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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[TD1]

Yes, and God ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in Canaan. What's the relevance?

God is not opposed to his followers killing people, as long as it's lawful.

God killing innocents is hypocritical, and conforms to the "do as I say, not as I do" thing.

[Helgoland]

To be fair, modern governments do the same thing.

[TD1]

And they're not seen to be the font of all goodness by anybody.

[timferius]

Posting to watch and jump on the sorta-pagan-ish-sorta-witch-ish train if it be required.

[mate888]

I'm going to do a bit of research into the possibly wrong information I have on satan/devil.
Tell me if I'm missing something that I have said on the matter without proper biblical backing.

1) Satan and lucifer are the same
2) Satan and other angels fell from heaven
3) Satan is one of god's most beautiful creations
4) Satan hates man
5) Satan is a generaly evil entity

E: autocorrect is dumb

1) That's correct. I think that Satan is actually the Hebrew word for "enemy"
2) That's correct, so it's erroneous to differenciate "fallen angels" from "demons" as they are just the same.
3) That's correct. The thing is that he was also the proudest. He tought that he could be a God, because of his beauty and intelligence being superior to that of the other angels. Many angels begun following him and decided to disobey God. You can tell that that didn't worked out well for him.
4) Well, he hates God and all of his creation. It's both hate and envy, as he sees that God's creations are superior to his (he created Hell, wich ended up being the most horrible thing on existence), so he wants to destroy and/or rule everything that God created instead.
5) Not generally, Satan IS evil itself. Only hate lives inside him, and everything releted to him must be avoided, despite he would try to decieve you to think otherwise.

Also, another thing about the Devil, is that even though we reference it as "him", he is an angel, and angels are genderless. So Satan and demons in general are genderless too.
Also, unlike the non-abrahamic religions, there are several demons, but Satan is the only one with a name (several names actually).

[Orange Wizard]

Yes, and God ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in Canaan. What's the relevance?

God is not opposed to his followers killing people, as long as it's lawful.

God killing innocents is hypocritical, and conforms to the "do as I say, not as I do" thing.

That's the thing. Nobody is innocent by God's judgement. I'm aware that it appears needlessly harsh, but there you go.

[Frumple]

[snip]

You wouldn't happen to be able to provide verses and whatnot backing that up, would you?

[Rolan7]

I'm going to do a bit of research into the possibly wrong information I have on satan/devil.
Tell me if I'm missing something that I have said on the matter without proper biblical backing.

1) Satan and lucifer are the same
2) Satan and other angels fell from heaven
3) Satan is one of god's most beautiful creations
4) Satan hates man
5) Satan is a generaly evil entity

E: autocorrect is dumb

1) That's correct. I think that Satan is actually the Hebrew word for "enemy"
2) That's correct, so it's erroneous to differenciate "fallen angels" from "demons" as they are just the same.
3) That's correct. The thing is that he was also the proudest. He tought that he could be a God, because of his beauty and intelligence being superior to that of the other angels. Many angels begun following him and decided to disobey God. You can tell that that didn't worked out well for him.
4) Well, he hates God and all of his creation. It's both hate and envy, as he sees that God's creations are superior to his (he created Hell, wich ended up being the most horrible thing on existence), so he wants to destroy and/or rule everything that God created instead.
5) Not generally, Satan IS evil itself. Only hate lives inside him, and everything releted to him must be avoided, despite he would try to decieve you to think otherwise.

Also, another thing about the Devil, is that even though we reference it as "him", he is an angel, and angels are genderless. So Satan and demons in general are genderless too.
Also, unlike the non-abrahamic religions, there are several demons, but Satan is the only one with a name (several names actually).

Is that all supported by the Bible, though?
For instance, as someone already pointed out, Lucifer is only mentioned in the Bible once - Isaiah 14:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/is/14.html#12

There's a lot of evidence that Lucifer, Light-Bringer, meant the current King of Babylon.

14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

So far, looks like Satan.  Matches the story of Satan leading fallen angels in rebellion, though I haven't checked for Biblical basis of that story yet.
But then:

14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Future tense - the subject hasn't been cast into hell yet.

14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

The subject is a "man".  Note that angels have fearsome, inhuman visages such as being made of burning wheels.

14:17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

The subject had a prison (despite not being in Hell yet) and is being blamed for not opening it.  And he destroyed cities.  An unjust king could do these things.  Satan never destroyed cities (just God), and he doesn't have the ability to release souls from Hell.  And again, the subject isn't even in Hell yet, so it's definitely not the prison being referred to.

14:18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.
14:19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.
14:20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.

The subject will not be buried with other kings of nations, because he destroyed his land and killed his people.  Clearly he was a mortal king.

[Leafsnail]

That's the thing. Nobody is innocent by God's judgement. I'm aware that it appears needlessly harsh, but there you go.

If God is incapable of finding people innocent then he isn't a just being, just some sort of crazed executioner.  He set everything off anyway, seems a bit rich to complain when he should have been able to see it coming

[ggamer]

@Leafsnail I promise I'll answer this later

What is it called when someone thinks that morals/ethics plainly exist, like the laws of physics and mathematics? The only word I can come up with is cop-out and that's hilarious but not exactly what i'm looking for.

[MaximumZero]

That would be Objective Morality, vs Subjective Morality (which means that you think there is no one singular morality.)

[Leafsnail]

Yeah.  The idea is generally supported by the notion that somehow if there's no "objective" morality then there's no answer to typical moral relativism arguments.

I don't think there are any kind of objective moral laws, but I do think you can build a system of morality from simple first principles, such as the "golden rule".  These principles are required in a functioning society, and it is therefore fairly simple to demonstrate that enforcing the moral system that arises from them is ultimately in everybody's interests.

I don't think it's productive to claim that morals are somehow inherent to the universe rather than built up through careful ethical thought.  All too often random stuff gets added according to the prejudices of whoever claims this divine revelation (usually it's "fuck the gays").

[ggamer]

I just did this topic in ethics so I've already been thinking about this a lot

I feel like certain morals are objectively true. For example, killing is wrong, so is stealing, breaking promises, etc.

No matter how you stretch it, these things are never right. Even if you must kill someone in self-defense, the murder is not morally correct. Even if you have to steal to survive, the theft is not morally correct.

From these, less fundamental morals come around, i.e. ideas on homosexuality, abortion, what have you.

Basically the true answer lies somewhere inbetween Objective and Subjective truth

_{i know i probably fucked this up somehow}

[lemon10]

14:16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

The subject is a "man".  Note that angels have fearsome, inhuman visages such as being made of burning wheels.
[/quote]
Just a minor correction. Angels can look look like men when acting on earth, so while they do look like that in heaven, they don't look like that on earth.

That said, the passage does seem to imply rather strongly that he is a proper human.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Going to shut my mouth on abortion
Don't want a flame war



Ya morals do kinda fall into separate categories
Always true and opinional


E: wrote the wrong thing woops