Posted on 03/25/2009 1:21:11 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
Satan is losing the battle for people's minds. This is a clear trend, and it's been mounting for a long time. The basic reason is that evil has gotten a lot of competition. Are schizophrenics possessed by the Devil? Raise your hand if you say yes. A century ago, countless more people would have raised their hands than today, when we use "sick" in place of "evil" for many things, including psychosis. The more replacements we find for evil, the weaker Satan grows. After all, the Devil is the embodiment of absolute evil, the kind that admits no other explanation. His fortunes decline when valid explanations are at hand.
Besides psychosis, we attribute criminal behavior to a host of influences -- poverty, domestic abuse, peer pressure, social resentment -- that overshadow the simple word "evil." Centuries ago, the first word that would come to mind when a murder took place would be "sin," opening the door automatically to think about the great tempter and progenitor of sin, the serpent in the Garden. Today, if we fail to understand why sadistic violence occurs, we might fall back on a phrase like "pure evil," but even then we don't automatically insert Satan's name or make him the cause. We simply mean an evil that passes understanding -- for the time being. Understanding can grow, after all.
And it does grow. Leaving aside the dwindling number of fundamentalists who have made the Devil a core belief, fewer people see the hand of Satan at work around them. Abu Ghraib was a horrific example of human nature at its most depraved, but who did the media rush to for explanation? Psychologists, not preachers. If you take the most evil acts in the world, such as the Holocaust, you must run out of human explanations
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
....If Satan is so cosmic, why did he wait billions of years to appear on the scene, until the day when the Old Testament was written?
Deepak Chopra always reminds me it’s PBS pledge time.
I disagree with the premise that “not crediting Satan reduces his power”.
Power is determining an outcome without anyone knowing.
I’d say Satan is alive and well in today’s world.
Exactly wrong. The devil doesn't want you to believe he exists. The more modern replacements or explanations we have for pure evil the greater in strength Satan gets.
Deepak + washington post + newsweek = lunacy.
Barack Obama sold his soul to the devil for the Presidency. Obviously.
This needs a barf alert.
Typical liberal mindset. Abu Gharaib = evil. How many heads were cut off there?
I was forced to listen to a Deepak Chopra tape at work where he claimed, “The world is exactly as it should be.”
I burst out laughing.
Anybody with half a clue can look around and realize the world is not as it should be.
Comparing the Holocaust w/ Abu Ghraib is so stupid.
Deepok has it backwards... The Devil’s greatest feat was to convince people he doesn’t exist and to persuade people to call evil sick. The hustler works best when you don’t suspect him of being there. Working in secret is his weapon.
Deepok Chokra is a jack ass.
Yet another example of demented moral relativism. Abu Ghraib in the same paragraph as the Holocaust???!!
No mention of Saddam's human-shredders, or even of the Nick Berg beheading, which took place a day or so after "Abu Ghraib" stormed the world's headlines in 2004 but garnered barely 10% of the attention.
Conclusion: Chopra is a psychobabbling idiot.
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Alive? Satan owns this world. I figured that out the first time I read the scripture about the third temptation. How could Satan offer to give the world to Jesus unless he owned it.
This world is nothing but a battleground between good and evil.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about Abu Gharaib too.
I never cared about it.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about Abu Gharaib too.
I never cared about it.
So according the Chopra, there is no absolute evil (unless it is Abu Ghraib—funny how it gets listed with the Holocaust) and the Devil is just our negative feelings.
Well, as one of those knuckle-draggers who believes there is a Satan, all I can say is that Satan must be happy that he is being denied. It is easier for him to ply his trade when people say he does not exist, is it not?
The devil of the gaps.
That wasn’t satanic.
We’re all gonna have rainbows and gum drops and unicorns and..
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn’t exist.”
—Kaiser Soze (The Usual Suspects)
I buy the above premise. The more we think the Devil is more notion than genuine entity, the more effective he becomes.
plus the countless “oldies” concerts that run all week
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