Who listens more to prayer, Satan or God?

Originally posted by Seko Originally posted by morticia Neither exists. God and Satan are religious perceptions of "good" and "evil". So you say! For believers, everything comes from God. Humans can appreciate the good from God and become aware of the bad from within.

Or percieve evil in God and good within. That's pretty more common.

Anyhow, from a theological or philosophical approach. Within is as godly as God... so where is the diference?

In the traditional religious monotheistic view, Satan stands for evil as God stands for good. I couldn't disagree more. First, (I am speeking as a believer), God created everything, be it good or bad. That includes Satan or �blis. Now, you could view this in many ways but I opt to be as more rational as possible. Satan stands for all that a human being can do wrong, but the human being has always the power to revert the situation. One can always consciously chose his/her way. That's the whole point. If not, there wouldn't be any point in a Judgement after life. All God's scriptures are also a product of their time (including the Qur'an to me). This may sound haeretical and some muslims could call me a kafir, but I think we must consider both the time and the culture where the Scripture was revealed - I'm not denying the Scripture. I believe in the Qur'an! Many stuff is alegorical and many stuff can be re-interpreted and re-translated.

Originally posted by Seko Though everything comes from God, people tend to take credit for themselves for the good and blame anyone or anything they can for the bad.

Or vice versa

While I don't value greed and vanity, I don't appreciate self-mortification either.

Good and bad, both, either come from God or from us. Personally I think that the diference between good and bad is overemphasized (manicheism) and that those two concepts are basically individually or socialy subjective.

Individually, what harms me is bad and what benefits me is good. There's no absolute divide between both as what is benefic in a one case can be mortal in another. There's no poison, only dose.

Socially what harms the society as a whole is bad and what benefits it is good. Sometimes the social good is opposite to the individual one and vice versa. In many cases though both are convergent, at least if society and individuals have a good symbiosis.

In any case there's a big deal of subjective judgement in that division that is in the end mostly arbitrary. For instance I have decided (my ethics) that goodness is a compound of freedom, truth and social justice, yet for others my values can be evil or just it is very dificult to decide when some practical case fits or doesn't inside such values.

World is not black and white but multicolor.

Both good and bad potentially exist in every human being. Humans can chose either way throughout their lives, some times interchangeably. God created all, but He told us what kind of behaviour expects from us. So, it is up for man to chose his way. God will judge in the end.

There are things that science can't explain (And I'm certain it will explain more in the future) - the meaning of life, of existence, the origins of the universe, why do we even exist, and so on. Science is observable real truth. It is not contrary to the notions of God.