Atheist Memes

You're only listing two of the three temptations. One of which was to eat rocks while hallucinating in the desert, and the other was to jump off a cliff to avoid dying later. The third:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Sound familiar? Bow down to capitalism, money will give you the world. Bow down to fascism, be a part of the in-group that will own and control the world. Bow down to ego-centrism, let the whole world revolve around you.

Offering to give you "all the kingdoms of the world" doesn't sound like he's liberating anybody. It sounds like he's offering to subjugate the world for you.

Priests don't tell you to interpret these things as narcissism and greed. They tell you it was about "tempting the Lord," whatever the fuck that means. Because that's how Jesus responded, and they take everything literally, at face value. They don't connect the dots to "Mammon" and the "Merchants of Babylon."

Convenient, because they're telling the poor to meekly accept their hunger and hopelessness and powerlessness.

Televangelists pushing the prosperity gospel might be telling people that, but there's no way to read the gospel and walk away with an honest interpretation that that's what it was about.

Jesus was anti-revolutionary.

That's a wild take, seeing as he was originally a disciple of John the Baptist, an Essene. The Essenes were a revolutionary faction who believed the Messiah would lead them to a military victory over the Roman Empire.

Satan was the rebel who defied the heavens.

Are you using Paradise Lost as your source of information? Because that was never considered doctrinal, by any denomination. It was purely a dramatization, and most of it made use of artistic license.

The doctrinal view of why Satan was cast down from heaven:

How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
“I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
to the depths of the pit.
–Isaiah 14:12–15

He was overambitious. He was trying to build a throne for himself above the throne of heaven. He wanted to be God.

You might wonder "Why can't he be?" Well, how would you feel if someone today demanded to be worshipped as God? You'd probably say he's the trump of the world. A power-hungry narcissist, and too dangerous to be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. And you'd be right. That figure isn't a liberator. He's a subjugator.

And if you're still asking yourself "Why does God get to be the ruler of all? I don't want to be ruled by anybody!" Then you're anthropomorphizing the Monad because you're still subject to the delusion beneath the Abyss. The malevolent ruler you see when you imagine "God" is really the Demiurge: the reflection in the Abyss which stares back at you. You don't see through the Abyss; you don't see the Monad beyond. You only see a subconscious projection of your own perception, complete with all your fears and discontents. What you see is "The Deceiver."

In effect, you're attempting to anthropomorphize the all-encompassing essence of the universe. That ineffable, pre-eternal, infinite unity I discussed previously. The thing that is you, and everyone else. Brahman is Atman, Atman is Brahman. Christ is to the Monad what Atman is to Brahman. When you strip away the layers of human language and cultural interpretation, they're fundamentally the same thing.

According to thermodynamics, everything that exists today (or ever will) must have existed prior to the Big Bang (the "exhalation of Brahman"). All that mysterious nothing-stuff which somehow composes everything in the Universe? That's what you are!

So on the one hand, as a living being, you have a birth right to the inherent divinity within you (as does anyone else!). On the other hand, anyone who wants to be enthroned as the sole divinity, is attempting to rob everyone else of their inherent divinity.

This is what Satan attempted to do by trying to supplant "God" (the Monad) as the ruler of the universe. And being cast out of heaven, he now dwells below the Abyss, where as The Deceiver he tricks you into believing that his evil aspect is actually God (the Demiurge), and that his friendly aspect is trying to liberate you from the traps that he sets for you as his evil aspect. Classic abuser behavior.