The Devil's Best Trick Quotes

“It is in Zechariah that Satan is for the first time described as “the adversary” of mankind. Yet he still seems to be in God’s service.”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“force of evil that human beings can best comprehend by personifying it,”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“reconcile the Bible with the scientific materialism”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“The abstract and indifferent deity Spinoza proclaimed was indistinguishable from nature; in fact, God and nature were simply two different words for the same reality,”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“The moral sins and physical evils suffered by humans are not inflicted on us arbitrarily, Leibniz insisted, but rather exist as a necessary consequence of the metaphysical evil, or imperfection, required to maintain our material reality, separate from God.”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“Augustine left the Church with a trinity of related explanations for the existence of evil. The first explanation was that evil exists because God tolerates it as necessary for the greater good. The second explanation was that evil exists because the Devil wills it to be and promotes its spread among the human race. The third explanation was that evil exists because some human beings freely choose it.”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“The main idea that united the various Gnostic sects was their belief that the world is completely evil and cannot be redeemed.”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick

“Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) is the first person known to have formally posed the problem of evil, and he did so in a way that has compelled theologians ever since to wrestle with the “Epicurean paradox”: “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If can, but does not want to, he is wicked.”
― Randall Sullivan, The Devil's Best Trick