I once tried to write a scenario where we were made initially as entertainment, creation itself being a kind of sandbox where different ideas got toyed with, earth and its dramas being a fairly specific little sub project that largely served to be interesting - if the creator deigned descend into and experience any given life, he had a reasonably unique experience to undertake. This was achieved by making storytelling machines, basically governors of different aspects of creation, and placed them somewhat at odds, but ultimatley in a context that meant the tug and pull was collaborative - the archons of the apocryphon of john were my inspiration there - with a chief governing storyteller that more or less set an agenda- a mix of archon stuff and demiurge stuff - basically he didn't make the table, but he sets the table.
As the creator got bored, eventually experiencing all but a derivative subset of experience - he moved on, and appointed the head storyteller - the demiurge basically - to rule in his stead.
Then he came back, realizing humanity itself had some interesting properties that were worth elevating, but the storytellers basically rebelled because they were used to bossing these little deranged ape-things around and couldn't imagine letting them rise above them, when there was no real path for them to ascend beyond their own station.
Because of the powers abdicated to the storytelling machinery - and because they're all a subdivision of the divine will, we're caught in a stalemate - the fall of heaven detailed in stories like Enoch are the driving theme for that material - basically satan is merged with the concept of archons and the demiurge - is largely due to a quirk in how everything we experience was generated - the supreme will abdicated power to a subset of itself in the interest of making sure humanity had some kind of guidance and found it wasn't as easily revoked as it was given
anyway i didn't finish the story because i'm shit at metaphysics and i have the attention span of a weevil.
also i didn't know how to reconcile omniscient omnipotence with a situation where the divine will could be defied, even by itself.
I once tried to write a scenario where we were made initially as entertainment, creation itself being a kind of sandbox where different ideas got toyed with, earth and its dramas being a fairly specific little sub project that largely served to be interesting - if the creator deigned descend into and experience any given life, he had a reasonably unique experience to undertake. This was achieved by making storytelling machines, basically governors of different aspects of creation, and placed them somewhat at odds, but ultimatley in a context that meant the tug and pull was collaborative - the archons of the apocryphon of john were my inspiration there - with a chief governing storyteller that more or less set an agenda- a mix of archon stuff and demiurge stuff - basically he didn't make the table, but he sets the table.
As the creator got bored, eventually experiencing all but a derivative subset of experience - he moved on, and appointed the head storyteller - the demiurge basically - to rule in his stead.
Then he came back, realizing humanity itself had some interesting properties that were worth elevating, but the storytellers basically rebelled because they were used to bossing these little deranged ape-things around and couldn't imagine letting them rise above them, when there was no real path for them to ascend beyond their own station.
Because of the powers abdicated to the storytelling machinery - and because they're all a subdivision of the divine will, we're caught in a stalemate - the fall of heaven detailed in stories like Enoch are the driving theme for that material - basically satan is merged with the concept of archons and the demiurge - is largely due to a quirk in how everything we experience was generated - the supreme will abdicated power to a subset of itself in the interest of making sure humanity had some kind of guidance and found it wasn't as easily revoked as it was given
anyway i didn't finish the story because i'm shit at metaphysics and i have the attention span of a weevil.
also i didn't know how to reconcile omniscient omnipotence with a situation where the divine will could be defied, even by itself.