Back when I still went to (Catholic) Church I don’t remember ever hearing about Satan/the devil/Lucifer/whatever
Comment on Religion
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 days agoI do, and I’m not sure why what I said would make you think otherwise… The way Satan is popularly depicted today makes him indistinguishable from the “evil gods” of other religions.
MBM@lemmings.world 2 days ago
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Catholics don’t tend to obsess over him like Evengelicals, that’s for sure.
mholiv@lemmy.world 2 days ago
True if all of your knowledge of religion comes from pop culture I can see how someone might see it that way.
Like in Family Guy or other Seth Rogan shows Satan, Jesus and “God” are all depicted as equals bickering.
Thanks for your thoughts here. They’re interesting.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Yesyes, it’s actually a fallen angel, servant of god. Same animal, different cloth.
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 days ago
No pop culture needed, just listen to Evangelicals. To hear them tell it, Satan is this huge powerful force that meddles in human affairs constantly.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That just sounds like evangelicals.
RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Older versions of the Bible contain references to “Hades” which was changed to “hell” in the King James Version.
galanthus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Well, the way Satan is depicted in pop culture has little to do with actual christianity, and I am not sure why you felt the need to include him, despite the fact he is a very minor character in christianity, and also even in the popular depiction he is not nearly on the same level, as he was created by God, is not omnipotent, omniscient, unlike God, etc.
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Listen to Evangelicals rant about Satan. They won’t say he’s on the same level,. but they act like he is.
psud@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Evangelicals are decidedly not Catholic
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 2 days ago
If Satan is less powerful, that means god can stop evil but chooses not to?
underwire212@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Oh boy… I think there have been entire books written about this argument like , 100’s of years ago?
PanArab@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Satan doesn’t do evil. He merely tricks people into doing evil. Kind of like a criminal lawyer than an evil god.
Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 1 day ago
Isn’t manipulating and coercing people to do evil things also evil?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Either that or:-
is not as powerful as advertised
has a different definition of evil
doesn’t exist
Maybe some other possibilities.
uberfreeza@lemmy.world 2 days ago
One of which that I’m aware is: the devil was deliberately created with the knowledge of its future rebellion to test the faith of people. Another is to wait for them to repent. I don’t follow any more, but deeper into catholicism there’s a surprising amount of theory. For a religion with an organized structure, it’s not very organized.
galanthus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Google “theodicy”.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 1 day ago
I’ll give that a read later and reply after
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In the text, definitely. In the practiced religion (especially in America), not so much. And even in the text he has a much larger role than in its predecessor Judaism.
I think the pop culture versions of religions have become so deeply ingrained that they became a part of many adherent’s actual beliefs. For example, ask the average Catholic to describe hell and see how long it takes for something from Paradise Lost to pop up.
Why would that disqualify him as god-like? Polytheistic religions had gods of varying strengths, many created by other gods - the Greek pantheon is a tangle of lesser gods created by greater ones, and even Zeus came from Chronos, a Titan (which is somehow different from a god).
The whole assigning of godhood seems completely arbitrary to me. Archangels are more powerful than many full-on gods from other mythologies yet somehow don’t count, whereas even humans could have been (or will become) gods in other lives in religions such as Jainism or Mormonism.
galanthus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Ok, I will concede to you that pop culture should be considered, however I would not say angels are gods.
The christian God is the supreme power, he is the monarch of the universe, so to speak, everything is under his authority. An angel is not a god, because he is a creature, not the creator, he is subordinate. He is not all-powerful, he is a servant. Within the logic of christianity there is absolute difference between god and everything else.
In greek paganism Zeus was the king of the gods. However, he was not allpowerful(there were some henoteistic tendencies, however), other gods were still powerful in their own right, and there were gods he was afraid of(in a famous passage from the Iliad that I do not quite remember, it is mentioned that he was afraid of Nyx). There was a revolution when Kronos was overthrown, as you mentioned. So those two religions are quite different.
In Jainism, the so called “gods” are a different thing altogether, no need to mention it.
I do not know much about mormons, aren’t they christians? I thought they were.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My point was that what constitutes a god differs between religions, and the Christian claim of monotheism uses a very narrow definition of god that excludes the many supernatural beings described in their religious texts.
By the standards of other religions one could easily argue it’s a polytheistic religion - the Trinity, or one divinity appearing in multiple forms, is similar to other religions considered polytheistic.
It’s an endless debate because both sides talk past each other due to disagreeing on the basic definition of the term.
That’s a matter of debate I’m not at all qualified to get into. They have some very [out there](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaltation_(Mormonism\)) beliefs that they understandably don’t advertise to outsiders, and that only became common knowledge with the advent of the internet.