As the fourth and silent member of the trinity, churches, mosques and most likely synagogues would have closed. We must, if we look at the narratives presented to us, take it that the devil has equal power with the god head.
Many a Christian believe themselves monotheistic while they believe in a multitude of gods; god the father, the son, the holy ghost, the devil, Mary mother of god and a multitude of angels and saints.
The priests believe in magic. They persecute magicians only because they think they have commerce with the devil.
The miracles of Jesus do not provide definitive proof of his power. The good book says even the antichrist will do the same but doesn’t tell how we can separate the two.
Nowhere in the bible is to be found a defence of freedom of thought.
There was never a just war. Only defensive wars.
Unless I’m mistaken, the devil and the trinity are unique to Christianity; because both Judaism and Islam reject the divinity of Jesus. And under Judaism, “satan” (the accuser/adversary) refers to the title (rather than a proper noun) of an entity that works for God rather than against him. But by some strange twist of fate, Christianity has reversed the roles by turning Satan into a proper noun and the Hebrew names for God (YHWH, El Shaddai, Elohim, etc,) into a title (Adonai: the lord).
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Of course you’re not mistaken.
Would the Christian religion prosper without the devil being blamed for every transgression that the good god should have averted?
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Depends. In the beginning, probably. Now, not so much. The modern prosperity churches focus more on the carrot (earthly blessings and financial success) than on the stick (hellfire and eternal damnation).
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I am not sure the devil has been dispensed with by the majority because by doing that the tempter can then only be the four holies- father son ghost and mother
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Even there, you have to be careful, because Christianity has many offshoots and sects. To my knowledge, only Orthodox Christians and Catholics
worshiprevere the mother Mary. Mainline Protestants, worship only God and Jesus and non-trinitarian sects (JWs, LDS, Unitarians, Christian Science, Church of God, Christadelphians) only worship God. Prosperity churches claim to worship God and Jesus, but mostly worship Mammon.LikeLike
This is i am aware and put this way, the devil looks to me to have suffered serious demotion
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I can’t speak for your neck of the woods, but according to the following article, he’s still more popular than God in the good ol’ USA.
Barna: More Americans Now Believe in Satan Than in God
Link to full report:
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I have seen no search research in my neck of the woods. I think some of these are taken for granted
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Well, as you’ve mentioned in your post, religion discourages questioning or thinking for yourself
Nonetheless, it boggles my mind that humans exposed to the wonders of technology in the modern world can still maintain any belief in the supernatural — let alone embrace the mythology of a severely misanthropic Hebrew god.
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I think it boggles MANY people’s minds. And the thing is … once it’s been implanted, it’s nearly impossible to exorcise it!
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Mainly because many who have drunk the portion never venture out. They can change sects but it is rare to repudiate the whole edifice
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Is it religion itself or religious institutions / organisations that discourages thinking for oneself? Personally, I feel that any strongly held idiology is a recipe for discouraging thinking for oneself. It doesn’t matter whether its theology (not tbe same as religiosity), politics, economics, or almost any other aspect of human thought.
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You are correct. Religious institutions are not unique in this respect. Dogmatic elements can exist in any ideological movement.
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You are right. Any ideology adopted without forethought will hinder investigation
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One could be exposed to technology but would never venture to find arguments against their most dearly held beliefs.
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In this neck of the woods, its only the fundamentalists who believe in existance of Satan/the devil/evil supernatural entity. As far as i can ascertain, the major Christian traditions think of it, as they do with much of the Bible in terms of symbolism/analogy/metaphor/myth – in other words, not literal.
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As I mentioned to Ron, the difficulty here is not a lot of research is done onto people’s conception of god or even on other religious matters except during census. But from ordinary conversation, you gather that the belief in a real devil is really the norm
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In this neck of the wood, there has been quite a lot of research into beliefs, by sociologists and other academics, and some churches have conducted surveys and more detailed research into what we believe.
Let’s face it, our 5 yearly census asks no questions on beliefs. All it does is ask about religious affiliation. A good example would be a survey by the Methodist church that found 40% of their membership did not believe in the existence of a deity, 90% did not believe that hell or Satan existed.
