I'm not a christian, but I grew up in a Baptist household, so I have at least a passing understanding of the Bible. Lemme know if I got any wrong.
If I'm understanding the bible correctly;
God Created heaven and Earth, Including Mankind and Angels
God is all-knowing and all-powerful
Relevant to this discussion, God created Lucifer and all the angels who sided with him.
God made Man in His image, and ordered the angels to serve them.
Lucifer, prideful of his own beauty, and envious of God's (at least perceived) favoritism of Man, and of God's position, started a rebellion in heaven and was/will be cast down into the lake of fire(aka Hell).
lucifer later tempted/took the form of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden and tempted Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.
my conclusion: God, with full knowledge of what lucifer would do/become created him and set him on the path that led to his downfall, and to the Sin of Mankind.
Or to put it more simply; God created Sin through his foreknowledge of what Lucifer would become.
I'm not trying to start a shitstorm here, but this is the logical conclusion that I find myself at.
Any Christian pedes wanna poke holes in this for me?
Well if you like very stimulating intellectual arguments you will definitely enjoy listing the Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis who is unquestionably one of the foremost "thinkers" of the 20th century.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis, as he states, is not trying to turn his reader into a Christian, he is "Merely" explaining Christianity as he understands it.
Listening to his rational, logical argument on the points of the work, the way he used logic and language so effectively is like watching a top gymnast perform on the balanced beam, or listening to a great singer and saying to oneself, "Man I wish I had that talent." The works is in essence a intellectual. logical, rational explanation of why Lewis believes there is a God, and why Jesus is what the bible says he is.
Try listening to the full audio book, and see if you agree with me that it is a great pleasure to hear such a great thinker embodied with ingenious language skills explain a complex topic with such pure logic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj_qM3gWNtk
I'll definitely take a listen.
...man, one of these days, I gotta finish the Space Trilogy... people rave about tolkien and how he needed to make his books so dense to describe his fictional world, but the reality is Lewis did basically the same thing in science fiction in a much less verbose way...
Seriously, read them. The space trilogy is every bit as grand (arguably more so, since he didn't have the entirety of european mythology to mine for his work), and you don't need a week straight of reading to get through the books.
Only reason I never finished lewis' work, was because I only had the first two, but I might go back and hunt them down now.
I will have to look into those books.
BTW, the link above is to the entire audio book Mere Christianity.
sounds like great listening material when I'm working on something.
been a few weeks since my lawn has had some love, lol.
it's very..."healthy"
Same here fren. While I type this my spousal unit is imploring me to get off the damn computer and go mow the grass.
Thank the lord for the invention of the 54'' Zero Turn Cub Cadet!