Their are plenty of threads on the reality of his counter part, but what of him? What are all his names in different religions? What levels of power does he have compared to his counter part? Whats his origin? Is he true evil, or is the only evil an absence from god...?

I'd like to hear more about what people think or have heard about the devil and whether they believe in the devil.

7/16/2005 3:39:31 PM

7/16/2005 4:05:16 PM

over 20 views and only one response? i know the bible belt is more religious than that. i would like all the information people believe about the devil, even if its something you would assume i already know.

7/16/2005 4:47:54 PM

Light bringer

7/16/2005 4:54:01 PM

^^ STFU. when has tww, and SB especially, ever portrayed itself as being representative of the bible belt? do your own research you pretentioius fuckstick

7/16/2005 5:24:51 PM

The Devil is evil because, despite having a much better understanding of God than we possess, he wholly and willfully rejected God in favor of himself. Ergo he is as far removed, as far absent, from God as you can get.

He was, back in the day, on par with Michael, which is to say that he was about as high on ladder of divinity as one can be without actually being God. Of course, he wasn't willing to settle for that, and got thrown out on his ass. Thus it is better to say that Satan is Michael's opposite rather than God's, because "opposite" implies some degree of parity that does not exist in this situation.

The more difficult question, theologically speaking, is exactly how Satan exerts his power of this world; we are told several times that he does have such power, and in a couple of instances that he himself walks "to and fro about the Earth." Other places and certain dogma have it that Satan himself is confined to hell and cannot directly control anything that happens on earth, but must instead work through intermediaries.

7/16/2005 5:59:48 PM

i just talked to him

he says he's not really that bad once you get to know him

7/16/2005 6:01:46 PM

We are talking about Karl Rove, correct?

7/16/2005 6:22:08 PM

does hell have a physical relationship to either earth or heaven? i find the pictures of the ancient world where lucifer has crashed into it, creating the cavern that is hell and the mound that is purgotary, thus turning it into the christian world quite interesting.





I can't find the picture from my copy of the divine comedy, but these combined show most of the interesting elements. I've only read the inferno so far though.

Having just rewatched one of my favorite movies, the ninth gate, sparked my interests as to what others know about the devil.

[Edited on July 16, 2005 at 6:40 PM. Reason : chaning pictures to find some that work]

7/16/2005 6:37:09 PM

^^ damn, you almost made me ruin my new LCD by spewing water all over it.

but on the topic - i hate to be "that guy" who comes in and tries to ruin the tread, but the devil? come on. I thought people stopped believing in that along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

So i'm completely fine if you want to believe that a god created the earth, universe, etc. And if you also want to believe that he created man in his image, and for some reason he cares that people are "good people" or whatever, that's fine too.
But to throw the devil in the mix, who is the antithesis of everything good and is the root cause of everything wrong and evil on the earth? give me a fucking break. It's so elementary that jsut because there is a "good force", there has to be an equally strong "bad force". and he sits in hell and punishes souls for all eternity because they chose not to believe some dude was the son of god, regardless of the life they led of if they were good people? bah

oh yeah - the devil also provides such an easy excuse for christians, though, when they fuck up. You just cheated on your wife..... 10 times? oh, those were just indiscresions induced by Satan when you were weak in your faith. You embezzeled money while acting as the chruch secretary? yep - devil made me do it. lost your kid's college money on a gambling trip? you know who to blame!

[Edited on July 16, 2005 at 7:23 PM. Reason : .]

7/16/2005 7:04:14 PM

Quote :

"^^ STFU. when has tww, and SB especially, ever portrayed itself as being representative of the bible belt? do your own research you pretentioius fuckstick"

I can't imagine such random hostility is at all serious, but the mix of educated and religious people in this area, combined with the quantity of people who use this message board, make it perfect for such an inquiry.

7/16/2005 7:08:05 PM

^^collecting peoples knowledge of the lore on the devil has nothing to necessarily believing in the devil.

I know some people think that on some level all religions are just different ways of worshipping the same god in different ways, or others misunderstanding the true nature of God. If there are any who believe this, or are informed on the way people think who do believe this, does the same apply to the devil?

