(July 22, 2015 at 1:56 pm)Tonus Wrote:(July 22, 2015 at 11:07 am)dyresand Wrote: I'll start it off
Satan isn't evil nor bad. In the bible he has done nothing really to show he is bad he showed
some what of a good side considering he didn't want jesus to die on a roman crucifixion. To start it off
with genesis god actually lied to adam and eve the serpent told the truth and god cursed humanity.
Note why would god curse humanity? if god told the truth they would have died were they stood but
the serpent told the truth while god simply lied.
If you view the Bible as a whole, then Satan is identified as a liar and murderer by Jesus in John 8:44. In Revelation 12:9 he is said to "lead the whole world astray." The NT links Satan to the serpent and specifically blames him for leading people away from god and towards their doom, which he will eventually share. He is the main bad guy in the Bible, since much of the wickedness in the OT can be laid at his feet in some manner or other.
If you view the Bible as a lot of different stories that were eventually mashed together to form an imperfect whole, then it is more ambiguous because the serpent may simply be a serpent and the Satan from the book of Job does not act without god's consent, and could be considered an agent of god or a counselor of sorts. When he urges god to stop protecting Job, god does so instead of telling Satan to shove off. At the end there is no indication that anything at all happens to Satan; his part in the whole drama is done and he goes his merry way. The NT authors sought to provide a more substantial villain for their narrative, and I guess the best they could come up with was a fallen angel who would get a shot at god after he almost completely "de-powered" himself but who was otherwise no longer a threat.
And yet the bible never identifies god as a liar and a murderer, despite the fact that he's wiped out thousands of people, including all the first born children of Egypt, and 185,000 sleeping Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19:35). He claimed to be merciful, but I cannot see this as anything more than a lie. Instead of freeing the Hebrews from the Egyptians himself (or preventing them from becoming enslaved in the first place), he makes a man do his work for him, knowing the whole time that Moses will fail to convince the Pharaoh of god's existence, and then, upon Ramses doing exactly what god knew he would do, god decides to wipe Egypt out. That's no definition of mercy that I'm familiar with. How is that better than the lying and murdering that Satan committed? Why did god even create Satan in the first place, given that he knew exactly how things would turn out? If he really hates evil, why not just eliminate the devil? Or does he like having someone else run hell for him while he's out killing people in their sleep and watching children suffer?
