posted
I had a sort of spiritual experience today about this question, which I had never thought to ask before. I'm curious what people here think about it. Does God love Satan or not?
If you're not religious, or if your religion doesn't fit this question then answer the Lord of the Rings question "Does Eru Illuvatar love Morgoth?" which I think is equivalent. Maybe not, though. What do you think?
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posted
If Satan wasn't exactly how God wanted him to be, then God could just change him. Perhaps not in Mormonism, but in most flavors of Christianity.
quote:If you're not religious, or if your religion doesn't fit this question then answer the Lord of the Rings question "Does Eru Illuvatar love Morgoth?" which I think is equivalent
I don't know the LOTR lore that well. Was Morgoth created by Eru Illuvatar? Can Eru make Morgoth not exist with a thought (or change his nature)?
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God loves Satan, but does not love his actions. (That's what my mom used to tell us when we misbehaved and then, when punished, complained that she "didn't love us." "I love you, but I do not love your actions or the way you are behaving right now.")
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: If Satan wasn't exactly how God wanted him to be, then God could just change him. Perhaps not in Mormonism, but in most flavors of Christianity.
quote:If you're not religious, or if your religion doesn't fit this question then answer the Lord of the Rings question "Does Eru Illuvatar love Morgoth?" which I think is equivalent
I don't know the LOTR lore that well. Was Morgoth created by Eru Illuvatar? Can Eru make Morgoth not exist with a thought (or change his nature)?
Yeah, Xav, I was thinking that way, wondering if God not only loves Satan but somehow approves of his being the way he is, because he allows it, if nothing else. And wondering if there has to be evil and stuff. Is heaven a contradiction because it has good without the existence of evil?
As for the Tolkien question, I'm not sure if Eru created the Ainur or not. I don't think we're told that for sure, are we? But Morgoth was one of them, the ones who helped Eru sing the material universe (Arda) into existence. He sang some of the discordant parts that built pain and chaos into the very fabric of existence. Then he took a body inside Arda and continued his tricks there.
So the two questions may not be equivalent. It's not really emphasized that Eru loves his children a whole lot, though it's implied.
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I guess it's an easy question in LDS religion? Yes God loves Satan and no he doesn't want him to be the way he is but he grants him his agency the same as he does to us. Satan doesn't have a body in LDS thought, right? But does he in other Christian religions?
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quote:Is heaven a contradiction because it has good without the existence of evil?
I see heaven as part of the created universe, same as wherever you believe Satan dwells (hell, outer darkness, whatever.) They are just on the extreme ends of goodness and evil. Then there's where we live, which is pretty much right in the middle, right on the edge with a constant struggle. If we could pull back, we could see the whole spectrum. But we only know where we are right now, so we view everything through the microcosm of what we know.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Satan seems bleh of a name, does he not possess some name that we can call him that he had beforehand?
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quote:I guess it's an easy question in LDS religion? Yes God loves Satan and no he doesn't want him to be the way he is but he grants him his agency the same as he does to us.
That's not so cut-and-dried either. As 2 Nephi says, there must be an opposition in all things.
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Blayne, give him one. If it's catchy other people will start using it too. For a long time after I became religious, I didn't believe in Satan as a real being, I thought of him as a personification of impersonal forces or tendencies. It's true that he would certainly want us to think that, however. He would want us to believe he didn't truly exist. And now I'm not at all sure. But I'm comfortable discussing him regardless. Still I agree that his name sucks. If you come up with a better one I'll use it. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: [QUOTE] As 2 Nephi says, there must be an opposition in all things.
Yeah. Lehi says the universe itself could not exist if there was such a thing if coins that had only one side.
(Obviously, I'm paraphrasing)
Still, nothing was predestined. While we're told some people were foreordained to do certain things (the Saviour being the most obvious example) their agency was and is present at all stages of existence.
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I'm also thinking of the Master and Margarita, that novel by Bulgakov. I'm thinking of what Satan was like, not so much malevolent as just enjoying exposing all our follies and hypocrisies. I'm thinking of Satan's role as a cynical teller of unpleasant or uncomfortable truths that we would just as soon forget.
