Is the Abrahamic God really Satan?

If I were Satan, and I wanted to lead as many souls astray as possible, I would claim to be a mighty, omnipotent and unconditionally loving God. I would tell my people there's only one way, and it's mine, and all other ways are false. I would tell people they needed to convert everyone to worship me so they could save their souls. I would have them torture each other in an aim of converting them all to my religion. My religion would publicly preach love and forgiveness while in practice it would cultivate hate and prejudice.

All I'm saying is if I were Satan, all these modern totalitarian religions claiming to hate me would be working exactly as I designed them to.

Well too bad, you don't always get what you want.

You're right I wanted someone with an IQ above 35 to respond to this thread.

I don't think it's the concept or figure of a monotheistic deity that emerges as 'evil' under close scrutiny as religious organisations. I believe on the face of it all religion has come into being as a way of rationalising and reassuring oneself about the afterlife, possibly the oldest and most maddening fear we have is our fear of our own mortality. 'It's alright, I'm going to paradise when I die. unfortunately that sort of message is very powerful if you want to start manipulating entire populations towards your own political goals as we've seen in history with the Roman catholic church and Islamic jihadism.

So God is not Satan, it is human nature to corrupt and be corrupted*

*I'm an agnostic.

Under the assumption that there is Satan, we could also assume there is God

I believe that God would not allow Satan to impersonate him

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kurlie

Under the assumption that there is Satan, we could also assume there is God

---

Why would we assume that? What's your line of reasoning?

Quote:

---

I believe that God would not allow Satan to impersonate him

---

Again, not necessarily. Some religions like gnosticism are built around the idea of a malevolent entity deceiving mankind.

Satan exists just as much as God.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

Not at all.

Then, and this is the kicker, every few hundred years or so I'd tell some random jack ass that everyone worshiping me is doing it wrong and he needs to spread the untainted version of my law. I'd bury golden plates in the ground and all sorts of shit to legitimize this new prophet, and start the whole mess over again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Why would we assume that? What's your line of reasoning?

---

All 3 abrahamic religions include a God who is has power over Satan. I dont know about Judaism or Christianity, but in Islam, it is specifically stated that Satan cannot impersonate God or the prophets

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

Again, not necessarily. Some religions like gnosticism are built around the idea of a malevolent entity deceiving mankind.

---

Wouldnt that mean we're screwed regardless of who we worship?

FYI I am religious, but I try to keep an open mind

Also the Abrahamic religions revolve mostly revolve around generally good concepts (dont kill/steal etc.), so even if Satan says he is God, to keep up the act he would have to act like god. This would be much more possible if we were questioning pagan gods, or any god that requires sacrifices or actually leads souls astray

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kurlie

All 3 abrahamic religions include a God who is has power over Satan. I dont know about Judaism or Christianity, but in Islam, it is specifically stated that Satan cannot impersonate God or the prophets

---

That's exactly what I would say if I were Satan

Quote:

---

Wouldnt that mean we're screwed regardless of who we worship?

---

No. Gnostics practiced the path as laid out by Christ to be Christ-like rather than just blind followers of God. The idea behind Gnosticism, much like Hinduism and Buddhism, is to transcend the need to worship a deity at all but to find the deity inside yourself.

Quote:

---

FYI I am religious, but I try to keep an open mind

Also the Abrahamic religions revolve mostly revolve around generally good concepts (dont kill/steal etc.), so even if Satan says he is God, to keep up the act he would have to act like god. This would be much more possible if we were questioning pagan gods, or any god that requires sacrifices or actually leads souls astray

---

The Abrahamic God does require sacrifice. People also kill and steal in the name of God. The killed heretics and heathens and stole their land for God. They carried out far more evil, and broke far more of God's Laws in his name than without it. The olnly thing that changed when Abrahamic Religions hit the board was a false sense of entitlement to do these things. They were told they were the holy representatives of a good God, giving them greater license for evil. It's a good plan for a malevolent deity if you ask me.

