{"id":1636,"date":"2022-11-17T23:36:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T04:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=1636"},"modified":"2022-11-17T23:36:55","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T04:36:55","slug":"prequel-to-genesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2022\/11\/17\/prequel-to-genesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Prequel to Genesis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Satan said unto the Lord, “Hey, God. I was wondering\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God’s attention turned, and Satan continued: “I know that you’re omnipotent, but I was wondering if you could create a world that had some good things in it, but also an overwhelming amount of toil, suffering, and evil.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lord replied, “Yes, I could do that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But could you, really?” asked Satan, stretching out the final word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Look, Satan,” said God, “you’ve agreed that I am omnipotent. That word just means all powerful<\/em>. An omnipotent god can do anything.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lord added, with the clarity and force of proof, “You’ve mentioned a thing to do. I am omnipotent. So I could do it. QED.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Satan paused for a moment before saying: “Sure, sure. I was just wondering if omnipotence was hype. Honorary omnipotence, if you will.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No, I’m really omnipotent,” God said. “I totally could do that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It seems like a tall order, though,” said Satan. “Quite complex.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Seriously?!?” sputtered God, his voice summoning up both the emphasis of exclamation and the incredulity of question. “Why would I even want to do that? Does that seem like the sort of thing I would do?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No, of course not,” replied Satan. “Let’s say no more about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because I totally could do it,” said God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Satan shrugged. “Look, God. You know I’m not given to calling anyone out. Let’s just drop it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No, I will not drop it,” said God. “Why would I create a world which slowly winds down toward its inevitable death?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t know, why does a god do anything? I was just wondering about omnipotence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because you think I’m not omnipotent,” God said in a tone that made it almost but not quite a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do you mean literally or just in some metaphorical sense? Because I’ve already said I’m not going to call you out.” Having said that, Satan got up to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No!” God’s voice thundered through all that was. “Proof of my omnipotence shall be manifest. See, and you shall believe!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The next part begins, “In the beginning\u2026” but you know how that goes.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"image<\/a>
Output from Midjourney AI in response to the prompt “Prequel to Genesis”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Satan said unto the Lord, “Hey, God. I was wondering\u2026” God’s attention turned, and Satan continued: “I know that you’re omnipotent, but I was wondering if you could create a world that had some good things in it, but also an overwhelming amount of toil, suffering, and evil.” The Lord replied, “Yes, I could do … Continue reading “Prequel to Genesis”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-1636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-et-cetera","tag-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-qo","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1636"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1650,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636\/revisions\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}