Bible does not describe or mention hell as we understand it. Our vision of hell is constructed upon drawings of Hieronymus Bosch, who drew inspiration from Visio Tnugdali, a 12th century manuscript describing a bad trip of a knight from Cork.
See you next time.
You have encountered Gnostic thought (and related heresies!) The Gnostics believed that the God of the Christian Old Testament was actually Satan all along. It is an interesting rabbit hole to fall down into.
It’s interesting to think of the world religions that could have been, had the scales of power tipped in different directions. Gnosticism is an interesting take on Abrahamic religions, almost like a blend of Christianity and Buddhism.
There were even literal Greek Buddhists before there were Greek Christians. Heck, Christianity as we know it might not have survived without the original Greek drafts of the New Testament. There’s another universe out there where the eastern Greco-Romans were way too busy with the karmic cycle and achieving enlightenment to worry about the execution of some random guy with daddy issues in the desert.
Yeah I’m pretty sure the giant Buddha statue that the Taliban blew up in Afghanistan several years ago was Greek work.
There are also plenty of accounts from (I think) the Abassid empire where Greeks and Buddhists were both present in Baghdad at the same time. I forget why that ended, maybe because of the Seljuks or the Mongols, can’t remember.
And of course, there’s an account in the Buddhist canon of a philosophical debate between a buddhist monk (Nagasena) and a Greek king named Menander (Milinda in Pali), which took place in the first or second century BC.
But damn… thinking about a world where Greco-Buddhism became the religion of the West… what could’ve been, eh?
God that sounds like such a better world.
Some say Jesus was actually influenced a lot by Buddhist philosophy or even has been to India
Also by stoicism. Remember Stoicism (but, like, actual Stoicism, not the tiktok-alfa-male “stoicism”) was very popular among both Roman and Greek people at that time, so…
Who says that was a different universe? You should understand by now how history frequently forgets such peaceful people in favor of the authoritarian de jure.
Turns out, humanity and its ilk hell bent on insisting they’re so important are just cancer. Pure and simple. Terminal cancer we’re all watching take hold.
What ilk? Like chimps?
🤪
Well, I’m not not gnostic. Or aagnostic, if you will.
Austrian Agricultural Nostic?
Ok, so now I’m wondering if Milton read the Gnostic texts. I’m still amazed that the church approved the publication of Paradise Lost, much less Paradise Regained.
That would explain a lot of historical (and recent) behaviour by many Christians.
ty for reminding me to crosspost
As someone who was raised Catholic, but learned to think for myself I can tell you: there is no way Satan is PUNISHING bad people. If Satan wants to spread evil and chaos he would be REWARDING bad people NOT punishing them.
Um… May I draw your attention to all the psychopaths & pedophiles currently running the world & reveling in wealth & luxury? Bad people are absolutely being rewarded. The concept of God vs Satan is debatable but there is definitely some horrific fuckery afoot.
This is why they don’t want people reading. Literacy will have you picking apart common narratives and questioning interpretations of the bullshit those in power have spoon fed you your entire life.
The fact it was edited down to condone owning people is diabolical and should be a perfect reason to hate religion.
Wasn’t it that God cast Lucifer down into Hell for asking too many questions?
And that Christianity rules over people with fear that they won’t get into Heaven if they don’t worship God correctly enough?
It makes sense that they’d lie about what Hell is like to lure you over to their side.
I bet Satan is actually a pretty chill dude and everyone just hangs out doing drugs, having crazy sex, and listening to metal all the time.
I always thought it was Satan was given a promotion for dissenting.
IIRC, current Catholic view is that Satan got upset that God treated humanity so nicely, to the point of giving us his only son to murder in order to redeem us. But earlier Christian views, and Judaism, has no war in Heaven. Satan was not cast out, is not in charge of, or trapped in, Hell. Satan was the Judaic version of Nemesis, the angel God sent to test mortals.
Also, Lucifer as a name for Satan is a mistranslation. A Hebrew prophet tried to warn the Babylonian king not to make the tower of Babel. He used an analogy the king would recognize, and compared him to a myth from the Babylonian pantheon. The pantheon was ruled by the two brightest celestial bodies, the sun and moon gods. The third brightest celestial body, Venus, tried to usurp them. His rebellion was put down, and he was forced to repeat his unsuccessful coup for eternity as punishment. This is a reference to the fact that the inner planets, Venus, and the as-yet undiscovered Mercury, never fully cross the sky. They rise, traverse, and then reverse and set the same direction they rose from. The whole of the myth wasn’t spelled out in the Bible, but enough was described that it did sound very similar to the war in Heaven, so a translator assumed Lucifer must be a name for Satan. They liked it so much they sprinkled it around in some other places top. Which is how Satan came to be known as Venus/Lucifer the evening/morning star.
