Satan

There has been some discussion as to whether the devil is real. One thing I know, if you ever see anybody running around looking like the guy in the above photograph, if it isn't Halloween, you might want to check and see if he knows it's not Halloween (and if he says he's not dressed up for Halloween, then you might want to call your local mental institution and let them know you've got one for them); that's not really what the devil looks like.

Wiccans beleive that there is no devil, that's part of Judeo-Christian "mythology." Of course, some people that call themselves Christians don't believe in Satan, either. I think that we can all agree that evil exists. Some people think that there is no intelligence guiding the evil in this world (sometimes it's hard to believe that there is any intelligence in this world, period). May I suggest that an intellect great enough to guide all of the evil in this world, is intelligent enough to be subtle about it. After all, if we can be seduced into believing that there is no evil force conspiring against us, then that makes it that much harder for us to fight against that force. How can you fight against something you don't believe in? You are then reduced to fighting the symptoms, rather than the problem itself. Familiar with the practice of bloodletting? Bloodletting was the practice of treating a fever by drawing blood from the patient; it did reduce the fever, because with less blood, it was actually harder for the body to generate heat and circulate that heat to the body. What 18th century doctors didn't realize was that the fever was part of the body's defense mechanism--trying to use an elevated body temperature to kill the infection. Drawing a significant amount of blood to reduce the fever not only circumvented the body's natural attempt to kill the bacteria that were the real problem, it also weakened the body and made it harder for the defenses to ward off the infection. Very few patients survived bloodletting, yet it remained the treatment of choice for decades.

I remember reading a comic book as a kid where Lex Luthor managed to design an electronic circuit (while in prison) and got one of his cronies to implant it in the latest NASA satellite. The circuit had a hypnotic effect on the world and made people forget all about Superman. So, no matter what Superman does, people always find a way to explain it away as some sort of natural phenomona. It takes him the rest of the issue to figure out what happened, and then burn out the circuit with his heat vision. When I read about it, I couldn't help but think, why would this even bother him? He could do all the good he wanted to, and marry Lois Lane, and never have to worry about the bad guys trying to get even by killing her... Of course, as a reader, I wanted the issue to end with everything back to normal, which it did, but it stuck in my brain because it just didn't make sense; Luthor did Supes a great favor, and then Superman went and messed it all up for himself.

This is exactly the situation that Lucifer is in (except for the doing good part). He can walk to and fro upon the earth, plant thoughts in peoples' heads, and have them think that those thoughts are their own, or worse, that they came from God. Most people don't even suspect Satan, because they either don't believe he exists, or that he is some red guy with horns and a tail, carrying a pitchfork. Beelzebub was created as an angel; a spirit. When he got kicked out of Heaven, his appearance was not changed. The image usually associated with Ol' Scratch is actually derived from the fauns of Roman mythology; I don't know why, I guess an image of a non-existant creature works just as well as the image of a creature with no physical being...