Then I thought about how Sauron subverted Denethor's will not by showing him untrue things in the palantir but by giving him the wrong impression of what he saw, by encouraging him to misinterpret true things. Sauron made it seem to Denethor that there was no alternative to despair, and Satan works in that way too, by telling the truth, but in such a way that it destroys people's spirits instead of strengthening them. He is, in that sense, a bringer of light (or truth).
But, really, those ugly truths do exist, and it's part of our agency that we're free to interpret them differently than God does.
This all came to me in the context of listening to the song "The Noose" by A Perfect Circle over and over again while I was driving back from Georgia today. The song is about someone who reforms, is reborn, and repudiates former ill-deeds. The context of the whole cd suggests that this person may have been a former addict who did some pretty horrific stuff. So that had me thinking about the nature of the atonement and the conflicting demands for justice and mercy. Oh, and I just read an Elie Wiesel speech as well which talked about human indifference to the suffering of people in the world, how easily we turn our heads and think of something else, and how we do ourselves a real injustice by doing that, not to speak of the ones we fail to help.
Maynard seems to speak in the song (which is an amazing excellent work of music, btw) that it's not as easy as that (repentance and atonement). He does it in a somewhat cynical way. ( Here's a live version from Youtube.)
"Now you stand reborn before us all So glad to see you well. And not to pull your halo down Around your neck and tug you off your cloud, But I'm more than just a little curious How you're planning to go about making your Amends To the dead." ( Complete lyrics.)
A reminder that even repentance and the atonement can't wash away the consequences of sin, or make it as though it never happened. And even our best efforts to make amends can't bring someone back from the dead. All that is quite true.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I dont think he exists really as I'm agnostic with maybe the occasional theistic tendency, but if the Christians are right then I am undoubtably going to burn in hell, so....
When I wake up in hell after I die and Lucifer comes up to me gloating I can calmely and with utter most confidence say. "So. We meet again Lucas, this shall be our final battle." Resulting in us having a titanic battle for supremacy lasting for centuries in a ultimate showdown, the battle rages on day after day, century after century and just when he gains the upper hand and my defeat seems certain then Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"'s Black Knight and Benito Mussolini and The Blue Meanie and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, The Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan all came out of no where lightning fast and they kicked Lucifer and his donkey redundant ass.
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Puffy Treat, yeah that is sort of what I was thinking. The problem of evil, of pain, or whatever, that there must needs be an opposition in all things.
I think Heavenly Father, in LDS theology, gets off the hook by not being omnipotent. But there's still a feeling or a sense that he approves somehow, that pain and evil are somehow necessary.
The feeling I got today was that God does love Satan, because he sees that so much of what he says is true, and he even loves him specially, his cynicism and truth-telling, the light-bringing which has no sympathy for the sinner, because it's necessary for justice that we not forget the ones sinned against, the innocent dead ones whom we actively harmed or at the very least did not help.
But nevertheless, the atonement is sufficient, even so. All the sorrow will turn to joy. All losses will be restored and all lacks made up and then some, to overflowing. That's the part Maynard doesn't inkle yet, maybe.
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posted
I thought this post was tittled "does god love Stalin"?
Which reminds me of a great joke at work, whenever someone was being lazy or trying to get out of work our boss would say "alright Joseph "stallin'" WA HAHAHAHA
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I'm tracing the history and evolution of Satan ending with the question of whether or not he is saved from eternal damnation.
The simplest answer is that if God has endless love, then not even Satan will not suffer forever and will eventually rejoin the kingdom like all of creation. My brain is skipping on the name of the theologian (Origen, maybe?) but it followed his theory that there was no hell, only purgatory, or a place where our souls would be cleansed by the fire in accordance with the amount of sin on them.
Of course, going further back, you have to ask whether Satan's actions are just part of his design? I'm focusing on Hebrew and Apocrypha works right now but the general idea is that Satan (or "the satans" as it is more often a common noun rather than a name) had a set of duties which included the observation and testing of man, though he is occasionally rebuked by God for being overzealous.
