Is Satan Real

Quote: Nareed

Humanity is not fallen, humanity is not broken, humanity is not imperfect and humanity does not need to be redeemed from imaginary failings.

Well said. My biggest problem with Christianity
is its negativity. It claims to be all about joy and
peace, yet constantly dwells on the opposite. It's
all about our fallen nature, and our sins, and how
bad we are. They should get a clue. You don't
make people feel better by always concentrating
on their failings. Christian guilt doesn't come from
being told how great you are, it comes from being
told the opposite.

Reading you all's recent posts I have this weird sensation that I am dialing in a distant radio station. It comes in tune and I begin to dance and then it quickly fades to non-sensical static. The signal is weak, but it is there. I go in and out of agreement with you in the space of a single post.

Humanity is fallen and broken there is no more clearer truth found in our mirrors and in our newspapers.

Humanity is soul-stirring art,..., apprehension of the Universe and all it contains...knowledge and scholarship...changed the face of the Earth...love and kindness. That quote was beautiful, moving, and all true.

The reason you can't come to grips with the fact that we are fallen is because it doesn't square with the beauty of humanity. The reality is that we are both. To truly appreciate this it would help to recognize that we are both spirit and flesh. Something you came close to recognizing not too many posts ago. We are imperfect beings who recognize there is something more to us. We strive to answer this hidden call deep inside of us to improve and be better. We rise above the animal and material world yet are frustratingly anchored by it. It is hard for an atheist, even one as spiritual as Nareed to embrace this truth.

The other thing an atheist has a hard time making sense of is how can humanity be so special, so loving, kind, full of knowledge, the conquest of space and time and yet be a complete and utter accident without any significance in the grand scheme of things, which of course itself has no significance of purpose either. Things are too beautiful and meaningful to be subjected to ultimate nothingness as their beginning and ultimate end. Your scholarship and efforts to overcome prejudice is too grand to be dismissed. An atheist sucks the poetry and eternity shaking power out of life.

To me a strict atheist can neither despise nor love humanity. It would be silly to love or despise something that is nothing more than a cosmic accident. While a Christian is in the position to both despise and love humanity, even at the same time. It is so much more full of a life. Granted the Christian idea is more complex and confusing, but that is what makes it truly awesome.

Quote: FrGamble

Humanity is fallen and broken

No, Christians believe THEY are broken and
fallen, don't paint everybody with the same
brush.

Quote: FrGamble

The reason you can't come to grips with the fact that we are fallen

Again, no. There is nothing to come to grips
with an untrue (and silly) concept. Humanity
is thriving, not broken.

Quote: FrGamble

The other thing an atheist has a hard time making sense of is how can humanity be so special.

Humanity is no more special than my dog is
special. We both eat meat and squat to void
our bowels. My dog can do many things I
cannot and vice versa. I refuse to let religion
inflate my ego to the point where my arrogance
overwhelms my ability to see the world the way
it really is.

Quote: Evenbob

Again, no. There is nothing to come to grips
with an untrue (and silly) concept. Humanity
is thriving, not broken.

Thriving, really?!? I guess one solution I didn't think of that you could use to avoid the stark reality that sin abounds in our world is to just lower the bar. Instead I would like us to keep the bar high and for humanity to reach our potential. Humanity will be thriving when we eliminate terror, prejudice, hunger, and injustice.

Quote:

Humanity is no more special than my dog is
special. We both eat meat and squat to void
our bowels. My dog can do many things I
cannot and vice versa. I refuse to let religion
inflate my ego to the point where my arrogance
overwhelms my ability to see the world the way
it really is.

If your example of humanity thriving is that we successfully avoid our bowels, than congrats we are thriving. However, I refuse to let you think so lowly of myself and humanity to the point that my ego is more deflated than the Patriot's balls.

Quote: FrGamble

Humanity will be thriving when we eliminate terror, prejudice, hunger, and injustice.

Which we are, little by little. It's all
in the journey, you know, not in
reaching the destination. We always
need injustices to correct, without
them we would be lost.

Quote: FrGamble

However, I refuse to let you think so lowly of myself and humanity .

Saying humans are no better than my
dog, and no worse, is the highest
compliment I can give them.

Quote: FrGamble

Humanity is fallen and broken there is no more clearer truth found in our mirrors and in our newspapers.

I'm going to try a brief answer before I resort to the full one:

The fact that some people are malicious does not mean all of humanity shares their failings. For every bad person there are hundreds of good ones. Evil is banal, incompetent and powerless. It succeeds only when good people stand by and do nothing about it. But also when good people are tricked into sacrifice. There is nothing more vicious than a society which accepts any part of any person is public property and up for grabs.

Quote: FrG

Humanity is fallen and broken .

I'm afraid not. Humanity isn't fallen,
it isn't broken, that's just a sales pitch to
'save' souls. You can't save something if
there's nothing to save it from. So the
Church invents the problem, then invents
the cure. Oldest sales trick in the world,
creating demand where none existed before.

Quote: FrGamble

Humanity is soul-stirring art,..., apprehension of the Universe and all it contains...knowledge and scholarship...changed the face of the Earth...love and kindness. That quote was beautiful, moving, and all true.

Thank you. I'm very flattered.

But I wonder whether you truly believe it.

Quote:

The reason you can't come to grips with the fact that we are fallen is because it doesn't square with the beauty of humanity.

You can list all the reasons why you think water is dry, and I will be unable to come to grips with it.

Our earliest hominid ancestors were little better than animals. Our earlier ancestors were animals. We've been climbing up, more or less steadily, for thousands of years. That's the exact opposite of fallen. We've gone from crude cave paintings of uncertain purpose to placing our mark permanently on the heavens in that time.

