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From: pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Gnosticism: Is Satan an intermediary to the ultimate God or not?
Message-ID: <353@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 16:58:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.353
Posted: Fri Sep 20 16:58:15 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 06:06:43 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway, N.J.
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	Steve Swope responded to my article on gnosticism by claiming that
what I was saying implied simply that God and Satan were not the same.
What you forgot, Steve, is that I also said that gnosticism is rife with
the same assumption that other God whorshiping religions make. That
assumption is that the ultimate God must be good. I don't believe that for
a minute. If God exists as you picture Him and Satan exists as some
stumbling block between us and the ``good'' God, then why has a ``good''
God left such a stumbling block between Him and us? Any explanation you
come up with has got to be incredibly distorted for the purpose of maintaining
the belief in a benevolent God. Why not simply accept the fact that if the
evidence is there in favor of some evil deity (and you would seem to admit
that), then either he is the ultimate God himself (which is what I believe),
or at best, his ``boss'' is no better than he is. It is not an issue of
naming, it is an issue of misnaming, and attributing separate names to God
for when He visibly engages in evil (a ``nomme de mal'') and for when He
claims to be the almighty good. Certainly God has taken no steps to eradicate
Satan (wouldn't that be suicide of a sort?). In fact, He has propped him
(Himself) up as the ruler of the domain of earthly souls.

Be well,
-- 
Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories
pyuxn!pez


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