I don't theological problems with Satan being a functionary under God, because Christian dualism gives Satan way too much power. The problem of evil seems to be most easily solved the concept of a God who created all things; the light and the darkness, the peace and the war. So who is Satan to wield trial and temptation independently of God. To me, he just seems like one of the angels who got assigned a really bad job (like the IRS or lawyers) and mankind is unable to see the good and so just whines about him alot. But really, what is faith without trial?? Satan's job is perhaps the most important.
The Sufi Muslims actually believe that Satan is the most devout follower because when asked to bow before Adam, he refused and said he would bow only to God. God exiled him, so maybe the best question is not: Does God love Satan? But how could God NOT love Satan?
As for Satan's other names, the list of ridiculous if you choose to view "Satan" as all dark and/or evil spirits in biblical texts. I, personally, loathe the name "Lucifer" and am quite fond of "Belial" or "the Angel of Perversity."
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Satan seems bleh of a name, does he not possess some name that we can call him that he had beforehand?
I've heard/read of him referred to as "Lucifer Morningstar". A tad redundant, if you ask me, but still very impressive-sounding.
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quote:The feeling I got today was that God does love Satan, because he sees that so much of what he says is true, and he even loves him specially, his cynicism and truth-telling, the light-bringing which has no sympathy for the sinner, because it's necessary for justice that we not forget the ones sinned against, the innocent dead ones whom we actively harmed or at the very least did not help.
Within the context of Mormonism, there's no real room for imagining a sympathetic Satan. Satan isn't just a trickster; he's not Counsel for the Opposition. He's not a jester. The Book of Mormon is very clear about this-- Satan wants people to be miserable:
quote: 2 Nephi 2:18 And because he had fallen from heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all mankind.
quote: 12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the dnations! 13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. (Isaiah 14)
Yes, I think that God loves Satan. However, he is not redeemable.
quote: Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! (Luke 17:1)
Acknowledgment of the need for opposition and granting of agency does not imply any approval of sin, as I read it.
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Scott, yeah, Maynard didn't ask his question in the song because he wanted the reborn repentant sinner to be happy. He wants to drag her down by her newfound halo and choke her with it.
I see what you mean about Satan in LDS thought being totally unsympathetic. Part of my confusion here is the blending in of more sympathetic views from other systems of thought. He wants us to be miserable, but many times doesn't he try to accomplish our misery by reminding us of inconvenient or unhappy truths that we'd just as soon forget?
I'm just wondering if a lot of what Satan says isn't true, anyway, and if God doesn't in some sense approve of that truth-telling. Like, Satan puts the wrong spin on it, he's trying to make us despair, but he's still reminding people of the consequences of their own actions or indifference? In a way, doesn't that serve Justice?
When Roosevelt turned back that ship full of Jews to Germany, when we turn a blind eye to the suffering of the helpless anywhere in the world, doesn't Satan or someone need to remind us of all the children who die in pograms and so on? Or, to modernize it, when we buy cheap Barbies that some young child in China worked as a wage slave to produce, aren't we complicit in her suffering? And doesn't Satan act to not let us forget our guilt, and to remind us that there's no way we can undo things that are already done, there's no way we can make amends to the dead?
I had this strange impression yesterday that God loves Satan very much, and that he approves of him in some way, too. Like he profoundly respects his point of view, and his right not to be saved by Christ's atonement, his right not to participate in the exaltation, his right to object to it on moral grounds, to remember the horrors and to refuse to forgive.
It ties in, too, with what Vanya Karamazov felt about God and Satan. Vanya kept these clippings of the worst conceivable horrors that happened among humans, like newspaper stories about young children tortured and killed, and so on. He vowed that God didn't exist because there can be no grand plan that's worth horrors like that, or that could make them okay. (Just as, in the end of "The Insulted and the Humilated", little Nellie refused to forgive before she died.) But Vanya really did believe in God, he was just very angry at him for letting things like that happen. And then when he got brain fever he talked to Satan for a long time. I should go back and reread that part, the section about Vanya talking to Satan, and see what he said.
There's a Jorge Luis Borges story in which the true Christ is Judas, not Jesus, because he's the one who puts himself the lowest of anyone. He's the one who's reviled and spit upon the most, and who dies a lonely suicide, with no mourners. I want to reread that story, too. That school of thought existed as a heresy in the middle ages some time, I think. It seems like someone was burned for teaching that.
