avevale_intelligencer | (no subject)

It occurred to me, watching "God vs Satan: The Final Battle" last night, that anyone who believes in a serious contest between God and Satan, like some of the idiots on the programme, cannot, by any logical definition, believe in an omnipotent and all-loving God. If they think they do, they're lying to themselves and their God.

Which is fine. To me it seems more romantic to believe in a God who's not omnipotent, who's just doing his best with something he doesn't have complete control over. I can relate to a God like that. It would be worth being on his side. And calling God "almighty" could be just flattery. "Oh Lord, you are so big...so absolutely huge..." as the prophet Python sang. You could, of course, believe in a God who's omnipotent and still lets all this happen on the pretext of allowing us free will and so on, but that wouldn't be a very benevolent God, would it?

It also occurred to me that those who disregard what happens in this world because they're so focussed on the climactic battle between good and evil are like people who go to films for the big CGI extravaganza at the end and think all the mushy character stuff in the middle is just filler. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it doesn't say much for their opinion of the writer who obviously thought the mushy character stuff was important.

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Exactly. I always wonder how these very ardent apocalyptical Christians never fail to make God look small, helpless and ovrestressed.

Well said!

BTW, I just watched "Still Crazy". The flame still burns, man, and thanks for the pointer and your story...

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

"Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent: pick any two out of three."

Have you by chance ever read G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday?

I've never bought the God cs. Satan concept either; as you say, it flatly contradicts the notion of God's omnipotence. It's a reasonably good answer to the question of "why is there evil", but it does boil down to "The Devil still cheats and wins most sets / and as for God, He's just doing His best."

Ohhhh yes, I love Chesterton and Thursday especially.

I kind of love that book a lot. And it struck me as relevant on the subject of preferring a cosmology where God is embattled and struggling and has His back to the wall.

Agreed.

For the sake of devil's advocacy (which seems to be required here) the book of Job is a good illustration of how God will always beat Satan. In Job, Satan is not portrayed as Evil Incarnate, but as an annoying little twerp.

Alternately, of course, the book of Job is a good illustration of how Satan will always beat God. I imagine him rather like Quentin Tarantino's cameo in Desperado (who tells a truly horrible joke and gets shot shortly thereafter). "Uh, yep, Mister God, you sure beat me on that one, here's your three hundred souls. But, uh, you see those other guys over there? I just bet them seven hundred souls, each, that I could take your most devout worshipper, kill his family, destroy his farm, wipe out his servants and smite him with boils withal, and not only would you not try to stop me, you'd actually order me to do it."

Still an annoying little twerp, of course.