I disagree with you: the world is only good.
I disagree with that.
It is exactly as the Bible states: Satan was a liar from the beginning.
Organised religion is fairy stories for adults. There is no Satan. It is a lie that lets people shirk responsibility for their own actions.
Everytime you do something bad, or somebody else does, they do it because they act on one of Satan's lies (misconceptions of the world). In a sense it's the result of ignorance, if you had perfect knowledge of the world, there would be no bad.
Makes my point.
In a sense it's the result of ignorance, if you had perfect knowledge of the world, there would be no bad.
There is no such thing as perfect knowledge of anything.
Hence, my people shall perish for lack of knowledge, etc.
There is no "my people" - these kind of lies are responsible for countless deaths and wrong doing.
Organized religion is bullshit. I agree to that, who does not?
Nevertheless, there is some value to biblical stories if you can interpret them (if you have reading comprehension which most adults lack to be honest).
Obviously, there is a Satan. Satan is a literally vehicle to explain why certain behaviors are bad (like e.g.: killing). There is no literal devil horned creature in existance, duh, that is not what I mean. Satan is a metaphor.
Additionally, obviously there is perfect knowledge. The problem is that it does not seem to be attainable by one single human being, but humans have some potential to understand perfect knowledge. At least, they can accept its existance as an abstract idea.
Actually, in statistics, perfect knowledge is a useful concept that we sometimes use to think about data collection and drawing inferences. I use it all the time to determine if I have collected enough data. For example, when I ask myself: "do I have enough data to predict the next outcome in a series perfectly, or do I need more data to do so". A set of data is good enough if you can reliably predict the next outcome in a series without error and thus you have attained perfect knowledge about a particular subset or system. The absolute knowledge about everything in statistics though is something that we call LaPlace's dream. He was a mathematician, but obviously LaPlace's dream will continue to be a dream. Unless the Universe is deterministic and once manages to perceive every particle in the universe at the same time and knows all its relationships with one another. Even then, it would only be possible if the universe was strictly deterministic as LaPlace assumed, but I don't think it is.
I think the biblical 'free-will' is the equivalent to the scientific 'quantum-behavior'. Unpredictable by common quantifiable rules and ordinary statistic and thus preventing a human realization of LaPlace's dream and perfect knowledge. Yet, not enough to reject the idea of perfect knowledge, even if humans are only destined to realize it as an abstract idea. (certain monks of certain Eastern spiritual traditions would disagree of course).
(One could imagine a 4 dimensional being with perfect knowledge of 3 dimensional space though, as in e.g.: Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 1).
Lastly, there is "my people". The Bible passage I am referring to here is from Hosea, where God laments about his children (arguably all humans) that forget their ways and stop following his law and therefore:
By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.
I.e.: they perish because they forget to follow the laws of a society and thus reap death as their reward. This is followed by the statement: "My people shall perish for lack of knowledge."
This passage if read completely is clearly applicable to all of mankind, thus my people refers to all humans, as god is the speaker in the passage. Hence, if you place "my people" in its appropriate context there is "my people" as long as you believe that there is mankind. However, when the Bible was written the word mankind did not exist yet, or the writer just did not use that word in the context. Idk, I was not a writer 5000 years ago. (This is from the Old Testament)
And, of course, taking single elements form the text enables the manipulation of the meaning so that it can be used to divide humans against each other, which is not exacty Biblical, but has been the favourite pass time of the Catholic church for most of its existance. The Catholic church, obviously not being supported by the Bible at all as it is just a political institution. Neither, is the label of Christian btw., the word Christian does not exist in the Bible. Most likely it was a term invented by the pagans around the year 0 to describe early Christian's as mentally retarded. The original Latin word is Cretin, meaning mentally feeble in a positive sense in Latin. (to remind people that mentally feeble people are human's after all and that they should not be shunned for they feeble minds)
Albeit, most people do not take the time to reflect on religious text and thus they fail to learn form them. Instead, they flock to organized religions. Conveniently all of those institutions forget the respective teachings of their Holy books when it suits them. Sometimes, I guess, also out of neccessity, survival instincts and all.
Great points.
Exactly that is why I love the subject but I don't take the stories as factual sadly some people (including my own family and friends) do take them as being actual truth.
Exactly and I'm not anti spirituality it's just that most people do these things in a mindless way.
Yeah and that is always a problem. Ignorance is the worst thing.
I think that stupidity and evil go hand in hand.
Or ignorance and evil if you will.
You can never let other people do your thinking.
You have to (double) check everyhthing for yourself.
I guess more accuratly what I meant to say is:
Satan is jealous of humanity and wants to corrupt us. (metaphorically speaking, not literally).
Satan didn't give us knowledge, he gave us knowledge of good and evil, which is artificial dichotomy that starts confllict in mans life - i.e. the knowledge itself destroys paradise you live in. We must abolish the evil and spread good, thus we fight against half the creation, so how can there be paradise?
By this act satan made us suffer and in war and the knowledge he provided is only artificial, since creation is as god made it and all has its place here.
Ergo, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" - Hamlet, Shakespeare
And that is exactly the problem here with the crypto space: some people invest money they should not invest. Then they hear news about their investment. Then they think: "Oh that's bad news". Then they sell their investment and lose money because they sell it too early and then they cry about the unfairness of the world because they acted because they deceived themselves into believing that their investment was bad because they worried about it because they heard some news about it. Yet, if they hadn't had these negative thoughts about their investment and if they had just seen the news about their investment for what it is and held onto it instead of falling for the deception then all of these bad things would not have happened.
Clearer now?
Thus, I meant that buying into the dichotomy of good and evil, is the deception of Satan and that is in itself a metaphor.
The world 'just is' and to me 'being' is good. Well, you could say it's neutral, but I think that 'being' is better than 'not being' so I classify 'being' as good and therfore I just view the world as inherently good. Of course you can disagree with me but I think that would be falling for the deception and encourage you to take the highroad. Afterall, that was the call of Bitcoin to take away the power to manipulate markets from banks to free people from war.
Now, personally, I also like to put myself into the shoes of an author of the Bible. How would I write if I lived 5000 years ago and wanted to communicate a positive message to people? I then read the text as follows: The garden of Eden can be interpreted as the brain, and the two hemispheres left + right as the false dichotomy that create conflict between themselves. Eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge in this view becomes a metaphor akin to forgetting because you eat away from your knowledge and become ignorant of the world as it is. You start to be deceived.
Of course, there is only the world (the creation), but from neuroscience we know that it gets interpreted by your brain twice via two different pathways. One of these pathways is called the "what pathway" and the other the "where pathway". Where just tells you where in the world you are and where other things in the world are, while what can tell you that the "where" is good or bad. From these thought experiments I drew the conclusion that the Bible is the first attempt by humans to scientifically descibe nature. Of course, over time the words they used got somewhat outdated. For example, when I read the Bible I think the tree of life means "lung" in modern English, while the tree of knowledge of good and evil means "brain". If you read the Bible that way you can actually learn a lot and get mind blown regularly. You also start to realize how retarded it is to murder because of religion and then you try to enlighten your fellow human being.
I am getting a PhD in Psychology. You see that I think quite a lot about this :D
Cool but I think we will have to disagree on this. I don't believe in any kind of Satan.