As a side note, Gnosticism is pretty awesome.

wait a second. The only purpose this conceptual "Satan" serves in structured religion is to oppose another conceptual "God", so if "Satan" is opposing "God" by being "God" doesn't that mean that "God" is a concept that is in itself contradictory? so if God is God and Satan is God then wouldn't "Satan" just be another term for "God"? Or maybe I misunderstand.

There's two ways I could answer that.

The first answer is yes, Satan is God, and God is a total evil fuck.

The second answer is that Satan wrote all the holy books posing as God, but God didn't because God understands dogmas lead more souls astray than forward.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

You're right I wanted someone with an IQ above 35 to respond to this thread.

---

Woulda given it an honest shot had someone with one over 25 started it.

It's an unlikely situation, and here's why:

Satan only exists as a being in Christian holy writings, and, if Satan (as the Bible describes) exists, we can assume Christian doctrinal writings to be true. It's a reasonable assumption, then, that God, a benevolent, almighty deity, would NOT let everybody on the Earth be deceived into believing in Satan and give nobody on Earth a chance at a relationship with Him.

Or, if you mean a different concept of Satan, then it doesn't really relate to the Christian religion much. You can talk about malevolent deities and all, but it's not how the Christian God is described.

But my point is if I were Satan, I would make christianity exactly the way it is, and describe myself as a benevolent diety, not a malevolent one. Why on earth would I get people to worship me by saying "I'm a douchebag?" I'd want my worshipers to feel like they're on the good side and like they're legitimately helping people by torturing and slaughtering them. If they knew they were following a corrupt diety, they'd be more open to other opinions and wouldn't feel so sure that they were right about everything. They may even look actively for some sort of good god to fight me. I can't have that, I would want everything to already think they're on the good side, no matter what evil shit they end up doing for me.

And if I were a good god, I'd of course give people a chance at a relationship with me, but there wouldn't be one specific path to find that relationship. No holy book from my mouth would tell people they found the one way, and every other way is corrupt. If I were God I'd let everyone follow me in their own way, and I wouldn't care how they did it or what they labeled me so long as they celebrated the diverse ways to find me rather than try to convert each other.

Ah, you're a fan of the idea of religious pluralism. That's logically flawed, as different religions make irreconcilably clashing claims. Different creation models, different salvation plans, different codes of conduct. No religion is the same, and they all make certain truth claims about the reality of the universe which cannot be ignored. There can only be one true religion, or there can be none at all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by koopa184

Ah, you're a fan of the idea of religious pluralism. That's logically flawed, as different religions make irreconcilably clashing claims. Different creation models, different salvation plans, different codes of conduct. No religion is the same, and they all make certain truth claims about the reality of the universe which cannot be ignored. There can only be one true religion, or there can be none at all.

---

Please excuse my crassness but what a load of festering bullshit. Each and every religion has, at the very least, a sect which believes in the universal path toward peace and self-liberation. The Christians have the Gnostics, the Muslims have Sufism, Hindus and Buddhists also have tons and tons of various followings which are usually regard each other neutrally until the followers decide that they have the one true way. The only thing that separates religion is the arrogance to assume there's only one way. They may vary in their details but those details are horizontal. When regarding the vertical, spiritual growth, they all lead to the same place.

And furthermore, individual religions are FULL of contradictions. Practically every word of the bible is contradicted by something else in the bible. Contradictions do not mean various religions cannot be reconciled, or else no one would be able to call themselves Christian to begin with. The fact is you can reconcile contradictions, Christians do it all the time, usually by picking and choosing or claiming different contexts result in what appears to be contradictory but isn't. The same is true of different religions, a lot of their contradictions are arbitrary but the core of every religion is a same fucking thing. Only the details change.

God is schizophrenic.

Satan is his first alterego.

Omnis is his second one.

