Satan is a fallen angel, he spoke with the Father in Job.
In revelation he is put into the lake of fire to be tortured for all eternity. So "alive" meaning self aware and cogent in thought and argument.
Did you know that there was NO torture involved in any penalty for breaking God's laws in Israel? There were not even any prisons. God dealt with his people in a just way...there were capital crimes for which the death penalty was administered (all clearly outlined in God's law, so there was no excuse that could be offered). If you took someone's life willfully, you had to pay with your own. But even if you did so accidentally, then there was still a penalty to pay. There were the cities of refuge where one could flee to avoid being put to death for manslaughter. There was no incarceration as such, but the person who took a life accidentally could find safety there in one of those cities, until the death of the High Priest, after which he was free to return to his home.
Other crimes committed like theft had a compensation system. The thief had to pay back more than he stole. It was a great system.
The devil will be consigned to the "lake of fire" which is called "the second death".....there is no conscious torture there...only eternal death.
God has no need to torture anyone, and in order to suffer eternally, one would have to have eternal life....God grants eternal life only to the righteous, not the wicked.
If God were to fiendishly torture 'souls' in eternal flames, then he makes himself like the ones he has condemned to be punished.
God showed the faithless Israelites who sacrificed their children in the fire to Molech, what he thought of the practice....
"They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’"
It never entered God's mind or heart to do such a thing.
As the snake in the garden of eden he uses logic to suggest Adam and Eve will not die after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which Eve assumes is true, but she has no way of knowing that satan is lying, as she has no knowledge of good and evil.
It was a test of their obedience, not their knowledge. The reason shouldn't have mattered.
The TKGE represented God's sovereign right to set the limits of their freedom. He made those limits clear.
There are many paradoxs in the story of Adam and Eve. They were not eternal, but they were naked and did not have a moral outlook other than they could talk with God.
They were created mortal like all of God's earthly 'souls'...but this did not mean that they HAD to die...only that they COULD if they disobeyed their God. There was only one very reasonable command....and they had no sin nature to corrupt their thinking. So there was no excuse for their disobedience even though they blamed everyone for their actions except themselves.
They had a rebel spirit who was placed in a guardianship position who had envied the worship that the humans would give to God. He abused his free will and was now wanting to use that same abuse to separate the humans from God.....it was the only way that he could be their god and ruler.
It was strange God put the tree of knowledge in the garden which obviously implies access and opportunity while saying if you eat of it you will die. He could of put a fence around it and stopped access, which administrators do around dangerous buildings etc. So in a state of not knowing what is wrong they knew the downside of the fruit is death but the upside is of being like God himself. The story concludes with God admitting that the ability to choose morality means if man obtains immortality this is a problem.
I have a very different take on that why "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" was there in the garden.
Everything in God's creation was created in perfect balance.....all things have an equal opposite, and we see these in our everyday life.....in...out, up...down, forward...backwards, for...against, happy...sad, full...empty etc. The only opposite that God wanted to withhold from his human children was the opposite of good.
With the degree of good that he would give his children, God needed to make sure that the opposite degree of evil would never come into the world to spoil the life he planned for them....but being made in God's image, he had also given his children free will, which meant that he could not keep it from them by force, they had to choose not to know it by obediently following God's instructions. To help them make the right choice, he put a very stiff penalty on taking something that the Creator had placed in his own jurisdiction. It was his exclusive property. It wasn't that they needed to know evil to carry on with life, but the devil made it seem as if it was vital to know what God knows, and that he was somehow holding back something that would be of benefit to them.....and he called God a liar saying that they would not die if they ate the fruit....was he? God allowed them to see where their uninhibited free will would take them.
After consuming the fruit, both became aware that they were naked, whereas it didn't cross their minds before. What had a knowledge of good and evil done to them? For the first time they felt shame. Sin was now invading both their minds and bodies. God evicted them both from the garden and out into the untamed world outside. The ground was cursed so that it yielded very little for all their hard work. Instead of the lush fruit of endless variety God had provided for them, now they would have to till the ground and "eat bread" until they died and the dust from which they were made, reclaimed them...."for dust you are and to dust you will return" Adam was told.
The way to "the tree of life" which was their only means to live forever, was barred indefinitely. (Genesis 3:20-2-24)
In the garden of eden the problem for salvation is solving death and gaining eternal life. In revelation access to the tree of life is given to those who have been washed by the lamb. So one could say eternity begins with the approval of the Father, who grants access to the means of continual sustenance.
Indeed, but there are qualifications needed to have access to the trees of life again. God requires the same of us as he did for Adam and his wife....complete obedience to the commands of the Creator.
What we lost in Eden, Jesus paid with his life to give back to us.
What God starts...he finishes. (Isaiah 55:11)
