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Opinions on Satan

GrowingSmaller

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What do you consider the difference between "dark forces" and non-"dark forces" to be?

Dark forces reinforcec the negative or diminish the positive. They go against the brilliant light of illuminated consciousness which is on fire with love of and for being. And vice versa for the light. For me the mentioned practice is existential carnivalesque. Fun but with potentially dark overtones if taken wrongly. Invollving oneself with blackness even if in travesty or dramstism is perhaps slightly twisted and dangerous. Religious narratives are potent stuff and to be handled with care. In buddhism one manifests as a vurtuous being to bring the result of practice into the path and elevate ones identity. Being satan is a bit grim due to the infeasably bad reputation.
 
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selfinflikted

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He/she/it doesn't exist.

Sorry to disappoint.

Hitch, you must remember the target audience here - many of them believe in ghosts and soul-possessing demons. It would only follow that they'd believe in Satan too.
 
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GrowingSmaller

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I actually believe in tge objective existence ifcthe devil. EDIT. all that i can hope is that in deception i may have somehow made war on evil but its waaaaay better to keep it simple and i havent officially declared war anyway as such. But yp the devil is real. But for me only God can save me now as was always the case. May He whom I believe is above creation be happy with what i have said. I seek His protection from all evil especially devils influence. If you dont have faith faireniugh thats your freedom but i believe faith is the faiirest expression of our essence being beautiful as well as just rather than simply a political right thankfully and simply part of our existential potential.
 
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GrowingSmaller

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Hitch, you must remember the target audience here - many of them believe in ghosts and soul-possessing demons. It would only follow that they'd believe in Satan too.

Selfinflikted what? Are you sure thats wise?
 
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GrowingSmaller

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You wNt to see ti believe. Do you think tgat God is part of creation in a test tube. You may have spiritual eyes or the sense of propriet in faith as part of ones good potentiality. Or i do when i try it. Appeal to consequence - faith brings goodness therefore faith is good. Or appeal to ESSENCE. Faith is goodness therefore faith is good. Faith to me is truth justice and goodness vis self realisation as made for worship by a praiseworthy and supreme, benevolent God. Of that is selfish of Him it is in my best interests as a corollary as it seems logical to believe He could only intend good for me as one fulfilling my self in duty if I get it right. This does notvmeanvthe world is without trials.
 
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Mustang56

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You wNt to see ti believe. Do you think tgat God is part of creation in a test tube. You may have spiritual eyes or the sense of propriet in faith as part of ones good potentiality. Or i do when i try it. Appeal to consequence - faith brings goodness therefore faith is good. Or appeal to ESSENCE. Faith is goodness therefore faith is good. Faith to me is truth justice and goodness vis self realisation as made for worship by a praiseworthy and supreme, benevolent God. Of that is selfish of Him it is in my best interests as a corollary as it seems logical to believe He could only intend good for me as one fulfilling my self in duty if I get it right. This does notvmeanvthe world is without trials.

You can have Buddhism faith and that can lead to goodness for the individual's well being too. That doesn't make it the absolute truth.
 
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wannabeadesigirl

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Hitch, you must remember the target audience here - many of them believe in ghosts and soul-possessing demons. It would only follow that they'd believe in Satan too.

I'm not going to try and "prove" anything or try to change your mind, but I think that I could give a perspective from someone who DOES believe in supernatural beings like God, Satan, angels and demons.

I know that alot of "unexplainable" things are explainable, but there are some things that shouldn't happen, according to science and logical though, but do happen anyway.

For example science cannot explain why some dreams I have manifest in real life. I'm not talking about obscure dream concepts that represent real life. I'm talking about play by play, word by word dreams that I have, and then happen in real life 2 or 3 months later with such accuracy that I can mouth or say exactly what is going to happen from one second to the next.

