The Great Experiment

Has anybody ever considered that God is running a great experiment with humanity simply because Satan made a hypothesis at the beginning of human creation.

That Hypothesis was "man can rule himself without God and do it successfully".
Now God already knew the answer, but every angel didn't, thus he was basically forced to run this grand experiment through time to test the hypothesis Satan issued. Every type of government has been tried, technology has developed, warfare could be stopped, world hunger is solvable without greed.
Much progress has been made, but in some area's we are regressing.

In 2023 who do think is correct now, God or Satan?

Bible prophesy indicts that the time for this experiment is almost over.

That is what the Bible teaches. God could have just zapped all the perpetrators of the rebellion into oblivion immediately if he wanted. Of course all that would have proven is his power. And just looking at his vast creation we know he has power. In fact nowhere in the Bible does Satan ever challenge God's power. In fact he has to request of God to test mankind (look at his conversation with God in Job 1) and he has to follow God's commands.

Even when persecuting Christians today Satan needs God's authority. Jesus told his followers:

"Simon, Simon, look! Satan has demanded to have all of you to sift you as wheat."-Luke 22:31.

That doesn't mean that Satan issues orders to God, but he basically said he could do to the apostles, and the rest of the followers of Christ that were to come, what he, by slander, claimed he could do to Job. There he told Jehovah that he could get every human to reject Jehovah God.

It is true that the majority of humankind has rejected Jehovah as the Sovereign. Much to the pleasure of Satan. But he has not successfully turned all humankind.

It is the good will of Jehovah that all sorts of people come to this accurate knowledge of truth about why the world is the way it is, who created us, why we suffer, and what our hope for the future is:

"This is fine and acceptable in the sight of our Savior, God, whose will is that all sorts of people should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth."-1 Timothy 2:3-4.

Everyone alive today was born as a descendant of Adam, a slave to sin and death, amid this universal war being waged between God and Satan. And the forces of good, with God's son Jesus Christ leading, and the forces of evil under Satan, his wicked angels whom rebelled alongside him, and the vast hordes of wicked human society.

Every human is a victim. And God is very well aware of all of our defects and flaws, our background, what molded us into what we are. Even as we strive to serve Jehovah it is a struggle, both against the wicked forces of this system of things, and the sinful tendencies of the fallen flesh. That is why the beloved apostle John was inspired to write about God's enduring love usward, toward us pitiful, decaying sinful people:

"God is greater than our hearts and knows all things."-1 John 3:20.

Well dinosaurs ruled the planet for 65 millions years -
I think mother nature is in control.

a reply to: RonnieJersey

Who do you think is Nature's God?

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: RonnieJersey

Who do you think is Nature's God?

You may be right about that, I was just making the point that they were talking about humans.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Experiment ?

The Earth is 4.5 Billion years old.

Homo Sapiens evolved less than half a million years ago.

So why would God leave such a huge gap in time from creating Earth and creating humanity ?

Maybe because God doesn't exist.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

I mean no disrespect to any particular faith or expression of religious observances; but it is clear that the context of your OP demands the acceptance of the 'personal' relationship between God and his angel Satan.

But how much of this can be a human (albeit inspired) attempt to make a conceptual image that the human mind can comprehend and communicate?

It is clear that these are two separate agencies who are engaged in conceptual disagreement about mankind as a species.

But perhaps it's not about a simple yes or no question, perhaps it is like an engineering problem. Or it might be not so much a disagreement, but differing perspectives of a process we can't fully understand.

There are anecdotal reinforcements all throughout the biblical accounts. But there are presumptions embedded in them that are hard to reconcile for me. Many questions that require me to 'assume' that God needs to prove anything to anyone, or that Satan cannot fathom that God, the creator, embraces his totality of being, and from that perspective he cannot exceed the 'whole' in which he exists.

I'm trying to stay within the context of your OP. I know some will "take the opportunity" to completely negate your OP by denying its relevance as a question. I will risk denying them the opportunity and accepting their ire. I value the question as an exercise to explore the spirit behind the question.

While I prefer not to delve into specific dogma, I do recognize that for some, this question is unaddressable, since they reject the premise entirely. I would suggest you expect those members not to enter the discussion, or at least show some respect for the OP's dignity and refrain from their usual pointless badinage.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Let me see if i get that right?
Satan says we can do it without God, and for God to prove Satan wrong he needs us to fail?

Doesn't that imply us failing is in God's interest, as every other outcome would undermine his omnipotence?

It also implies that you can basically take satan out of the equation for solving our failure. Appart from challenging God, he would actually have our best interest at heart, compared to God....

That's quite the conundrum you have there, don't you think?

a reply to: Terpene

Would he?

As someone suggested in another thread, all Satan did was give us knowledge like God had.

