Mitchell Stephens is working on a book about the history of atheism, and he reports the striking absence, in the atheistical literature he’s been reading, of the Devil. “Am I reading badly”, he asks, “or does the devil really not fit, even as an object of scorn, in the atheist’s cosmos?” In my comment on Mitchell’s post, I explore an idea that I’ve been mulling for some time now.

If there were a Devil, and if he were as devious and clever as he is purported to be, and if his most persistent desire is to corrupt God’s highest creation, Man, then would he attempt that corruption through drug addicts, drunks, and various types of thugs? Not a very attractive picture of evil.

No, I think that the Devil works by presenting himself as the messenger of God, and persuading those who accept him to behave in wicked ways – ways that contribute to the increase of pain and sorrow in the world and to each individual’s own degradation and unhappiness. I think that the Devil exists in the person of those priests and ministers, rabbis and imams, who persuade their congregations that hatred of others is the will of God, that greedy accumulation of wealth is not only acceptable but proof of God’s grace, that the environment was given to Man for his exploitation, that those who think or behave differently, or belong to different tribes, or speak a different language, or have skin of a different color, or who accept different scriptures, deserve death at the hands of the faithful – i.e. those who are deluded by the Devil’s imposture.

So the Devil, in my way of thinking, exists, and his minions include Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Muqtada Al-Sadr, Baruch Goldstein, Binyamen Kahane, and Pope Benedict, among many, sadly many others. If you look for those who are causing most sorrow in the world, and leading the greatest number of people to behave cruelly, ungenerously, and murderously, it is those and their allies. To the Devil they’ve gone, and to the Devil may they go!