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ADAH:thy God is alone; and is he happy?Lonely, and good?He is not so; he hathThe angels and the mortals to make happy,And thus becomes so in diffusing joy.What else can joy be, but the spreading joy? (1.1.476-81).The Devil’s response is to turn the question back onto Adah, to say, “ask your ownheart; /It is not tranquil” (1.1.483-4). Adah, at least, is not projecting her currentmood onto God, although she might well be projecting her general attitude, her beliefthat love is the solution to everything (3.1.148-9). At this point, Lucifer is theimmediate cause of Adah’s unhappiness, and if unhappiness is evidence of evil, thenhe has just implicated himself as a cause of evil, because he disclaims any connectionbetween himself and God. The consistent theme in these representations of God isthat the viewers represent God out of their own feelings: their image of God is only animage of themselves. In so doing, the drama presents a very accurate picture ofreligion as it most often operates, entirely subjectively. This places any conception ofany real God beyond reach, problematizing the identification of (im)piety.Such a mystification of the nature of the Deity is in accordance with Byron’s viewsexpressed elsewhere, particularly in the aporetic discourse of Don Juan. At a pointshortly before or during the composition of Cain, Byron wrote in his journal of‘Detached Thoughts’,If according to some speculations – you could prove the World many thousandyears older than the Mosaic Chronology – or if you could knock up Adam &Eve and the Apple and Serpent – still what is to be put up in their stead? – orhow is the difficulty removed? things must have had a beginning – and whatmatters it when – or how? […] a Creator is a more natural imagination than afortuitous concourse of atoms – all things remount to a fountain – though theymay flow to an Ocean. (BLJ 9.47, #101).333