rhutchin

The presuppositions one brings to the discussion are important to know. You assume the story to be fiction and I assume the story to be truth, so we go in different directions from that point.

rhutchin

To clarify, I agreed with the statement, “The Christian god has done, is doing and will do as [He] pleases.� I also agree that human concepts of morality don't apply to God given that human concepts of morality derive from the selfish desires of people.

I disagree that God tortures people, kills babies and encourages soldiers to rape virgin girls, so this is not part of His nature.

rhutchin

That's an interesting observation because God punishes people who are deceived by Satan and could be described as innocent if they did not willfully participate in the evil that Satan tempted them to do and they did not enjoy that evil. It kinda makes people pawns in the hands of God and Satan.

Mageth

Right. You go to great (ad hoc) lengths to shoehorn the story (and several different characters found throughout the Bible) into your beliefs:

'This need not imply that the serpent was the mastermind but only that the serpent was a very suitable animal for Satan (the true mastermind) to use.'

'The decision to use the serpent would seem to be made on a variety of factors in addition to the ease of doing so. It could have been based on the serpent being “more subtil than any beast of the field.� '

"Satan", as you know and love him, is a product of a long evolution. The "serpent" in Genesis is not the "Satan" of your beliefs. The "Satan" in Job is not the "Satan" of your beliefs. The "Satan" you believe in (the Christian Satan) came to be much later. That belief has been projected onto various characters from the much older writings.

What results from that is the necessity to create ad hoc explanations as to why we should consider the various characters the same as the "Satan" of your beliefs. Such as 'perhaps Satan was a ventriloquist' and 'perhaps Satan used the serpent because the serpent was “more subtil than any beast of the field.� ' Gotta put a lot of axle grease on that shoehorn.

rhutchin

In Jude we read,
5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

There are three events identified. If we take the events to be in chronological order, then the angels were "reserved in everlasting chains" after the destruction of Sodom and before the time that Israel left Egypt.

That would allow Satan and the angels to roam the earth and be the cause of the wickedness of the people that led to the flood and to that wickedness that led to the destruction of Sodom. After Sodom, the influence of the angels would have been diminished, so we should have seem less wickedness on the scale of Sodom. There are some who think that Satan was still free until Christ died on the cross at which point he was bound. The impact on the world is that we are told of relatively few people being saved in the OT and great numbers of people being saved in the NT.

David Vestal

Sorry, the bible depicts the serpent as acting alone. Your explanation doesn't wash.

However, even if Satan was pulling the strings, you've no idea why he'd have decided whether to use a serpent, or even why he'd use an animal to begin with (since the bible says Satan could have just as easily appeared as an angel of light, which would certainly have been a better guise). You also have the problem that the word "subtil" makes no sense unless it describes an animal acting autonomously. You also have the problem that the bible does not say what you're suggesting happened. Your position is riddled with flaws.

Jack the Bodiless

Does the direct contradiction between these two consecutive paragraphs not bother you a little?

Who are YOU to override the Bible and arbitrarily decide that such acts are "not a part of God's nature", when human concepts of morality don't apply to God?

Of course, there's also another contradiction here, because Genesis 3:22 declares that we DO have the ability to distinguish between good and evil.

Iznomneak

No satan observable today has the power to reason and talk in a human language either.

post tenebras lux

But why does god allow the 'god of this world' to do this? I've asked this of you before, but I don't think you've given an answer (maybe there was a 'I dunno' somewhere).

How do you respond to the idea that god and satan may be the same entity? People with split personalities can argue against themselves, and your god was able to send his 'son' personality down to earth to be crucified, so why couldn't he send his 'trickster' personality down to be bound in chains?

Given that you admit to not knowing why your god decides certain actions (such as who is on the list of the elect), do you agree that it is at least possible that the true personality of your god is that of 'The Trickster'? That it was satan who created the universe and this world?

Do you think that your apologetics satisfy these conditions from 2 Cor?

Here they are again, for ease of reference:Whether or not you consider yourself 'crafty' (is that a bad thing?), do you at least agree that you are not yet 'commending [yourself] to every man's conscience in the sight of [g]od' with your apologetics?

Wayne Delia

So you don't believe in the Great Flood of Genesis, or the accounts of the battles against Midian in Numbers 31? (Killing off all but eight people among the entire world population by asphyxiation via drowning is not a particularly pleasant form of death, and leaving virgin girls for soldiers to do with as they please, presuming no rape, would be incredibly naive on God's part.) Those references claim that God either did it or ordered it, and you feel free to ignore those verses simply because they don't fit in what you think is "God's nature?" The only way we can determine anything about God's nature is to read what the Bible says about it. Since the Bible includes those unpleasant details about God's behavior, those can be incorporated into "God's nature." If you prefer to ignore those details, you have no standing to make any claim about what God's nature is at all, unless you concede that God's nature is simply what you prefer it to be.

WMD