His second alter ego has a massive erection

If satan was god than why did satan go through the trouble of creating mankind and setting up an elaborate plan to convince them he was god. Maybe he just created mankind to win a bet, to prove to the other gods that its possible to decieve an entire race.

I'm not necessarily saying satan is the creator god, just that when abrahamic dogmatists worship God they're really worshiping Satan.

The great thing is your argument is absolutely flawless. There is no way to prove it wrong :cheeky:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

I'm not necessarily saying satan is the creator god, just that when abrahamic dogmatists worship God they're really worshiping Satan.

---

They are worshipping an idea.

:facepalm:

...an idea that causes them to do all the horrible shit the idea of satan would want them to do.

What exactly do you want from this thread?

Satan is an idea too.

Your point is?

Don't worry about it, you wouldn't get it anyway.

Why make a thread then?:)

Try not to think too hard, you might hurt yourself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Try not to think too hard, you might hurt yourself.

---

Oh, speaking by experience? :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Don't worry about it, you wouldn't get it anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by littlezoe

Why make a thread then?:)

---

---

Obviously, because other people will. And they might even have something interesting to add. But I get where you're coming from; it's hard for some folk to imagine that other people, with wholly different minds than themselves, exist in this big ol' crazy place we call the universe.

Though, to be fair, while Omnis' approach is definitely interesting and novel (to me, at least), it's not going beyond territory that hasn't been well traversed.

The gist of it all (for those who strain themselves when trying to piece together ideas presented at a higher level of thought): Dogmatic thinking causes all sorts of horrors in the guise of good intent, while a personal approach to spirituality/salvation/whatever tends to be just that--personal. You'll find the former in most universalizing religions, at the center of many world conflicts and atrocities throughout human history. The latter you won't hear of nearly as much, because that's the whole point.

Of course, coming to this conclusion from the OP assumes your reasoning abilities are functioning to par.

I for one...fuck, why am I in R/S?

It seems the evidence lends itself to that view, at least. Atrocities are more likely to be committed by people who follow the only correct way and believe everyone needs to follow the same way to get to heaven.

But I understand why it went over your head, LittleZoe. You're still stuck in the mindset that everything you don't believe in, no one should, sort of like the opposite of a dogmatist and therefore a dogmatist in your own right.

Satan is an angel of the Lord in ancient Jewish tradition. Lucifer is the cast down angel who becomes the devil. Satan is the "devil's advocate" and challenges those who would call themselves loyal to god.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Please excuse my crassness but what a load of festering bullshit. Each and every religion has, at the very least, a sect which believes in the universal path toward peace and self-liberation. The Christians have the Gnostics, the Muslims have Sufism, Hindus and Buddhists also have tons and tons of various followings which are usually regard each other neutrally until the followers decide that they have the one true way. The only thing that separates religion is the arrogance to assume there's only one way. They may vary in their details but those details are horizontal. When regarding the vertical, spiritual growth, they all lead to the same place.

---

Does that matter? Let me give you an example. Greeks assert that there are multiple gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, to name a few.) Jews and Christians assert that there is one God, Yahweh. Also, the Hindus assert that reality is but an illusion, while Christianity says that reality is definitely real. They both make individual truth claims about reality. One can be right, both cannot be right (it's called the law of noncontradiction. An object cannot be both a cloud and not a cloud. Reality cannot be both an illusion and not an illusion in the same respect, and there can't be both one God called Yahweh and multiple Greek gods,), or both are wrong. It isn't arrogant to assume there's merely one way: it's logically respectable, since religions make different claims about reality.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

And furthermore, individual religions are FULL of contradictions. Practically every word of the bible is contradicted by something else in the bible. Contradictions do not mean various religions cannot be reconciled, or else no one would be able to call themselves Christian to begin with. The fact is you can reconcile contradictions, Christians do it all the time, usually by picking and choosing or claiming different contexts result in what appears to be contradictory but isn't. The same is true of different religions, a lot of their contradictions are arbitrary but the core of every religion is a same fucking thing. Only the details change.

