I don't know if Mormons still teach the "Plan of Salvation" the way they did when I was a Mormon kid.

But back then, it was explained to me that Satan had a plan to force everyone to do the "right thing," so that everyone would be saved. He disagreed with God's plan to let people "choose" to do the right thing. He supposedly disagreed with the principle of "free agency."

So according to that explanation, Satan's plan was all about coercion and God's plan was all about freedom.

But when you really think about it, both plans are all about coercion. Satan planned to use coercion to prevent people from doing the bad stuff in the first place. God planned to insert a testing or entrapment period first and then punish the ones who fall for the various traps and snares.

So God's version of coercion is to use the threat of damnation and eternal servitude to encourage his spirit kids to make the right decisions. But then God added a new twist. He'd give all his kids amnesia, make them rely on horny pervo prophets like Joseph Smith for guidance and then throw a whole bunch of enticing temptations at them to see how many of them will trip up. For extra fun, he programmed their bodies to have various appetites ("temptations"), hard-wired in to the system, that would be stimulated more or less on a constant basis and, if resisted, could become powerful enough to make them go batty.

Another weird twist in God's plan is that, despite their apparent falling out with each other in the "war in heaven," God and Satan are still on good enough terms that God outsourced the temptation and entrapment operations to Satan. Go figure on that one.

So Satan's plan versus God's plan? Both of them look like coercion to me.

It all makes sense in the House of Cards--er--temple.

And then you go and it makes even less sense, but other people seem to be getting some kind of something spiritual, so you figure it's your sinfulness that's keeping you from some aha moment.

Neither plan makes sense because the fundamental truth is that a perfectly powerful, complete in himself, all-knowing, all-seeing God does not NEED to create humans, a world, a plan, popes, priests, devils or anything at all.

If there were such an all-everything First Cause, we wouldn't be here at all, no plants/animals/rocks/suns/stars/nothing.

Because nothing is needed. There is no boredom.

I have researched this as an exercise in philosophical thinking, using my new-out-of-the-box critical thinking skills. Only one person, Stephen Davis, ventured an explanation which I thought merited some consideration:

What if God wanted the experience of being imperfect and created humans as his avatars, his characters, in the Human Game? He creates a template called "world" and gives the players different characteristics and obstacles....to experience vicariously what he cannot have-- imperfection.

More information on this novel point of view is contained in the book "Butterflies are Free to Fly" by Stephen Davis.

Anagrammy

...about 10%

Too bad we couldn't do a version comparison (like in Microsoft Word) with a Kolobian metalic plate computer

What you're saying is so true. If, as western religions teach, this entire existence is just a "soul filter" so either A) a god can see who will be good or bad (like santa claus) or B) so that god can show us that we are good or bad, then the whole thing is totally fu**ed from the get-go because the god in question already ruined everything by tainting the experiment.

If this life is a soul filter, then the goal would be to see how these souls acted when placed into a mortal world with the desires and mental capacities of higher primates. As if that weren't bad enough, this god gives us arbitrary rules that are contradictory to our biological nature. Then, in a fit of insanity, this god explains that if we disobey him there will be eternal punishment with no chance of rehabilitation, and if we obey him we will be given the honor of worshiping him for the rest of eternity.

So now, instead of allowing the experiment to run its course, the god has tainted the experiment by introducing rewards and punishments. Now you have bad souls obeying god either A) to avoid punishment, or B) to gain reward. And you have good souls disobeying god either A) through ignorance because this god has chosen not to provide empirical evidence of its existence, or B) because their moral values are too high to support such a tyranny.

So once this god interferes in his own soul filtering experiment he has contaminated the specimens and the results are invalid. But he doesn't care, because in the end all this god cares about is being worshipped. It doesn't bother this god that the majority of its creations will either be tortured or annihilated. It will probably just create more and more talking monkeys that will repeat sacred mantras until it gets bored and tries another experiment.

But back to your point: there is no greater coercion than the threat of eternal punishment. It's no different than a mafia boss offering "protection" to a local store clerk in return for "loyalty." What is the mafia boss really protecting the clerk from? Himself.

And that's what the western god is really offering protection from: himself. He says, "Obey me or I will have no choice but to torture you or destroy you. Why don't I have the choice? Because I chose not to have a choice. Those are the rules that I just made up, just now."

It sounds like the thinking of a bronze-age tribalist to me. But that's just my opinion.

Can I steal this? :)

You will receive it upon the 5 points of fellowship at the veil...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2011 03:19PM by kolobian.

Heck yes! I've frequently stated that if the version of God I keep hearing about is really what's waiting for me after death, then I can't think of much worse than spending eternity with that sadistic frat boy. Mormons take it one step further and have turned Heaven into North Korea, with a leader that makes arbitrary rules just to watch its subjects jump through hoops. I think I'll take eternity with the damned if it's all the same to y'all.

Oh, and that he didn't demand that the faithful buy their way into heaven.

Personally, I find Satan to be somewhat more worthy of admiration -- not much, but somewhat.

:)

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/job/1.html

Job 1:7-12, etc.

1:12 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

This was done, because Job was SO good. So the sheeple better not complain about how difficult they have it. If they are bad, satan will get them. If they are good, gawd will send satan to get them - as a test this time, not a punishment, of course! Then the GA's will remind everyone that jeezus had it worse than anyone, and in the preexistence we asked for, and agreed to, ALL the abuse we are now getting. It's like you signed a contract or worse. It is the perfect plan for people in power who exploit, and abuse others, because the sheeple have to take punishment from any source, and gawd's chosen are always right.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2011 01:32PM by atheist&happy:-).

...to remove all the options. If there are no bad things to choose, then you can only do the right thing. That's one of the things Mormonism and some other religions do. Censorship, cutting access to various products and services, etc.