Satanic Temple sees Arkansas as possible monument location

[Deleted]

What in the name of the trinity is going on here?!?!

[Azgraal]

Yeah I'll hope it doesn't.

So you're against religious freedom in the US, a country that was founded by people who wanted to escape religious persecution, among other things?

Or you're ok with it as long it's only Christians and Jews building stuff?

[Rukh]

Can't remember where I read this:

In the void before all things, a spirit created himself and declared "Let there be light" and light was made, the spirit named itself after this as Lucifer (roughly Latin for light bringer). Lucifer then gave life to everything, created the angels who were made of light, created men, women and animals from water. He then sent his angels out into the world to watch over it.

The head angel, had three faces and an iron heart, and did not join Lucifer in the rapture. Lucifer praised free will above all things, so his choice to not follow was his own. This head angel had a horrible weakness in that he wanted to be worshipped. While Lucifer rejoiced in his creation, this angel began a propaganda piece to other angels and the men that told them that he would raise high above their peers if they just praised him above all things and call him God. He would build a world of his own where he could rule and set it aside from Heaven and the realm of men (Earth).

All the worship went to his head and he began to try and create new life to justify himself. However, he wasn't that powerful and could never create life anew, nothing grew in his world's plains and gleaming cities that he called Hell. In anger, he took the scraps of other living things, fused them together and created the first devils. The worst one of all being Satan. God put them all in Hell while Lucifer played around in Heaven. Devils are different to demons, as demons are just angels who leave Lucifer's Heaven.

At some point or another, Satan, under the command of God, was able to cast Lucifer down from Heaven and lock him away into prison inside Hell along with some of the angels who stayed with him. God was so pleased with Satan that he gave him dominion over men inside Hell, then any man who was evil, diseased or disfigured (their form disgusted God) went to Satan to torment.

A war inside Hell erupted, during a victory for Lucifer, he was able to escape from Hell and came to Earth as a man. He tried to reconcile with God, even calling him father to try and get all men to be seen as equal as Lucifer isn't proud like God. God sends him the false friend Judas to deceive him and get him crucified. God then plagued the minds of men, tricking them into believing that Lucifer was his son can called him Jesus, so they worshipped him as well, which Lucifer did not want.

Lucifer now knows there can be no reconciliation with God and a war is set to erupt between the usurped angels and the megalomaniac God during a time of perdition, after which the Earth will return to it's peaceful and beautiful state. Free of disease and mistrust caused by God.

This is essentially adaptation of Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was a branch of Christianity around the time of the early Christian church, way before reformation, when it was still a mystery cult. It was actually at least as practiced as other branches of Christianity, however early Pauline Christians burned the gnostic church and most of their writings. Most of what we now know of gnostic practices come from second-hand references and citations.

Gnostics believed that there was god, who created the spiritual world, and then there was the Demiurge, a powerful deity who is a creation of god, but wants to rule all the universe. The Demiurge created the physical world and captured fragments of the spiritual world as souls because he wanted followers to worship him. This creator god was associated by the gnostics with Yaweh. So, while what became mainstream christianity adapted the Jewish Yaweh to be the ultimate god of creation and where he was a jealous vain god suddenly became the source of all that is good and forgiving, the gnostics took the Jewish god and cast him as the source of suffering in the world. Not necessarily "malevolent" but a flawed vain being and said that the true monotheistic god had made him.

Each branch of course took the teachings of Jesus and cast them in their own way. The gnostics using his teachings as proof of a higher god that rejected physical things. Things like the gospel of Thomas are thought to have been more gnostic in nature, because the quotes from jesus in it refer to things like heaven being inside of us, something we need to unlock and of course rejection of material wealth. On the other hand, Pauline Christianity considers the Gospel of Thomas to be hearsay.

[Azgraal]

Those things are mostly american, where christians are active to a point that cannot be compared in any European country, and more than all, in France (say you're a christian here, and you'll often get a smile wondering if you're a little dumb or make the person uncomfortable ... I know what I'm talking about ).

That's not true in all European countries then. Here in Portugal, until recently, an unnoficial creed of the people was "Fado, Futebol e Fátima", Fado, a traditional portuguese singing style, football, and the name of the town where in 1917 took place an event of mass hysteria (also known as the apparition of the virgin mary to 3 sheppard children).

Even though Portugal is supposed to be a small secular state, there's thousands of churches abound an heritage of the previous generations of a fervorous belief, lots of money from the country's finances are spent yearly in catholic matters, and even in our capital city, a traditional neighbourhood is being demolished to make space for a mosque, all paid by the mayor's office.

I'll admit we've got nothing on those nutjob religious in the US but here if you have some older people in your family (>60 or sometimes younger) and you mention you don't believe in god to them, you might as well be announcing that you're into necrophilia and/or you put your milk in the bowl before the cereals.

[Ryme]

This is essentially adaptation of Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was a branch of Christianity around the time of the early Christian church, way before reformation, when it was still a mystery cult. It was actually at least as practiced as other branches of Christianity, however early Pauline Christians burned the gnostic church and most of their writings. Most of what we now know of gnostic practices come from second-hand references and citations.

Gnostics believed that there was god, who created the spiritual world, and then there was the Demiurge, a powerful deity who is a creation of god, but wants to rule all the universe. The Demiurge created the physical world and captured fragments of the spiritual world as souls because he wanted followers to worship him. This creator god was associated by the gnostics with Yaweh. So, while what became mainstream christianity adapted the Jewish Yaweh to be the ultimate god of creation and where he was a jealous vain god suddenly became the source of all that is good and forgiving, the gnostics took the Jewish god and cast him as the source of suffering in the world. Not necessarily "malevolent" but a flawed vain being and said that the true monotheistic god had made him.

Each branch of course took the teachings of Jesus and cast them in their own way. The gnostics using his teachings as proof of a higher god that rejected physical things. Things like the gospel of Thomas are thought to have been more gnostic in nature, because the quotes from jesus in it refer to things like heaven being inside of us, something we need to unlock and of course rejection of material wealth. On the other hand, Pauline Christianity considers the Gospel of Thomas to be hearsay.

Ah, that might be exactly what I'm recalling, I couldn't remember if Earth was supposed to be created by God or Lucifer.

I love reading religion and myths, often some fascinating stories to be told.

[Darsithis]

Religion discussion isn't allowed here.