God cast Lucifer down into Hell for asking too many questions?
I mean, it’s a mythology that changes based on who is telling the tale, so…
Yeah, sure, if that’s the story you want to tell.
But other reasons range:
- He tried to create stuff from nothing, a thing only God is capable of doing, and was cast out for this blasphemy
- He fucked God’s Wife (Lilith, the First Woman)
- He taught humanity to defy God by lying, which is the True Original Sin
- He was dispatched by God, deliberately, as a Loyal Opposition and all part of the Great Plan
- That shit ain’t even in the Bible, you’re a heretic for believing it
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?
Die, Heretic!
No, wait, I thought it was all made up fairy tales intended to intimidate and control people.
I mean yeah, if we’re being real it’s all just a load of shit to give people something to fear so they have some reason to not rape and steal and murder so much.
And she brought forth her hardcorest son, and wrapped him in denim and leather, and kicked him out to heaven; because there was no room for them in hell.
Fine, I will watch Belzeboss again. It’s been more than a week, anyway.
Also remember in the Bible Satan killed 10 people for coming into his house to kill him which is very understandable on the other hand. God killed over 2 million people for the crime of not believing in him makes you wonder who really is the bad guy…
Satan’s house is just a place you can go to?
Maybe if we knock and brought a bottle?
Proper etiquette.
Only if you’re invited it seems.
Yea, you never been?…
I never understood how in 2,000 years or whatever, after all the translations and obvious edits for personal gain, no one thought to change the name of the tree from “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
God forbidding (lol) Adam and Eve from seeking knowledge automatically puts him in the bad camp.
Real answer: It’s not that knowledge is itself evil. It’s that by obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, mankind was responsible for its actions.
The idea is that animals aren’t capable of being good or evil because they have no knowledge of the concept. Whereas humanity’s knowledge and understanding means we’re aware of the morality of our actions.
To put it in a more contemporary, non-religous context - you can’t blame or judge invasive Kudzu or Bark Beeltes for the environmental damage they cause because they aren’t aware of their impact. Humans are aware, and should be held to account for their actions.
Love your response. I see people trying to dunk by just focusing on “knowledge” constantly.
Leaving out the extra words and details feels the same to me as a news outlet blowing up a stupid thing a politician says simply by ignoring a few words before and after the quote.
you can’t blame or judge invasive Kudzu or Bark Beeltes
maybe you can’t, dawg. godsdamned homalodisca vitripennis can suck my numerous buttholes.
deleted by creator
A curious flaw in that story is that Adam and Eve were supposed to know in advance that disobeying and eating from the tree is wrong, before they had knowledge of what wrongness or disobedience is.
I like the evolutionary interpretation, that humans developed the capacity for social cooperation (including interpersonal ethics, moral good and evil) and then realized paradise (the natural world) was actually a bot of a quagmire, teeming with disease and parasites. They were less evicted as realized they could do better.
I like the evolutionary interpretation, that humans developed the capacity for social cooperation (including interpersonal ethics, moral good and evil) and then realized paradise (the natural world) was actually a bot of a quagmire, teeming with disease and parasites. They were less evicted as realized they could do better.
That’s not true. Before civilization, diseases were much rarer because people travelled together in small, consistent groups. Anthropological evidence suggests that the average person had better, more well rounded diets as well. Which isn’t really surprising, pre-civilization is literally the thing we had millions of years to adapt to.
Civilization brought about much higher rates of disease, and also came along side the introduction of class and slavery, which reduced the quality of life of the average person.
Slavery was not viable in hunter-gatherer societies, because slaves could not be sent out to forage or they’d just leave, and they can’t join hunts without being armed. With agriculture, you can sit on the porch with a bow and arrow and make other people do all the backbreaking labor, and with higher, more consistent yields, you can afford to hire an army of dedicated soldiers to go out and capture hunter-gatherer tribes to use as slaves, perpetuating the system.
It wasn’t that humanity just collectively decided to do cities instead of tribes, and it wasn’t like everyone in cities wanted to be there. But once cities were established, systemic forces caused them to expand and become dominant.
This is what the story of Eden is actually about. Once humanity became aware of agriculture and civilization, we no longer had the ability to remain in the state of nature that we were adapted to, where our brains were evolved to make us happy and satisfied, and faced with problems that our brains aren’t designed to handle or cope with.
Nowadays, yes, we have things like medicine and vaccines and basic hygiene, but those things were only developed in the past few hundred years. From the first cities until then, cities were perfect vectors for the disease, tons of people clumped together, just dumping waste on the streets.
I’m pretty sure there were still infectious diseases. Bacteria don’t have to exist inside a host, and viruses sometimes jump species. It also explains why our hindbrains want a small homogeneous community and start distrusting the Jews and Romani even in a village of only a thousand. Small tribes that don’t like each other much are less likely to communicate a pathogen between each other.
