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
Yup. We all have Sleeping Beauty to thank for showing us how cool dragons can be. ![]()
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Until I found out about Bahamut, that is. ![]()
I saw a peacock walking around the Brookfield Zoo, because of course they are.
But anyway, I remember reading that it’s thanks to the god Indra that peacocks became so beautiful. :)
And that maiden turned cow later became a queen of Egypt, so it all worked out.
In the translation I had, (Not English) the closest thing is a passage in the book of Matthew, talking about a place called Gehenna when you will get destroyed by fire for your sin.
Gehenna though, appears to have been a real place, outside Jerusalem. A sort of garbage disposal site, when you burn things, so there was always a cloud of black smock there.
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurtThere are a number of New Testament passages that give rise to the longstanding conception of Hell as a place of "fire and brimstone" (brimstone being an old word for sulfur). (All of this is pretty much exclusive to the New Testament. Christians have often interpreted some passages in the Old Testament as referring to notions of eternal fiery damnation, but I'm not aware of any passage in anyplace from Genesis to Malachi that unambiguously makes any reference to any kind of fiery judgmental afterlife.) A phrase that crops up in several of the Gospels is "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (or "wailing and gnashing of teeth"). In a number of places this phrase is associated with "the outer darkness" (e.g., Matthew 8:12
) but in the 13th chapter of Matthew
this phrase twice gets associated with the imagery of people being thrown into a "blazing furnace" (at verses 42 and 50):
Trying to interpret the Book of Revelation is always tricky, but it's here that we get the idea of Hell as featuring "burning sulfur" (or "brimstone" in older translations). In Revelation 14:9-11
we have a description of those who have worshiped "the beast" as being condemned to a "fire and brimstone" version of Hell:
The idea of Satan and/or Lucifer being this great enemy to God isn’t actually supported in the Bible. In Job, Satan just wanders into Heaven and makes a bet with God with relatively minor stakes and elsewhere, any reference to Satan is probably not referring to any specific entity.
Jesus’ “get behind me Satan” is probably supposed to be more like “get behind me, my enemy” since Satan just means adversary and that was a place where you’d use that word in colloquial speech. Even in Revelation, there’s a few different things that could be Satan and/or Lucifer but that are probably just supposed to be purely metaphorical.
Judaism basically lacks any concept of a serious afterlife and it doesn’t really contain the idea of a great adversary. It’s probably why Jewish missionaries aren’t really a thing, because there’s not really a salvation concept in the way there is in Christianity. Why bother aggressively trying to convert people if it’s not relevant to your beliefs?
The Christian stuff about hell and Satan and all that mirrors Zoroastrianism a lot more than anything where Ahura Mazda and Ahriman are almost equal opposites, but Ahriman is destined to fall. Interestingly, Zoroastrianism was never super big on conversions either because it has this element of universal salvation. Doesn’t matter how bad you were in Zoroastrianism, you get to go through the river of molten metal and have all of the Ahriman-induced corruption burned away before you get to enter the paradise after the end of the world.
Edited by Zendervai on Mar 9th 2023 at 1:22:50 PM
Of all things, Marvel Comics has a more true to the the text take on Satan.
Satan in Marvel comics isn't an actual devil. Marvel comics has a Hell that is populated by devils, but Satan isn't one of them. There is a throne in Hell that is called Satan's Throne, but it's empty. It's basically a symbol of rulership that none of the devils dare to claim for themselves for fear of the others ganging up on them.
At least one devil in Marvel comics, Marduk Kurios, pretends to be Satan to increase his own cred. He basically exploits humanity's belief in a singular great Adversary to make himself seem scarier.
Disgusted, but not surprisedHey, everybody. The Histocrat just posted a video about Beowulf.
Thanks to it, I found out that the story of Beowulf has had some influence on The Lord of the Rings.
Edited by Demetrios on Mar 22nd 2023 at 6:31:53 AM
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtRHlfe6MHk
Edited by jawal on Mar 23rd 2023 at 4:27:22 PM
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurtWe were discussing whether Sauron is a fascist/racist in the Tolkien thread, and I felt that that is a bit of an odd question, since Sauron doesn't really favour any race over any other (he is, if anything, a Sauron-supremacist, as someone put it), and that got me wondering: since Sauron is basically an expy of the devil, wouldn't that be like asking whether Satan is a racist?
And that may be an interesting question in itself: is Satan a racist?
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesAssuming a largely modern Orthodox Christian interpretation (IE Satan as God's nemesis):
It's not explicitly stated, but it's plausible. Satan doesn't actually appear that often in the Bible, which means his views aren't very clear.
It's not hard to argue God is opposed to racism (the Bible speaks out against it a few times). Ergo it's plausible Satan supports it.
Leviticus 19:34But supporting racism isn't the same as being one, here. After all, Satan is not human, and stands outside humanity, and thus has no reason to favour any particular race. It could also be argued that Satan simply supports racism as a means to sow division, without favouring any particular side.
You could similarly argue that God opposes racism without being of any race, so not from the position of any minority or majority, but from an outside position.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times

The difference is that Salamanders tend to stick to one agreed design way more than dragons.