I don’t think Satan is supposed to be an “opposite,” he was an angel who just fell or something
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
97 points (71.0% liked)
Showerthoughts
29692 readers
1469 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The lore is actually unclear on that. Most seem to agree that Lucifer is a fallen angel, but it's never so much as suggested in the source material that Satan is Lucifer. Lucifer is actually only mentioned one single time, in an old testament verse. The other dead kings are making fun of the king of Babylon for failing to defeat God and dying himself. As the king of Babylon is dying, the other dead kings say he has "fallen from heaven" and call him Lucifer. It seems implied that Lucifer and/or the king of Babylon are being compared to ~~the sun~~ Venus, the "morning star", and the second brightest object in the sky behind the moon [added this part in an edit], and I think many have interpreted this as to mean Lucifer was an angel that tried to shine brighter than God and this was cast out of heaven. But it seems like most of the modern depictions of Lucifer have no basis in biblical canon. It's all people trying to extrapolate from one single time the name Lucifer was mentioned while dead kings make fun of a dying king.
The "morning star" referred in the bible is not the sun. They had no idea the sun was even a star.
The firsts mentions of the sun being a star was in 500BC and the Greek that said it was exiled as heretic for even saying something like that. The old testament predates that for millennia.
The morning star and the evening star, at a different time of the year, are the planet Venus. Which was the brightest "star".
Yes, you are absolutely right. I totally had a brain fart on that. Edited to fix that.
Lucifer in the Old Testament testament is the king of Babylon I believe in context.
The symbology of a star falling from heaven fits with allegories of stars as kings/rulers in many places in the Bible.
As for satan being a fallen angel that’s a little more substantiated
Luke 10:17-18
Fiction tends to get more from the apocrypha and similar spurces.. things like the rebellion, Lilith etc. More meat on the bones when you want to write an interesting character.
If you had to base it on a couple of lines in the old testament you'd have very little. Certainly not a netflix series worth 😁
I mean I feel like undoing all creation every time I fall or stub my toe, too. Sure, we all do. But geez, it's a figure if speech! An in the moment thing!
"anti" also doesn't mean opposite, it means against. The roots of the word, tracing back to the Greek, means against. As it does in French and it's Sanskrit version. All forms of it mean opposed to. This is why language is important and some checks should be there to counter the "language is malleable" argument that people use as an excuse to not learn how to use words correctly. The idea that anti means opposite has been around as long as I can remember, and definitely longer than that, but it drastically changes the meaning of words.
Satan and Lucifer are only the same being in the minds of theology invented by men, in the Bible they're never mentioned as being one and the only time ha-satan is mentioned is in the book of Job, which plays out in the opening scene like a formal hearing where the accuser (the meaning of the word Satan) is investigating God to see if he's made a worthwhile creation or that his creation will worship him.
He says that there isn't anyone on earth that would worship God unless they were actively protected/blessed by God, which is the accusation against God and his creation. God then retorts with a "witness" of sorts in the courtroom of divine beings, claiming Job will prove Satan incorrect.
Then the events of Job getting his whole family killed and losing everything occur, etc.
It's just funny how modern fundamentalist Christians see it as some kind of "bet" between God and the devil, when the text makes it seem like God is on trial and Satan is the prosecuting attorney assigned to the case. Never does it imply that he's Lucifer or the talking snake from genesis, and the Bible never conflates those two characters either. That's exclusively been done as part of the theology surrounding the Bible that has been taught for so long to people so young that they believe it's just part of the faith, and since most will never bother to read the whole Bible they'll just assume it's true and go on acting as if it's in the text instead of a very VERY loose conclusion drawn from the Bible.
load more comments
(11 replies)
Don’t bother trying to make any of it make sense. And don’t bother trying to reason with those that believe it. If you’re an actual atheist, just move on with your belief and pay no attention to the beliefs of others. They should be just as irrelevant to you as your belief should be to them.
Now, if you’re a Reddit atheist, I think you’re supposed to throw a hateful insult-ladened temper tantrum about how Christian are insulting and short fused. At least that’s what it seems anyway.
If it is neither…. Cool musing!
load more comments
(1 replies)
The problem is that God is allegedly light (1 John 1:5).
Light is its own opposite (a photon's anti-particle is identical to itself).
So there cannot be a Satan that's the opposite of a God of light.
