Comment by nybble41
6 years ago
I ran across an interesting (fictional) variation of this viewpoint once where Satan was cast as the unsung hero of a resistance movement, fighting on behalf of human beings against a tyrannical God. Unfortunately, the resistance lost—and the "history" espoused by most major religions is basically just propaganda on behalf of the winning side. (IIRC this was mentioned offhand as background data for one character at some point in the Empire of Man series by David Weber & John Ringo.)
I have no personal stake in this one way or the other, but it's an interesting thought-experiment. If that version of events were true, would anyone be able to tell? Is it really any less plausible than the "official" version?
There's a piece of Lord of the Rings fanfic around that inverts it in the same way -- Mordor was really a democratic scientific place and they just wanted to understand how magic really worked, but were defeated by the autocratic kings of the rest of the world who wanted to keep magic to themselves. The standard history is propaganda, etc.