When God created the universe, did he give planet Earth to Satan to play with?

[KannikaP]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

IMO all humans are capable of evil, given the relevant circumstances. No one was born evil, but many became evil.

Does that work the other way round as well ie became good after birth?  Just asking!

[sirineou]

Just now, bignok said:

Esculators

Are you trying to Brake Asian Now again?

It was out all morning and took all of my contacts, and a call to the Whitehouse to get it working again.

If it goes down again I wash my hands of it. .  

[KannikaP]

5 hours ago, Keep Right said:

Interesting question. Was Satan, like Adam, created good and then fell? Or was he created to be what he is now? Scripture indicates that there were angels who fell from their place and into rebellion against God. Both Jude 1:6 and 2 Peter 2:4 mention angels who abandoned their positions of authority and fell. These are angels who are now kept in chains and darkness, awaiting judgement. It is not hard to image Satan being one of those who abandoned their position of authority in rebellion against God. He may or may not be bound now, but certainly his influence is widely felt in the world today.

And nobody since Jude and Peter?

[bignok]

2 minutes ago, sirineou said:

Are you trying to Brake Asian Now again?

It was out all morning and took all of my contacts, and a call to the Whitehouse to get it working again.

If it goes down again I wash my hands of it. .  

See u in KK one day

[Rampant Rabbit]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

If anyone doubts that humans can be utterly evil, just look at Gaza, Sudan, Mali, Rawanda ( when the genocide happened ), the Congo, any episode of colonisation. Not forgetting Stalin and the Bolsheviks, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Idi Amin, Ghengis Khan and his mountains of heads, etc etc etc.

The history of human kind is soaked in the blood of countless billions.

problem is you are  looking at it purely through human eyes, many animals do what could be described as evil things, they arent evil its just nature. There is  no good bad all are human constructs.

[MrPancake]

I have a good one !

 

Q: "When God created the universe, did he give planet Earth to Satan to play with?"

A: "No he gave Uranus to Satan to play with."

 

[freedomnow]

5 hours ago, UWEB said:

There is no God, so why should be there a Satan?

You are a part of God masquerading as an atheist....

[Rampant Rabbit]

4 hours ago, KhunLA said:

If we don't believe in GOD, ergo, can't believe in the Devil.  For the believers, do think about ...

,,, Man was made in GOD's image,(Genesis 1:27), means GOD is real A$$hole, evil to the core, and has no sense of humour.

God was made in Mans image.......funny that eh, surely  just coincidence. Its a farce

[sirineou]

1 minute ago, bignok said:

See u in KK one day

Not if i see you first 

 

Only kidding, it would be my pleasure to see you

[Gottfrid]

6 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

You could have just answered the question.

Please, next time you start a thread. Be careful to set up guidelines regarding how us poor members on AN will be able to post and respond. This is a forum, which creates discussion and talks in topics and threads. If you want direct answers, try Quora.

[cdemundo]

I think most bad behavior is down to selfishness, not evil.

 

 

 

 

[HappyExpat57]

6 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

You could have just answered the question.

 

You ask a silly azz question and act miffed when someone gives a response in kind?

[mania]

6 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

My question is:

Do you believe in the Devil ( Satan ), and if you don't why are humans so evil?

 

Well I have a wealth of no idea but.... I find it interesting that Devil spelled backwards is Lived

So maybe that makes those that lived the devil? That would answer your question

 

Kidding aside I would say some are evil because they can be. We can all be what ever we want we can all create what ever we want.

As to why each does what they do..... again I have a wealth of no idea

[save the frogs]

the devil still cheats and wins more souls

and as for the Lord, he's just doin' his best

 

 

[expat_4_life]

Seems any mention of God or Satan attracts mockery
but, trust The Science ™ be all good

 

[sirineou]

Just now, save the frogs said:

the devil still cheats and wins more souls

and as for the Lord, he's just doin' his best

The lord knows some trick also.

 

[cdemundo]

6 hours ago, Keep Right said:

Interesting question. Was Satan, like Adam, created good and then fell? Or was he created to be what he is now? Scripture indicates that there were angels who fell from their place and into rebellion against God. Both Jude 1:6 and 2 Peter 2:4 mention angels who abandoned their positions of authority and fell. These are angels who are now kept in chains and darkness, awaiting judgement. It is not hard to image Satan being one of those who abandoned their position of authority in rebellion against God. He may or may not be bound now, but certainly his influence is widely felt in the world today.

 

Assuming you are in Thailand, does observing people whose beliefs are very different from yours raise any questions for you?

Thailand is of course majority Buddhist with a significant Muslim population.

Does that cause you t think at all about the universality of your religion?

 

I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm just curious.

This forum seldom sees posts that reflect knowledge of the NT.

 

[OneMoreFarang]

5 hours ago, Chris Daley said:

humans are the only species capable of living in peace and rising above the savage nature of other animals.

My rabbits live in peace together!

 

 

[Walker88]

Humans need no devil to be evil any more than they needs gods to be moral.  Civilization leads to moral behavior on average, though not for everyone. It's silly to think some guy named Moses climbed down a mountain with a couple of stone tablets, gathered the guys around, and said, "Bad news. We can't murder, rape or steal".

 

Bad ratios of neurochemicals, poor development of the brain that leaves some 5% of people psychopathic or sociopathic, character flaws like trump has in spades...many reasons there is 'evil' in the world. IN those with character flaws, evil is a learned behavior, but in psychopaths or those with bad neurochemicals floating around their brain, evil is innate. Dr Robert Sapolsky studies human and primate behavior and produced a fascinating TED Talk that discusses evil and goodness, and what is behind such behavior. It's worth a watch.

