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What religion do you follow?

Judaism
- 0 (0%)
Christianity
- 17 (23.3%)
Islam
- 1 (1.4%)
Hinduism
- 0 (0%)
Taoism
- 0 (0%)
Buddhism
- 0 (0%)
Scientology
- 2 (2.7%)
Other (please tell)
- 7 (9.6%)
Athiest
- 35 (47.9%)
Undecided
- 1 (1.4%)
Agnostic
- 10 (13.7%)

Total Members Voted: 70


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Author Topic: Religion discussion.  (Read 72673 times)

hops

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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #285 on: May 05, 2017, 03:11:38 am »

Can the Christians here give their take on the Problem of Evil? I'm writing a story involving the Abrahamic God, and for once I want to give a fair representation instead of just putting in a random Pagan God and then saying that it's Yahweh. How do you explain the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient entity in a world where evil exist? I want to write him in a way that is believable for me, so I need some help here.

Additionally, some advice on how God would act would be helpful. I find it unlikely that God would act exactly like he did in the Bible in the modern day and age, what with changes in societal values. Do you think that God changes his methods of dealing with humans as we mature as a species, too?

I believe that we're sent here to learn and grow and so we don't get a perfect world. We get a world where we have challenges and overcoming them teaches us. If this life was all there was, it would be cruel, but because it's not then there is value in learning from a difficult world.

I think that God still acts fairly similarly to the way he did in the Bible. I believe that he still calls spokesmen/prophets just as he did in the Old Testament (and in the later New Testament) - I'm LDS and believe that the head of my church is a prophet. In addition, things like the Ten Commandments and related commandments in the New Testament are still in effect. However, they are updated to account for changes in society. For example, in my church illegal drugs are specifically prohibited, but they aren't even mentioned in the Bible (or even more recent scripture that my church also uses) because most illegal drugs didn't exist 2000 or even 200 years ago.

Hopefully that helps a bit. How are you planning on writing about God? What kind of role will he have - as a character or as the god of a religion that some characters are part of?
To put this in the stupidest way possible: The premise of the story is set in an alternate timeline to Earth, where Satan challenged God to a fair game of chance and won, with the wager between Satan giving up on tempting anyone and sending all the demons and the damned over to God to be redeemed, or for God to leave his Creation until the Judgement Day. God's departure coincides with the Civil War in the United States, where Satan set to work arranging for him to be summoned by both sides, and then proceeded to flatten both sides as her his contract. He then proceeded to rule the world Aku-style from Hell.

The protagonist has a pair of sacred revolvers and have been talked to by God, who has discovered a loophole in the agreement between Him and Satan, and the protagonist must travel through the demon-ruled US in her quest to find God, who is enigmatic and does not actually reveal what His plan is.

The reason I'm asking is because God would show up in person towards the end, and I want him to have a very good reason why this all happened in the first place. Something something free will and theodicy?
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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #286 on: May 05, 2017, 03:45:11 am »

Well, in Judaism Satan was not a devil figure but the "Adversary", an angel who prosecutes mortals for their sins and generally accentuates the negatives of humanity. This can be seen in the Book of Job, where Satan is among the angels in Heaven and this isn't treated as remarkable. In this role, Satan torments Job and kills his family, but is doing so on God's command to test whether Job's faith is selfless or sourced in his material blessings.

This gets reworked with the rise of Christianity to the role of the "Beast" Satan that is seen in the Book of Revelation.

Christian theology generally posits that angels are "complete beings". They have, as the Dresden Files put it, "intellectus". That is to say that their understanding of reality is instant and total at the moment of their creation in a manner similar to God's omniscience. The relevance of this is generally in regards to the question of if demons can repent of their sins, which is that angels/demons don't really have "opinions" because they don't change their minds about anything. Alternatively, the line of reasoning goes that they rebelled against God with knowledge while humanity rebelled with ignorance, so God will never forgive the former.

God also cops to having created both good and evil in the Bible, so it's not even really unbiblical to just throw out the standard of benevolence in all human terms. Alternatively...
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hops

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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #287 on: May 05, 2017, 06:17:39 am »

So would it be less blasphemous if it's explained that God allowed Satan a chance to have free reign as His punishment for mankind's wickedness? Also, the last explanation is intriguing but in a narrative standpoint I might as well frame myself as God in that case, since I did put the protagonist's world through hardships so that it exist.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2017, 06:20:57 am by Cinder »
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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #288 on: May 05, 2017, 07:40:00 am »

Not to interrupt, but I just read the thread's poll results for the first time tonight and thought, "Ah, yes- that's the Internet Republic."
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hops

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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #289 on: May 05, 2017, 07:42:06 am »

It probably also helps that this is an English-speaking board. Demographics would obviously differ if this was, say, Japanese.
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Re: Religion discussion
« Reply #290 on: May 05, 2017, 02:29:42 pm »

I only just now realised where this thread went.
I love religion.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #291 on: May 05, 2017, 04:04:08 pm »

My take from the Bible and God's reasoning thereof is this.