Like the demons or evils from other religions, are they supposedly the same as from Christianity?

7/16/2005 7:18:30 PM

They could just rename the 8th level of hell "Little Nigeria"

7/16/2005 7:39:36 PM

How did pentagons and "666" come to be associated with the devil? what other symbols does he have?

7/16/2005 7:44:13 PM

apparently 666 is in the New Testament - Revalations, although i've never seen it.

And actually, recently they found some acient Greek tablets that showed that the actual sign of the devil is 616 (therefore throwing off half of salisburyboy's conspiracy theories)
http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1115997336239311.xml
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/166/story_16630_1.html
http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2532/The_Beast_Gets_A_New_Number_In_Time_For_Karmageddon

7/16/2005 7:50:46 PM

^it's made up, just like everything else.

7/16/2005 7:52:48 PM

while i question the accuracy of some of the things said here, it did make for an interesting read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil

I'm going to read more about what it says on Zoroastrianism. Near the begining it says humans are urged to align themselves with the good god instead of the evil god because the good god is eventually, after a nearly eternally long struggle, win. But from what I've heard from my professors here at ncsu I was lead to believe the winner was not predecided and that both sides had a chance at winning.

7/16/2005 8:10:21 PM

And what a surprise that agentlion's understanding of Christianity, the concept of the devil, and morality should be so facile as to warrant little more than derision.

The Devil entices people to do bad things, he does not make them do it. People are ultimately responsible for their own actions. Incidentally, you almost never see Christians claiming, "The Devil made me do it," and getting away with it. Quit talking out of your pagan ass and come back when you know it from a hole in the fucking ground.

7/16/2005 8:21:00 PM

Quote :

"Specific Zoroastrian Concepts Zoroastrianism teaches many of the concepts found in the major Abrahamic faiths, such as Heaven, Hell, Day of judgement, the concept of Satan, the prophecy and the coming of the Messiah and the extensive teaching of Angels and Evil spirits. According to the Gathas humans are free and responsible beings. Predestination is rejected in Zoroastrian teaching. Humans bear responsibility for all situations they are in and in the way they act to one another. Nothing in the Heavens and Earth has the power to force a being to do evil. Reward, punishment, happiness and grief all depend on how the individual lives his life. Good befalls the people that do righteous deeds. Those that do Evil have themselves to blame for their evil-doing. Humans possess a great power. They can improve their way of living and the living conditions of others. This power is called Charitas. After death, the person must walk through the Path to Judgement or Chinvat Peretum to bear responsibility for his actions when he was alive. The Prophet Zoroaster acknowledged devotion to no other god besides Ahura Mazda. The concept of Dualism plays a role when speaking of the Spenta Mainyu ("Holy Spirit") and the Angra Mainyu ("Evil Spirit"). These two have an eternal battle at the end of which the Holy Spirit will prevail by the power of Ahura Mazda. Metaphysical dualism is rejected in modern orthodox traditions and beliefs when it comes to worship. The belief that Good prevails over Evil and God's supremacy over all is similar to that of the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in which Satan is in no way the equal of the Abrahamic God and is a creation of God. Mardanfarrokh, a Zoroastrian theologian in the 9th century CE, posited, "If God is perfect in goodness and wisdom, then ignorance and evil cannot come from Him. If they could come from Him, He would not be perfect; and if He were not perfect, He should not be praised as God and perfectly good..." (117-123 from For students and novices Complete Pazand and Sanskrit texts published by H.J. Jamasp-Asana and E.W. West; pioneer English translation by E.W. West, SBE. XXIV; transcribed Pazand text with French translation by P.J. de Menasce. From Textual sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism by Mary Boyce. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1984.) "

After reading that from the wikipedia site it seems like the idea that good eventually wins was intentional in the devil section. "Angra Mainyu" sounds like an interesting name for the devil. More interesting than diablo, mephisto, and baal which my first encounters with were from a computer game.