And look what we have done with it. In the short term, it seems he had our backs, but in the long run, look how awful we have been. Has he really done us a good turn? Have we really done good with our ability to know the difference between good an evil?

Or have we simply been our own worst enemy?

a reply to: ketsuko

Club God is one of the biggest if not the biggest social influencer since roughly 2000 years, yoz wouldn't assume that the pitty humans running that enterprise would feel self righteous enough to actually # us over just to prove a point... I agree very much human like... Being our worst enemy and such...

a reply to: Terpene

It was in Satan's interest for them to succeed, yet throughout history he was so determined to get those not serving him he ended up targeting everybody for maximum mayhem.
WW1 & WW2 would be a really good examples of this.

It's like if you had 1 person on a plane you wanted dead, instead of just taking them out, you blow the whole plane out of the sky, not caring about the hundreds of other people you would kill just to get the one.

This type of perspective can only foster a perpetually losing governance that will always fail the populace.

The American system from 1776 to 2023 is a really good example of an idea that started out pretty good, but has progressed to division and failure. If there was ever a chance of Satan hanging his hat on good human governance that was it, but it sabotaged itself into tribal conflict, him and his Demons love sadistic conflict and pain.

It's why the demons calling themselves "Legion" ran 2000 pigs of a cliff once they were evicted by Jesus from a possesed man.
Bunch of sicko's that get pleasure from death and mayhem.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Weird... there was no Satanism doing what you want to blame them for, but there sure as hell were many Christians, where were they? Oh well, marching along the beat. where were their spiritual leaders, right! playing the war drums...

It's really simple to blame it on a mythical figure, but if you look at the hard evidence against Satanism and against christianisme, like whose adherents have committed more atrocities in the name of their favorite, team God has a much longer black book...
I don't think we disagree much, i just would join a team so long all cards aren't on the table...

a reply to: Terpene

Satan needs to prove that we can do it without God, so it's in his interests that we actually get it right. However, in order to prove God wrong, whatever he builds cannot be of God. If it is, then God was at least a little bit right.

a reply to: Maxmars

Saying God and Satan don't exist is another thread topic, for the sake of not going so far off topic, at least we can consider even what the theoretical conflict would be between these two as spoken of in the bible.

It's like analyzing Shakespeare's work at the minimum, you don't have to be a believer.

a reply to: Terpene

I don't disagree Christianity took a complete nose dive once the apostles all died off, the clergy sponsored a lot of evils.
But then again Satan was allowed to infiltrate and sabotage the Church.
The core tenants of the faith are solid when followed, but they aren't followed too much.
The crusades are an example of the church sponsoring horrible warfare.

And Christendom blessed the troops on both sides of the world wars, Catholics killed Catholics and Protestants killed Protestants. And the Jews got genocide. So yes religion has done more to encourage death than stop it.

True Christians were in all types of camps around the world during WW2 for neutrality, anybody searching for truth needs to start looking at the groups that refused to fight in WW2....that is your starting point.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

The two world wars were political things, not religious ones. The people who fought in them were not fighting religiously. Although if you must go to war, then I don't think it's unfair to ask God to safeguard you. He can watch over soldiers on all sides without taking sides.

It's similar to asking Him to help me come through a competition without injury and to help me find my best self. He can do that for every competitor without taking sides. It would be unfair to ask Him to play favorites and pick a cause. That's not for Him to do. Our fights are our own, good, evil and otherwise. It's part of learning that we really don't know how to handle the knowledge of good and evil without His wisdom.

a reply to: Maxmars

"But how much of this can be a human (albeit inspired) attempt to make a conceptual image that the human mind can comprehend and communicate?"

Perhaps the labels seem silly to you. But religions are specifically written to men/women that believe they exist distinct from God. So the concepts of God and Satan, and stories thereof, were formulated to abide to the limitations of our ego-mind. Jesus walking into the desert (or Buddha under the Buddha tree) battled their own ego-mind which they both conceptualized as satan/mara. Merely labels identifying the same obstruction to achieving enlightenment.

The universe allows life to evolve. The tree of knowledge of Good and Evil allows knowledge to evolve. Perhaps labels identifying the same attribute.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Oh but I am not meaning to imply they don't exist. On the contrary, there existence seems necessary to me.

I refer to the way we have chosen to chronicle their contention, "as people would."

When it seems like the two must exist in a frame of reference so far outside what humans could grasp.

As I wrote that, I suspected it wasn't finding a good form in the wording. I should have held back, I think now.

Sorry if I accidentally drifted away from what you were going after.

a reply to: glend

I think you understood what I meant. And just for clarity's sake, I don't think the labels silly at all. I think they are an expression of how we need to communicate in order to address the transcendent nature of the topic.

a reply to: ketsuko

I agree but



The Catholics could have opposed Hitler way more than they did, if both the Catholics and Protestants didn't support Hitler he would never have made it into power.