What is the point to 'SATAN'

You're not actually trying to make sense of any of this stuff are you?

Mark, I cannot understand how you can think that satin has no purpose whatsoever!

It is used in dresses (including wedding dresses); sheets, furniture, drapes, and a host of oth...

...uhhh...

...oh...

...Satan.

Well, I wouldn't know anything about that.

The role is that there must be a villain to the story. And Satan fulfills that purpose. See, this way God gets off the hook. Bad things aren't God's fault - they're Satan's. And when we do bad things, we can also blame Satan. E. g. we weren't intrinsically evil. Instead, we were swayed by the dark side. If there was no Satan entrapping us, we'd be awesome individuals, 24/7!

Satan is, essentially, both the human and the divine scapegoat.

No, Sorry Mark, She isn't. First of all omnipotence negates the idea of freewill and second, She cannot do the impossible. Thus if the humanoid is a requirement, he can only be evolved on the surface of a spherical rock full of cracks and with a molten core under pressure; orbiting somewhat precariously in the immediate absence of a big, heavy asteroid of random pathway, a huge hydrogen bomb and destined eventually to be drawn into and destroyed by a phenom called the Big Crunch

Again She cannot perform that which cannot be done, for instance make herself both exist and not exist, or in a more practical vein perhaps, make something out of nothing

Hence storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, strife, pain, disease, war, etc

But yes, as an apodictical existential pantheist I can attest She is indeed everywhere all at once

He is more nearly abstract than She. On the absgtract-concrete spectrum with a rock, say, near the left or concrete end and Her near the opposite, or abstract, He is represented to Her right (forgive pun)


False, He has freewill just as She. Perhaps He embodies what we consider Her imperfections

….by freewill..though you must remember "evil" is a relative phenom. What She the Christian Power considers good in his treatment, the porker for instance finds evil of the most awful magnitude, forced by her to live in mud as he does; then She hangs him up by the rear legs bleeding to death in the utmost pain from a split throat before ultimately eating him

In a sense true, only because She permits what owing to freewill She cannot control

Forgive me Mark but not all of us take the tome so seriously. However some of us do nevertheless consider its truth in a purely symbolic form

True, but only in the sense that his inevitable presence can't be avoided. His (largely abstract) existence does however make life more interesting to be sure

Straight answer: A q of that magnitude requires volumes in reply. But first you have to concede that according to the general principle that nothing is entirely anything while everything is partly something else, its position on the concrete-abvstract spectrum is not a measure of its reality

Indeed the Universe is Her body and all the activity therein Her mind at work

(Even Costco for instance, slightly to the right of the rock, is largely abstract, its concrete form merely groupings of humanoids moving physical objects from one location to another whilst muttering at one another)

Applause


Dale

Mark obviously is, Ros. Did you mean me but inadvertently address your remark to him

Oops that can't be can it, as you responded while I was still composing

Yes one might say His entire purpose (however abstract) is to make The Entire Megillah more interesting. How boring if everything were just fine, no contrasts

Yes for Goodness Sake (forgive pun)

Only to certain specific groups of humanoids

A certain truth to that, inasmuch as we're to a large degree determined, that the gift of freewill is often very difficult or almost impossible to exercise

For instance it appalls me to wonder, born 1930 of Deutsch ancestry, with only a very slight difference of circumstance I might have born in Berlin, would I have joined the New Hitler Youth, heiling him and hating The Jew

Amen (pun unintended), Jes

Well put indeed Jes, and I know how it can be done. However there's much resistance, mainly from The Right, and so I have little hope for adoption

I couldn't have expressed it better; on our scale of abstraction the humanoid 'way over toward the Left and divine at the right (that one intended)

Ive allowed him to introduce himself,
Hes a man of wealth and taste.

Not that I believe in his existence, but his role within the Christian cosmos is The Tempter.

He tests our faith by appealing to the dark side of our free will.

A declaration of faith and adherence to the laws of God aren't so special if there isn't an alternative.

Considering he was once first among the angels in the eyes of God, he's quite a rich literary character as William Blake and many others have recognized.

@all

Finn got it right. Satan is the personification, not of evil, but of our darker impulses. He is the tempter. In fact, that is the only power he is initially allowed to have. Satan has no other power except to tempt. Now if Man succumbs to one of these temptations, Satan's power increases.

I do hope you understand that this is all allegory, not even straight mythology.

Then is it you who screens participants

If so it seems you're quite liberal


Yes his name is even Noble

…or were you referring to Satan

One has a choice depending upon what degree of abstraction one can tolerate. I for one see Him quite a way to the right of Her since She at least has a body where He doesn't

Excellent dude.
Only you forgot one thing.

'Fault ' implies it could have been different, mankind must be taught, therefore blame and fault only apply if mankind has already learned and no action was needed.

Why thank you Tod, a pinch of encouragement is most ineluctable in this otherwise contentious fulmination of grandiloquent acrimony


Only you forgot one thing.

I don't recall defining "Fault" but I'm sure you're perfectly right in this connection

I do however seriously doubt that--even through many sequential restructurings through the Big-Bang, Evolution, Big-Crunch--that the humanoid will prove or has proven substantially different since it has to start from scratch each time

Fair comment.
Thank you for that elegant recounting. You have re-opened my eyes to a point which I had not truly attempted to harness, a point of quite rare worth.

Satan is just another Gawd in the Fundamentalist Calvinist Polyidolitry: The father; the son; the Holy Ghost; and Satan to explain the meaning of predestined bad occurrences like Hitler, Calugia, and Herod.

Rap

I'm happy the two of you have found someone to talk to.

A point deeply appreciate, Tod, in this quotidian diriment of convoluted hermeneutic miasma

I am most sincerely beholden for your and hermeneutic cognition

Rap you misjudge Him. Her is merely what's left else after everything has reached its pinnacle