The rest of this post you can just skip over, I found it to be interesting information about Zoroastrianism enough to be posted, but its rather off topic

Quote :

"Zoroastrianism was the favored religion of the two great dynasties of ancient Persia, the Achaemenids and Sassanids. However, because we have virtually no contemporary Persian written sources from these periods, it is difficult to describe the nature of ancient Zoroastrianism in much detail. Herodotus's description of Persian religion includes some recognizably Zoroastrian features, including exposure of the dead and divination. The Achaemenid kings acknowledge their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions; however, they also participated in local religious rituals in Babylon and Egypt, and helped the Jews to return to Canaan, so apparently no attempt was made to enforce religious orthodoxy on their subjects. According to later traditions, many of the Zoroastrian sacred texts were lost when Alexander the Great destroyed Persepolis and overthrew the Achaemenids in the 320s BCE. The status of Zoroastrianism under the Seleucids and Parthians is unclear; however, it is widely believed that the Three Wise Men said to have come from the Parthian empire bearing gifts for Jesus of Nazareth were Zoroastrian Magi. It was also during the Parthian period that Mithraism, a Zoroastrian-derived faith particularly focused on the Aryan god of the sun, Mithra, began to become popular within the Roman Empire. The Mithra cult reached the peak of its popularity in the second and third centuries AD, and was particularly popular in the Roman army. When the Sassanid dynasty came into power in Iran in 228 CE, they aggressively promoted their Zoroastrian religion. Many historians believe that the Sassanids were primarily opposed to the Catholic (Orthodox) Christian church because of its ties to the Roman Empire, and thus during this time the Nestorian Christian church was tolerated and even sometimes favored by the Sassanids. During periods when the Sassanids captured provinces held by the Romans, they often built fire temples there. Also during the Sassanid era, the belief that Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were the two sons of the time-god Zurvan became popular. A form of Zoroastrianism was apparently also the chief religion of pre-Christian Armenia, or at least was prominent there. During periods of Sassanid suzernity over Armenia, the Persians made attempts to promote the religion there as well. By the 6th century, Zoroastrianism had spread to northern China via the Silk Road, gaining official status in a number of Chinese states. Zoroastrian temples still remained in Kaifeng and Zhenjiang as late as the 1130s, but by the 13th century the religion had faded from prominence in China. In the 7th century, the Sassanid dynasty was conquered by Muslim Arabs. Zoroastrianism, which was once dominant in a region stretching from Anatolia to Persian Gulf and Central Asia, did not have a powerful foreign champion as Christianity did in the Byzantine Empire, and so steadily lost influence and adherents in Iran under Muslim rule. In the 8th century, Iranian Zoroastrians had fled to India in large numbers, where they were offered refuge by Jadav Rana, a Hindu king of Sanjan (the modern-day province of Gujarat) on condition that they abstain from missionary activities and marry only in their community. Although these strictures are centuries old, Parsis of the 21st century still do not accept converts and are endogamous (though see below for further discussion). The Parsis of India speak a dialect of Gujarati. Zoroastrians in Iran are still persecuted by that nation's theocratic rulers. Even today, however, one can find Zoroastrian communities living and practicing their faith there, such as in the province of Yazd. The earliest English references to Zoroaster and the Zoroastrian religion occur in the writings of the encyclopaedist Sir Thomas Browne."

But back to the topic, surely people adding all the views to this thread know or have heard more about the devil than has been explicated so far.

7/16/2005 8:44:14 PM

Quote :

"The Devil entices people to do bad things, he does not make them do it"

This seems like a redundant role, I mean humans with free will seems like they can find temptation all on their own. Are you saying the devil's tempting (not forcing) is only in specific instances with certain people, or are you saying all temptation is to some degree the work of the devil?

7/16/2005 10:31:17 PM

Before the Devil's initial temptation of Adam and Eve, there was pretty much only one thing we could do to sin: eat the fruit and thereby learn good and evil. The Devil convinced us to do that. Although we were technically able of deciding to eat the fruit on our own, our only exposure at that point was to God, who we would not have disobeyed; it is only once the Devil comes along and shows us the alternative path that we had that potential to commit that first sin.

