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#5266By AOU on Monday, March 22, 2004 - 10:15 pm

Real or imaginary, good or bad?

The opposite of God or the other half of 'him'?

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#5268By mountainwoman on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 1:14 am

A personification of what humans perceive as evil. A lesser opposite of G-d, who is humans' personification of what is perceived as good. A personification is when humans give a human form to a concept. The devil was created by man in man's image.

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#5272By mysticsdream on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 1:08 pm

I agree Satan/ Devil are 'personifications'. Curiously though the characteristicts/ attributes they have relate to the concept of 'evil' which concerns behaviour of humans whose choices are of intent to harm others/ (to cause misfortune and/or be destructive)... I found it interesting to consider the connection in language... Devil (subject) evil (verb) depraved (adjective).. I'd never noticed this before

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#5275By Carlan on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 10:08 pm

The devil is alive and doing very well! The thing that we call the devil is a conceptual thing that has its existence in what we think and what we perceive as being evil. The devil is not a human or an animal or has it any concrete form. The devil is the embodiment of evil thought. Unlike God which is the creator of all things and everything, the devil is the embodiment of all things we humans identify with as, murder, robbery, molestation, rape, incest, and the other well known sins.

All of the other species of this earth have no evil thoughts and therefore know not of evil or the devil, however, all of them recognize their creator which is God.

Do not fear the devil because it is not a real thing but is only evil thought which by and in itself cannot harm anyone, but beware of evil men and evil women because they are the ones that are the true devils of this world!

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#5289By AOU on Friday, March 26, 2004 - 6:08 pm

Strange,

On this I disagree with all of you, excuse the pun.

With a mathematical mind concieve either entity.

With a spiritual mind concieve either entity.

With an if I was God mind concieve either entity,


Must be balance for the mathematicians

Must be to blame for the spiritualists

Must be mad, anyway..

Well my friends, maybe just an insight into looking at good and bad to the enth degree, no harm to look.

I dreamed a nice dream the other night.

Realistic or not, it felt possible.

Suicide bombers, Israeli soliders, etc.

What would we do without both of them.

Take care all of you.
G.

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#5337By Stilts on Sunday, April 04, 2004 - 6:58 am

Philosophers:

You know so much about nothing. Would you like to know what the Devil is?

Look it up in the dictionary. Christ, does everything have to be so difficult?

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#8273By Anonymous on Thursday, April 28, 2005 - 11:01 pm

if the devil is 6 then is god 7?

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#8274By crossquad on Saturday, April 30, 2005 - 4:00 am

I see him at the beach sometimes.I guess he enjoys
the overt sinning.He is about six feet tall,looks
about sixty-five,white hair,strong torso,wears amber
sun glass.Usually he has two women with him,one
young,one middle age.He is missing his right leg,but
he stands quite well,never moving.When I saw him, I
use to go a few beaches over to East.But,when I
thought about the earth turning West to East,I now
move to the West;best to have been where he was
(missions,homes)than to be be where he is going
(bars,clubs).

by(e)carg

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#8382By IAMGODjoke on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 - 7:59 pm

Devil is my younger brother that causes and is attracted to mischief. I create he manipulates and/or destroys. I give he takes. That is how it has worked since the begining of when the universe was created. Little has changed since then but be on the look out because his descent on to earth will soon begin. His reign of terror will soon bring apacolypse to the world starting with the humans or something so beware!

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#8384By mountainwoman on Thursday, June 02, 2005 - 4:31 pm

Sigh.... why do we bother?

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#8411By Carlan on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 12:02 pm