So I'm still left with questions. Does God love Satan? (I think the answer is yes.) Should we love him too? (I think the answer here is yes, too, but that we shouldn't listen to his message of despair.) Should we hear the cries of the oppressed and the suffering and act to alleviate their suffering or, if we can't fix it, should we at least mourn with them, tear our hair, and loudly decry their suffering, as Elie Wiesel says? (I think the answer to that is probably yes, as well.)
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posted
Yeah, I think sometimes people get "necessary" mixed up with "appreciated", whether it be Joseph's brothers selling him into Egypt, Judas betraying Christ, and the devil rebelling.
Something to take into consideration is that in religions which don't consider angels to be the spirits of men, the devil is an angel, a being that man is "a little lower than." They are creations of God, that "neither give or are given" in marriage, except for when they (Angels who followed the devil) fathered the Nefalim.
As Mike Huckabee pointed out, Mormons are a bit weird in saying Jesus and the devil are brothers, leaving off that they are siblings right along with all the rest of us.
I don't buy the respect part, any more than I would respect someone for committing suicide. That, in the end, is what the devil did and lead a third part of God's children to do the same.
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quote:As for the Tolkien question, I'm not sure if Eru created the Ainur or not. I don't think we're told that for sure, are we?
First sentence of the Simarillion: "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Illuvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought."
Tolkien's creation story is strongly Catholic in principle and includes the concept of creation ex nihilo at its core.
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posted
Darn it Dag! I read all the way to the end of the thread thinking no one had yet pointed this out and I was going to get to show off my Tolkien geekhood to the max by quoting the first line of the Silmarillion and there you go, ruining my moment of glory.
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quote:And doesn't Satan act to not let us forget our guilt, and to remind us that there's no way we can undo things that are already done, there's no way we can make amends to the dead?
I had this strange impression yesterday that God loves Satan very much, and that he approves of him in some way, too. Like he profoundly respects his point of view, and his right not to be saved by Christ's atonement, his right not to participate in the exaltation, his right to object to it on moral grounds, to remember the horrors and to refuse to forgive.
Like pooka, I think 'respect' is the wrong word.
I'm not sure how God would approve of someone who goes around purposefully making people miserable. (That's the opposite of the refiner's fire, by the way.) I guess that's where I get hung up on your point of view-- approving of Satan means approving his actions. I don't think that Mormon theology allows for that philosophy.
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Perhaps respect is the wrong word, but maybe it isn't.
God certainly created Satan and as His creation He loves him. I am certain God knew what role Satan ultimately would play concerning His children and clearly there is room in God's plan for such a role, otherwise God would not have created Satan.
It seems that Satan does play a role that in some way is necessary for God's plan to be accomplished, but not in the sense that there must be a spirit willing to give up salvation in order to tempt the others.
In the sense that Satan is intentionally being utilized by God I think we can say God acknowledges both the positive and negative results of Satan's mission to destroy those he can destroy.
Quick question Tatiana, have you been through the temple yet?
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: If Satan wasn't exactly how God wanted him to be, then God could just change him. Perhaps not in Mormonism, but in most flavors of Christianity.
No, only in Calvinism, I'd say. and it's the main reason I could never be a Calvinist.
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posted
Does God choose to love everyone (thus leaving open the possibility or potential of him hating someone), or is God incapable of not loving someone? Would it be wrong for God to hate someone?
Is there a point at which God shouldn't love someone? If Satan is hell bent on making everyone suffer and has made it his personal agenda to destroy all that is good and righteous in the universe, if his entire self and identity is consumed with more than just misguided ambition, but the desire to cause eternal misery and pain, what is left to love?
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I think God deeply respects the principle of agency, and everyone's right to exercise it. I don't think that translates into respecting Satan's use of it, or Hitler's, or others ad nauseum.
My personal belief is that God loves Satan while deploring everything that he's chosen and become. How can God respect someone who has chosen as his mission to, as Scott put it, make all God's other children as miserable as he is? To destroy rather than create?
