  |
|
|
|
Belief in a red horned being responsible for all evil may seem ridiculous in this day and age. But in a world where belief in Creationism, UFOs manned by aliens and homeopathy, magical thinking is the order of the day. Did not Pope Paul 6, as recently as 1972, claim that :
"We come face to face with sin which is a perversion of human freedom and the profound cause of death because it involves detachment from God, the source of life. And then sin in its turn becomes the occasion and the effect of interference in us and our work by a dark, hostile agent, the Devil. Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others. It is a terrible reality, mysterious and frightening." ("Confronting the Devil's Power", 15 November 1972) One-third of religious believers believe in Satan, and is an integral part of many sects and cults. Certainly there is no doubt that the idea of a singular powerful enemy is memetically powerful. Such an enemy provides cohesion and drive to the group of believers. It also permits cult leaders to use opposition to the enemy as a pivotal concept of the slave-morality they present to their followers. In the case of Christian sects, this expresses itself in two main ways. Fighting Satan certainly is a unifying influence, a reason to stay within the sect, and a motivation to make new converts as well as a sense of urgency. The existence of Satan also reduces the whole of morality to a simple black-and-white issue : either you are for us or against us. Because only one's fellow believers (and similar sects) fear Satan and fights his influence, someone who is not a member of the sect is necessarily an agent or sympathizer of Satan. Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, all sects believe that their methods are the best, and that everyone else is misguided at best, deluded by Satan or satanic influences (at least, what their own propaganda tells them satanist influences are). From an atheistic point of view, positing the existence of a personification of evil is an easy way to evade the problem of evil. While people who consciously espouse religious ideas do not use such excuses, most people have no qualms using Satan as an excuse for the existence of evil, and even their own personal evil. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Satan as a tool of evasion in Atheism is owned by Francois Tremblay. Permission to republish Satan as a tool of evasion in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