It's because of these dreams that I do believe in God, that I do believe in a power much larger than humanity or myself. From belief in God it's not hard to jump to believe in Gods opposite and any other minions either of them might have. You can say that I believe in the supernatural because I believe in God, because I'm programmed to, and maybe that's the case, but that still doesn't explain my dreams.


@ OP: As far as Satan is concerned I think too much attention is paid to it, and too much is credited to it. Because I was raised in a Christian home I believe that Satan, if it is a person, has little to no power because Jesus died and rose again. Any influence in our lives is residual gunk or simply bad impulse control on a humans part. Somethings I think are a combination of the two, like humans with bad impulse control are given a little extra spiritual push. I'm also willing to accept the belief that Satan is a symbol of humanity's own worst impulses and feelings.
 
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selfinflikted

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I'm not going to try and "prove" anything or try to change your mind, but I think that I could give a perspective from someone who DOES believe in supernatural beings like God, Satan, angels and demons.

I know that alot of "unexplainable" things are explainable, but there are some things that shouldn't happen, according to science and logical though, but do happen anyway.

For example science cannot explain why some dreams I have manifest in real life. I'm not talking about obscure dream concepts that represent real life. I'm talking about play by play, word by word dreams that I have, and then happen in real life 2 or 3 months later with such accuracy that I can mouth or say exactly what is going to happen from one second to the next.

It's because of these dreams that I do believe in God, that I do believe in a power much larger than humanity or myself. From belief in God it's not hard to jump to believe in Gods opposite and any other minions either of them might have. You can say that I believe in the supernatural because I believe in God, because I'm programmed to, and maybe that's the case, but that still doesn't explain my dreams.

I mean, not to be ugly or anything, but I don't believe that happens.
 
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wannabeadesigirl

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I mean, not to be ugly or anything, but I don't believe that happens.

You're not being ugly at all. I wasn't expecting you to be the paragon of belief in a strangers words, but my intent was trying to explain kind of the mindset behind the belief in God and other supernatural stuff. I kind of hope I succeeded...

Here is a question though for curiosity/the heck of it sake. If something strange was to happen to you, such as you see an apparition of an angel or something, or you experience paranormal activity how would you handle it as someone who doesn't believe in the supernatural?
 
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selfinflikted

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You're not being ugly at all. I wasn't expecting you to be the paragon of belief in a strangers words, but my intent was trying to explain kind of the mindset behind the belief in God and other supernatural stuff. I kind of hope I succeeded...

Here is a question though for curiosity/the heck of it sake. If something strange was to happen to you, such as you see an apparition of an angel or something, or you experience paranormal activity how would you handle it as someone who doesn't believe in the supernatural?

I can't really answer that question, as it's never happened. I guess my first instinct would be to doubt my own senses.
 
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Mystman

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For example science cannot explain why some dreams I have manifest in real life. I'm not talking about obscure dream concepts that represent real life. I'm talking about play by play, word by word dreams that I have, and then happen in real life 2 or 3 months later with such accuracy that I can mouth or say exactly what is going to happen from one second to the next.

Sure it can. But you're right, your first instinct is "it's a miracle!". I told my friends last month: I had a dream about needing to fix my sister's laptop, and it needed to reboot because the anti-virus updated. With my antivirus (AVG) that's an extremely rare occasion. I wake up, start my computer: it needs to reboot because of AVG, probably for the first time in a year or so.

If it was something more "spiritual" instead of dreaming about rebooting computers, I'm sure that people would've seen that as something miraculous. But it's not, because:

1. Confirmation bias. You dream every night. Depending on your sleeping pattern, you might vaguely remember multiple dreams per night, or at least recognize the situation when something similar comes up in real life. The hundreds of dreams that never resemble real-life situations are ignored. The one dream that fits a situation 4 months later is seen as evidence that your dreams are special.

