Hyndis

Which is it? :devil1:

aa5874

Did you get this information from a manual on myths? What do you mean by Satan cannot stop God? Mythical and legendary figures can do anything. You just simply write down whatever you want them to do.

Azathoth

To be fair, though, Old Testament god, and New Testament god are also very different.

Which is what you get when you throw a bunch of books about a pretty decent guy, together with a bunch of books about a huge dick, and then try to link them together by saying they're the same person.

Actually, they don't even have to be omnipotent, they just have to make it so you can't tell the difference.

That's what every aspiring young deity learns when starting up in the god racket.

Either the god in the bible won't stop Satan, or he can't stop Satan. Naturally, you'd like to think some variation of the first, but the other is equally valid.

Well, no. Unless god's way is to be an asshole.

Because, seemingly, Satan did a wonderful job of throwing a monkey into god's wrench in the very first pages of the book.

Unless the fall of man was actually planned, in which case, this particular god arranged for a couple of innocents to eat the abu ghraib apple and then punished the people he set up, by cursing them to pain, suffering and death. Of course you could say this was all part of god's plan, but if our two hapless victims were perfect, then he really just needed to keep his two pets away from the fruit in question.

As well, you have a supposedly omnipotent being that was apparently capable of creating two perfect creations, but incapable of using a simple Jedi mind trick to make them forget the apple in question (though to be fair, Microsoft has the same problem), enabling them to be perfect in his eyes again. This shows a casual observer, a god watcher if you will, that he's actually less powerful than the Highlander fans who have easily done this with part 2.

Or, if that isn't his thing, your omnipotent being could have created two other perfect beings, and placed a few anti-snake mines around the garden. He instead seems to have no choice but to curse billions to pain, suffering and death, with the stated goal of getting at least some of those individuals through a nasty winnowing process and back to the perfect state that he had supposedly created them in, to start with.

There is even the possibility here that Satan could be more powerful than god, moving events without god catching on, and causing him endless frustration. To the point where, no matter how well god seems to plan, things fall apart.

If you take a look at the collected books of the bible, there appears to be a theme of god announcing "This time I know it's going to work...oh...shit, back to the drawing board.".

So, considering the way that god is written, all of the Abrahamic religions could just be worshipping the early equivalent of the ninjas on the Real Ultimate Power website, except with somewhat more flipping out, and less exploding pirates.

Really, then, it's just an argument about who has the toughest ninjas.

That's what his defense is gambling on. Personally, I don't think diminished capacity is going to work this time, even if the twinkie was over six hundred pounds.

Johnny Skeptic

Ok, let's take your claims one at a time.

1 - Only one entity can truly be "omnipotent" at a time.

Even if that is true, it does not tell us WHO is omnipotent, and WHAT he is like.

2 - God is omnipotent; Satan is not.

Even if that is true, God might be evil, and Satan might be good. Paul says that is it no surprise that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. If it is actually God who is masquerading as an angel of light, he could easily have deceived Paul, or anyone else who he wanted to deceive. A God can obviously accomplish anything that he wants to accomplish.

3 - Whatever God wants to do, he can do and no one, including Satan, can stop Him.

But if God is evil, and sends everyone to hell, your statement would not be of any value to you or to any other human.

4 - God always gets His way.

Well sure, but that is the problem. No one can stop God from killing people and innocent animals. He even empowered a vicous Devil to help him terrorize mankind. I don't suppose you know why God hurts and kills people and innocent animals, do you?

DBT

Well it does tend to throw doubt on the reliability of our so called knowledge in regard to God.

• How did they gain their knowledge of God in the first place?
• How reliable is the process or means used?
• Why are there so many contradictions?
• If some of it is obviously wrong, how do we determine which information (if any) is correct?

Brother Daniel

Scenario 1: One monotheist says to another monotheist, "You and I believe in the same God. But we have some differences in what we believe about Him."

Scenario 2: One monotheist says to another monotheist, "You and I believe in different Gods."

What is the difference between the two scenarios? NONE. The information conveyed is exactly the same in each case.

It is purely arbitrary, a matter of taste, whether you consider any two monotheists to believe in the same God or not. Neither option is any more "right" or "wrong" than the other.

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Azathoth: :notworthy: