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Technically speaking, light and heat exist, cold and dark don’t – they are the absence of light and heat.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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And please note that I just used that as an example. We could get into some seriously confusing arguments concerning "evil as the absence of good" and such.
Posts: 48 | Registered: May 2003
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That has been and is a well accepted definition of evil in some theological circles. Popularized by St. Augustine in the fourth century. (Based on neo-platonist philosophy)
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I think you get around the good/evil dependence if you understand good as a matter of propriety and evil as unconcerned with or a deviation from what is proper. We would need to understand belonging and responsibility and those seem to have been lost under the onslaught of salvation religions.
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True, but again I never said Satan is a self-created entity. Merely an existing entity that chooses to take advantage where God is absent. I would submit that God chooses not to be everywhere all at once. Again, so that we could have free will.
Posts: 666 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote: It will be much easier to withstand the kind of temptation we experience here due to the removal of doubt, but unless we cease to have free will, won't there still be opposition?
I think we will still have free will, but the potency to act upon things and to be acted upon will be greatly diminished. I think that is one of the reasons we will look upon the long absence from our bodies as a bondage. And I think the only reason it would be easier to resist temptation is because so many of our temptations come because of the needs and desires of the physical body.
D&C 138: 50
50 For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage.
I think Satan is evidence of the fact that we had free will even before this life and that in such a situation you are bound to have some bad apples.
Evil is. Good is. God stands in judgement over these things and sees that the universe is balanced in the end. He can't force that balance now without removing our free will. Things must play out to their natural end.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I don't believe in God or Satan because my philosophical system "requires" it, but because it talks about them in the Bible. I know more sophisticated interpretations have said that Satan is only a metaphor. The fact that such a view defines sophistication pretty much says it all in my view.
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Relating to older issues, what is Satan's purpose? In Judaism it's quite different from Christianity...
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I'm gonna warn you in advance Jon, don't assume that you know what all Christians believe on this one.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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So he tries Job not out of rebellion toward God but because it's his ... uh, employment? I guess that would explain why they are chatting at the beginning, but it raises the problem of God being responsible for what happened to Job in a more direct way than if Satan were acting "independently". Which I realize can also ultimately be traced back to God allowing him to exist (per my view).
What about the serpent in the Garden of Eden?
Posts: 666 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Jonathan, traditionally, it's not Satan, but one of multiple satans. Synonyms that mean "prosecutor" are common as well.
Trisha, since traditional Judaism absolutely rejects the notion that God could possibly not be responsible for each and every event in the world, clearly He is responsible for the tests that each of us is faced with. And we believe no one is presented with a challenge that he/she lacks the ability to overcome.
The snake was the first manifestation of a prosecutor/tempter, and was external. One consequence of Adam and Eve's choice was the internalization of the Evil Inclination (another term for the same notion).
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Thank you, R/rivka! I shall inform "the others" (in my class who were also interested). (((Rivka))) (For beig so nice .)
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: Technically speaking, light and heat exist, cold and dark don’t – they are the absence of light and heat.
This is most definately the case. Applying this to God and Satan in a clumsy way: Satan is wherever God isn't and since God is everywhere, Satan is nowhere.
That makes sense as an argument .
(I might come back to this later, but right now I'm thinking)
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Smart thought! (If I may say, I guess I can.)
Never thought of it... Satan is God's absence, so "he" isn't actually "real", or a self-acknowledged entity...
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Let's see if we can read that more carefully. Heat and light do exist. It's cold and dark that don't.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Alright, I did misread; no need to be snippy about it. The point I was trying to make remains, so I'll think of a way to clarify it so you think it deserves a response.
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