with. There will be no tolerance for people who can't keep the tone light hearted.
- There is no one true answer for this thread. Don't try to force out opposing voices.
edited 9th Feb '14 1:01:31 PM by Madrugada
Like reflections in the glass!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The Guided Fate Paradox also goes that route, though by attaching the "el" particle to Japanesesque names.
Today at church, the priest sprinkled some humor into his speech. He described John the Theologian as Jesus’s BFF, which the audience had a good chuckle about. For some reason, I thought Peter filled that role.
I smell magic in the air. Or maybe barbecue.
Most theologians agree that John may have been the apostle closest to Jesus, and that whenever the Gospels mention "the disciple he loved most" it was referring to John. Peter had the important role of becoming the de facto leader after Jesus and establishing the early church, but John was the one he had the closest personal relationship with.
The El- thing does make me think that Lucifer's original name could have maybe been "Bringer of God's Light" and Falling just cut the god bit off.
To be fair, the "-el" part isn't universal. Metatron, for example.
Usually with Lucifer, I've heard it explained that Lucifer was his name when he was still serving God. But after his rebellion his name was changed to "Satan", a word meaning "Adversary" or "Accuser".
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
𐀀𐀩𐀯𐀂𐀰𐀅𐀡𐀄
Isn't Lucifer as a name a bit of a confusion with the name of a Babylonian king or something?
Secret Signature
To be fair here, Metatron is from a non-canonical text. The biblical angels all follow the -el pattern except for Lucifer.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Like reflections in the glass!
The king in question was Nebuchadnezzar IIRC.
What's the story behind that traditional rule? The one that says "A wise man climbs Mt. Fuji once. A fool does it twice."
I smell magic in the air. Or maybe barbecue.
Redmess
Something something not learning from your experience?
Optimism is a duty.
Something about doing even arduous, unpleasant tasks once to experience new things and broaden your horizons, but doing it twice is just subjecting yourself to needless hardship?
Oh, bother.
Climb it a third time and you might just be a glutton for punishment.
Disgusted, but not surprisedAll good reasons.
I smell magic in the air. Or maybe barbecue.
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
Climb it dozens of times, and you might just be a guide helping others climb it.
"A wise man climbs Mt. Fuji once. A fool does it twice. A sportsman climbs it every year."
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
This is a bit out of nowhere, but it's something that caught my attention and wanted to ask about it and did seemed the best place to do so I could think of.
A show I listen to, The Last Podcast on the Left has just released their first episode of a series on Mike Warnke
, a stand-up comedian who made false claims of being a Satanist and who the hosts describe as "one of the accidental architects of the Satanic Panic" of the 80s and 90s.
I'll share a link if anyone's interested, but the reason I bring it up at all is, while I only just started listening, right up top one of the hosts, Marcus Parks brought up an interesting idea for why Satanic Panics happen in the first place: as a way to resolve Crises of Faith.
"If you can convince yourself that the devil is real, manifested on Earth through his many minions, then it makes believing in God that much easier and therefore your crisis in faith is solved."
I'm not religious myself but this is caught my attention and I was curious if anyone thought there might be anything to it.
Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 1st 2021 at 1:18:23 AM
That could be one reason, but there are others. I knew a good friend once who believed wholeheartedly in the Devil, to the point where she believed she had encountered actual possessed people, but to my knowledge she wasn't experiencing a crisis in faith. For her, it was just the way her family had raised her, and she saw no good reason to challenge that (then again, she didn't contribute to any sense of panic, either).
I think another common reason these scares happen is the response of a lot of people to the anxiety that rapid social change and uncertainty brings. During times of rapid transition many people find it hard to cope, and look around for a scapegoat to blame their feelings on. Something similar was behind the D&D scare, the child-molestation scares, the Halloween candy scares...
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst liesI thought it started in the '70s.
I dunno, to me that actually kinda sounds like an anti-theist viewpoint. "See, these people are desperate to look for anything to validate their religion because their religion is fake."
Edited by danime91 on Oct 1st 2021 at 2:34:51 AM
It's probable. I'm not sure where Marcus, the one who made the statement, stands on the matter but the other two hosts one, Henry Zebrowski, is an active Satanist while the third, Ben Kissel, grew up in an evangelical household and no longer worships himself that I know of. When they once did an episode on the Book of Revelation they called out "the most Rock chapter of the Bible"
I'm mostly going be episode description but they also once covered the West Memphis Three, a Satanic Panic case from the 90s, so I'm inclined to assume it's 80s / 90s.
Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 1st 2021 at 3:46:13 AM
As a Christian who does believe that Satan really exists, I think there's some truth in that idea. It's also a good argument from a Christian perspective against those satanic panics: if Satan does exist, and wants to stop people from following God, then why on earth would he act like that in the materialist western world and show everyone that supernatural things are real?? That would just get people believing in God again. It would be far more effective for him to trick people who already believe that Satan is real into claiming he's doing things that are clearly ridiculous, so as to discredit the idea that he might actually exist. Wait, hang on a minute...
Also explains why there are several demon possessed people in the Bible and we don't see that sort of thing today.
This doesn't mean that Satan never does anything supernatural nowadays, though: I suspect he does sometimes, especially in the developing world where there's more superstition about him already. And it certainly doesn't mean that he's not involved in current events in more subtle ways. I would be shocked if he didn't have a hand in the Nazis' rise to power, for example. But conscious devil worship doesn't help him right now.
Edited by pi4t on Oct 1st 2021 at 3:30:41 AM
Something something greatest trick something something.
Anka Aquila
You could argue that the Devil's greatest achievement is convincing us that one of Sartre's phrases is unironically true: Hell is other people.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
Marcus uses a variation: quoting Anton LaVay: "Satan is the best friend the Church has ever had."
Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 1st 2021 at 3:41:54 AM
@ Gaon: Metatron used to be human unlike normal animals so maybe he gets a different nomenclature. I believe Sandalphon is also thought to have been a former human, so I guess those who go through an Angelic Transformation just get the -on suffix
