Bay 12 Games Forum

All I know is that if clinton was half the nascent demon god/robot people seem to enjoy portraying her as, I'd be a lot more enthusiastic over the prospect of voting for her. The political scene would be hella' more interesting if getter rays rolled up into that shit.

E: Though now I have this amazing mental image of the first (and last) presidential debate of this cycle starting and ending with hilary stepping on stage, tearing open her shirt with a scream of "GEEEETTTAAAA BEEEEEEAAAAMMMM",* and reducing her opponent to an irradiated ashen smear on the ground. Betcha' it'd win points like goddamn with the warhawk parts of the polity.

*Rough visual reference. Don't ask where the dragon robot comes from in the above proposed scenario. It was always there.

I'unno, I could probably get behind forcing paid parental leave on both parents -- 6-8 weeks at a minimum within the first two years of life, something like that. Maybe give companies an out for that if they're providing on-site childcare plus it still being mandated both can take the (still paid!) leave by choice. Probably try it on the state level in a few places for a decade or two, see how it effects the generation after.

Do you really, though, sheb? That would entail spending hours, more or less daily, listening to republican politicians speak. It's hard to do that with any kind of politician without wanting to kill something, possibly yourself, nevermind the stateside faction that's currently gone more or less insane.

Side note: Or Ra is a particularly powerful angel/demon which has been referred to as a god, but is not the God.

In that case, you'd have something subordinate to god in power violating something's free will, which... would instead replace the first bit of that catch 22 with "is not omnipotent"

I do agree with this though, angels appear to have free will.  While "free will" is a weird and nebulous concept, surely beings without free will can't rebel.  Like, by definition.

They can definitely be forced to abandon their positions of authority and whatnot, though. Go through all the motions of rebellion even if their will is set against it.*

Not really sure you can make the argument they couldn't have been forced to rebel outright as well, either... that (unfortunate) bit of retconning with the pharaoh paints the christian god as something entirely willing to strip something of its free will and screw with its head when the godcritter feels like there's a need. It may have been that the angels had free will, did not want to rebel, and was not given a choice. Or that they left heaven on god's command, or any number of things along those lines.

And yeah, the whole teaching/testing/responsibility thing kinda' falls apart in... quite a great number of situations. At least unless reincarnation is actually a thing (which, to be fair, some christian denominations hold to, to various degrees) -- soul can't exactly pick up much in the way of lesson from dying in utero, or starving before they can walk, or so on. Plus the thing's own actions flies in the face of that pretty hard -- there's not exactly a lesson to be learned from getting genocided, having your children murdered, your pregnant wives ripped apart, etc., etc., etc. If th'thing's intent is teaching it's really gorram bad at it. Either that or the people that wrote the text really screwed up the transcription, heh.

... it'd make a sort of sense that instead of cruel, the thing's just incredibly incompetent, though. Like, all powerful, all knowing, all good, but... kind of stupid (to the point of not figuring out how to use that omnipotence to fix the problem), and not really that good at using the tools available. Would explain a hell of a lot. Would also kinda' slot in with how we're really bad at dealing with information overload -- maybe we were substantially made in its image, and it's basically spent the last ever being mostly crippled by the omniscience. Less cruelty, more flailing migraine seizure.

*E: Well, set against it or nonexistent. As always, it's possible the people writing the text misinterpreted what happened, and saw rebellion or abandonment where there was only obedience.

You're not really going to find one, save in the extra-canonical sources. It's implied by the texts treating them as different entities, but it's also similarly implied there's multiple "satans", so...

Metaphysically, insofar as christianity goes the source of sin is kinda' necessarily God, regardless as to if Satan (or whatever else) is the primary source of inculcation or not, because God in christian metaphysics is the source of everything. The serpent was God's creation, the inclination towards sin in the garden was God's design, etc., etc. The closest way of sidestepping that that exists, so far as I'm aware, is considering sin to be a lack (generally of God's presence, or something along those lines), but even that falls fairly flat -- God would have made the conditions for the lack, as well. God being the source of sin is kinda' axiomatic to the metaphysics in question.

The rebellion thing is pretty much entirely extra-biblical, so far as I can recall -- genesis makes no mention of rebellion, if my memory's not failing me (which, being fair, it might -- I just woke up from a nap), and the adversary (/adversaries) are shown elsewhere in the texts to be subordinate to God's will (as everything is). There's just not really all that much canonical support for it, heh.

That said, satan as the source of sin (for whatever reason) and whatnot is a relatively common belief among individual denominations. It's just one of those kinda' fanfic-y ones, heh.

Not with that attitude, you won't!