(November 23, 2016 at 2:16 pm)Drich Wrote: Then i read what you said about john 8:44. What specifically in John 8:44 makes you think he was created as 'the devil?'
Jesus claims that "he was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
It does not sound like the description of someone who stepped into a role (ie, his "beginning" refers to the point when he became the devil). It sounds like the description of someone who personifies wickedness, whose very nature rejected 'truth' and who is the 'father of lies.' If God wanted to test a creation that he decreed was "good" then what better option than to create a being who personified evil in order to muck around and try to break it? The story of Job and the temptation of Jesus in the desert make more sense from this perspective, though it makes God seem either fallible or proud.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