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posted
Calvinism is extremely logical. I'm with Chesterton, Lewis, Austen, Pratchett, and Dr. McCoy (edit: and Rivka)-- it is irrational, as a human, to always be rational.
But my point is really best illustrated by the statement I responded to: "If Satan wasn't exactly how God wanted him to be, God could just change him."
To me, the difference is in the active versus passive status. The one position is that Evil exists in the world because God put it there (and continues to cultivate it-- otherwise He could just change it, right?), the other because God allowed his creatures the dignity of causality and it's all downhill from there, but for what God (in presumably infinite wisdom) saw as the greater good of freewill.
Lewis's analogy was a child's messy room. The parent says "I'm not cleaning up after you anymore," and the room is a mess. Is it in accord with the parent's wishes? Well, in a sense, yes, but only because the parent has chosen *not* to clean it up so that the child will learn about actions and consequences... that is to say, about freedom.
Camus, your first question is especially interesting in light of the Christian axiom that God is Love.
But for your second, no, there isn't. Loving someone means wanting what is best for them, not necessarily admiring them. Also your last question is perhaps a sufficient answer-- you stop loving someone when there is no *person* left to love: when their entire self and identity is consumed. I am very influenced by Lewis's The Great Divorce as well as my own experience in therapy.
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quote:I dont think he exists really as I'm agnostic with maybe the occasional theistic tendency, but if the Christians are right then I am undoubtably going to burn in hell, so....
Not if the Mormons are right... Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
This question reminds me of a quote from Shakespeare’s Othello, spoken by Othello, right before he kills his wife. “This sorrow’s heavenly/ it strikes where it doth love.”
That line got me thinking a lot. I think God loves Satan, and I think it brings Him sorrow to have to strike Satan down.
This line of thought leads me against justice in general. As Othello demonstrates, a sense of justice, a desire to make people pay for their crimes, can lead you to make horrible decisions. I can feel how justice can be used to restore a sense of balance, but I’m not sure this is ever the correct thing to do. Too often, in America at least, the punishment does not fit the crime. Too often there is intense focus on making criminals pay a debt to society when the focus should be on rehabilitation. I’m not even convinced it’s possible for someone to “pay” for their crimes.
I see a similar problem in Christian thought in general, especially concerning Hell. Even if we rule out the possibility of someone innocent being punished, I don’t see how the punishment fits the crime, and I certainly don’t see a focus on rehabilitation. I would not follow a God that blindly applied justice without allowing sinners a chance at redemption. Even in this cosmic sense, where sinners go to Hell, I’m not convinced they can ever “pay" for their sins simply through pain and suffering. It seems an inefficient and incomplete method of retribution.
As far as the name is concerned, I prefer to think of Satan as the Morningstar. I recall the story of an Aztec God, also known as the Morningstar. He was a God of peace. When the Aztec people chose to worship the God of War instead, the Morningstar was filled with sorrow. He went to his temple and burned himself on his alter. After death, his heart rose into the sky and became the planet Venus. It amuses me that Venus should be called the Morningstar by two completely different societies, and it amuses me that in one, the Morningstar is evil, but in the other it is the heart of a God of peace. That strange duality across human culture makes me think that Morningstar is the closest thing we have to Satan’s true name.
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quote:I dont think he exists really as I'm agnostic with maybe the occasional theistic tendency, but if the Christians are right then I am undoubtably going to burn in hell, so....
Not if the Mormons are right...
Or, you know, a lot of the other Christians.
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quote:Originally posted by scholar: For me, a more interesting question is can the devil repent and be saved?
You probably already know my take on this. Satan cannot be saved in that God, the very embodiment of all that is good cannot persuade Lucifer to repent and come back.
Since there is nobody more powerful and good then God, Satan will continue to be evil no matter what anybody does to him.
Therefore to use Biblical phrasology, "Satan would that he be saved not, there is no redemption in him."
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posted
In my scenario, I skip how the devil is persuaded to stop being evil and just assume he decided to repent. I would like to think that if he truly asked for forgiveness and repented, then God would forgive even him. But I wonder if there are some decisions that you can't take back.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: I had a sort of spiritual experience today about this question, which I had never thought to ask before. I'm curious what people here think about it. Does God love Satan or not?
