Satan Is One of the Good Guys!

Satan (Lucifer, the Devil, Beelzebub, whatever) has gotten a lot of very bad PR. But if you stop and think about it, it’s hardly justified. One could argue that Satan, though hardly a poster boy for the Salvation Army, is angelic relative to his former boss, commonly called God or Jehovah. However, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter as both Satan and God/Jehovah are as fictional as Winston Smith (“1984”), Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter.  

If Satan popped into the United Nations today – a tourist obviously – and was recognised (those security cameras are everywhere) what would or could that international body actually accuse him of and charge him with? Could Satan be hauled off to the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice and tried for something – say crimes against humanity? Since he is the most evil being that ever was or ever will be, you’d think they’d not only throw the book at him but the whole contents of the New York City Public Library – and that’s a lot of thrown books!

Could Satan be accused of assault, being drunk and disorderly, book burning, bribery or blackmail, child abuse, counterfeiting, corruption, drug use and abuse, drug trafficking, eating meat on a Friday, illegal gambling, graffiti, infidelity, hijacking, being a homosexual, incest, jaywalking, littering, murder, being a paedophile, being a pervert, polygamy, practicing medicine without a licence, prostitution, rape, robbery, sex with a minor, spitting in public, tax evasion or avoidance, terrorism, witchcraft, even cheating at cards? No; none of the above.

Can Satan be accused of genocide? No, but God surely can be. The proof of that pudding is in the Old Testament itself - something to do with forty days and nights of rather inclement and stormy weather. Then there are these Godly bloodthirsty passages from Deuteronomy: 10-17:

¹⁰When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

 ¹¹And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

¹²And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

 ¹³And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

 ¹⁴But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

 ¹⁵Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

 ¹⁶But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:

 ¹⁷But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

Satan isn’t as bloodthirsty as God, that’s for goddamn sure!

Now Satan did some rather nasty things to Job, but that was with God’s full authority and approval, so Satan escapes that rap.

I can’t recall anywhere where Satan has actually advocated anyone breaking terrestrial laws. Satan hasn’t issued his version of his Ten Commandments.

Can Satan be accused of mutiny or rebellion? You bet he can and a damn good thing too as he (and his followers – those fallen angels) mutinied against the worst tyrant civilization has ever recorded. The tyrant is God; the written record the Old Testament. Satan and his followers get thumbs up for his and their mutinous action. Now mutiny in the heavens is probably something outside terrestrial jurisdiction and is ultimately none of our damn business. Mutiny itself is not evil; it depends on the circumstances, and ousting a tyrant is a good a circumstance as you can think of. I’m sure we all cheered when Fletcher Christian gave the finger to Captain Bligh on the HMS Bounty.

Can Satan be accused of being a smooth-talking, snake-oil salesman? Yes, but that’s hardly a crime as even back then its Caveat Emptor. He smooth-talked Eve into biting that apple; he tried to smooth-talk (tempt) Jesus too. In fact, this smooth-talking is the basis for all of  Satan’s bad PR. He smooth-talks those willing to listen and lead people away from the love of God, but nobody in their right mind who has read the Old Testament can believe for a moment in a loving God, so IMHO Satan is to be commended for trying to steer the great unwashed away from the tyrant we so loving refer to as God. Now of course history is written by the winners, and the Bible is God’s version of things, so its little wonder Satan gets a bad rap since Satan’s mutiny ultimately failed. I mean if the South had won the American Civil War, I very much doubt that Abe Lincoln would have quite the positive image he has today.

What about Satanism or Satanic rituals? We’ve all heard of that, but you won’t find any connection between those and the Satan of the Bible which after all is THE source. Just because some people worship Satan and engage in religious rituals in support of that worship doesn’t of necessity mean that Satan wrote that ‘how to worship me with satanic rituals’ textbook for them – unlike God’s Bible. God is very clear about how He is to be worshiped and adored.

Can Satan be accused of hellish torture? God, who allegedly created all things, has to take full responsibility for not only creating Satan but hell as well. You can’t blame Satan for hell and associated tortures – that’s your ever loving God’s doing. And Satan has nothing to do with satanic ritual abuses – that’s a human ‘invention’. “The Devil made me do it” is just an all too typical human trait that shifts the blame away from where it actually belongs – on the human’s head.

