[outlier]

Once in a while the importance of Satan pops up in a lesson manual and he's been the subject of numerous conference talks in the past, all pointing to the importance of understanding and accepting the existence of the devil. I still haven't found a good reason why this should be.

Evil existed before Satan did. If that weren't the case, then he couldn't have chosen his contrary path. Even if evil *didn't* exist since forever, I still don't see the necessity of having to have an embodiment of evil exist in order for evil to exist.

Some people, I understand, find it easier to have a persona against which to fight their moral battles. I suppose that for some it's easier to fight "Satan" than it is to fight thousands of years of human nature that's often resulted in people being selfish, vain, and hurtful. But from a purely rational standpoint, a person shouldn't need an Emmanuel Goldstein in order to fight something bad.

That's sort of where I start having a problem with doctrinal insitence on the existence of the Devil. At the risk of trusting Nietzsche above, you know, the teachings of many apostles (sort of)... When Nietzsche said "God is dead", the context of the statement (by my reading) indicates that he wasn't being anti-religious as such (although I think he was anti-religious). Instead, he was trying to get people to take responsibility for their own lives and their own self-improvement. He was saying: "don't expect God to make you a better person, that's up to you".

I have a very similar sentiment toward Satan. Many people sin or are tempted to sin and blame that situation on the devil. How is this helpful? People should recognize that they have faults and that these faults are THEIRS. Blame-shifting over to Satan seems like the moral equivalent of political responses to Hurricane Katrina: "something really bad happened, but it's definitely not my fault".

When I hear someone say "Satan was really tempting me to break the word of wisdom", it always makes me think "no, you put yourself in a situation wherein breaking the word of wisdom would be easy and, in the meantime, you have an internal curiosity regarding the potential benefits of certain substances which you have not to this point managed to fully quell". How is the blaming Satan response better? People are imperfect and "fighting the devil" seems a less direct path toward perfection than working out your own faults.

I'm not saying that I necessarily don't believe in Satan -- I have no strong feelings one way or the other. I don't think that people who believe in Satan are idiots (although, as mentioned, I see some potential risks in this). However, I also don't understand the value of insisting that members of the church believe in the existence of a literal devil.

o