Mountainwoman, good question: Why do we bother? I can only think that the reason some of us “bother” is because we hope to somehow someway get through to those among us out there that believe in the make-believe thing out there that does not exist but we were all taught from our birth to believe does exist and that fantasy and falsehood was and is the devil or Satan. There is no such thing as the devil or Satan and there never was such things. The only devil that does exist is in the evil thoughts in the minds of people who do evil things and cause trouble for themselves and for others but as to a Satan or a devil those words were made up by naïve and ignorant people who themselves were ignorant and naïve about such things. People have nearly always had wanted to humanize those things they either cannot understand or comprehend or they knew could be used to manipulate and control other people, in order, to either make themselves feel more at ease or feel superior to other people. I bother to explain these misconceptions almost on a daily basis because “new” people whom have not heard what I said before or else they are people who just cannot get pass their earliest childhood lessons that their parents and their other leaders that they were exposed taught them. I bother to be a sort of broken record on some of these old fairy tale beliefs because I believe that if we could rid people’s minds of many of those old fairytale lies and the like that all of us would be able to make some better human progress along the way. But, along comes another “Iamgodjoke” and similar others that believe in devils and Satan and other such nonsensical things. He or she believes that they know the devil but what he or she knows is a boy or girl with bad thoughts in his or her head and those bad thoughts are the only devil that there ever was and that there ever will be. The only devil is the evil thought of men and women and boys and girls but as to there somewhere being actually a devil, well, there just isn’t such a thing!

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#8986By Some random guy on Friday, November 18, 2005 - 8:56 pm

good - one sided alutrism
evil - selfishness

nothing more, nothing less

Very well said, Mr. Some Random guy
Thinkers.network

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#9376By sabrina on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 1:56 am

inside my loneliness, i can feel a chasing demon behind me, eats, with me sleeps with me, lives with me is with me, waiting a chance to use the knife in his hands... to cheer with sorrow and silenbce with my blood as poisoned wine.... suddenly i realized in the dark room, theres just a mirror and me...

we are our own devil...if u define it as an individual being, we gotta discuss it...
lady_summonner_yuna@yahoo.ca

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#9388By Carlan on Friday, July 28, 2006 - 12:42 pm

Sabrina, the bad things that occur to us or on us or within us help create the evilness that we experience in our own lives and that we perpetrate onto the rest of the world. Others and other things, as well as, we ourselves conceive all of the evilness that we understand to be in our world. In other words, we are exposed to what we believe is evil by others and we expose our own evilness onto others. Our demons (evilness) follow us and chase us when we are at our weakest point that point when we are defenseless to its penetrating and pervasive onslaught. At which moment we think thoughts of fear, of pity, of total vulnerability. We see and feel demons behind us and in front of us, demons that will eat with us and sleep with us and live with us and in silence imbibe our own blood as a poisoning wine. Be not afraid at these times because like the mirror and you sitting in that dark room the mirror cannot see you and you cannot see that mirror so does the demon not exist and you do exist. The ‘you’ in you are real but that demon that seems so real in your thoughts is only an imagined form of evilness but is not a real thing at all.

We are most vulnerable to thoughts of demons when we are too long alone or too long set under an abusive hammer which we think is about to fall on our heads. We must turn to family and friends and other caring people and remove our aloneness and that abusiveness from our situation as fast as we can. Once we feel genuine affection and we are no longer alone soon after those evil demonic thoughts will disappear into the nothingness from where they were created in the first place.

The only devil that ever existed and still exists is in the minds of humankind and nowhere else!

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#9516By Nikki on Monday, April 09, 2007 - 11:38 pm

The question of whether the devil is real or not is answered from a religious point of view in Scott Peck's book "Glimpses Of The Devil" and "People Of The Lie" the first explaining the "devil" and second describing evil. i don't believe the devil is only inside of us, unless you consider it to be another name for evil, but i do believe it is a part of who we are and must be accepted to live happily.. definitely more than just selfishness considering there are more than one kind of evil email me if you want to debate this i'm always open for discussion

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#9518By Carlan on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 - 2:14 pm

Nikki, I think that to take from the religious point of any book or any teaching is to take the view of fantasy and delusion. I think that when we try to make something concrete out of something that does not exist is pathetic and very wrong. Evil which is a thinking process of the human mind is very real and can and will cause harm to not only human kind but will cause harm to almost all that surrounds us. But, Nikki, there is no devil and there is no Satan!

In Blacksburg, Virginia, at Virginia Tech University yesterday a deranged male human being prosecuted an evil process of his own mind onto the families and friends and the rest of us by shooting and killing and maiming thirty to fifty unarmed human victims by purposely squeezing off automatic gun shots at them when those poor defenseless students and teachers and others had no way of protecting themselves nor could they shoot back at him to stop his crime. They could only duck behind desks or jump out of windows or just try to run to get away, mostly all they could do was cower and hide and get killed and maimed. But, Nikki, there was no devil there because devils do not exist the only thing there that is always there when there are evils done and that is humankind was there.

