Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
LOL...I would think it hard not to assume a God, any God is not Omnibenevolent...
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Well, certainly in polytheistic religions, gods tend not to be omnibenevolent. It's a catch-22 for relgions: if you're a monotheistic religion, you can't really explain why evil exists. If you're a polytheistic religion, you're can explain evil, but only because your God isn't all-knowing/powerful/benevolent. So you tend to get jealous of the monotheistic town on the other side of the hill.
Christianity tries to have it both ways: they took a small voice from the Telmud, and expanded it into this minor-god character. A good example would be from the story of David, where God pursuaded David to take a census of Israel (a sin). But because the new church didn't want to have stories of God doing evil or controversial things, they transferred the role from God to the newly-promoted Satan. From the original Christ stories, to later books like Revelations, to the satan mythology that Dante invented, Christianity moved fairly quickly away from its monotheistic roots and became a polytheistic religion. Even if only one god is worshipped, there's still a belief in two. Yet despite the promotion of this secondary god, Christians have always maintained the omnipotence of their own God.
Today, there isn't nearly as much belief in satan even amongst christians, largely because there is no real obligation on religion to be logically sound; it is allowed to exist in its own world for the most part, separate from science and logic. Though the pope recently confirmed the existance of hell (really nothing more than a glorified garbage dump outside Jerusalem's city walls in the Telmud), so at least the punishment side of satan is alive and well.