Quote:

To truly appreciate this it would help to recognize that we are both spirit and flesh.

This is self-evident.

Quote:

We are imperfect beings who recognize there is something more to us. We strive to answer this hidden call deep inside of us to improve and be better. We rise above the animal and material world yet are frustratingly anchored by it. It is hard for an atheist, even one as spiritual as Nareed to embrace this truth.

The truth you refuse to embrace is that the spirit is not separate from the material world, but an integral part of it. Your soul may be intangible, but it's part of your body. Call it the brain's active neural networks if you want, but it's as material as your hand or your eye. The contents of a book are intangible, yet material. they're words on paper, or sound in an electronic circuit. This doesn't make the book less, but more than mere paper or silicon. A book remains a bit of a human soul frozen and preserved forever.

We are not frustratingly anchored to the material world, we are joyously integrated with it. There this phrase I love: Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. Follow that, and the material world becomes a rich mine with which we build the playground for the spirit.

Quote:

The other thing an atheist has a hard time making sense of is how can humanity be so special, so loving, kind, full of knowledge, the conquest of space and time and yet be a complete and utter accident without any significance in the grand scheme of things,

I am an accident without any significance in the grand scheme of things. So are you. So is everyone. Had your parents been in a different mood one day, you wouldn't exist. Had your mother worn something different some earlier day, you might not have ever existed. All the pets I owned, loved and cherished, were as accidental as I. You may as well complain about being made of cells or having DNA.

My life is what I make of it. A culture, a country, a nation, a group, a people, even a religion and certainly the whole of humanity is what its members make it into. That's what makes us so special: that we can live beyond our years through the legacy we leave behind, through what we add to the world before we leave it. Few people are so isolated or withdrawn as to leave nothing at all behind, as to have had no effect on anyone.

Quote:

To me a strict atheist can neither despise nor love humanity.

I laughed so loud I nearly got caught posting here :)

Quote:

It would be silly to love or despise something that is nothing more than a cosmic accident.

See above.

Quote: Nareed

Thank you. I'm very flattered.

But I wonder whether you truly believe it.

You need not wonder. I believe that we are made by a loving God in His image and likeness. God freely made us out of love and offers us the gift of eternal life with Him in the joys of Heaven. This is why I believe humanity is wonderful. I still am scratching my head as to whether you truly believe what you say about humanity.

Quote:

Our earliest hominid ancestors were little better than animals. Our earlier ancestors were animals. We've been climbing up, more or less steadily, for thousands of years. That's the exact opposite of fallen. We've gone from crude cave paintings of uncertain purpose to placing our mark permanently on the heavens in that time.

If you are impressed as to how far we have come from single cell organisms that is nice. Do you think we are heading somewhere other than into nothingness and oblivion? Are you content with where we are now and if we made no more of this upward progress you speak of would you be happy and call us perfect? It sounds like you would say the exact same thing 100 years ago and call humanity all these beautiful things even though the scourge of slavery, injustice, and ignorance existed. An upward line means little if it is not pointing to something.

Quote:

The truth you refuse to embrace is that the spirit is not separate from the material world, but an integral part of it. Your soul may be intangible, but it's part of your body. Call it the brain's active neural networks if you want, but it's as material as your hand or your eye. The contents of a book are intangible, yet material. they're words on paper, or sound in an electronic circuit. This doesn't make the book less, but more than mere paper or silicon. A book remains a bit of a human soul frozen and preserved forever.
We are not frustratingly anchored to the material world, we are joyously integrated with it.

In this we are almost 100% in agreement except that I believe in the immorality of this spiritual part of ourselves. Have you ever know the spirit to die? How can the spiritual reality of ourselves die, can you explain that?

Quote:

I am an accident without any significance in the grand scheme of things. So are you. So is everyone. Had your parents been in a different mood one day, you wouldn't exist. Had your mother worn something different some earlier day, you might not have ever existed. All the pets I owned, loved and cherished, were as accidental as I. You may as well complain about being made of cells or having DNA.

My life is what I make of it. A culture, a country, a nation, a group, a people, even a religion and certainly the whole of humanity is what its members make it into. That's what makes us so special: that we can live beyond our years through the legacy we leave behind, through what we add to the world before we leave it. Few people are so isolated or withdrawn as to leave nothing at all behind, as to have had no effect on anyone.

Do you see the glaring contradiction between the first two sentences of these paragraphs? "I am an accident without any significance in the grand scheme of things." and "My life is what I make of it." How do you reconcile the idea that you and I are mere accidents whose existence depends on the flap of a butterfly wing with the idea that I can make my life whatever I want and an army of butterfly wings can't stop me from leaving a mark on the world that goes beyond me?

Again you are coming in and out of focus here. I feel your desire to recognize humanity's obvious beauty and wonder, in spite of its continued struggles, but this can't be grounded in anything other than God.

Quote: FrGamble

To me a strict atheist can neither despise nor love humanity. It would be silly to love or despise something that is nothing more than a cosmic accident. While a Christian is in the position to both despise and love humanity, even at the same time. It is so much more full of a life. .

We live in a random universe
chock full of random events. We are all
random 'accidents', it's your ego telling
you that you're not. We are all the same,
all in the same boat. I can choose to love
or despise humanity every bit as much
as you can, instead I choose to just accept
it for what it is. If being a Christian is so
'much more' of a full life, I certainly don't
see that in most of the Christians I know.

If anything, it's the opposite of a full life.
There's a whole list of things they must
not due if they want to stay in the good
graces of their fellow church goers. Woe
be it to them if they break any of those
unwritten rules. Living a full life means
following your heart, not the dictates of
an organization or group. That's a poor
life, not a full life.