Do you believe the Devil exists?

[Millergirl4]

bellwitch74 said:

beck said:

[glow=blue,2,300]Without question, he exists.[/glow]

Ditto.
God created him, he was the most beautiful of God's angels. He exists. His greatest trick, however, is making people believe he doesn't exist.

I love that!

and I agree with you Shag. One cannot exist without the other.

[SwampFire]

Here's another take:

God is omniscient. God created Satan for his own purposes as he created all things for his own purposes. Satan acts as God meant for him to act because God is omniscient and cannot create something that is unknown to him.

WE don't understand God's motivations for creating Satan.

[beck]

Or we could look at it yet another way: that God created a being who exercised a will that none of God's team had exercised before. After all, angels possess incredible powers -- while humans sometimes witness what an angel chooses to project, in reality, these are incredibly powerful beings that are fearsome, almost unfathomable in the scope of their appearance alone. Like God, they are so far beyond the grasp of man's imagination that the only sightings man has witnessed are those that have been altered, lest the power of their prescence kill those they appear to, lest even the sound of their actual voice destroy not only a human, but an entire city with a mere sound.

Now .. let's throw in another possible factor/talking point: Is God perfect, or capable of mistake? Honestly, it could be debated, even from the Old Testament (and the Qu'ran, and the Torah as well). Could it be that over time *man* deemed God "perfect" simply through his adoring words, words of reverence?

After all, when we say a child is a "perfect angel," it's never completely true, yet we may say that out of love, or to encourage, or even out of unconscious vanity, bragging of our offspring's value or accomplishments.

If this is so, is God any less loveable or worthy of worship if He is even a shade less than perfect, or ever made a mistake? Is He no less powerful nor omnipotent simply because of a past mistake?

Last but not least, if He did make an error in early history, isn't it just as possible He learned over time, got past the mistakes, and is fully reliable now?

Even as powerful as angels are, even they do not possess some of the qualities that man has. That in itself is interesting. Equally worthy of note is, no matter how you slice it, God still retains the strongest on His side, and no less than twice that of those who chose to follow satan's path. And there has never been a mention that this proportion has ever changed; rather, it is written that even in the end, when this world passes, that number [good entities/bad entities] will be the same?

[Millergirl4]

beck said:

Now .. let's throw in another possible factor/talking point: Is God perfect, or capable of mistake? Honestly, it could be debated, even from the Old Testament (and the Qu'ran, and the Torah as well). Could it be that over time *man* deemed God "perfect" simply through his adoring words, words of reverence?

Very interesting theory. I've questioned the 'God is Perfect' theory for a long time. Maybe Man has deemed him to be over time like you suggested was possible.