2. Many dreams often sorta make sense, and use things that you've observed in life. If I dream about being pulled over by a cop for speeding, and 5 months later I actually get pulled over for the first time in my life, there's a good chance that the dream resembles the reality. The dream probably took place on a road that I actually use, and the procedure of being pulled over by a cop has been drilled into my brain by stupid television shows.

3. Your recollection of what you dreamt might be way of. People's recollection of events that happened when they were awake is already terrible (there has been a lot of research into that area, where people are sure that they remember X but records show that Y happened). It's notoriously hard to remember all the details of a dream. If you were to ask me what I dreamt of tonight, I might give some very vague description, but I forgot most of it. Yet if a vaguely similar thing happened next week, I might go "hey.. I dreamt of this!". After X happens in real life, you might think that a dream that you had some time ago contained a perfect recreation of X, but before X happened, you had no recollection of the details in the dream. As the event unfolded in real life, all the missing pieces in the memory of the dream got filled in, and you went "hey, this event completely matches my memory of the dream!" (even though the memory was only just created).

If you're sure that you regularly have dreams that get recreated word for word in real life: write your dreams down as soon as you wake up. If you have a high percentage of fully accurate, non-trivial predictions in your written record, you should go to a book publisher and maybe start your own religion or something. But I'm pretty sure that a month (or a year) of dreaming will only produce a few trivial predictions ("the dentist in my dream told me I should floss more, and that came true!"), and maybe one or two lucky coincidences like the virus scanner thing.
 
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jpcedotal

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I will say most modern day churches speak of Satan as an afterthought. Seems like there are more flesh vs spirit sermons than there are of Satan's rule over the things of the world.

Big mistake
 
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Skaloop

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For example science cannot explain why some dreams I have manifest in real life. I'm not talking about obscure dream concepts that represent real life. I'm talking about play by play, word by word dreams that I have, and then happen in real life 2 or 3 months later with such accuracy that I can mouth or say exactly what is going to happen from one second to the next.

I had a similar sort of thing. I knew what was going to happen. It was brought on by psilocybin (magic mushrooms, if you don't know). There's also deja vu, which I'm sure we've all experienced numerous times. In both those situations, I have been absolutely sure I knew what someone was going to say. Then they said it and I thought "I knew they'd say that!" But also in both situations (not so much the mushroom one, though) if everything had been paused and I was asked what they would say next, I wouldn't have known. It was only in hindsight that I was able to say I knew what was coming, even though at the time I was certain that I knew.

The brain is a wonderful thing, but it is prone to all sorts of errors.
 
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GrowingSmaller

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You can have Buddhism faith and that can lead to goodness for the individual's well being too. That doesn't make it the absolute truth.

i agree 100%. but if you tell me diseased morals are as true as lively ones then i am disinclined to accept that. as trueness is like correspondence and morals ought to correspond to the better potential of nature in us ie health flourishing and welfare. this is analogous with math to me 2+3=5 not 4 or 6. so striving for goodness is an analytic definition of morality then we seperate the apples from the oranges of positive and negative existential ontology as it were through experience and understanding and then calculate what to do.
 
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wannabeadesigirl

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If you're sure that you regularly have dreams that get recreated word for word in real life: write your dreams down as soon as you wake up. If you have a high percentage of fully accurate, non-trivial predictions in your written record, you should go to a book publisher and maybe start your own religion or something. But I'm pretty sure that a month (or a year) of dreaming will only produce a few trivial predictions ("the dentist in my dream told me I should floss more, and that came true!"), and maybe one or two lucky coincidences like the virus scanner thing.

I see what you mean by regular every day things happening and causing dreams, and I do have alot of those. At the same time every once in awhile I have a dream of a location, or person that I've never seen before months before I'm at the place or I meet the person. I think the dream journal is a good idea. Thing is not all dreams are remembered, and like you said sometimes an impression or not even that is left in our mind.


I know how crazy I sound but I definitely think, behind all the ambivalence in our world there is ultimate good and ultimate evil, and these things can be defined as God and Satan.
 
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