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Originally Posted by aurigus
Are you saying that you control God and what kind of control he has on your life?
But God supposedly is omniscient and all-seeing, all controlling. God created everything and has a "purpose" for everything. Why would "God" create satan?
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All powerful, not all controlling. There is a difference. He has all the power, but also all the knowledge to know when it is most useful to the universe as a whole as to when to use it.
God does not have a purpose for everything. He knows the possibilities and probabilities of all things, as he is all knowing. Therefore he can look at all the information and put out a best guess. Is he always right? No, be he's got a better track record than Zeus, Odin, or any of the other gods (which incidentally, I do believe other gods exist, I just choose not to worship them).
Why would God create Satan? For the same reason he created people. Did he create things to be perfect? He did not make Satan because he had the capacity for evil, but because he had the small chance of being good. And that was a chance he was willing to take. It might not have been the best gamble, but he took it. Now, throught a slow process, he is having to reclaim us one by one because of this gamble. And yet I still love him as I know he loves me. And he does so because if I wanted to go sacrifice infants, he'd have the attitude of, "What you do dissappoints me, but I will wait until you can better understand." I have the choice and the power because he created in me free will, and will not undermine that.
God is not the church. I don't know why people think this, but most of the attributes that the church gives God are those
they have given him, not the ones he has. It's like waging war in the name of God. You would think, as a human, that if someone waged war in your name, you would do anything in your power to stop that person (unless you
had given your blessing). However, if God stops you, he stops your free will, and that is the one thing he will not do. If he does so, he offends the argument that he has made against Satan: that man does not need someone to choose his life for him. God asks any who believe in him to explain that you have to
choose him to be with him in his heaven. It is your choice, not his. It is your choice to ask him for help, likewise, because if you don't ask for help, he won't give it. This is because if he tries to meddle in your life by giving you unwanted "advice" this shows him trying to control you.
Satan wants to control you, not God. He also wants to show that the ends justify the means, and that "ethical" is a mere point of view instead of the yard-stick we measure our fellow man with. If something has 2 or more of these traits, consider the source. After all, one of the few truths that can be found in the bible is that even evil men can speak truth. The devil is similar in operation to the title character of Hook: he won't lie when he can tell the truth, because the truth is far to much fun. He will use twisted logic, circular thinking, and close-mindedness as tools to convince you that your way is the only way.
These are my current beliefs (though not all of them, it is a good chunk. I left out the whole soul thing for lack of an entire space devoted to a 20 page paper on my belief system. Hell, I'll be lucky if this doesn't bore most of you to tears.) as they exist right now, and I have been given, by God himself, the right to change them if I see fit. I do not think they are "right" inasmuch as I do not think they are perfect, but currently they work for me. That, my friends, is freedom of choice, my God given right.