 

 

 

By the way, a decent human is infinitely more moral than anybody's god. Most humans, even if they had the power, wouldn't send tsunamis crashing into coastal zones, nor cause earthquakes, nor give 3 year old kids horribly painful cancer.

 

Steven Weinberg probably summed it up best: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."

 

[stoner]

I didn't think conspiracy theories were allowed on here.

[bignok]

Try Watts

 

[jaywalker2]

4 hours ago, Walker88 said:

How do you extrapolate dark matter on to some malevolent or supernatural force?

 

Did the use of the word 'dark' fool you?

 

Maybe you can add the scientific proof behind your 'supernatural forces' tempting us. Are they made of leptons or quarks? Do they have mass or are they like photons?

 

 

I was being facetious about dark matter but it does bring up an important point, that we don't understand the forces controlling 97 percent of the universe. We don't even know if dark matter is really matter. We don't know what it is.

 

We don't know why the Big Bang occurred or even if it did occur. We don't know what existed before it and we can't explain how the universe magically came into being. Modern physics has become to a large extent the equivalent of magical thinking, with multiverses and the 9 dimensions of string theory. But at least the math works.

 

There are forces at work, fundamental forces, that we just don't understand. Meanwhile, there is a long and rich tradition of mysticism that stretches right back to the beginning of the human race, as some anthropologists believe the cave paintings of stone-age man were mystical rituals.

 

These mystical traditions all point to a reality beyond the material world and our physical senses. It is my opinion that we cannot explain the prevalence of acts of so heinous they make no rational sense, mass murderers, cannibals, genocide, modern billionaires, for example, without recognizing that there are evil forcces at work. They do not have our best interest at heart. And they tempt into doing what is bad for us.

 

Bob Dylan was once asked why kept performing so much when he no longer needed to. He answered, "That gets back to that destiny thing. I made a bargain and I'm holding up my end of it." "A bargain with who?" "The chief commander, of this world and the world we can't see."

[Walker88]

1 hour ago, jaywalker2 said:

 

These mystical traditions all point to a reality beyond the material world and our physical senses. It is my opinion that we cannot explain the prevalence of acts of so heinous they make no rational sense, mass murderers, cannibals, genocide, modern billionaires, for example, without recognizing that there are evil forcces at work. They do not have our best interest at heart. And they tempt into doing what is bad for us.

 

 

Mystical traditions simply point to the fact that humans seek ways to reduce stress. Virtually every culture going back to Oldavai Gorge developed some sort of mystical thinking to provide easy answers to things they were incapable of understanding. Uncertainty is unsettling. If things are random, that's bad, because one cannot make a deal with random. That creates stress.

 

It was comforting to believe a power was in charge, more comforting if that power was believed to be benevolent, yet more comfort if you could believe you could communicate with it, and more comforting still if those around you similarly believed and their belief reinforced your belief. That doesn't mean the beliefs are real, but that sort of thinking was probably 'selected in' to the species in a Darwinian sense because it led to stress reduction....and stress kills. It also allowed for communal cooperation, which provides security against outside hostile forces, such as other clans.

 

Of course other clans maybe created their own deities, and if they were right and not you, there goes the stress level shooting higher. So your clan took on their clan, and with your deities on your side, you would win. If you lost you were dead; if you won, that further proved your mystical beliefs were the One Truth.

 

So that's another source of "evil", which is folks who challenge your myths as you challenge theirs. This has long played out, and is doing so as I write in the Middle East.

 

As I noted in another post, 'evil' also results from things such as bad combinations of neuro chemicals, improper brain development, or even game theory where people might behave in a negative way if they think an encounter is a one off and anonymous, whereas people will be more 'moral' if they are unsure an encounter is a one off, so bad behavior might be returned in spades at some future date.

[thaicurious]

Without any magical thinking, without God or gods, without organized religion or even personal spirituality, without the Rosicrucianism of Christianity, without the Sufism of Islam, without the Vedanta or Bhakti schools of Hinduism, without the Kabbala of Judaism without the animism of Thai Theravada Buddhism, without the sorcery of the Toltec, but considering merely a demystified Universe within the science of existence, it can be said that unimagined Universe as we empirically know it, not as we wish it to be but as science has thus far determined, began in a violent big bang. Through further scientific observation of existence as far as we can see it over the 13.8 billion years since, we can objectively say that Universe has since the Big Bang calmed down a tad. Perhaps we can extrapolate without too much imagination that as violent was original Universe, as violent was early Earth, that perhaps even humanity might similarly evolve.

[thaibeachlovers]

7 hours ago, KannikaP said:

Does that work the other way round as well ie became good after birth?  Just asking!

Obviously.

[thaibeachlovers]

7 hours ago, Rampant Rabbit said:

problem is you are  looking at it purely through human eyes, many animals do what could be described as evil things, they arent evil its just nature. There is  no good bad all are human constructs.

I wasn't asking about animals. Humans have free will and choice. Choosing to do evil things makes those that do them evil.

[thaibeachlovers]

7 hours ago, Gottfrid said:

Please, next time you start a thread. Be careful to set up guidelines regarding how us poor members on AN will be able to post and respond. This is a forum, which creates discussion and talks in topics and threads. If you want direct answers, try Quora.

I didn't expect answers as there probably are none. I sought opinions and some interesting theories.

I expected some of the usual non sense posts, but I hoped for some gold amongst the dross.

To the few that did contribute something worthwhile I give thanks, but as the thread seems to be heading in the wrong direction, I'll ask a mod to close it.

[ezzra]

Here is an interesting conundrums, would the concept of god exist if there were no humans?...

[thaibeachlovers]

6 minutes ago, ezzra said:

Here is an interesting conundrums, would the concept of god exist if there were no humans?...

Does a falling tree make a sound if no one hears it?

 

However, without humans religion would not exist.

[Crossy]

At our OP's request.