Did god create satan?

[pinkpops]

This topic has been moved by the moderator of this forum.
It can be found at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=111&topic_id=8906

[jobycom]

1. Did Al Gore create Bush? Fascinating theological question...

I'd say no, they coexisted, but then I've given two beings eternal and therefore god-like status, and the Bible is adamant that there is only one god, though he's sort of three gods.

Albigensians and Zarathustrians accepted a good god/evil god dualism. Christians and Muslims went with the idea of one good god, but they run theological circles trying to understand the evil entity central to their faiths. Versions of both faiths claim that god created angels (actually a central tenet of Islam), and that satan is a fallen angel (angels have free choice, see, so God can't make them be good, just like man). Angels are immortal (usually), but not eternal, thus they are not gods. (Immortal means they were born/created but never die, eternal means they have neither a beginning nor an end. There is also the theolgical perspective which says that God created all existence as we know it, and therefore the whole question of eternity is only relative within our existential system, not within God's. That makes more sense to me.)

Anyway, there's a primer. I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in either one, but since I think the height of foolishness is to be certain of anything, I leave open the theoretical possibility that I'm wrong, in which case I believe there has to be a Satan created by God, because I don't see how an eternal Satan could be an integral part of God's creation. It's like a big glass ball-- all of existence is inside this ball God created, and it's his ball, so no one else is allowed inside. If Satan is outside the ball, like God, then God can protect us from him. So Satan has to be inside, and since everything inside is their because God put it there, then he had to put Satan there.

But again I leave open the possibility that maybe Satan is eternal, and God (or a judicial committee of God's peers) has imprisoned him inside the glass ball-- maybe he even created the glass ball as a prison for Satan, and put us inside as examples to Satan of how to be good. Only of course Satan corrupts us. Therefore the goodness God created us with to influence Satan is countered by the free will that Satan manages to corrupt-- a little in all of us, and completely in a few of us, namely Republicans.

Theology is fun!