Yeah, but eating the fruit also meant that we will all die at some point in our lives, men have to work all their lives and women have to go through intense pain giving birth, so...hrm, being a pet or living a life of pain and suffering and then death
That's a pretty nihilistic point of view to equate life with pain and suffering. But, compare that to a rock, which never lives, hence will never die. Would you prefer an opportunity to be one of the rare entities in the universe gifted with the chance to experience happiness, even if it would mean that you will one day die? Or would you prefer to mete out an existence ignorant of your condition? In the case of a pet, having all of your desires satisfied by no effort of your own, and with no risk of dissatisfaction, I see little difference between that and the existence of the rock.
Your understanding of Satan's motivations and the ramifications of "The Fall" seem tenuous at best.
My understanding of Satan's motivations arise from the perspective of one who believes that Satan, nor God, exist in the first place. They are allegorical concepts used by people with a primitive level of knowledge attempting to understand their own place in the universe. In the case of the tribal Jews, they believed that the origin of Sin was mankind's possession of the capacity to know good and evil. That much is beyond debate. The first sin was the disobedience of the first human woman and man (we'll leave Lilith out of this as she was presumably born with her sin fully intact) against the commandment from God that they not partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil.
In reality, the one characteristic that defines humanity apart from the rest of the biological world (and beyond) is that we are capable of making the conscious choice between good and evil. To make that choice, we require knowledge of what is good and evil. It is our nature, and there is nothing criminal about it. You are free to like it or not, but your opinion of our nature is not going to change it. Like all facts of nature, it is absolute.
If Satan was the allegorical entity that bequeathed that nature to us, I would like to shake his hand. How people choose to use the power of free will is not "His" fault. It is their own. Their evil choices are their own, and their good choices are their own. That is the only real ramification of The Fall, other than the insistence that we should be somehow penitent for being what we are; that it is somekind of black mark on our perfection and worthiness of esteem in the face of the greater Universe. I agree that to choose evil is a sin. I do not agree that the ability to choose condemns one as a sinner from birth. That's just self-loathing written into a universal law. Even rocks don't hate themselves on principle.
.....on a serious note though, I believe the devil, satan or whatever the hell u wanna call him is the best representation of mankind in general IMO....just my two cents, y'all...
That's a fact. At the same time, there is planty of humanity represented in the personage of God. Think of how many out there would prefer that mankid was not free to make it's own choices and live it's own life. Think of how many wish that they were the sole authority on what was good or evil. Think of how many have tried, and think of the destruction that they are responsible for.
Personally, if I were going to choose a symbol of pure
evil, that would be it.
I dunno. I tend to believe that most people are basically good (or at least have the inclination to be good). To say that the embodiment of evil represents an entire species is perhaps overdoing it.
I basically believe, rather than painting a box red and tossing the whole of humanity in it, its more accurate to acknowledge that every person is in a constant state of flux between cursing humanity and blessing it.
I think that equating Satan with evil is overdoing it. Like I said above, Satan only opened the door. Whether we enter the room to love, or enter the room to kill is our own issue; not Satan's.
