God and the Devil

God and the Devil are a magnet. United as one, polar opposites, attract diffferently and one would not exist without the other.

Hmm, I guess it depends what you mean by either God or the Devil or magnet...
Now, I could of course just walk away after thanking you for sharing your perspective, but after considering it I find myself lacking the necessary gratitude. This hardly tells us anything about you because we have no idea what impact this perspective has on anything else about you. Since we do not know how you came to the view you just shared, we literally don't know where this is coming from or indeed where else this can be going, i.e. what further use it is.
I understand that you didn't mean to say that this is how things are or that you unlike any of the rest of us have means to know these things but are really only sharing your thoughts. And yet, here they are and what are we to do with them? Whether I grant you that what you say about gods and devils or the validity of your comparison or not, at the end of it the question remains the same: "So what?...:dry:"

Oh, and by the way, magnetic poles aren't discrete locations - which is why they don't exist apart from each other - nor do they attract differently (what ever that means). That is because magnetic fields have no start or end point. Their divergence is zero, that's what we call Gauss's Law for magnetism. You're welcome.

It's purposively a vague statement to stimulate discussion and opinion. I look at discussion as a trip not a destination.

Knowing me, impact, where is it coming from, where is it going, what to do with it, so what, etc? WOW, to complex, can't respond to all that at once. Pick one question at a time and I'll do my best with it.

I really wasn't intending to explore the magnet scientifically as much as a metaphor or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract. God and the devil personified good and evil? Different but the same? The Ying Yang thing?

heres one potential way to speak about it

using very simplistic language, there are GOOD WAYS to live, and there are BAD ways to live

i dont know what other standard one might wish to adopt, but i would say that EXISTING and being ALIVE are about as good a standard or context for determining what is GOOD and what is BAD as any other, (and better than most) and within ALIVE, we also have HUMAN, and by these standards, and within this context, we can confidently say (for example) that being healthy is BETTER than being sick, being courageous is better than being cowardly, being loved and loving is better than being despised and bitter, ect

one aspect of "God" is to represent the individual's or the culture's collection of understandings which move a person and society towards "BETTER" ways of living and being

or you could say that "God" is whatever that/those force/s of the universe is/are which produce/s "positive" consequences as a result of "positive" actions

from this, the opposite can be understood as "The Devil"

There are absolutely BAD and WRONG ways to live, and to see and interact with the world

"The Devil" is whatever external forces, or internal personality characteristics within an individual, or within a society, that encourage, promote and result in, alignment with these WRONG WAYS

the "wages of sin is death" or the results of living the wrong way are that one is less healthy and less efficient than one s capable of being, over a broad range of criteria, especially in the psychological and psycho-social realms

Rickie wrote: God and the Devil are a magnet. United as one, polar opposites, attract diffferently and one would not exist without the other.

God did exist without the devil originally... the creation of the devil was due to an oversight by God.. (if we're talking Christian myth here). (From my viewing of it.)

God did exist without the devil originally..

One sect opinion. Not saying it's wrong but who knows. No one me thinks.

I'm thinking god/devil is a human effort to define good and bad rather than, in my opinion, they are one and the same representing yin and yang. We as humans, at least in the west, are obsessed with defining more rather than experiencing and accepting. God and the devil are one just as I/we am, having negative and positive poles. It's all me just different aspect of me.

Edan wrote: God did exist without the devil originally... the creation of the devil was due to an oversight by God.. (if we're talking Christian myth here). (From my viewing of it.)

Well, Christianity teaches that they're separate and that the devil's ambition outgrew his sense.

Prior to that, if we look at the Book of Job (one of the oldest extant texts, if memory serves, and linguistically unique from the rest of the Old Testament), we see something different. Satan is as his name implies, just God's District Attorney. Nothing more.

haha I love this topic because everyone can relate to it through their prior experiences with religion. god=good, devil=bad. So now I can tell you all what is good and what is bad:
Good:
1. Sex with animals - god said so
2. Killing people - god said so
Bad:
1. Sharing - Satan loves this
2. Love - Satan likes this

I LOVE the magnet analogy. A piece of something trapped in some mystery, torn between freedom and 'alignment'. In this regard I'd view God as representing freedom, and the devil as being enslaved to banal (read subconscious) drivers. Of course it could be flipped and viewed the other way from other points of view, which is why I find it a good one, thanks!!
:lol:

Whyte Horse wrote: haha I love this topic because everyone can relate to it through their prior experiences with religion.

Yea, that must be exactly my problem here. I just don't have any such experience so all I read is a few thoughts and all I have to add amounts to "Hang on, that's not how magnets work...!"

god=good, devil=bad.

Now... I don't know how it is with other religions, but the holy texts I read never actually showed us this. Superman is good because he helps people in need first and asks questions later, if at all. The Joker is evil because all he seeks is havoc and destruction for pretty much nothing but his own amusement. There is no big introduction that tells us that Superman is the pinnacle of goodness or that the Joker is pure materialized evil. Instead of being told this we are being shown it through their dialogue and actions. Theology aside, the text itself really only declares who is the good one and who is the bad one and the examples you give right after what I quoted demonstrate that the rest of the text tells quite a different story indeed...