Who Let the Dogs Out?

[POI]

Theists will state Satan rules the roost here on earth. But someday, God will (contain/remove/isolate/other) him.

Imagine you possessed a very violent dog. He attacks or disrupts all animals and all people for which he encounters. Your only job is to contain him, by leash. You opt not to, citing free will or something other. Would you be considered wise?

For Debate:

Someday, God is going to contain Satan, but not yet. Why?

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to POI in post #1

Theists will state Satan rules the roost here on earth.

Why are you broad-brushing theists as all believing in the existence of Satan? It does a lot of us a thoughtless disservice.

[TRANSPONDER]

Satan is very much a Church doctrine, or at least so far as I know (I could check) and to reject the same (no matter how well argued) is to start ones' own Church.

Hmmh well, they are pretty damn' cagey about it. The nearest I saw to a pronouncement was a Barna survey of Christians (they said they were) in 2018 where 40% said they didn't believe in an actual Satan and few more were in doubt, and another article about the Protestants suggested that they saw it not as an actual being but a personification of evil.

Well, folks, it looks to me like they don't want to let go of Satan (and Hellfire) as it's just too damn' useful, but at the same time, they are worried about making doctrinal belief - statements about talking donkeys, walking snakes, living in a fish for 3 days and Satan in charge of the ovens in case they look ridiculous. The apparent move towards a metaphorical view of all this may show that they are at least showing up on the horizon in their reluctant trudge towards humanism, rationality and unbelief.

P.s Do you know, I might go to the extremists for pronouncements.

RationalWiki says this:
Satan is called the "Father of Lies", but there is no biblical evidence (other than hearsay) that Satan ever did lie. In fact, in the Garden of Eden, when Satan (or "the" Serpent, but who can tell the difference?) tells Eve that she won't die "in the day thereof" when she eats the fruit, Satan is telling the truth, because Eve did not die until much later. Further, Satan was right, that Eve could hold good and evil apart from that point onwards (God on the other hand told, they will die, but since Eve needs the fruit of immortality first, she would have died anyway, that makes God the liar instead of Satan, but thats another topic...). But Biblical literalists quote a Psalm, where it is written, that for God, a thousand years are like a day gone by or something. Fundamentalists cover the issue by saying that Eve spiritually died the instant she ate the fruit, despite the fact that she gained the ability to tell good from evil. This is very much like when you send $30 to a TV preacher for him to pray that you win the lottery. You don't actually win the lottery, but you win the lottery spiritually.

The Qur'an tells a story that God commanded the angels to bow down to none but God. Then at some time later God commanded the angels to bow down to Man. Unable to reconcile these two conflicting instructions, Satan and various other angels had the divine equivalent of a nervous breakdown and attacked God.

In Judaism, Satan is given a drastically different image. Since something so holy like an angel rebelling against something so powerful like God makes absolutely no sense (imagine that) Satan is seen as a servant of God that just has an unpleasant job. Since it would be heretical for anything to be without God's control, let alone an angel, Satan is seen as completely operating under God's will without any independence. (Notice that in Job he acts more like a debating opponent than a master of evil.) The Talmud equates him with humanity's innate sense to do evil, while simultaneously equating him with the angel of death. Yeah, wrap your head around that one.

Muslims must first evaluate what Satan actually is (an angel, a jinni, an angel with bad manners like a jinni, a jinni with good manners like an angel...), before getting into a deeper analysis.

Had a great portrait of him hee hee...I might try to copy and paste....





Conservapaedia
Satan also known as the Devil, is the embodiment of evil. Satan plays a major role in Christian theology and literature, and in other religions under different names. He is the tempter and spiritual enemy of mankind. He is the adversary of God, although subordinate to Him and able to act only by his sufferance, and is represented frequently as the leader or prince of all the fallen, apostate angels, and as ruler of hell.

Leftist Saul Alinsky dedicated to his book Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, which is another name for Satan. Satan and the Devil are popular topics of rock music.[1] Satan is even mentioned three times in the lyrics of a Christmas Carol, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.[2]

"Satan is the force that loves to find the guilt and weakness in people, to humiliate them with it, to convince them that, because they are not good, God cannot love them."[3] Liberals today try to deny the existence of Satan, or at least depersonify him into "more a force than an actual being."[4]

[Miles]

Theists will state Satan rules the roost here on earth. But someday, God will (contain/remove/isolate/other) him.

Imagine you possessed a very violent dog. He attacks or disrupts all animals and all people for which he encounters. Your only job is to contain him, by leash. You opt not to, citing free will or something other. Would you be considered wise?

