Is the DEVIL real?

I agree, you have to go back to the origin of man. You have to go back to the roots. But the Old Testament doesn't do that. The Old Testament is one small tribe's account of the origin of man, and the power of a sky god, the defeat of the female, and the fall of man from his grace. But it is based on the philosophy of a planter culture that has already rebelled against the Goddess. A culture that has already had centuries of programming in Planter-Culture group ethics, and duality. That already understands the institution, and has already developed the institution of religion, with all the dogma it needs to properly socialize and empower a people. They were already an objectivistic people, alienated from their own self-conscious self, and the Old Testament is riddled with that.

The Old Testament is an alien document to the Chinese living in the early planter cultures of the same period. It is alien to the Indo-European tribes who spread accross Europe and into India. Or the Ural-Altaic tribal people who spread clear accross from Europe, through Siberia and into the Americas, or the people living accross the islands of the Indain Ocean and the Pacific, or the aboriginies living in Austronesia. Or the American Indians, who lived clear accross the Americas, or even the tribal settlements all through Africa.

But what is amazing is that of all those people, those living in planter cultures were developing similar institutional structures, just different stories and traditions. But all of those traditions including those of the Hebraic tribes, show vestiges of an older tradition---which was not alien at all to all the other non-planter cultures. There was (and still is) a common spiritual element that was shared by all people. It is a common spiritual understanding of the universe, of the power of the spirits, of a world tree/world mountain/world cave that is the center of our existence, that understands the universe as a multiplicity of forces, some benevolent, some malevolent, and some are just mischevious tricksters. They understand the ecstatic experience, and how to consciously explore, seek guidance, and get help within the spirit world. They know that we are just a part of nature, and are not meant to lord over nature, but to show it respect and take care of it. They know that what is good and evil are human concepts, and from our viewpoint not that of Spirit. They generally understand an equality between genders. These people do not have religion, but only spirituality. And this is universal from the farthest corners of the globe to everywhere in between.

I think with this common shared knowledge and understanding of the universe, an understanding that science has only within the past 100+ years come to validate----that they probably have an awful lot to teach over a small tribe travelling in the Desert of the Middle East.

And most of all---they have the key to the door that, when closed, created centuries and centuries of ego-shadow development, that has alienated man from his subconscious and turned him into only half a person, and that in today's modern abstract world, has allowed mankind to lose so much meaning that the world has become a terrible evil place. They have the key to the door to reconnect us to our subconscious and the spiritual reality that underlies everyday life.

 

You are free to engage in your fairy tales and play with your imaginary friends if you wish. I would rather remain where I am, grounded in reality.

 

I think good and evil are real.

 

the human ego is as real as any devil gets. good and evil are behaviors that we chose to do or not do. not unseen powerful personalities.

 

your grounded in a matrix that's been built around you by the elites who want to dumb you down, not tell you about the origin of mankind. they just want you believing there is no other realm outside of our own. when even science proves that. gee, ya think? it's real. there are dark energies and entities floating through our dimension but they are as far from human as possible. it's called deception. satan is here to deceive and cause strife with humans. it's his most powerful tool is deception and confusion. we need to know who and what we're dealing with if we are to repel their attacks.

 

the devil is more real than god is

 

i dont believe in gods. i dont believe in the devil.

i believe in love and that is plenty for me.

 

Well said!

 

consider Satan as a materialist, and a radical leftist

not for nothing are people like marx and bakunin accused of being in league with the devil. i don't believe it such a charge would necessarily be viewed as an insult by them (not that they believed in a literal devil, of course.) because the devil is a highly politicised figure, the first anti-authoritarian and dialectical materialist.

 

How could that be? Without god there is no devil. The personification of evil in the form of the devil means nothing without the counterpart which is the good/creator god. Is evil more real than good?

 

Ever since I first learned of this point of view I was immediatly intrigued but in the end it just seemed to me that in this regard we humans are Satan. We are the rebels that (symbolicaly) took the insight in good and evil. Of course I believe this 'insight in good and evil' is just part of our primal nature to judge things as essentially beneficial or not.
If you see god as the personification of good and Satan as the personification of the human invented abstract concept of evil why project things on this symbols like materialist or even more trivial: leftist.
In general Satan is not perceived as such and even though I can't take the concept of Satan serious at all I certainly don't view him to be more of a materialist than the (personified) creator of all matter and reality.