The last census tells us that only a third of the population consider themseves Christian and 60% claim they have no religion, yet research from Massey University reveals that among those who claim no religion, 40% believe in some form of vaguely defined “higher power”, energy, or “something” that is outside or beyond human understanding.
Only half in NZ Christians belief in a Heaven, yet a third of all Kiwis believe that there is a place we go to in an afterlife, and another third believe that we don’t simply cease to exist after death. That puts me in a minority, yet I consider myself to be religious
It really is a melting pot here when it comes to religiosity, spirituality and secularism,and it is very difficult to know where one ends and another begins, which is why such questions as “do you believe in God? ” is most likely to be responded to with “what do you mean by ‘God’?”
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our 10 year census only asks about religious affiliation. I haven’t seen any reports or studies on religion by any church. Maybe i should try to look or ask my sociology friends if there are any such studies.
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It would be interesting to compare beliefs across geographical locations instead of just affiliations.
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Of course you probably know this, but there ARE other “trinities” …
Babylonians – Anu, Bel, Ena
Egyptians – Osiris, Horus, Isis
Romans – Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune
Hindus – Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva
But I get your point. 🙂
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Yeah, I know. I was confining it to the Abrahamic faiths.
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I figured … but I thought it well to mention it for any “Christians” who might be reading. 😈
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The Christians stopped coming here. I think they are preparing for the nativity and here is not the best place for that
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That’s a downright shame. Perhaps this will make them feel more at home here.
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Hahahaha.
We can only hope.
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Call it a gut feeling, but something tells me that our Christian audience will quickly dismiss these other gods and trinitarian beliefs as demonic falsehoods and deceptions. 🙂
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Idols all of them. False gods
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Jewish trinity: Fran Fine, Sylvia Fine and Yetta Rosenberg.
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Some North Americans claim the holy trinity was Moe, Larry and Curly. Others insist it was Chico, Harpo and Groucho. But I submit it was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
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Hahahaha
MGM the Goat of Trinities
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Hahaha Pink!
Where is YHWH and his lovely wife
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I read somewhere that much of the popular understanding of Satan is quite “modern”, based more on MILTON than any of the usual sources. Along with the Catholic Church’s need for a foil?
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This could be the case. Maybe Nan can tell us
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Nawwww … you really think so? 😄😂🤣😅
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Nan, just think about it. How can one preach hell fire without the devil?
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According to Wikipedia: “The concept [of freedom of thought] is developed throughout the Bible, most fully in the writings of Paul of Tarsus (e.g., ‘For why should my freedom [eleutheria] be judged by another’s conscience [suneideseos]?’ 1 Corinthians 10:29).”
Lloyd Geering argues that the concept of the individual being responsible for choosing whether or not to form a relationship with God/Christ/deity has been a uniquely Christian concept that set the inevitible path to the Enlightenmentand eventually to the secularism and the freedoms of the individual many of us enjoy today.
And we need to recognise that freedom of thought is not the same as freedom of expression.
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Well, in the first instance you are right that freedom of thought is different from freedom of expression. In many places and instances it has been argued that the limits on expression translate usually to even limiting what one can think. It reminds me of George Orwell’s thought crimes.
On whether the bible encourages freedom of thought, I am not convinced. But I am open to persuasion on this matter.
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Actually … the devil as a Big Bad Guy doesn’t exist. I covered this in my book at considerable length. Not doing a promotion … just making a point. Ron addressed something similar in his very first comment of this post. 🙂
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we all agree he has been made use of for a very long time
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My favorite version of the Devil (as in truly frightening depiction) is SAURON from Lord of the Rings. THAT gives me the major creeps. And Tolkien was almost as Christian as the execrable C.S. Lewis.
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I haven’t read the trilogy. Just watched the movies.
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I am thinking of the movie version at the moment. The YouTube algorithm keeps feeding me LotR excerpts. Sauron is just CREEPY. Creepier than the Star Wars Emperor, imo. At least the Emperor was still human.
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I ought to refresh my memory of him
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