I'm totally serious with this question:
What difference does it make whether or not god loves satan? Does it change your opinion of god, or shed light into some now-dark corner of your particular -ology?
Or is it mainly academic, like 'Could Superman impregnate a human female?'
I apologize if my question is offensive -- I'm honestly curious.
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quote:For me, a more interesting question is can the devil repent and be saved?
Well, if you presuppose that angels have free will and the fall was an act of such will, when he has the necessary ability to repent. (Which is out of line with some theology, including Aquinas, which said that free-will was a gift to man only and that angels were purely intellectual beings. But if angels didn't have free will, how did they fall in the first place?)
Or is your question, >would< he repent?
On a side, I read this interesting theory that said that Satan and the other fallen angels cannot be saved because Christ came to bring salvation to Man. It would take a similar sacrifice of a being from the angelic ring of creation to redeem Satan and the other fallen angels.
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It is short, but given the author, jam-packed. Very deep stuff, but also very crucial, and elegantly articulated. Maxwell just seems like your kind of apostle. I would send you my copy, but one of my roommates is borrowing it.
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I believe the definition of omnipotent for LDS theology is somewhat different than that used by others.
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1) Flippant: Yes, but its a tough love, hence Hell and all that stuff.
2) Silly: He must for I've been spammed the porn web-site, "Dietysex.com"
3) Religious: God is all loving, so yes god loves Satan.
4) Serious: We can never truly know how much pain another person is in, how much joy they feel, how deeply they love, or how much fear they endure. How can I know, mere mortal me, how much love God feels for anyone, yet alone one who would undo all his creation.
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That's not my understanding. From what I've been told, LDS believe that He's as omnipotent as they think it makes sense for something to be omnipotent, but He's definitely not omnipotent in, say, the Catholic meaning of the word.
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posted
Actually, God did love Satan for a very long time, but then more recently bible sales have been down and so God's relationship with Satan was retconned away in an overly complex bargain with Spiderman.
God is not omnipotent. Or omniscent. He, for one thing, has a body, which limits his power to, say, be in two places at once. Having a body also means that God is in the flow of time. Furthermore, Joseph Smith clearly taught that human beings are not created by God, but rather are co-eternal with him. Therefore, our free will comes from the same place as God's free will, which means that he cannot infringe upon it and furthermore does not know the future, because the future is contingent upon our actions, which are entirely up to us. Emphasizes human potential and likeness to God.
Emphasizes the Doctrine and Covenants and Joseph Smith.
2)Neo-orthodox Mormonism. Emerges from the camp of Joseph Fielding Smith, who drew his religious thought not from nineteenth century Mormonism, but from correspondence with and wide reading among Protestant fundamentalists (see Ronald Numbers's _The Creationists_ here). Also his son in law Bruce R. McConkie; spreads mostly through McConkie and Smith's voluminous writings in the 1950s through 1970s; thus influential among those Mormons who grew up in that period.
God is in fact omnipotent, and omniscient. He knows the future. We are created by God - we are his children, and not co-eternal with him - thus he has a plan for our lives and our happiness depends upon us determining and following that plan. Downplays the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Emphasizes the sinful nature of humanity, stressing our moral obligations as a way to please God.
Emphasizes the Book of Mormon and Bruce R. McConkie.
More recent advocates: Boyd K. Packer, Maxwell, and Dieter Uchdorf.
Prefers the term 'moral agency.'
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Classical Mormonism: Satan has his free agency; he does what he will. Thus, he is not a necessary portion of the plan of salvation.
Neo-Orthodox Mormonism: Satan, following an interpretation of 2 Nephi 2, is necessary, and his rebellion 'had to happen.'
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For a long time after I became religious, I didn't believe in Satan as a real being, I thought of him as a personification of impersonal forces or tendencies. It's true that he would certainly want us to think that, however. He would want us to believe he didn't truly exist. And now I'm not at all sure. But I'm comfortable discussing him regardless. Still I agree that his name sucks. If you come up with a better one I'll use it. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