In the beginning, God was alone. As a being that apparently exists outside of time and space, this means he was alone across all of literal infinity simultaneously. I feel like the goal was to create humans with free will so that we can choose to love God, rather than having it be the only choice present. Without that choice, love is 100% meaningless. The God described in the bible wants to be worshipped honestly and with free will, so he created us with the capacity to do so, rather than an imperative. Sort of like how deceiving a person into love/affection or forcing a person into it is seen as universally reprehensible. It's a perversion of the very concept.

I think he also set up the circumstances in the Garden of Eden so that we would (could?) come to the end of introducing ourselves to evil by our own accord rather than simply including it in our existence from the start. He could have just not allowed Satan in there to begin with, but he allowed that to take place so that evil, and therefore choice, could exist.

The idea is that the entire process from prehistory to the eventual end of time has taken place within our own free will. He could interfere as an omnipotent being and remove our capacity for evil, but cannot interfere as this would invalidate the entire purpose of creation. To that end, evil is allowed to exist.
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Descan

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #292 on: May 05, 2017, 05:10:36 pm »

nowhere in genesis does it say the serpent is Satan, and even if you assume that while unnamed, it's implied to be Satan, it makes no sense to punish the snake specie(s) for the actions of the satan-snake. Whether Satan was merely possessing a snake or was, somehow, a snake in and of himself that turned into the most powerful adversary of God makes no difference to the immorality of punishing the entire species.

then again, I guess that's par for the course for God. Punish an entire species for the actions of a few. :V

I mean it's obvious that the Genesis story is an allegorical explanation of the state of the world instead of a literal story to be taken as writ, including why nearly every non-insect animal has legs except the snake, but if we're going that route, it throws out a lot of the other things you said anyway...
« Last Edit: May 05, 2017, 05:12:49 pm by Descan »
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #293 on: May 05, 2017, 06:32:13 pm »

It's not really that much of a jump, actually. While it does not name that serpent as "Satan" right there in Genesis, it does refer to Satan as the serpent 3 times in revelation. Most damningly (ha) Rev 12:9 refers to him as "that serpent of old" or "that ancient serpent" and "the deceiver of the world". Not "a" serpent, that's "the" serpent.

So yeah it seems pretty clear.

Also, I'm sorry, this doesn't really answer the question at hand. I'll cease this line of discussion, I'm more interested in other people's answer to cinder's question.
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Reelya

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #294 on: May 05, 2017, 06:36:29 pm »

Book Of Revelations canon is basically like Star Wars: Expanded Universe canon.

Dunamisdeos

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #295 on: May 05, 2017, 06:44:12 pm »

Book Of Revelations canon is basically like Star Wars: Expanded Universe canon.

I'd pay to see John the Apostle duel a ten-headed dragon with a lightsaber, but there I go digressing again.
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Ghills

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Re: Religion discussion: The church of Bay12
« Reply #296 on: May 05, 2017, 07:40:02 pm »

Can the Christians here give their take on the Problem of Evil? I'm writing a story involving the Abrahamic God, and for once I want to give a fair representation instead of just putting in a random Pagan God and then saying that it's Yahweh. How do you explain the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient entity in a world where evil exist? I want to write him in a way that is believable for me, so I need some help here.

Additionally, some advice on how God would act would be helpful. I find it unlikely that God would act exactly like he did in the Bible in the modern day and age, what with changes in societal values. Do you think that God changes his methods of dealing with humans as we mature as a species, too?

I believe that we're sent here to learn and grow and so we don't get a perfect world. We get a world where we have challenges and overcoming them teaches us. If this life was all there was, it would be cruel, but because it's not then there is value in learning from a difficult world.

I think that God still acts fairly similarly to the way he did in the Bible. I believe that he still calls spokesmen/prophets just as he did in the Old Testament (and in the later New Testament) - I'm LDS and believe that the head of my church is a prophet. In addition, things like the Ten Commandments and related commandments in the New Testament are still in effect. However, they are updated to account for changes in society. For example, in my church illegal drugs are specifically prohibited, but they aren't even mentioned in the Bible (or even more recent scripture that my church also uses) because most illegal drugs didn't exist 2000 or even 200 years ago.