If infectious diease was not a concern in the bush ages, the capacity to organize larger groups would prevail over their xenophobic cousins, but in civilization we actively have to train kids tolerance of other races and creeds, since their hindbrains are super eager to faction up and wage war on the next block over.
I remember from my anthropology class it was livestock that served as a catalyst for both the propagation of infectious disease and community resistance, usually after a sequence of outbreaks and die offs. But that’s not to say plagues weren’t a problem prior to agriculture.
Of course diseases still existed in hunter-gatherer societies, they just didn’t have the capacity to spread as far. If, for example, during COVID, everyone had formed groups of say 100 people and those 100 people only ever interacted with each other, that would have made it very difficult for the virus to spread. Obviously, that’s impossible today because we are too interconnected, but that was more or less how hunter-gatherer tribes tended to function.
Disease wasn’t a significant limiting factor in the size of those groups because there were other limiting factors. One is resource availability. Without agriculture, what the land naturally produces is what’s available, and larger groups would require more resources. Another factor is social dynamics. The larger a group is, the less likely you are to personally know everyone in the group. Informal collective decision making also gets harder as you scale up, with smaller groups, it’s possible for everyone’s concerns to be heard and accommodated.
The extent to which xenophobia is a product of nature rather than nurture is debatable. I would argue that racist attitudes are taught and passed down, usually informally, rather than being innate. Growing up, I learned one set of stereotypes about Japanese people and another set of stereotypes about Chinese people. The origins of those stereotypes can be traced historically, and it’s not as though everyone comes up with stereotypes on their own and they just happened to arrive at the same ones.
I would say the thing that is more evolutionarily ingrained in us is “Dunbar’s Number,”, which limits the size of our direct social in-group to around 150 people, likely consistent with the size of hunter-gatherer tribes. Modern ideas of race or nationality obviously present an in-group that goes far beyond that number, which suggests that those ideas are learned rather than innate. There is a degree that we have to be taught how to function in a world with regular interactions with strangers in general, but I would argue that treating people differently based on race or other characteristics is learned behavior. Though of course, everyone starts in a state of ignorance and ignorance of someone’s culture can lead to accidental offenses and misunderstandings.
The bible, as we know it, was canonized from the available religious scripts/scrolls of the time. The original work was a quilt of chosen stories designed to tell a narrative. No, no, that’s too Jewish, no, that’s too Muslim. I think there’s not enough wife beating in here, have you considerd…
Any changes in translation are still pale compared ot the section and organiztion of the source material that honestly wasn’t great to begin with. Even at that, whatever it says, preachers place their own spins on it. Whatever it take to get those donations…
And just because one religion didn’t there are other religions out there that are STILL coming up with more source content :)
Satanic temple runs the after school satan project, which teaches kids science, critical thinking, and rationalism. Also, the Hellions Academy of Independent Learning (HAIL) project champions non-discrimination policies while offering secular-aligned values like empathy, compassion, inclusion, and justice without religious coercion. Sessions feature hands-on projects, STEAM activities, arts, games, community service, and local history tours.
The christians think its inappropriate and want it shut down.
“NoOoOoOo, but they’re Satanists, they do satanic rites killing and eating children and making orgies!!1!1!!1”
If you think of God as just a collective narcissistic projection of human dysfunction, authoritarianism, and self-preservation, then it makes a lot more sense as to why God’s “love” seems so abusive.
The only account we have of Satan is in the Bible. Not exactly an unbiased source.
Well since the writers of the Bible made up all the characters in their rpg gamebook it makes sense the beastiary is one sided.
That’s just because it’s the only canon source. If you include fanon, then the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost expand on him.
Except the Bible was at one point the B movie release of more popular films.
Something about being a jealous god is a huge red flag.
God is a narcissistic fuck
Definitely an abusive parent
He’s full of human emotions for some reason. Wonder why?
God was indeed created in our own image and likeness.
Well, no. If you’re taking a stack of supposed moral allegories as fact, Lucifer was cast out for defying God, not for being naughty. Lucifer wouldn’t kneel to mankind and serve them, thinking them lesser, so God tossed him out. Again, if you think myths are facts.
Look, I don’t know what to tell to you “atheists.” I met the devil last week and she was utterly forthright and honest in the reason for her expulsion from heaven. Clams. Paella, specifically. She has no idea where people got this rebellion thing.
I was told it was pineapple on pizza and tbh that seemed completely justified.
Last time Luci and I had a spat we sat wide eyed at a mountain of sins powerful men were excavating, looking for the true name of God. “Fuck,” she noted. “Aye,” I acknowledged.