Nikki, the only reason there is any evil done on or in this world is because we humans are on it and in it, in other words, without us the world would spin on and on and all of the happenings left on it would neither exist in a state of goodness nor would they exist in a state of evilness but they all would go on and on living in their own designated state of being.

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#9537By mysticsdream on Sunday, April 22, 2007 - 6:54 am

Nikki I enjoy Scott Peck but he is not a religious authority. He is a psychiatrist who came to believe in God through his pursuit of his craft.

I particularly enjoyed his Road Less Travelled series and in a former life created an interactive online newsletter which ran for a year using the road less travelled as the basis for a discussion.

As for evil however Im not sure how you wish to define it. Or cant remember how Peck defines it. But Im sure he'd agree that we need to take responsibility for ourselves, and we need grace, and understanding and there are destructive dark forces within and around us which can impact on us and our friends reducing the potential for a creative life.

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#9532By mysticsdream on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 8:47 am

Nikki I tried to send a response to you but either it was edited, and banned or this site has undue delays.

In any case my views on Peck are that he is positive.

I have thought much about what I wanted to say to you.

A psychiatrist like Peck.. is a person who gives us analytic frameworks. They help us understand behaviour.

Their frameworks are interpretive.

But they as a science psychiatry seems to me to be more scientific than religion but not much more. They don't prove things. They give us insight.

If you wish me to try and say more I will try.

I think Peck is right. But its not a proof. Its just a way of seeing things that makes sense

What is evil?
A lot of evil things also bring good things up in people: solidarity, the awareness that we have the choise between good and bad. By people doing evil things we adjust our laws for the better.
Splitting atoms made us boms, but also gives us electricity, it helps in medecine. So, was it a good or a bad inbvention?
If there's no bad, we cannot feel the good. There must be equilibrance.
I don't think the devil exists. I think there are people who like the evil, somehow they choose the dark side of the dualitys we are presented in our life.

Evil is quite a topic to think on. Of course, the standard "Christian" belief, that all evil originated with Satan and his fall from "grace," is one concept. (Personally, I find that plausible) However, whether one accepts the biblical stance for evil or not, it is certain that evil exists. Take a look at the list below and tell me that evil doesn't exist. Often seen UNFORTUNATELY surrounding some kind of obsessive belief, and horribly destructive. It really is hard to imagine some people can be filled with so much hate and violence. (With these kind of examples the idea of demon possession becomes very believable for me).

The Top Ten Evil
1. Tomas de Torquemada (pictured here) - Born in Spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. He was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation. He was made Grand Inquisitor by Pope Sixtus IV. Popes and kings alike praised his tireless efforts. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000. Torquemada's hatred of Jews influenced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Jews who had not embraced Christianity.


2. Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler was a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement. He was a fan of various forms of torture including disemboweling and rectal and facial impalement. Vlad the Impaler tortured thousands while he ate and drunk among the corpses. He impaled every person in the city of Amlas -- 20,000 men, women and children. Vlad often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc. He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs and limbs. But his favorite method was impalement on stakes, hence the surname "Tepes" which means "The Impaler" in the Romanian language. It is this technique he used in 1457, 1459 and 1460 against Transylvanian merchants who had ignored his trade laws. He also looked upon the poor, vagrants and beggars as thieves. Consequently, he invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to his princely court in Tirgoviste for a great feast. After the guests ate and drank, Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. No one survived.

Note: Every Romanian who contacted me said I should remove Vlad from the list. They said he was not evil and seemed to like him. In an effort to understand how our views of evil can be so different, I reproduce an exchange I had with Marius who was born in Romania. Perhaps this will help us understand more generally how the perception of evil can differ from person to person. Other strange discussions on this same web page focus on Bill Clinton and those people who truly believe Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler who exterminated millions.


3. Adolph Hitler - The dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary.

4. Ivan the Terrible - Ivan Vasilyevich, (born Aug. 25, 1530, in Kolomenskoye, near Moscow) was the grand prince of Moscow (1533-84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. He enjoyed burning 1000s of people in frying pans, and was fond of impaling people.

