Satan is the easiest scapegoat for the generalization of evil. To claim Satan is behind collective evil is lazy. Use your brain. Especially don’t claim to be esoteric and rely on conventional superstition – this one really gets my goat. Take the difficult path and earn wisdom.
Humans often prefer the scapegoat to lay blame. It is much easier to blame a single entity for the woes of a community, localized or global. It is a mob mentality to blame others without evidence. Jews were often blamed for plagues in the Middle Ages and murdered for it. Germans blamed Jews for their post-WWI depression, ushering in Hitler. He had easy answers and solutions.
It is much easier to point to a metaphysical entity for the evils of mankind. Humans have a great capacity for both good and evil, whether systematic or anarchic. To blame some cosmic devil for the evils of homo sapiens is dissociation and folly. The idea of absolute evil and absolute good is a metaphysical comfort adopted by our ancestors long ago in the form of Manichaeism and other mystery traditions who inherited the idea, from what historians surmise, Persian religion. The appropriation of the idea into popular religion is almost inevitable considering the powerful tool it is for religious leaders to speak of a single enemy and the comfort it gives one to know that humans are not entirely responsible for the evil of the world – that one day this idea of absolute good will triumph. If you choose to accept the conventional religion your mommy and daddy gave you, then shut your eyes and go back to sleep. If you seek the difficult truth, be courageous amidst the comfortable and brainless solutions of popular religion.
For those who find it too hard to remove their lips from the religious pipe: Even if the Devil exists, it is still ignorant to blame it for the evils of mankind. Wake up.
Fig. 1 The Devil. The 15th trump from the Waite tarot deck. Look real close. The humans have horns too.
SM Dotson 