re our domain name, lucifer.com, Josh Aaron Bradley <jab13@cornell.edu>
writes:
> I realize that it's supposed to be figurative and symbolic and
> all and that it represents a challenge to traditional Xian thought,
> but why fight back with "their" terminology?
I would contend that it is OUR terminology. If you go and read about
lucifer, you discover that he is what we want to be. A challenger of blind
obedience, an angel who would not submit. What better symbol to personify
that which we stand for?
Sodom says that lucifer "is not referenced in the Bible at all", but I
disagree. He is not referenced in the NIV, but he *IS* referenced in the
KJV. Isaiah chapter 14, verse 12-16. The translators of the NIV staff
have been cursed and cursed again by the fundamentalists for their
translation of "the light bringer" as "Morning Star" rather than
"lucifer". Because, you see, *Jesus* is referred to as the "Morning Star"
in Revelations, and so the verses where The Lord condemns The Bringer of
Light now apply, properly, to the man who said "I am the light of the
world" (John 8:12). I would give much to know how the translators of the
NIV got away with such an outright slap in the face to all Christians.
Could it have been on purpose?!?
As a aside, you should check out the Apocrypha, especially the Book of Adam
and Eve, which gives much more insight into lucifer, and his motivations.
It's not what I expected to find, and it doesn't really mesh with the rest
of what I know of lucifer, but hey...
You should be able to find it here:
http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon.htm
> and why name your domain such that every time you tell it to
> someone you have to explain that we're not really satanists
Check your premises. Are we satanists? Why should we not be? I have
certainly found nothing in the posts on satanism yet to disagree with. It's
only the Christians who think that being a satanist is a bad thing.
> what do a bunch of atheists/agnostics want with the name
> lucifer anyway?
We want to show the world that we are willing to stand our ground, to draw
the line and say: there are things that even a god cannot make one do.
The story of lucifer makes it clear that the power of man is "that
everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to
choose one’s own way." -- Man’s Search for Meaning: an introduction to
logotherapy by Viktor E. Frankl (pg. 65)
"God" may have been able to cast lucifer out of heaven for his "sins", but
God was *not* able to take away lucifer's last freedom -- the freedom to
say "better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven!"
(and for those who haven't read it, I highly recommend Frankl's book, as
well as Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which I am just reading now)
> we should give people a chance to see what we're about
> rather than scaring them away before giving us a chance.
If we are *not* about The Bringer of Light, then what *are* we about? If
we are unwilling to challenge the dominant paradigm, then what is our
purpose? I, for one, think that those who are scared away by the domain
name would not have been valuable members anyway.
ERiC