Well for one Christian god is afraid of human potential and yet at the same time he is not due to simple fact that there is no way for us to actually truly reach him or any other god for that mater(spiritual communication doesn't count as human spirit alone just doesn`t have potential to be a threat).
And reason for not dumbing us down is because he already made us self-destructive(vengeful bastard, we chose free will over paradise and...), which basically means he just doesn`t give a dam about human kind(this is all off course if you believe what bible said).
The Christian God does not fear or hate magic. It's man that fears magic. The early Christians and Jews even used magic. The Bible has been mistranslated and remade so much that it's not even a holy thing any more. Ever heard of ,"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."? It was originally ,"Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live." That bible verse was targeting people who used herbs and potions to kill and harm people. And plus, the Christian God is most definitely a war God. If he really did fear or hate magic, we'd all be dead right now instead of discussing things on an online forum.
Coming from a strong Christian background (though I no longer consider myself Christian), I will answer this from my perspective of what Christians/God have meant.
I do not feel that God fears magic. After all, if he created us, why would he create something that could potentially do him harm? The Bible even states that God is within each of us and can be found everywhere, "Look under a rock and I shall be there". This line of thought is in almost every major religion. So it can be taken that God and/or his power is (at least in part) within all of us and all that surrounds us.
Many of the said Christian religions were initial very ritualistic and magical in their own right. In fact what Christ was said to have done (his miracles) were considered by many to be magic and spells. If I am not mistaken Christ himself has never condemned witchcraft. He was a teacher of love for all, acceptance of everyone, and doing no harm to anyone.
There are a couple of points (already made by others) that I believe to be true. Firstly, that during those times it was exceptionally rare for anyone, outside of scholars or scroll keepers, to be able to read or write. This worked very well for those in high positions of power and influence.
Secondly, the Bible in its Hebrew form, can never, I repeat, can never be fully and correctly translated into English. It just simply isn't linguistically possible. There are too many variances and gaps between the languages to get a verbatim translation. Over time, the Bible has been translated, rewritten (as in the different versions, i.e. King James), that no telling what has been lost, or reworded, and has grown too far from its original intent.
I believe, in the end, it was more the Church that feared the power and knowledge the people could gain (whether from magic or by other means). As far as the Christian God, I think if he ever had problems with the occult, it was not out of fear of the peoples knowledge or power. I think was it was more two trains of thought. One, that God himself said he was a jealous god, and perhaps he felt jealousy when his creations were not focused on him. Second, (and this applies to many things in life) that magic can be a powerful thing, but when abused, or misused, it can be dangerous in many fashions.
Besides, if God didnt want us to be knowledgeable (or wanted to keep us dumb) he would have used his omnipotent power to prevent us from eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Free-will or not, if you believe what the Bible says, God is well within His power to take away our choices, but as of yet, has not done so.
Anyway, my two cents on the matter. This is from somebody who is now no longer a Christian, but explaining it to you as best as I saw it when I was a Christian.
I think any omnipotent god of any religion isn't and shouldn't be afraid of anything, because if they're in complete control (making them omnipotent), why would they create something that would scare them?
If you or anyone want to believe in an omnipotent being then treasure the fact that magick was made by that same being and the results through magick are real because they made it so.
Well, many condemn the christian god as an entity that feeds off fear and manipulates emotions of his follows, however, I believe that all gods are one and they are merely the faces (characters) we make to represent a great spiritual force that lives both inside us and as an external force. a point was made earlier that the bible translations often get the difference between 'poisoner' and 'witch' mixed up. The christian god is recorded to have created this entire world, so he would not create anything that would harm himself, instead, people feared magic, not God. The powerful, wealthy and influential people were educated, while the poor remained illiterate. This meant that the very few educated people had power over the uneducated. They kept it this way by using people's fear of eternity in hell and the like to control them. that's my theory, anyway.
God is not omnipotent or all powerful. If that was the case, why would evil exist? He has no power over me. If he thinks this stuff is an abomination, why would we know about it? If he was all knowing why would he have created lucifer? If he was all powerful why would he need the angels? He basically made the garden of edin a nice little zoo. If he didn't wasn't us to eat that fruit, than why was it there? If lucifer was our enemy why wouldn't we be dead? Lucifer is called evil, but he killed ten people all with permission. God sacrifieced his own son. He caused a flood and wiped out millions of people. He basically says follow me or suffer eternal torture. If the tree of knowledge was evil, why did it exist. Eating from that tree of knowledge was evil, than knowledge is evil. Knowledge is something to suffer for. If we where imperfect why where we created?
I was brought up a Catholic. The Catholic Church has never condemned magic. It condemned "witchcraft". The reason was a simple one. Witches, when there were very few doctors, did all the healing of illness; especially in emotional healing.The Church wanted only their priests to do the healing. So witchcraft was banned! But magic? A Catholic priest uses magic every morning at Mass! Jesus was said to use magic; what do you think the miracles are? Moses used magic.
No, it wasn't magic that the Catholic Church was against. It was witchcraft!
I no longer think myself a Catholic, but I can still say what I've been taught over the years is that the christian God allowed all these 'evils' to exist to test his people, to see which will be faithful to him and which ones will betray him. Lucifer doesn't kill outright like one would think, he wants you to sin so you can spend an eternity in hell, just as he was condemned to when he tried to defy God. As humans, we will often times want to disobey the word of this God, that's why he made angels, they guide us and grow with us 24/7, like a beloved and trusted brother or sister, which if you think about it, seems better company than a distant god. He created the tree of knowledge to test Adam and Eve, see if they would really do as they were told or not. Of course, this all comes from the beliefs of the parish that taught me, although I no longer follow it, there are many good and loving things about the Christian faith, it's just that corruption, fear, and intolerance has made it into a religion that advocates all these bad things they had done.
Note: I am an eclectic pagan, all that I have stated was the beliefs that the Catholic church has taught me, I don't follow much of it, not do I believe in this type of doctrine, just wanted to put a more 'civilised' view of the Christian God. If anyone finds anything I could be wrong about, let me know.