Thus the Devil already has some part in every sin that gets committed, since it was only because he showed us how to sin that our free will is able to take us down that path. Beyond that, we are merely told that the Devil has a hand in pretty much all the tempting that goes on. There's a couple of ways to look at this. One, every version of Christianity I've run into pretty much agrees that to some extent the human conscience, as exists in every healthy individual, is a sort of natural law inscribed by God onto everyone's heart. All over the world people tend towards certain beliefs about morality, even if they do not always adhere to the same. As a result, one theory might hold that the voice contrary to conscience (and let's face it, there almost always is one, or dilemmas wouldn't be dilemmas) is either the Devil, his intermediaries, or whatever scar his temptation of Adam and Eve left on the human soul.

7/16/2005 11:15:03 PM

I think its easier to buy that the devil by causing people to have knowledge, including how to sin, in that sense has a hand in all sin. But with every action their being some influence of god in conscience and the influence of the devil in other voices is a little redundant.

I think men can see the moral goods and bads in the different options without having constant outside, non-forcing, influence.

7/16/2005 11:50:07 PM

Quote :

"He was, back in the day, on par with Michael, which is to say that he was about as high on ladder of divinity as one can be without actually being God. Of course, he wasn't willing to settle for that, and got thrown out on his ass. Thus it is better to say that Satan is Michael's opposite rather than God's, because "opposite" implies some degree of parity that does not exist in this situation. "

So the devil is evil because he wanted more out of life, and rejected what he saw as the oppression of God? Sounds like some Marx or something...

7/17/2005 12:21:49 AM

Quote :

"I think men can see the moral goods and bads in the different options without having constant outside, non-forcing, influence."

Certainly they can, but if a little well-placed influence can possibly tip somebody to your side, of course you're going to ply it...

Actually, I have another problem with your assessment. Without the knowledge of what is good that is put into men by God, we can't see the moral goods and bads in anything. We might occasionally arrive at conclusions that are concurrent with with reality in the Christian sense, but not for the right reasons.

Quote :

"So the devil is evil because he wanted more out of life, and rejected what he saw as the oppression of God?"

The Devil wanted more than he deserved, and he was willing to destroy and supplant other entities to get it. And remember, within the context of Christianity there is no question as to whether or not he deserved more; he didn't, end of story. God isn't some earthly master who can potentially be oppressive or wrong. He is never those things, thus one is never right in assuming otherwise or rejecting Him accordingly.

7/17/2005 12:44:01 AM

Quote :

"The Devil wanted more than he deserved, and he was willing to destroy and supplant other entities to get it. "

I think we can all see where your secret word-play mind-game messages are leading, and you wont get away with it.

7/17/2005 1:03:39 AM

Dammit, I caught myself from saying it once.

7/17/2005 1:39:29 AM

Quote :

"Incidentally, you almost never see Christians claiming, "The Devil made me do it," and getting away with it. Quit talking out of your pagan ass and come back when you know it from a hole in the fucking ground."

eh - i spent 18 years in a Southern Baptist chruch, and heard plenty about tempation and people "resisting the pull of the devil" and stories of being prey to the devil before seeing the light and all that.

7/17/2005 5:29:44 AM

so is hell a real place, is it hot like in most movie depictions, cold at its depths like in the inferno, a lake of fire or what? what descriptions of it are in the bible or writings of religious figures, and just how metaphorical are they?

7/17/2005 8:57:11 AM

wouldn't hell (and heaven, too) just have to be a "state of mind" - just a place for your spirit to go, and maybe join some kind of collective consiousness or something. I don't think even fundamentalists (in modern times, at least) could argue that heaven and hell are actual, real places you could put on a map of the earth or universe.

7/17/2005 9:19:55 AM

Well here hell seems to have a physical location inside the earth, and the heavens are above. but are you contending that the afterlife has no physical reality anywhere, the golden gates of heaven are actually are entirely metaphorical? Or is it not physically real in the matrix sense where you can touch and feel things, but its just not the reality thats happening on earth? I think if its the latter case then its not unreasonable to try to describe one of the afterlife locations.