Hopefully that helps a bit. How are you planning on writing about God? What kind of role will he have - as a character or as the god of a religion that some characters are part of?
To put this in the stupidest way possible: The premise of the story is set in an alternate timeline to Earth, where Satan challenged God to a fair game of chance and won, with the wager between Satan giving up on tempting anyone and sending all the demons and the damned over to God to be redeemed, or for God to leave his Creation until the Judgement Day. God's departure coincides with the Civil War in the United States, where Satan set to work arranging for him to be summoned by both sides, and then proceeded to flatten both sides as her his contract. He then proceeded to rule the world Aku-style from Hell.

The protagonist has a pair of sacred revolvers and have been talked to by God, who has discovered a loophole in the agreement between Him and Satan, and the protagonist must travel through the demon-ruled US in her quest to find God, who is enigmatic and does not actually reveal what His plan is.

The reason I'm asking is because God would show up in person towards the end, and I want him to have a very good reason why this all happened in the first place. Something something free will and theodicy?

Just because God can do something doesn't make that a good thing to do.  I'm also LDS, and a cornerstone of our theology is that God is our Heavenly Father who set up this earth for us to learn and grow in.  Just because He could arrange everything so that we never get tempted, or have a bad idea, or have anything bad happen, doesn't mean that doing that is the right thing to do.  Like every parent, He needs to take a step back and let us have the opportunity to shoot ourselves in the foot, learn how to deal with seemingly random calamities, etc. 

Satan's overriding evil, in our theology, is that he tried to usurp God's authority and misuse it to remove people's ability to choose. And some of our spirit siblings followed him and lost the privilege of being born into this world.  Basically, he took his teen rebellion so far it became actual rebellion and God said no, sorry, you and your followers are no longer going to be part of gaining eternal glory. Now Satan and his followers are sad, jealous losers who get their jollies tricking people into making the same mistakes they made.

Evil is a side effect of being able to choose, because not everyone is going to choose to avoid evil. Sometimes, our spiritual brothers and sisters are downright vile and we suffer for it.

God promises us that we can and will be healed and live gloriously, that the evil we suffer from will be a temporary thing, if we let Him into our lives and trust His guidance.  It's not a culture-specific thing either; we believe that all genuine religions (i.e. not joke churches or actual devil worship) have some truth and good principles. Most people will wind up with more glory than they can imagine, because most people are trying to be good people. The highest degrees of glory require more serious commitments, but those commitments are also possible to fulfill after this life, so no one is barred from anything they want and work towards.

And yeah, societal changes and different needs of different populations is why LDS put such an emphasis on living prophets and every person having their own connection to God. The scriptures are great and hold true principles and we study them all the time, but the world changes!  A good parent and leader doesn't leave people without current feedback and guidance on how to apply eternal principles in their current life. 

About your plot -  God is not going to play games of chance with Satan. God doesn't need or want to.  He's got a million things to do trying to get his crazy, stupid kids to learn not to be assholes.  He's got a plan, Satan's accounted for in that plan, there's no need to humor the delusions of one of His kids who got on a high horse and is spiritually attacking people.

But what God will do is respect our wishes. Including dumb, destructive wishes.  So maybe something like society en masse is starting to follow Satan's principles more than God's principles. Slavery, the various religious wars, corruption, etc are all evidence of this. God tries to talk to people, no one is really listening, and He says 'Well, OK, this is going to be terrible y'all' and tries to warn anyone still listening to Him so they can prepare for what their fellow humans are about to bring down on them. That avoids making this God look like a callous gambler but doesn't really disrupt your plot. 
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #297 on: May 05, 2017, 08:31:30 pm »

I'm cool with fiction about the bible being fiction and not a documentation of what I believe. Go for it.

Yes I know what I said, ye of not-Christian faiths. I'm sorry :3

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(Rather than that, please picture my llama avatar saying the above sentence, head turn and all)
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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #298 on: May 05, 2017, 09:01:38 pm »

That is a nice thing to imagine.
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Re: Religion discussion.
« Reply #299 on: May 06, 2017, 12:32:10 pm »

Satan and God wagered before. It's the whole premise of the book of Job. They talk almost like they are friend and wager on Job's reaction when God permits Satan to ruin his life.

Also Satan already controls the world. It's stated so in John 12:31 and most Christians will say as such.
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