Pleaseresearch ยป To say this whole creation thing has been or will be a success at the
end is absurd. Not only did one third of the angels jump ship to Satans
side. But Adam and Eve screwed up so quickly. Even before Adam and
Eve sinned. Satan had turned on God. So it's really not gone well for
him so far.
Christianity and atheism can't be settled by mere sophistry of this kind. You have no idea of what lay behind the war in heaven, as it's called. You also have little understanding of the fall of man and if Adam and Eve "screwed up" as you say. How do you know they screwed up? Given that God is all powerful and all knowing, it's difficult to believe that He would put Adam and Eve in a garden under the restrictions He gave them and not know in advance that they would fall.
How do you know He did not intend for man to fall?
Did God fully intend for man to remain in an ignorant state forever? Because of your religious background that's all you've been taught. But if the Redemption, or Atonement, of mankind enabled Adam and Eve and their descendants to become like God -- that is to have an immortal glorified body of flesh and bone and to be "like God" (see 1 John 3;2) -- then only by falling, becoming mortal and being redeemed could they complete the process. Thus, Satan's plan fails and God's plan succeeds.
This has been debated since St. Augustine and in far more detail. As Father Kallistos Ware notes in The Orthodox Way, "The source of evil lies thus in the free will of spiritual beings endowed with moral choice, who use that power of choice incorrectly." God could not make the choice of man's fall for him. He had to put him in a position where it was man's choice. Not evil, for the scripture states: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever...[God] placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
How could man be evil if he had not that knowledge? And also, why would God keep man away from the tree of life, which would have given him immortality? The only logical conclusion is that man would have been trapped in an imperfect, immortal body for eternity with no possibility of growth.
"The effects of man's fall were both physical and moral," Ware notes. ...For death is not the end of life, but the beginning of its renewal." I believe he summed it up well when he wrote: "The Incarnation, then, is not simply a way of undoing the effects of [the fall], but it is an essential stage upon man's journey from the divine image to the divine likeness." In other words, we were created in the image of man, but we required the fall and the atonement to acquire God's likeness. It was God's plan all along, and Satan and his angels opposed it.
If one reads and understands the scriptures, God is always one step ahead of Satan and has provided man with limitless potential. Scoff at the creation if you will, but you've missed the heart of what's in the scriptures.
