angellous_evangellous said:
You are referring here to the Genesis story, where Satan tempted humans to disobey God and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. .
This brings up a point I was wanting to discuss with some of my learned brethren. Exactly where in the Bible does it say that the serpent was Satan? I recently began reading the Bible again, my plan is to read it from beginning to end. I haven't really read the Bible that closely for a few years, so when I was reading it this time around, I was a bit surprised at some of the things I read, or more importantly, some of the things I did not read.
Bible starts off with the story of creation, six literal days, then on the 7th day, God was tired and took a break. Create Adam who named all living things. Adam is lonely, so God makes him fall asleep, takes his rib, creates a woman from him.
Everything is hunky doorey until the serpent comes along and tempts Eve with the apple. Except there is no mention of an apple, per se. Nor could I find any reference in Genesis which says that the serpent was possessed by the Devil, or was the Devil in serpent form, or anything of the like.
Is it that preists, and preachers over the centuries have just assumed the snake was possessed by the Devil, or was the Devil in serpent form?
There are many other questions raised by my recent reading of Genesis, but this one seems most pertinent at the moment.
And to answer the question posed to start this thread, it seems to me, that if God's purpose is for humans to be happy, then He is falling well short, as there seems to be a deluge of misery in this world. If God's purpose is that we should suffer and die miserably here so that more souls make it into the afterlife, then He is doing a bang-up job.
As far as Satan. I don't really hear about him too much anymore. I think he was used to scare ignorant peasants into going to Church and forking over 10% of their earnings to the Church. But if Satan's plan is to bring misery to the world, he is going over like gangbusters.
Tho, back to my current reading of Genesis, I thus far have yet to see any mention of Satan, that I can recall. And if he was mentioned but I missed it, I can't see anywhere that he, Satan, has specifically murdered anyone, tho I have noticed that thus far God has killed a couple of people specifically, one for refusing to impregnate a woman who was not his wife. There are also mentions of the total destruction of Soddham, and Gommorrah, and also the complete destruction of the entire world, except for those aboard the Ark.
I can't really understand, thus far, in how those reading or writing the Bible come to the conclusion that God is so great and Satan even exists. Again, if there is a mention of Satan in Genesis that I missed, I would appreciate someone pointing it out to me.
B.