happy(It's been far too long since I wrote some Satanism text... so here is some!)
http://www.dpjs.co.uk/god.html
This text presents three arguments that if there is a god, it is an evil god. Each of the three arguments take a standard argument for theism and use it to uncover the truth that an evil god is more likely to exist than a good one. Each argument also has a "sensible refrain" that looks at the evidence from a normal atheist point of view, without making the assumption that a god of any kind exists.
Contents:
Cheers Mate
Now, I know you know shite (I hope), and I was wondering if I could have your opinion on the whole situation, maybe even a scrap of advice. I know this is the kind of thing that you must just find to be right up your alley.
Re: Cheers Mate
Thought inspiring!
I.e., it could be God's intent to create supercomputers to play chess with, and we're merely a tool, therefore our suffering is irrelevent to the greater good.
Actually the possibilities are pretty much endless, I should just, perhaps, add the text "If the only gods that exist are "benevolent" or "malevolent", then the latter is more likely..."
How's the music project going?
When do you start your military stint?
:)
Music project is going very slowly at the moment, in particular I'm skint but waiting to buy a particular new piece of software. I've hit the limits of what I can do with my mix-match of odd bits of ill-suited software!
I have psychometric tests to look forward too, but should do basic training this year (3-months soldier training).
Spiritual forces "do" exist.
I believe that the so-called "spirits of Satan" are the lost souls of those evil ones who have perished. Every living thing on this planet has its own spirit/soul, and can attach itself positively or negatively to other spirits after death. How do you think the spirit of Jesus Christ lives on? It is a God spirit, that goes into the souls of those people who accept it, adding strength, vigor, and regeneration. Maybe the spirit of Jesus was embedded with an even stronger spirit when he was alive, and that is why he called him "His father", or our traditional "God". Satanic spirits, and God spirits alike, may show themselves visibly, but solely in the mind of the person who has them. That is why a group of people may see or witness something from the same spirit, but always differently than everyone else, and not from that spirit itself, but from that which has embedded itself with their spirits.
That's what I believe after examining your essays, and the personal experiences of myself and my wife here in Toronto, Canada. Death is still and always permanent, but the tiny spark that was created when you were born, and developed and changed throughout the course of your life never dies. And by one spirit connecting with those of others whose bodies are alive, similarly connects with their minds also. This can produce incredible surreal experiences for some individuals, and possibly even reality-based effects, though I have never witnessed this, and doubt its existence.
P.S. Your writings are very intellectually fullfilling. Keep up the great work!
God
Re: God
truthCHANGESyou@hotmail.com
LIER
Re: LIER
You accuse me of worshipping another God... HOW MANY gods do you think exist???
If I do not believe in your God (so far you haven't actually told me what God(s) you believe in, so I don't know), then shouldn't your God get off it's backside and introduce itself to me? Or is it going to "burn me in hell" simply because I'm too clever to fall for pathetic organized religion?
God is Evil
Re: God is Evil
There is no evil god or is there a good god.
If you start with the assumption that there is no god, and that we evolved from random events, it tends to make more sense.
There is no good or evil, but just what 'is'. There's beauty in a sunset, in newborn creatures, in music, etc., and there's evil in senseless murders, cancers, and violence, again...etc. It a subjective reaction to the world that 'is'.
What we have is a world that we must adjust to. A world that says that in order for you to survive, you must adjust to what 'is'. There is no evil god who punishes us or is there a good god we rewards our pleas for help.
We are the results of an impartial 'all this is'.
If god is good,everything should be good, not bad
Re: If god is good,everything should be good, not bad
Don't Read This
Life is not about "EVIL" VS. "GOOD"; because there is really no such thing. These concepts were created by men thousands of years ago in hopes for power over the community.
These men created these concepts to "scare people into church". In order to have power and recieve much money from the church-goers.
So you say, what about murder, rape and stealing? Well the majority would say ---> evil; I would say waste of time that could be spent making progress in your life (and also hurtful to others; which in turn slows the progress in their life).
So my point is, why are you focusing on "AN EVIL GOD"? Why not spend the time focusing on your life and how you can grow into a better person?
That is what life is....it's really simple, we just have to make it very complicated......
Re: Don't Read This
If god is love, who created hate
Re: If god is love, who created hate
Argument 1.1, by the second sentence has forgotten the free will that it proposed in the first. If God is all-good and has free will, and creates a being that is not God, and gives it free will, obviously this new being can turn its free will towards evil. That's the essence of free will.
For 1.3, if life were truly built on death, wouldn't life eventually drive itself into extinction? Evolution would work in reverse: new, higher organisms, requiring more energy derived from death, would cause more death. Somehow the balance has worked out, however, and life is sustained. Anyway, it may certainly seem, in ignorance, that it's odd that things must eat other things to survive; but I'm not sure that this points to a malevolent God. After all, autotrophic organisms (like plants) and heterotrophic organisms (such as ourselves) live in fairly perfect symbiosis. We can't survive without ingesting the energy that comes only from plants. This is true. But plants can't survive without the waste products of our cellular respiration. The chemical equation for photosynthesis is the mirror-reverse of the chemical equation for cellular respiration. It seems more like a complex and masterful coordination than anything sinister. What you're seriously suggesting, perhaps, is that a good God would only create photosynthesizing life forms, because you find it horrible that we must eat plants to survive. But what if plants were partly intended to be heterotrophic food? What if there's no morality attached to the death of a plant?
Your "sensible refrain", 2.3, is only correct that physical constructs in this universe our temporary; and living things being physical, they too are temporary. I don't see how this is disharmony, per se, and I don't see how this means life is incidental to the universe. I'm not even sure what you mean by that phrase, because everything in the universe is incidental to everything else. The nonliving universe no more exists to produce life than life exists to produce new arrangements of nonliving matter.
3, in general, assumes that God is hidden, which seems arguable in light of our free will and our non-omniscience. It's certainly possible that God is everywhere, to the extent that we can't find a particular object called God; or that over thousands of generations we've raised ourselves to avoid seeing it.
In 4, the oft-presented argument that God cannot choose evil, it's being forgotten that a morally perfect being, by definition, will do whatever is morally perfect; such a definition cannot tell us whether he wills this or not. For all we know, he may just continually choose never to do evil, which seems likely if evil is incompatible with his will. You may as well say that the fact that I did a particular thing is indicative of the fact that I could do nothing other than it. That's the eloquent assumptive fallacy of determinism.
1.1. No, the first sentance says "God has free will AND is perfectly good", by implication a "perfectly good" being does not create evil, therefore if God was good, it would create beings that were also perfectly good AND had free will.
ALSO, I do not agree that the essence of free will is only to choose between good and evil. There are millions of choices in life, and I don't agree that results of some of these choices have to be "evil" in order for choices, free will, to exist. Free will is the ability to choose between different goods just as much as it would be to "choose" good or evil. Also note that much of the time evil, suffering, is an unintended result of our actions. If "evil" was a result of free will, or tied to it, it wouldn't occur accidentally. I think it's clear that free will does not require evil, nor that evil is only a result of free will.
Natural evil, accidental evil, etc, are all big clues that free will is only another natural form of evil, piled on top of already-existing created evil. All this means that to say that god only created evil in order to sustain free will must be wrong - there is plenty of evil whether or not it's been created as a result of free will!
I've got a (hopefully) fuller set of pages on the problem of evil and failture of free will theodicy, an intro is here: http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/theodicy_freewill.html
God does exist and indeed he is evil!