That’s medieval fanfic built over badly translated old testament passages that are talking about local kings and it’s literally in the previous and next passages that they weren’t talking about any angel… the only thing about being cast out is in Revelations after a war in heaven, that is said the dragon is the same as the serpent, the serpent that told humans that god lied that the fruit would kill them but instead would give us knowledge of good and evil, so literally pushed us towards developing philosophy and sciences, and that war is narrated just after god wipes a third of humanity in one go, turns the oceans into blood, send plagues, famine, beetles that sting like scorpions, and tortured the rest of humanity that for months would look for death and not find it and good were the mothers who smashed their babies against the rocks etc etc etc, that’s what the dragon rose up against
The Woman, the Child, and the Dragon
12 Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. 2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. 5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
Satan Thrown Out of Heaven
7 And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, 8 but they [a]did not prevail, nor was a place found for [b]them in heaven any longer. 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
10 Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. 12 Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”
The Woman Persecuted
13 Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. 14 But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. 15 So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. 16 But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Does it say that in Revelations 13 somewhere? Because it does not say that in Revelations 12 anywhere.
No.
Book of Job proves you wrong, Revelation proves you wrong, various references throughout Bible I won’t bother to look up prove you wrong, and Jesus said that you are wrong. No Christian theologian agrees with you and no atheist theologian agrees with you. Because it’s untrue, sorry.
You should probably read the Bible again (or for the first time?), perhaps annotated would be of help.
What part is untrue? That god said eating the fruit would certainly kill them and the serpent said it wasn’t true and they ate and didn’t die and instead gained knowledge (and lived till they were like 800yo or something)? The part that god killed a third of humanity in one go and then gruesomely tortured the rest? That the dragon rose up against that genocidal maniac with an ego bigger than creation? Or that those Isaiah/Ezekiel verses that created the myth about beauty, jealousy, narcissism, etc, that shaped the image of Lucifer in pop culture are about the kings of Babylon/Tyre? Is it really me that should read again?
I’d still vibe more with the guy who won’t kneel to us - we suck.
And … the rest of the angels do kneel to us?
So if I met an angel, I could command it to do whatever I wanted, and it would obey?
I need to get a new summoning book…
Maybe. Probably. No refunds though.
- Temu Angel Summoning Kit, Candle Pak 6, Celestial Circle, and Fuzzy-Wuzzy Sacrificial Lamb are Trademarks of Xianzhou Holy Enterprise, llc. *
*Book Of Flesh W/ Angelic Summer Breeze dust cover sold separately.
Hail Satan.
Hail Nero.
That’s not how the story goes at all.
He didn’t defy God; he wanted to be God.
Mankind wasn’t a factor, it didn’t even exist.
You’d have better luck spinning a story about a bad breakup and we’re a puppy someone got out of impulse, thinking it’d fill the lonely void.
Thats how it goes in NKJV. But yes, there are other versions with variations on the tale.
No it does not.
The version of bible does not change canon, just the language/interpretation of language.
The narrative you mention does not exist canonically in any Bible.
Okay so what is your denomination’s version of canon? I see a lot of denial here and thats about it.
I’m no longer a Christian, and I don’t think any of it is fact. But I was one for 22 years and went to Bible college before seeing the light and studying anthropology. What a text says and whether it’s true are two different things, and you’re making a claim about what’s in that text that just isn’t true. You’re right that the overarching theme was defiance, but not anything else.
Your “refusal to bow to mankind” is only found in later non-canonical texts after the Bible. It’s why it is canon in one Abrahamic text…the Qur’an. Not the NKJV, and obv not any translation of the Christian Bible. I.e. not in the teachings or literature of Christianity, nor your NKJV.
The story never mentions humanity, not even where the NT brings it up. The Torah covers creation and the Fall, so the Bible gets all that from there and so there’s no Lucifer story in it. The Torah doesn’t say the serpent was Satan at all, so neither does Genesis. In the Bible, only until Isaiah is the Lucifer story established, which doesn’t mention what you said at all and that’s the core for that tale in that literature. The only place Satan actually gets pinned to the serpent in Genesis is Revelation, and even there, nothing about refusing to bow to humans.
You may have been preached some individual’s interpretation of the Bible, including their reading of texts written after the Bible (like, 100-700years after), but if you read it, you’d read what I’m saying and not find mention of what you’re saying.
Your narrative doesn’t exist in any Bible. This isn’t a difference of opinion, denominations, versions, whatever. This is something you can Google right now if you can’t be bothered reading your NKJV.
Sheep go to heaven.
Goats…go to hell.
I don’t wanna go to sunset strip, I don’t wanna feel the emptiness
Gold marquees with stupid band names. I don’t wanna go to sunset strip.
Goats go to… HELL.
Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
Gnosticism coded.
