Is Satan good? I don't know. But I'm not passing judgement until I hear both sides of the story.
You're not wrong.
Satan revealed to us the concept of ethics. Which God wanted to hide from us. Which is logical since he already knew the injustices he'd impart on our innocent little world.
Satan forced ethics on us. Why would we need ethics if we could not do any harm? What is the other side of the story where everything we did was human, but there was no baggage attached to those decisions? What is so great about knowing good and evil?
No he didn't, he banished Lucifer, and he banished humanity from the Garden.
He removed satan from being in charge of heavenly things to be in charge of earthly things. Satan has access to heaven. He just will never be able to replace God. Adam was not allowed to eat of the tree of life.
To choose between eternal worship and eternal damnation? That's like choosing between death and slavery. In other words, not a choice at all.
Why does it have to be all of one thing or the other? Now we are enslaved to our desires which leads to death. You think that is a better choice than being able to live for eternity and explore all the universe has to offer?
There wouldn't be a Hell if God hadn't banished Lucifer for defying him, either.
I thought that humanist had no problems with their essence continuing on in the material aspects of the universe. The only thing they will loose is their ability to choose. They will just be a part of the universe like the molten core of the earth.
For all you know, there may not even be a Hell, or it may not even be bad. You only have God's side of the story. If he wanted you to want to try to get into Heaven so badly, then of course he would say that the alternative is terrible.
It would seem that hell is just the interior of the earth. The end would just be the sun engulfing the earth. It is just the natural aspects of an ever changing physical universe.
Actually it is, that's why we have to try in order to do it, and why those who do not choose to believe (a departure from the original state of mind) are damned.
"Live separately from God?" Where does that nonsense come from? The explicit "history" of Satan isn't given in the Bible, all we know from implication is that he rebelled against God by refusing to bow to him, and was expelled for this. He certainly didn't "freely choose" (which reeks of weirdo Christian-capitalist syncretism...) to leave, unless you mean that he "freely chose" not to submit to God...
You can't logically go from God banished satan, and then ask why "live separately from God?" It would seem to me that banishment is separation. Satan was removed from being in charge becaue he attempted to take over Heaven, because he thought he could do a better job of running the universe than God could. Now that may be viewed as satan over stepping his bounds, or failing to "submit" to God. I get that most people just think of worship, worship worship. There is more to God than mere worship. That just comes with the territory, but complaining about worship could be the first step of rebellion, but where in the Garden is man commanded to worship? No where. It is said that all of nature worships God. Would you explain how humans or satan would go about turning the universe against God?
This is a highly contentious statement...
Why? Do you struggle with yourself, or with the thought of there being a God?
That doesn't sound like Free Will to me...
Free will is concerned with running one's every day life. You do not have the freedom to transport your self to the bottom of the ocean, but that would not mean you do not have free will. Unless you think that atheist are forced to be atheist and they have no choice in the matter, free will is even exercised in forming one's belief system. There is even a plethora of religious practices that one has freedom to choose from.
It was "easy" to do because mankind had no agency of his own. Lucifer gave him that agency. It was Lucifer who dared to free us from our slavery to God and make us God's equals in will, if not his equals in power.
We do not even know what it was like to not have to choose between good and evil. Why can we not see that side of the story as being untold? It would seem to me that there were other humans on earth beside Adam and they were able to do as they pleased without any fear of being in "trouble" with God for doing so. Adam could have been the only one who had access to God. Why do you think that humans did not have a choice in their relationship with God?
I don't agree that "follow authority out of fear" is a morally right thing to do. If anything, Man was right to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so that he could understand the nature of his own slavery to God. Only he should have relished in being driven from paradise by The Despot., but obviously this is a myth so Man is made to be shamed and dejected instead.
Adam was not a slave to anything in the garden. Name one thing that made him a slave. Why is it a right to force one's self into the servitude of ethics. The right would be the freedom from such bondage. Why is being free of ethics a form of slavery? By that logic it would be ok to have slaves, because having slaves is outside the boundary of ethics. Ethics does not create a frame work to allow freedom. It is the boundary that shows us our shortcomings and inability to maintain a freedom therein.