In greek mythology with the Elysian Fields, ancient egyptions with their house of dust, and many older religions its not uncommon to believe the after life is experienced in a physical way, even if some of the laws of nature dont work quite the same there.

7/17/2005 9:48:53 AM

the devil seems to be out of hell alot in the bible.

7/17/2005 9:56:57 AM

The Devil.

Right.

Sure.

OK.









No, really.








































bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!1











.....silly theists.

[Edited on July 17, 2005 at 10:15 AM. Reason : ]

7/17/2005 10:15:45 AM

There seems to be physical form here with the 3 headed perversion of the trinity. Jesus certainly had physical form. I don't think a physical afterlife would necessarily be less pious than a mental one.

Quote :

"wouldn't hell (and heaven, too) just have to be a "state of mind""

Why would it have to be a state of mind?

[Edited on July 17, 2005 at 10:52 AM. Reason : .]

7/17/2005 10:36:16 AM

the history of satan in judeo christian religion is pretty interesting

the god of mischief, chaos, merriment, and fertility, nature, known (depending on the place and the time) as pan, dionysis, were typically depicted with horns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_God


pashupati?


pan

pan, especially, is even goatlike and usually carries a trident

these gods, who symbolized worship of nature, sex, and mischief, were "demonized" by the church in order to draw people away from paganism. hence, the creation of the idea that satan was a horned god.

7/17/2005 10:44:46 AM

that pan statuette makes me think of...

7/17/2005 11:21:56 AM

I watched the glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the Gods they made
I shouted out "Who killed the Kennedy's?" when after all it was you and me
Let me please introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I lay traps for troubadors who get killed before they reach Bombay

Please to meet you hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game

7/17/2005 11:54:50 AM

If the heavenly host is infinite, and Lucifer took with him 1/3 of the heavenly host....wouldn't his army, as well, be infinite?

7/17/2005 12:47:33 PM

Quote :

"The Devil wanted more than he deserved, and he was willing to destroy and supplant other entities to get it. And remember, within the context of Christianity there is no question as to whether or not he deserved more; he didn't, end of story. God isn't some earthly master who can potentially be oppressive or wrong. He is never those things, thus one is never right in assuming otherwise or rejecting Him accordingly. "

How do we know that he didn't deserve more though? How do we know that God isn't really the bad guy, and the Devil is the good guy trying to save us from God's tyranny? History is written by the victors after all. Also, if God can't be depicted as some type of early ruler, how then could you frame him as smacking the Devil down for trying to snatch too much power? It seems to me people just like to use that as a cop-out so they don't have to answer questions about God, while still trying to not seem like blind zealots.

7/17/2005 12:58:48 PM

Man is 5

The Devil is 6

God is 7

7/17/2005 1:44:13 PM

^^ Because this discussion is pointless unless it's inside the context of a specific religion, and if that religion is Christianity, then God is undeniably right.

7/17/2005 1:52:24 PM

but does heaven's infinite or hell's infinite approach infinity faster?

when did the devil pick up a pitch fork? was he just borrowing posiedons trident or is it something more useful?

7/17/2005 3:53:46 PM

According to wiki, it is most likely a borrowed symbol from Hinduism (Shiva's trident). There is a single verse in the bible mentioning the devil's staff.

7/17/2005 3:55:30 PM

can you quote it?

7/17/2005 4:11:10 PM

I was reading different wiki religious topics all morning.

It's in one of 'em.

7/17/2005 4:15:52 PM

how much is the lord of the rings bad guy based off the devil? i've heard of comparisons between aragon/gandalf and christ, so i was wondering if there was the same thing between the bad guy and the devil?

Also any thoughts or knowledge on what/who the anti-christ is would be interesting.

7/17/2005 4:35:00 PM

Get to reading.

Morgoth is very similar to the devil in the Lord of the Rings universe.

7/17/2005 4:35:59 PM

Quote :

"Also any thoughts or knowledge on what/who the anti-christ is would be interesting."

Everyone thinks the anti-Christ is going to be some tyrannical leader who does great evil but thats not so. The devil is about deception, not doing what people normally think of as "evil." He will be a very appealing world leader who seems to have the peoples' interests at heart. He'll probably take power in the US or Europe.