Also, the addition of Satan as a supernatural adversary in the Abrahamic tradition was probably the result of a later editor needing to change Anat petitioning El to kill the son of the protagonist as adapted from the earlier polytheistic Tale of Aqhat to set up the adapted dialogue of suffering from the Babylonian Theodicy into a monotheistic version and just replaced the goddess' name with the generic term 'adversary.' So there's the whole later fanfiction as just the result of a lazy editor adapting a polytheistic earlier story to a monotheistic version going against the whole 'Satan' thing too.
This is the kinda of rebuttal I like to see.
Translation after translation after translation is how we ended up with the such an absurd story.
It's high time for another reboot of the whole franchise.
Lmao. Yes
Manichaeism still alive and well.
What an amazing rabbit hole to go down. Thanks for teaching me something new! Fascinating religion with quite the history.
Fun fact: St. Augustine started out as a Manichaean! Super interesting stuff even from a purely philosophical POV.
Me: "Interesting thought."
Me after reading the comments: "This shit is more complex then family relationships in Austrian Royalty."
Satan/Lucifer is not the opposite of God but a opposing force to the creation and will of God. Lucifer is kind of the oldest teenager with a bad case of "I hate my creator" temper tantrum ever.
In that way Lucifer itself is already the antichrist, he is just missing a corporal manifestation on earth.
Well and Lucifer is, a lot like the named angels, Jesus and all the saints, a great loophole for monotheistic Christian religion around the first commandment.
edit notes: Corrected german written Luzifer to Lucifer
It's "Lucifer." It means "Light Bearer."
In German he is written with a z, "Luzifer", and my tired German brain just took that instead of the correct English writing. Sorry for that! 🫣
That's kinda badass honesly
I think your logic is messed up somewhere.
Jesus is the Christ, Christ being the word for "the anointed one" or "the chosen one" or "the Messiah".
An antichrist would be one that is the opposite of "the Messiah" or "the chosen one" or "the anointed one", they wouldn't have to be the complete and total opposite of Jesus to count.
My favorite (probably inaccurate) point about the name "Jesus Christ": the name "Christ" means "anointed one", as you said. People were generally anointed by having oil poured on their head. "Jesus" is just contemporary form of the name "Joshua". So in another life, "Jesus Christ" could literally be translated as "Oily Josh".
I feel like if Jesus were alive now the name oily josh would be like that horrible childhood nickname that he hates
As pointed out above "Christ" is a title, not his name. His dad wasn't called Joseph Christ.
load more comments
(2 replies)
And Jesus is an incarnation/aspect of God (at least in the version I'm most familiar with), right? It's some kinda bizarre circle
Incest everywhere
i'd like to learn more about your religion please
The question is, why the god would give a freewill to the humans but not the angles? aren't we all his creation? why god punishes the angels for opposition but still give the humans the best shape who do worst? all these are Myths, there is no such a Satan, the human viciousness is the satan we afraid of. there is nothing eviler than the human rampage causing harm.
why the god would give a freewill to the humans but not the angles?
Angles do have some free will, but only to a degree
Unless they’re arc-angles.
okay so they made a spelling mistake there's no need to be so obtuse
Is that a Linux joke?
the christian god also punishes humans for 'misusing' their free will
Because angels are only gods army of mindless robots.
If you try to make actual sense of these things you're gonna have a bad time. They're not made for people capable of thinking.
It's not that they're incapable (at least not all), they just turn it off when it comes to religion.
My parents are staunchly evangelical to this day, and I've heard my father use logic and critical thinking on multiple occasions, even identifying things like non sequitur and Occam's razor when it comes to following a train of thought through. I've literally witnessed him using the same logic atheists use to disprove islam.
Unfortunately they're trained from birth to believe that...
-
Doubting the Bible is heinous and will put your salvation in jeopardy.
-
Everything that contradicts the Bible is just a plot from the devil to ruin your salvation.
Once you ingrain those ideas into a very malleable 3-4 year old mind, it's incredibly difficult for them to remove their emotional attachment from the specific religion they're a part of so that they can use the same logic they employ on other philosophies into their own.
It's like a mental block, or a thought virus. They terminate any and all logic when it comes specifically to their religious beliefs (and politics, because it's the same thing for modern fundies.)
I am neither high enough or primed enough for the weird logic of theology to handle this post.
Wouldn't the opposite be Jesus's mother? In other words... Mary is the anti-Christ?!
view more: next ›