The first being ever created was Satan, and God's first love. If God is omniscient then he knew that Satan would become rebellious and would want the powers of God. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

(1) Satan is just a part of God playing a role.
(2) Satan knows for a fact in his level z thinking (almost infinite thinking ability) that God's power is probabilistic and he actually has a shot at godhood.
(3) It's just a silly level 1 myth that could never play out.

You think of omniscience as knowing everything...but this a simplistic definition. In order to know about something that something actually has to exist. For instance God cannot be said to know about pink unicorns unless pink unicorns actually exist. If pink unicorns don't exist but God knows about them...all that can really be said is God knows about the concept of pink unicorns or that God knows about potential pink unicorns. You can't really know about anything that is non existent. If it doesn't exist in actuality and you know about it....then you only know about it as a concept or potential. Claiming God can know about an actuality that is not actual is as nonsensical as claiming God moved a stone that is unmovable.

God created Satan with freewill. Before He created Satan He knew all the possible actions Satan could take but He could not know what actions Satan did take until those actions became an actuality. Omniscience isn't knowing everything....rather it is knowing all that can be known or knowing everything about every thing which exists. It is simply nonsensical to think you can create a free agent and know its decisions before you create said free agent. At best you can can only know its potential decisions and to claim any more than that is to spout nonsense.

So you agree with #2.

No. Satan may just be behaving irrationally. We see rational beings do this all the time.

The being closest to God is acting irrationally? The idea in itself is irrational.

Satan probably thought that himself.

Don't argue like a child.

Your premise that Satan could not act irrationally was provided without any meaningful basis. It is an assumption that you make which I dismiss on its face because rational beings can and do behave irrationally from time to time.

The story of Satan's fall is a story of falling prey to ones own pride. It describes an actor who is behaving irrationally so what can you give me to convince me it is something other than the obvious?

I'm sorry but I just don't find "being the closest to God" all that compelling.

Satan is second only to God. To apply human inconsistencies to such a character is beyond fault.

It's always fun to root for the underdog.

Suppose Satan did not exist....who would have been "second only to God"? Lets say Michael. Now suppose that Michael did not exist...who would be "second only to God" then? Lets say Gabriel. Now keep doing this process and eventually you exhaust all the angels and come up with a human being. So yes it is certainly logically possible that a being with human consistencies could "second only to God". An amoeba could be "second only to God".

"Second only to God" is meaningless. I'm sorry if the supposition that Satan wasn't behaving rationally doesn't sit well with your sensibilities but it is actually a better explaination of his actions than your 1,2, or 3.

I agree with Stu Pidasso concerning Omniscience does not mean the specific future knowledge of an event because of the free will of a conscious being. If the war in heaven story is true, certainly God was doing something prior to this war and there was no need for a Lucifer (Satan, Devil, etc.). For Lucifer to have such a high position in God’s kingdom he must have had some God-like qualities. I think Lucifer or Satan had compassion for others and that he wept for them. Satan’s power grab was more of a philosophical one that he convinced a third of the host of heaven to follow him (according to the bible story). I think we may be blaming Satan unjustly for all the evil in the world. I for one don’t need him to assist me in doing any bad things. My free will gives me that choice. I am leaning towards Satan wanting to eliminate some aspect of our free will to eliminate a potential danger to some form of eternal development….maybe Godhood. I am still of the belief that inherent in everything we see is the process of reproduction, biological and the physical processes of the universe, stars, etc. all seem to reproduce themselves. Why should a God be any different? Well, to answer the question of "Can Satan win?" I don't think it is a matter of "win" on either side. I think we may be influenced by thousands of years of distorded biblical history in this matter. If it is a battle between Satan and God maybe they should go to some corner of the universe and duke-it-out...winner take all. As I told this to my fundamentalist Christian daughter who proceeded to cast fire and brimstone on me, I don't like to get involved in other People's business. I prefer to be left alone. For Anyone to not allow this is infringing on my God given gift of free will.

Um, I would say that not only can Satan win, but He is winning and has been winning since the world began. By Satan I don't necessarily mean the biblical fallen angel, but the avatar of the Adversary, the Dark Energy, the Satanic current which has driven life upward from bacteria to the beast called man. We are clearly the greatest evil so far, the apex of a process of evolution toward ever greater evil which suggests that Satan really is the Lord of This World. A great book on this subject is The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom (the real "Satanic Bible"). Here is a favorite quote from that book:

Since this has come up a couple of times recently, it should be pointed out that the story that Satan is a fallen angel is based on extra-biblical texts. While it wasn't that unusual in apolycalyptic Jewish literature (although not in the book of Revelation) for fallen angels to make an appearance, the identification of "Satan" with a fallen angel named "Lucifer" is based on a misreading of a text in Isaiah by early Christian theologians. Here's wiki for some more background.

God says he can't win.

The bible is all about God's victory.

Arguing from the validity of the Bible is inconsequential. Just because the Counsel of Nicea approved some texts over others, doesn't make either more or less valid. The concept of good vs evil is a universal ideal or archetype known in all cultures, societies, and systems of religion. Satan or Lucifer is just another face on the same idea. That's why if I was a theist I would tend to believe that God and Satan are of the same, but at times their power is balanced unequally.

Please elaborate.

How can someone be "victorious" if the opponent literally has no chance of ever winning?

God sounds a little self-indulgent....

Very easily?

This is completely inconsistent with the position taken in the theistic evolutionists thread about determinism. There God not only must know every action that every created being CAN take but must know the ones they WILL take in order to ensure that the causal chain that gets us to H. Sapiens unfolds as planned.

Theists seem to change their conception of God to fit whatever argument they are making at the time.

Satan already lost. He lost any legal claim he had to the Earth at the Cross.

since God is rational can he also be irrational sometimes? like in many instances of the Old Testament?

lol. good observation. It's typical for theists to say one thing and then another because it is useful in order to keep their arguments alive, but the contradictions are obvious.

I don't think God is ever irrational. He has a lot more information than we have about people and events. We assume a lot of things from our own culture without knowing a lot about ancient times.

I find it strange people think accepting God's love is an irrational delusion and why are people so quick to question God's motives? Are we always so suspicious of other people that love us? There's nothing delusional about the results of accepting God's love. If you study the growth of children you'll find a simple concept at work. The ones that receive or register the most love tend to fare better in this world. Behavioral results are not divorced from our emotional states.

Imagine atheists are biased towards logic by brain structure and education and a preference for logic and other circumstances and ignore or refuse God's love in part because of a dependence on visual acuity and they say they can't see God and think they can't test Him and they can provide a better explanation so therefore He doesn't exist.

But what if your brain which is a sense organ overweighted things toward materialist explanations because the growth of your neo-cortex through education and worldly knowledge caused you to dismiss God as a delusion.

The love of God could be compared to mother's milk. It fosters human development particularly in our human interactions.

What if you're speedier neo-cortex development prompted you to get off your mother's milk too early?

There's nothing necessarily better about divorcing yourself from your emotions. Relationships are built on them and relationships enhance our lives more than they take from them. That's why isolation is one of the most grievous punishments.