7/17/2005 9:01:32 PM

there was a god
and a lower god controlled the sea
got killed by two million pounds of sludge from new york and new jersey

7/17/2005 10:28:09 PM

Quote :

"eh - i spent 18 years in a Southern Baptist chruch"

That was your first mistake.

Don't come talk to me as though the fringe of Christianity represents the whole, or even the majority. That said, none of the things you quoted them as saying are strictly speaking untrue. Anyone who is doing anything contrary to God's law is succumbing to the Devil. It's only if they try to make it sound like they have no fault in the matter that they're bullshitting.

Quote :

"wouldn't hell (and heaven, too) just have to be a "state of mind""

I don't know, and I don't really think it's that important from a theological perspective. I won't rule out that the places are, in some respect, physical locales -- we've got more than three dimensions to work with here, and besides, if we've gotten this far we're acknowledging for the sake of argument an Almighty God who can make a physical location that isn't in the universe if He so pleases.

Quote :

"these gods, who symbolized worship of nature, sex, and mischief, were "demonized" by the church in order to draw people away from paganism. hence, the creation of the idea that satan was a horned god."

I don't know that it's canonical or anything that Satan has horns, it's just sort of a popularized image. That said, from a Christian perspective, it makes perfect sense that people obsessed with sex and mischief should be worshipping what they thought was a god and which was, in fact, the devil.

Quote :

"How do we know that he didn't deserve more though?"

Satan and his powers were created by God, along with everything else. As the creator, God is intimately familiar with what everybody "deserves." If you want to deny that God created everything, then you have no business believing in any of this in the first place, or, at the very least, debating from within a Christian frame of mind.

Quote :

"the good guy trying to save us from God's tyranny?"

God created a perfect world for us and gave us one very simple rule. I would hardly call that "tyranny" by any standard.

Quote :

"Also, if God can't be depicted as some type of early ruler"

I said He isn't an "earthly" ruler. Big difference. Not that it matters anyway, because you aren't understanding what I said. The point is that God is not like earthly (ie, "fallible") rulers. He is never wrong or tyrannical, He is always right and just.

Quote :

"It seems to me people just like to use that as a cop-out so they don't have to answer questions about God, while still trying to not seem like blind zealots."

What questions are we getting out of answering?

Quote :

"The devil is about deception, not doing what people normally think of as "evil." "

This is an interesting point, but I'm not sure if it's quite on target. The Devil wants to get as most people to fall to temptation as possible, and that means getting them to do evil things. But to acheive that end, he'll use whatever he has to -- deception, the truth, seemingly good works, whatever -- as long as he maximizes the damage to people and to the church. But any time the Devil tells the truth or helps somebody, it's merely convenient to his ends.

Quote :

"Also any thoughts or knowledge on what/who the anti-christ is would be interesting."

The anti-christ is not Satan, exactly. He's part of the unholy parody of the Trinity: the Devil, the anti-christ, and the beast. He's a very powerful pawn of the Devil who will acheive a lot of earthly power, and who will (if memory serves) die at some point and then come back as a mockery of the Resurrection. Hitler strikes me as a very good example of the kind of guy we're probably talking about, except the A-C would have to be more charismatic, powerful, and (in the short term) successful.

7/17/2005 10:36:07 PM

Quote :

"I don't know that it's canonical or anything that Satan has horns, it's just sort of a popularized image. That said, from a Christian perspective, it makes perfect sense that people obsessed with sex and mischief should be worshipping what they thought was a god and which was, in fact, the devil."

yeah, it's not canonical, and what's also not canonical is the satan character ever doing anything we'd call evil.

the worst things he did was tell eve to eat the fruit (though actually, that was "the serpent," and we're never told it was satan), try to tempt jesus, and a few minor things

all of the really nasty shit was done by god.

satan never destroyed cities, turned innocent women to salt, covinced fathers to murder their sons then stopped them right before they did it, or killed the first born sons of entire cities

7/17/2005 10:54:22 PM