Satan certainly can not be accused of any and all traffic offences and violations. Those are all null and void – no road rage here. Ditto no computer hacking or any other nasties that require modern technology. 

Can Satan be accused of trespassing? Well no doubt God would argue that Satan was trespassing at the Garden of Eden when he shape-shifted into a serpent and chatted up Eve. So, okay, Satan can be charged with trespass. That’s not usually a hanging offence except at Area 51 and similar top secret military bases and locations, but the Garden of Eden hardly qualifies as an example. Besides, if God is so all-powerful, why didn’t He just smite Satan then and there and be done with His one time subordinate? I mean God is hardly squeamish when it comes to cold blooded murder. Of course that would make for a very boring story; the Bible would hardly be a best seller if Satan had been bumped off in Genesis! I mean we can’t have James Bond kill off the villain in chapter one and then have the rest of the chapters alternate between casino locations, bedroom scenes, and being chewed out by M. But on the grounds that God probably didn’t care about the Bible reading something akin to a 007 novel, God could have eliminated His opponent in the beginning but didn’t. Something’s fishy.

And that fishiness leads to wonder, what is the origin of God and of Satan and of monotheism itself?  Clearly in the historical record, there has to be a first accounting; a first mention. And there is! What’s ultimately filtered down to us as God and Satan is nothing more than the invention by Zoroaster (Persia), known also as Zarathustra, from roughly 600 BC. His invention was the start of the transition from mythological polytheism to real reality monotheism. He invented the first monotheistic religion (called Zoroastrianism obviously).

The rational was that it was way more convenient to take all of the thousands of good and bad polytheistic gods and roll them into just one dualism; one example from each of the two extremes, which were called Ahura Mazda (good deity) and Angra Mainyu, sometimes known as Ahriman (bad deity).  Polytheistic Jews held in Babylonian captivity around 600 BC, absorbed this new idea and when eventually repatriated to their homeland (present day Israel) adopted the new monotheistic dualism, and the rest, as they say, is history. Everything spiralled out of control like fast food chains from that original invention, Zoroastrianism branching off into variations on the new theme (maybe to avoid plagiarism). Then, as now, new bright ideas provide ample scope for spin-offs. New and improved imitations branched off; all the monotheistic variations starting with Judaism, hence the Islam, and Christian varieties we know today.

It was Zoroaster who first conceived of the ultimate final battle between good and evil – what we call today the (oft forecast, never arriving) apocalypse. He of course set himself up as chief prophet vowing his second coming (sound familiar?). His religion also promised a final judgement, a resurrection and an afterlife (also sound familiar?). However, Zoroaster never totally wiped out polytheism. Consider the following Biblical verse: Psalm 95:3 (King James Version) “For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” That “gods” plural just won’t fade away, and that polytheistic reference is just one of many in the Bible. And since the Bible is the word of God, we note just from that one verse that He has a bit of an ego; He’s really more than just a little bit up Himself!

However, the credibility of Zoroaster and his invention of monotheism is a bit suss. The priests of Zoroastrianism were known as Magi, from which we get the word “magic”. They formally institutionalised the concept of what we call today astrology, charting the movements of the stars in the heavens to predict that ultimate apocalypse. Magic and astrology don’t normally sit well with rational people.

In conclusion, the great fallacy here, quite apart from the likelihood that both God and Satan are as fictional as “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, is the great unwashed swallowing hook, line and sinker what their religious superiors (priests, rabbis, clergy in any shape manner or form), via selective picking and choosing from Biblical texts, preach to them. The message universally is God is good; Satan is evil. Yet the unwashed sheep, those religious flocks, have never apparently bother to actually read the Old Testament evidence for the accuracy of that good/bad labelling themselves. 

Far closer to the facts of the matter is that God is the ultimate in incredible evilness; Satan has a few flaws, but at least his heart’s in the right place – he never tried to drown the whole lot of us! As far as God is concerned, He has His chosen people; the rest of humanity can take a long walk off a very short pier for all He cares! The various current monotheistic religions that evolved from the original monotheistic Zoroastrianism have preached everything half-ass backwards. IMHO, God wears the black hat; Satan the white hat. God is General Santa Anna (one who shows no quarter, shows no mercy, takes no prisoners – everyone is put to the sword); Satan is Davy Crockett (fighting the good fight against all the odds). God wins in the short term but eventually Texas exists!