---

I think that contradictions are resolved every day, but it's really a hard thing to debate about. People can say that it's riddled with contradictions all they want, but it's impossible for the Christian to completely reconcile unless the opposing party brings specific examples to the table.

Define the core details of religion. What are some of the categories that comprise the core details? The nature of God, the nature of reality, the path to salvation, the correct moral code, etc?

Many polytheistic religions such as the greek and roman pantheon are based on Mystery Schools which were essentially phiolosophy schools that discussed in depth philosophy while using the symbols to reveal this philosophy to the public. While a commoner might literally worship a deity like Poseidon, behind closed doors the true meaning of the deity was discussed and debated.

So I'll admit, to the commoner the differences may seem irreconcilable because they take everything at face value rather than read in between the lines and read through the symbols. If you take the bible literally, of course it's going to sound like an utterly different history than the Hindu version of creation. If you take it symbolically, you can understand how the pieces fit together like a puzzle.

For instance follow what you just said to its logical conclusion. What do you think it means in Hinduism when they say reality is an illusion? Only God is real because only God is eternal. Hindus call this Atman or Brahman, the one who fell asleep and fractioned into an infinite number of dreaming pieces. When, in Western Religions, they say God is inside of you, how is that different from saying you're a piece of God experiencing itself, like in Hinduism?

The only way to claim religions are different is by using strawman arguments. When you misinterpret what Hindus mean when they say reality is an illusion, you can contrast it with some baseless concept of reality. But if you understand the actual philosophy then you realize they're the same, no matter how much their followers skew them to be different.

Oh jebus, I'm struggling so hard right now to remember something. There was some church or some idea or some something that said/believed that the God of the old testament was what is now considered Satan. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Maybe you're thinking of the book of Job?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

n the Book of Job, ha-Satan is a member of the Divine Council, "the sons of God" who are subservient to God. Ha-Satan, in this capacity, is many times translated as "the prosecutor", and is charged by God to tempt humans and to report back to God all who go against His decrees. At the beginning of the book, Job is a good person "who feared God and turned away from evil" (Job 1:1), and has therefore been rewarded by God. When the Divine Council meets, God informs ha-Satan about Job's blameless, morally upright character. Between Job 1:9–10 and 2:4–5, ha-Satan merely points out that God has given Job everything that a man could want, so of course Job would be loyal to God; if all Job has been given, even his health, were to be taken away from him, however, his faith would collapse. God therefore grants ha-Satan the chance to test Job.[11] Due to this, it has been interpreted that ha-Satan is under God's control and cannot act without God's permission. This is further shown in the epilogue of Job in which God is speaking to Job, ha-Satan is absent from these dialogues. "For Job, for [Job's] friends, and for the narrator, it is ultimately Yahweh himself who is responsible for Job's suffering; as Yahweh says to the 'satan', 'You have incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.'" (Job 2:3)

---

No, not that.

What do mean 'no, not that'? The passage basically outlines the idea you were expressing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

What do mean 'no, not that'? The passage basically outlines the idea you were expressing.

---

I think I know the idea I was expressing better than you, eh?

That idea expresses the opinion that Satan plays a particular role in Heaven. Not that he is in hell, as the Divine Comedy described, nor that God doesn't like him or he doesn't like God. It rectifies a lot of the paradoxes between Satan and God, but I don't think it's what Jesus of Suburbia was referring to. The problem is the description is so broad it could be any number of things, but it's most likely Gnosticism.

Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But it may be Marcionism

Marcionism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If it's neither of those maybe you can find it here

God as the Devil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

That idea expresses the opinion that Satan plays a particular role in Heaven. Not that he is in hell, as the Divine Comedy described, nor that God doesn't like him or he doesn't like God. It rectifies a lot of the paradoxes between Satan and God, but I don't think it's what Jesus of Suburbia was referring to. The problem is the description is so broad it could be any number of things, but it's most likely Gnosticism.

Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But it may be Marcionism

Marcionism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If it's neither of those maybe you can find it here

God as the Devil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

---

Marcionism sounds almost right, but the article just calls the Old Testament God a "separate entity", whereas what I'm thinking of states that that other entity was to become known as Satan.
Or maybe I'm just imagining that part, or remembering an add-on idea or something. Memory can be tricky sometimes.

Look at the conduct of the abrahamic god. Is it satanic? I would say yes.

Oh wow, this sure is a blast from the past. Remember the summer of 2012? Good times.

Blast to the past or not..

No one in the topic seems to have pointed something key out..


Words from the Bible that would seem to support Original Posters point..



Somewhere in the NT it is written to this effect..

That in the end times when Christ returns.

He will see all those who come to him and claim to follow ..

And He will not know them and send them away


At the age of 10 I saw this one..

Asked myself how when there is a church on every other block

And in virtually every town..

How can such be possible?

The only answer would be if in fact..

The churches had departed from the teachers teachings

And replaced them with their own



OP

It might not be so much that it is "God" that is actually satan..

But the religion itself that is...

Or has become..


What do you think?

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

- Isaiah 45:7

Yep. The Bible does not claim that Satan created evil. It claims God created evil.

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;"

- Matthew 25:41

That seems to suggest that God created Hell. So the character created evil and Hell. That is extreme wickedness. The Biblical concept of God creating evil is paradoxical because creating evil would be the ultimate act of evil, but it's what the Bible says. I believed for a long time that evil and Hell were the creations of Satan. I believed it the whole time I was a Christian, but then I became an atheist and learned about the Bible.

The Bible also advocates slavery and wiping out large populations for the purpose of take over. God drowned the whole world except for one family and two of every kind of animal. He punishes people for what their dead relatives they never met did. He turned humanity inside out because a naked couple in the woods ate a fruit he told them not to eat. The Biblical God is angry, jealous, and vindictive. This isn't Mr. Nice Guy we're talking about here.

For further readings on this topic: Evil Bible Home Page

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

- Isaiah 45:7

Yep. The Bible does not claim that Satan created evil. It claims God created evil.

---

Is there something else here..?

" "I" form the light, and create darkness"

" "I" make peace, and create evil"

Most assume, and take for granted that God is good, or THE good. But, is that a valid assumption?

When I read the quote above (and others like it elsewhere) I see something else.

I perceive that there is this "I" that has created both good and evil

A "I" which has created that, and perhaps all dualistic creations


Perhaps the idea and label of "God" has been applied to the wrong part of the equation..

Or even willingly misapplied ..

What if that which has been labeled God... is not "God"?

That's an interesting idea. It's much more believable than the common Christian view. I used to consider myself a Taoist and sort of a Zen-Buddhist. I ended up accepting the ideas of Hinduism and quickly became an atheist. If I were to ever be part of a "religion" again, I would probably be a Zen-Buddhist. I have had one foot in that door for that last 20 years. There is something to it.

Imposing a thought for discussion, but not necessarily any views of my own, could the times when God refers to himself as "Us" (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, and 11:7 are three examples) have anything to do with either this or other times when God has seemed inconsistent? Most people have accepted it to be a reference to the fact that God exists in the three parts of The Father, The Son, and The Spirit, but I think placement in contrast to other parts is important. To paraphrase, in 1:26 he says that he made man in "our" image, and in 3:22 he says "man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil". It's only when it talks about his own actions or speech that refers to God as "He".

I'll probably make a thread sometime soon detailing how this relates to matters irrelevant to this thread.

When god commands his follows to rape prepubescent girls, I think the topic of if god created hell or not is kind of a moot point. People say the bible is often taken out of context, but I never heard a context in which raping children is not evil.

Try this one out..

From the Gnostic Gospel of Phillip



"God consumes man,

Egos are sacrificed before Him;

Animals were sacrificed..

To those who were not God."