By the way: how it is perceived in your post I can see indeed people like Marx would not be insulted by a comment like being in league with the devil. In reality I can imagine it would depend on the context and the perception of who would accuse them of such a thing

 

naturally. if you don't believe in god, then you necessarily believe that the bible was written by men. constructed either consciously for socio-political power, or arising more organically through the subconscious (almost certainly both) and in this case (as in all other mythologies) the figures presented are symbolic of human impulses, desires and fears, both conscious and unconscious

The operative word being "if".

even if you believe in a notion of "good and evil" (which i don't) merely reading any of the appearances of the devil in literature would be enough to disabuse you of the notion that he is a symbol for "evil" (in the sense that we now understand the term) . in fact, in ALL of satan's biblical appearances (in fact, in all of his appearances in literature, remember that "the devil" as we currently imagine him, is not so much a biblical figure as one of 16th century protestant literature- post protestant reformation) the relationship between god and the devil (and indeed, man) is FAR more complex than simply a binary good/evil opposition and tends to give voice to many concerns, deontology vs.consequentialism, rebellion and authoritarianism, freudian repressions, individualism etc. But, i would argue most strongly that the devil is most definitely presented often as a materialist, with his relationship to god being not that of good to evil, but that of materialism to idealism. (for the most explicit biblical example of this, see him tempting jesus in the desert.)

in fact, its interesting to note how the rejection of idealism has, historically, often born the charge of "satanism" from the alchemists, to Nietzsche to Dawkins.

if we are to understand satan not as lifeless symbol of "evil" but as an individual character with his own motivations and desires (and, as i've said, the biblical account does little to discourage this reading.) then the politics of satan are not trivial, but make a rewarding study.

aye,Bakunin makes rather a nice analogy there, i think, he most definitely would not have minded being referred to as the devil (and i'm sure he was, frequently) marx bore the charge more frequently (and continues to do so, from the christian right) his views on religion differed from bakunin's so its difficult to predict how he'd have responded. although he wrote (rather beautifully, i think, although it is now one of the most misquoted sayings in history) about religion. although, of course, he was a materialist, and therefore would not have been afraid for the safety of his immortal soul, i'm sure that he would have dealt with it as he did all of the criticisms amassed against him in his life, by ignoring them, and then drinking copious amounts of alchohol

 

I've got to ponder some more about this god and devil division in idealism and materialism, because I am not so sure I can find myself in it (if I wish to project it on them in reverse I could easily do it, all it would take is a serious conviction).
Trivial things can be as much rewarding to study as crucial stuff for sure, but that doesn't make the politics of Satan so to speak less trivial to those who regard him as a symbol or personifaction. I can fairly easy put myself in the shoes of those who do look at Satan in the more biblical sense (not always so uniform, as usual) and even then his politics remain trivial and more importantly something to not get involved with/stay away from I would argue they make an equally if not more rewarding study to the peeps who already perceive him and his politics/ideology as a human projection on an abstract concept.

 

quotes prove only that others have fantacized before one's self.

there is nothing a so called devil is claimed to be responsible for, that cannot be accounted for by human ego, arrogance, and aggressiveness, totally without the aid of unseen mysterious powers or beings.

now there is no reason such forces and being cannot exist, but rather, what people pretend to know about them, is still people pretending.

 

hail satan. the bringer of light

 

Screw that.
Hail SAGAN!!

 

So why do you call him lightbringer, mystic eye? I know Satan has been called like that for centuries but the reasons why seem to differ.

 

hail nothing, harm nothing. there is no "him" to call anything. there are endless other things though, completely neutral to whatever WE CHOOSE to pretend.

 

I think theirs a duality of things good and evil. I've also heard of negative/evil spirits being in the very low frequency range. That's why you call for energy only from higher frequencies that are beneficial to your greater good. I mean like god is an idea and not a person why can't satan be an idea of things as well, such as demonic possession . read this

 

i don't. there is the causing of harm and the avoidance of the causing of harm. that is as close to any kind of thing like that as it gets.

human ego is real. human aggressiveness is real. these together are as close to a human concept of a devil as it gets or needs to.

unknown things are certainly real enough. but everything people pretend to know about them, including labels like devil, angel, demon, and even god, are people pretending to know what is not known and probably cannot be known.

whatever is out there, beyond all physical realm, is known only to itself, and owes no obligation to anything anyone believes or claims to.