The moral of the story, and of so much of the Abrahamic Religions, is that ego is bad. You don't matter, so stop thinking that you do. You don't deserve to have true agency, and if you deviate ever so slightly from the prescribed path, then you will be punished for all eternity for that.
The moral of the story is that there is no evil outside of ethics. Now if you think that not understanding ethics creates a God without morals, that is backwards thinking. Because before ethics and morals, there were no ethics and morals. Satan did not have a choice between good and evil, thus ethics did not apply. There was no choice in that matter with satan. He either did what God told him, or he did not. Doing not was what put him in charge of earth. There are no morals in the universe outside of what consist of human thought processes and decisions. It is either do as you are or cease to exist.
"Evil" things, on the other hand, are those which show concern for the world in which we live, or for ourselves: selfishness, avarice, egoism, pride. It's no surprise then that Christians so often suffer this dual mind-[fudge] of feeling either superior and entitled (because they're going to Heaven) or dejected and melancholy (because they're never good enough, and must believe that their own wants and their own self-worth is irrelevant). You want to talk about mental abuse; if you locked someone in a prison and consistently told them that they didn't matter and that you would punish them severely if they didn't totally surrender their very will to you and give up all ambitions in life, you would be guilty of severe psychological and emotional abuse and the person in question, having been essentially robbed of their humanity, would require a lifetime of therapy to overcome. Yet if you dress all that up in robes and pearly gates then it's the righteous path and morally superior? I don't think so. People are mentally healthy when they love themselves and feel that they are worth something. Mankind had no knowledge of this until he ate the forbidden fruit. He was liberated that day, and God has been throwing a hissy fit ever since.
Why conflate that which is natural with "evil" things? The problem is that humans come up with inventive ways to force economics on other humans to keep them physically and psychologically enslaved. God offers freedom from such humanistic control, yet humans prefer to enslave other humans and those humans are comfortable in their human bondage. Well there are some who fight back like communist, anarchist, and even IS. People even clamor for revolution to overthrow their oppressive human overlords.
In my opinion the story is about how "man" has to eat from the tree to really become man. Before eating from the tree he did not know right from wrong. He was ignorant and he was living in bliss, like other animals. To become man he had to gain an understanding of right and wrong and become a slave to morality, forced to abandon ignorant bliss - paradise.
Paradise is even a garden in the story, which is in my opinion is meant to illustrate "wilderness".. where animals live. Once you become sentient, you have to leave wilderness and accept the burden of man.
It's a very metaphorical look at the whole situation and question of the sentience of man and the need for morality in my opinion. Not good morality, or bad morality, just the concept of morality itself. I don't even really see God as a character in the story. God is just a placeholder for the forces of nature I think. He's given a personality so that he can engage the other characters in the story.
I know that all of this is highly heretical, but I've been taught this story a long time ago, and I've had a lot of time to think about it.
I guess in essence I agree with you, because man is a slave to the forces of nature, and I think that's one of the things you get out of the story if you look at it the way I am.
Humans growing up may not be too far off of reality, but man did not need satan to be enticed. They could have lived a very long time and accomplished a lot of things before becoming so board that they needed to kill eternity and enforce a code of ethics. Ethics does not really push knowledge. You don't need to realize that killing some one is bad, in order to get to the next star system. Now we have to worry because human economics tends to keep us stuck on earth and always at war to see who can be the best at inventing things to do each other more harm.
There is no evidence that before ethics, humans were a slave to nature. Humans were given all authority over the rest of creation except themselves. The so called "blessing" of ethics changed man's control over nature, and now the only thing they have control over is each other. It has taken humans thousands of years to gain back some control over nature, and then they are hit with the fact that that control only caused "global warming". Now it seems that the only way to correct it, is give back all that control and go back to the drawing board.
