lgot wrote:Actually, i'm serious about the 'is it God or Satan?' thing. There is not way to distinguish from the bible.
There is pretty much a reason for that. The Satan, adversary of God is a christian make up. The hebrews, and the bible, the OT mostly is about them, are not that naive to believe that a God like theirs - the Omnipotent and all - have anything that could have been a adversary. They believed in other spirits, other cultures gods, etc that would interfere with them but not in someone in the way we have today - a duality between those. Of course, when handling dualities we often find many similaraties. So the Bible is the probally worse place to look after for the christians beliefs...
And Solomon knew Yahweh wasn't the only deity, that's why he had a temple built near Jerusalem in honor of Ashtoreth, God's
freaking wife (wonder if they tell that to fundies). Modern religion is nothing more than a trend towards simplification of mythology and complexity of theology, in light of improvement in writing skills, larger, more efficient instituions, and philosophical concepts such as 'infinite perfection.' God was never originally all-powerful, knowing, or loving; he was just bigger than us, like all the other Canaanite deities, and we here his to subject and be observed. Fundementalist Protestants have screwed the whole thing even further by thowing away the Talmudic legends, the Apocrypha, and all the other supportive scripture, in favor of the cult worship of the Canon exclusively.
I don't know why i even bother arguing about religion these days. Sure, I'm a longshot abouve the sophmoric "hi God, I don't believe in you" atheistic arguments, but one of these days I'm just going to drop all attachment from the bible's validity (you've got to admit; alot of us nit-pick individual parts of the bible simply 'casue we're so damned used to the idea of religon in this Christian-dominated society) and simply put its words' on the same level as pure fiction.
Actually, I'm pretty damn close to that point now, so try not to push me if you don't want me asking 'why does that amount to anything valid?' to everything god supposedly says. Or do so, if you want.
I must be tired, I'm thinking aloud.