Conversations with God 1

I used to converse with God all the time. Especially in the morning while driving to work. In the silence, one thinks that one hears the voice of God. It is difficult to discern God's voice though. Satan can appear to be anyone or even anything. He is Hermes Trismegistus as Baudelaire says. There is something so seductive about the wise serpent's words... that we would become like God if we ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I don't think Adam and Eve were self-conscious personalities and they were not exactly in communion with God either. They were like children in paradise with almost infinite freedom except that they not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Disobedience was what was evil then. And they disobeyed. Adam and Eve have no race or even gender in a sense. The question I always ask God is, "How can you be all powerful, all knowing, and all good?" I can accept the fact that he is all good and all knowing, but I really have a problem with the all-powerful part. Rabbis whom I listen to on the radio also have the same problem. Why does this present a problem for me? If he is all-powerful, then is he responsible for the Holocaust? Aren't human beings responsible for the Holocaust? Isn't human evil the cause of the Holocaust? And I don't have any sentimental ideas about the Holocaust. This was the logic of European, Greek civilization. Greek civilization, probably the greatest civilization of all time in terms of secular logic, really had no sense of sin. Sacrifice worked according to the laws of karma. There was no right or wrong, just a bunch of city-states competing with each other, each valuing different ideals of civilization. It was only with the arrival of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle that Logic became a determinant of human behavior. Nietzsche sees these philosophical movements as the end of Greek greatness. But the ancient Greeks, at least if you subscribe to the idea that art expresses the society of their time, seem to have gone quite mad or at least lost all control in the late peroid of their art. Ancient Greeks had no guilt and their sense of shame was derived from losing in contests. Anger was often associated with shame. At the same time, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle would shape the very foundations of Christian and Jewish logic and thought for generations to come.