For Debate:

Someday, God is going to contain Satan, but not yet. Why?

Personally, I think god, the creator of evil, is still enjoying the conflict too much to put an end to it. Maybe in time he'll contain Satan . . . . . maybe.

.

[Purple Knight]

Imagine you possessed a very violent dog. He attacks or disrupts all animals and all people for which he encounters. Your only job is to contain him, by leash. You opt not to, citing free will or something other. Would you be considered wise?

Personally I don't think it's a good idea to subject people to abuse and torture just to prove the strength of their souls. But would some people consider me wise for testing others like that? Of course they would, if I was seen as wise to begin with.

I can even construct a parable where I set a violent dog on people and they respond with violence, causing more violence, but the person with the true understanding simply lets the dog bite, responding to violence with tenderness until the dog feels comfortable and stops attacking. Now, granted, it works better if the violent dog is just around and nobody sets it on anybody, but that's something a lot of people consider wise if it comes from a wise source, absolutely.

I don't think there is a God or a Satan but I think this represents something that may well be true about evil, if it simply represents unsustainable destructive behaviour, versus sustainable, good behaviour.

I think it goes in cycles where lean times call for extreme intolerance of evil just to survive, and extreme intolerance of evil creates a world where most people are good, which creates prosperity and abundance. Prosperity and abundance mean nobody has to be so tough on evil anymore, and people tolerate destructive behaviour because overpunishment is cruel. You can kill someone and get 5 years in prison, get let out, and kill people again. This happens because excessive punishment is indeed cruel, and people thus abandon it when they can. Unfortunately, this makes killing people the winning strategy. If you can take someone else's life with only minimal cost to yours, survival-wise, you're a winner. This goes on until most people will kill if it benefits them. And that makes society collapse, and that brings lean times, starting the cycle over again.

[brunumb]

Had a great portrait of him hee hee...I might try to copy and paste....

It would make a great avatar

[1213]

...
Someday, God is going to contain Satan, but not yet. Why?

Maybe because people wanted to know evil by the hard way.

[TRANSPONDER]

Imagine you possessed a very violent dog. He attacks or disrupts all animals and all people for which he encounters. Your only job is to contain him, by leash. You opt not to, citing free will or something other. Would you be considered wise?

Personally I don't think it's a good idea to subject people to abuse and torture just to prove the strength of their souls. But would some people consider me wise for testing others like that? Of course they would, if I was seen as wise to begin with.

I can even construct a parable where I set a violent dog on people and they respond with violence, causing more violence, but the person with the true understanding simply lets the dog bite, responding to violence with tenderness until the dog feels comfortable and stops attacking. Now, granted, it works better if the violent dog is just around and nobody sets it on anybody, but that's something a lot of people consider wise if it comes from a wise source, absolutely.

I don't think there is a God or a Satan but I think this represents something that may well be true about evil, if it simply represents unsustainable destructive behaviour, versus sustainable, good behaviour.

I think it goes in cycles where lean times call for extreme intolerance of evil just to survive, and extreme intolerance of evil creates a world where most people are good, which creates prosperity and abundance. Prosperity and abundance mean nobody has to be so tough on evil anymore, and people tolerate destructive behaviour because overpunishment is cruel. You can kill someone and get 5 years in prison, get let out, and kill people again. This happens because excessive punishment is indeed cruel, and people thus abandon it when they can. Unfortunately, this makes killing people the winning strategy. If you can take someone else's life with only minimal cost to yours, survival-wise, you're a winner. This goes on until most people will kill if it benefits them. And that makes society collapse, and that brings lean times, starting the cycle over again.

That's an excellent parable - for the human condition, but does it work with Satan, who - whether supposing himself to be undoing all God's work or (more likely) doing God's dirty work under orders, if logic and evidence is applied to the Bible (and ain't I glad I don't believe it) is simply never going to respond to kindness?

Had a great portrait of him hee hee...I might try to copy and paste....

It would make a great avatar

It's up for grabs - I don't think its' copyrighted. I keep trying to copy and paste the Ta Phrom stegosaur as mine.

[POI]

Had a great portrait of him hee hee...I might try to copy and paste....

It would make a great avatar

Yea, it would... But I have been having difficulties adding any desired avatars, as the allotted space is too small

[POI]

...
Someday, God is going to contain Satan, but not yet. Why?

Maybe because people wanted to know evil by the hard way.

This response does not follow. Do you have to experience rape, torture, etc, to truly know that you do not want it, or that it is bad/'evil'?