Atheists, suppose....just suppose?

Question

Given the following scenario, and using logic, please see if you can come up with a better solution to God's problem.

Suppose God exists...okay, just suppose. Okay... He creates intelligent life, free to "think and make choices without barriers of thought". He creates millions of intelligent angelic beings and humans. One of these angelic beings begins to question God's authority and starts casting doubts about God's sovereignty. This rebel angel (Satan), creates a following of millions of angelic beings who agree that intelligent life would be better off to live without following God's rules of conduct.

So as you can see, there is much confusion in the universe about God's authority to rule.

Satan also helps humans question and disobey God as well.

The universe is now divided in two sides. God's side and Satan's side.

You are God...What do you do?

Let me just add that if you destroy Satan and his followers, you would have never known if Satan was correct or not.

Hot_air, thanks for that info. You must be a Jehovah's Witness? I am not, but I like how they teach the bible.

Answer 1

obviously you let your creation suffer for indeterminate amounts of time, never once offering conclusive proof of your existence to that very creation.

Answer 2

Obviously a more direct approach would work better than using an old book that has been mistranslated by scribes for thousands of years before being finally put to a printing press. There are more than 50 versions of the bible, many chapters/gospels cut out entirely, and the entire thing is completely and utterly nonsensical - it contradicts itself, history, and so on.

If I was god, I'd think it's time for a public appearance to clear all the confusion up. I'd get off my lazy *** and actually make a real book that lays everything out clearly. I'd appear before the world, state my existence, and make a version of the book materialize (in every appropriate language) to the humans.


Satan's disobedience is by no possible means equivocal to humanity's. Satan knows for certain that I, as a god, would exist and would be willfully disobedient. Humanity has no such knowledge - in fact everything suggests that there is no god! If humans strayed from me, it would be my fault for not making my existence clear! Sending people to hell is never something I would consider, and doing so for eternity is out of the question. I would not condemn atheists like Einstein or Abraham Lincoln to hell as the Abrahamic god would, nor would I condemn Ghandi for being a Hindu...

The obvious solution is to prove my existence and lay out all the information (making sure it's consistent, I would go ahead and state the Genesis is metaphorical and never happened, evolution is real and should be respected, etc.) and then let people make their choice.

Answer 3

There is no using logic on this. That is almost like using logic to figure out who would win a fight between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

You automatically prohibit a course of action that would make some sort of sense. Destroy what you created that is not working. If I were god then why would I care if I knew if some beligerant angel was correct or not.

You are trying to rig the outcome in your favor. If the reader of this were god, then the reader would have all possible options.

Answer 4

Given your scenario, the first issue is what does god purportedly do with those that don't agree with him? Right, he makes them suffer unbearable torment for . . . get this . . . an eternity. Ooookay. That makes god bad and evil, by any common sense definition.

Secondly, even us mere humans are intelligent enough to know that discourse and disagreement further knowledge. Disagreement is a good thing unless you are an egomaniac that can't handle disagreement. Your question even suggests the possibility that "Satan" may be correct.

So, according to your question, god has a problem in logistics. This is also absurd since he is supposed to be, by definition, perfect. But I will play along and answer:

The solution to god's problem is to recognize there never was a problem in the first place. "Good" and "bad" are human concepts tailored to how we feel about things. Pain, for example, is bad, nobody likes it (leaving masochists out of it for the sake of argument). Ice cream is good, everybody likes it. And so on. In this sense, the arbitrary value judgments for good and bad correlate to survival. If one is immortal (another absurdity), as your angelic hosts are supposed to be, what really IS good or bad? I don't think there would be any such thing.

Answer 5

So you see, if I am God, and God is all-powerful (omnipotent) and all-knowing (omniscient), then I cannot have created an imperfect being, and thus there could be no being called Satan. However - every major religion posits the existence of a Satan. So, not being omnipotent and omniscient after all, I cannot be God - and in fact, there can be no God at all...or a Satan.

Answer 6

There's no logic to the question, therefore no logical answer for it.

To say that such a scenario would result in only 2 sides (for God or for Satan) is ridiculous--what about those who chose neither?

Why would humans need Satan to question God's will if humans already possess the necessary free will to question on their own?

A pro-Christian bias and too many "what ifs?" render the question impervious to "logic"

Answer 7

Using "God," "logic," and "Satan" in the same sentence (or paragraph, for that matter) is a stretch at best. Technically I suppose it's an oxymoron.

If you assume all things occur according to your god's "plan", he already knows all this stuff, therefore all will transpire according to his wishes. If there is a "divine plan," there is no true "free will," merely the illusion of creative or free thought. It follows then there can be no real place called hell, because to punish all the creatures following the "plan" is disingenuous. So either there are no gods or they're just f***ing with us.

Answer 8

"You are God...What do you do?

Let me just add that if you destroy Satan and his followers, you would have never known if Satan was correct or not".

So your concept of God does not include omniscience?

I don't see what this stuff has to do with atheism, anyway. I thought at first that you were addressing the notion that an omniscient, omnipotent God is incompatible with the existence of evil, but if your notion of God is not omniscient, that can't be it.

Answer 9

I would be an all-knowing God. Therefore, I would know if Satan was right or wrong.

I would create intelligent life. By that, I mean not a race of idiots that listen to talking snakes.

Answer 10

I would have never known? I'm God. I'm omniscient, which means I also know that Satan will sin. Further, given the preexisting rebellion of Lucifer, why did I go ahead and create Man? Just to see if ALL my creatures rebel? Also, if I exist outside of Space and Time, why I am I "waiting" for it to be resolved?

Answer 11

I wouldn't destroy Satan and his followers, far from it.

See, since I would have known before I created a thing its entire fate, I simply would not have created any being with free will that would use that free will to reject me.

Because I would know the full consequences of my creation, I would not create that which would force me to do evil.