5. Adolph Eichmann - Born in March 19, 1906, Solingen, Germany he was hanged by the state of Israel for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. "The death of five million Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."

6. Pol Pot - Pol Pot (born in 1925 in the Kompong Thom province of Cambodia) was the Khmer political leader whose totalitarian regime (1975-79) imposed severe hardships on the people of Cambodia. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a legacy of disease and starvation. Under his leadership, his government caused the deaths of at least one million people from forced labor, starvation, disease, torture, or execution.

7. Mao Tse-tung - who killed somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen, including the elderly and intellectuals. His picture still hangs throughout many homes and businesses. Mao's own personality cult, encouraged so as to provide momentum to the movement, assumed religious proportions. The resulting anarchy, terror, and paralysis completely disrupted the urban economy. Industrial production for 1968 dipped 12 percent below that of 1966. In short, the Revolution led to the destruction of much of China's cultural heritage and the imprisonment of a huge number of Chinese intellectuals, amongst other social chaos. This policy is usually regarded as a complete disaster.

8. Idi Amin - Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924 in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long- standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by allegedly ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango, and other tribes. Reports indicate torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency. In 1972, he began to expel Asians from Uganda. God, he said, had directed him to do this. (Acutally, he had been angered by the refusal of one of the country's most prominent Asian families, the Madhvanis, to hand over their prettiest daughter as his fifth wife.) Over the years, Ugandans would disappear in the thousands, their mutilated bodies washing up on the shores of Lake Victoria. Amin would boast of being a "reluctant" cannibal - human flesh, he said, was too salty. He once ordered that the decapitation of political prisoners be broadcast on TV, specifying that the victims "must wear white to make it easy to see the blood". One of Amin's guards, Abraham Sule, said: "[Amin] put his bayonet in the pot containing human blood and licked the stuff as it ran down the bayonet. Amin told us: 'When you lick the blood of your victim, you will not see nightmares.' He then did it."


9. Joseph Stalin - Born in 1879. During the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. In the 1930s, by his orders, millions of peasants were either killed or permitted to starve to death. Stalin brought about the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people while holding the Soviet Union in an iron grip for 29 years. Stalin succeeded his hero Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1924. From then on, he induced widespread famines to enforce farm collectives, and eliminated perceived enemies through massive purges.


10. Genghis Khan- The Mongol Temjin, known to history as Genghis Khan (born 1162) was a warrior and ruler who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. When attacking Volohoi, Khan convinced the city commander that Mongols would stop attacking if the city sent out 1,000 cats and several thousand swallows. When he got them, Genghis had bits of cloth tied to their tails and set the cloth on fire. The cats and birds fled back to the city and ended up setting hundreds of fires inside the city. Then Genghis attacked and won. At another time, Mongols rounded up 70,000 men, women, and children and shot them with arrows. Genghis told his comrades: "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, use his women as a nightshirt and support, gazing upon and kissing their rosy breasts, sucking their lips which are as sweet as the berries of their breasts."


11. H. H. Holmes - built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and experimented with their corpses. He killed over 200 people.


12. Gilles de Rais - A Fifteenth Century French war hero, Gilles was also one of medieval Europe's worst killers. He enjoyed killing mostly young boys, whom he would sodomize before and after decapitation. He enjoyed watching his servants butcher the boys and masturbated over their entrails. He killed over 140 people.

Some Runners-Up: Nicolae Ceausescu decreed that all women must bear five children. Due to terrible food shortages, many women were unable to support their "decree babies." They turned them over to state-run orphanages. More than 150,000 children were crowded into these institutions. Many died of malnutrition and disease. Others ran away becoming homeless beggars. Ceausescu also forbade testing of the nation's blood supply for AIDS. Through transfusions and shared vaccinations needles, thousands of orphans contracted AIDS. Eventually Romania had over half of Europe's cases of childhood AIDS.

Basil the Bulgar Slayer blinded 14,000 prisoners. Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.

[QUOTE=WriterAtTheSea;16441]Evil is quite a topic to think on. Of course, the standard "Christian" belie