{"id":559,"date":"2009-03-30T17:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T17:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/no-devil-in-the-craft\/"},"modified":"2009-03-30T17:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T17:06:00","slug":"no-devil-in-the-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/03\/no-devil-in-the-craft.html","title":{"rendered":"No Devil in the Craft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last Thursday night ABC\u2019s Nightline<\/em> featured a debate on \u201cdoes Satan exist?<\/a>\u201d I didn\u2019t see it. For one thing, it didn\u2019t look interesting enough to keep me up past my bedtime. And I had a pretty good idea what it would look like. Dallas Morning News Religion Blogmeister Jeff Weiss said<\/a> \u201cThis was to real debate what air guitar is to Carlos Santana. It may have been entertaining in parts, in a car-wreck-and-flames kinda way. But edifying? Smarter to have watched this week\u2019s episode of South Park<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no devil in the Craft\u201d is a line from Sandra Bullock\u2019s character in Practical Magic <\/em>(which is a pretty good movie, despite being a chick flick), a line that many Pagans have repeated when accused of \u201cdevil worship\u201d and similar nonsense. Another, more confrontational way of putting it is \u201cSatan is part of your pantheon, not mine.\u201d <\/p>\n

All true. But that still leaves the question, does Satan exist?<\/p>\n

As someone who is first and foremost a universalist, the concept of a God of Evil, an adversary who is created by a God of Good but exists to oppose him, doesn\u2019t make sense. It\u2019s an early attempt to explain the presence of evil, and it comes from Zoroastrianism and most likely from the religions that preceded Zoroastrianism in the Middle East. There is no comparable figure in any of the European pagan religions or in the Eastern religions.<\/p>\n

But it seems odd for Pagans to simply dismiss Satan when we worship (or at least acknowledge) virtually every other god, goddess, demigod, or fae known to humankind. If Satan didn\u2019t exist, he has surely been created and sustained by all the attention he\u2019s been given over the past couple thousand years. <\/p>\n

Below is the comment I posted on the DMN Religion Blog:<\/p>\n

That humans can do great evil to their fellow humans is, sadly, irrefutable. In asking \u201cwhy?\u201d it is much more palatable to blame it on \u201cthe forces of evil\u201d or \u201cthe Evil One\u201d rather than putting the blame where it belongs \u2013 on the humans who do such things.<\/p>\n

Because if some humans can do great evil, then all humans can do great evil \u2013 and that includes you and me. The Stanford Prison Experiments and the complicity of ordinary Germans in atrocities of the Nazis show that the capacity for great evil lies in all of us, not just the worst of us. <\/p>\n

Does Satan exist? Yes \u2013 we created him. And he will continue to live until we \u2013 individually and collectively \u2013 accept that we have the capacity for great evil as well as great good, and choose to do good and not evil every day of our lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Pagans, we are wise to ignore Satan, to refuse to feed the thoughtform of an Evil One, and to accept responsibility for what we do and don\u2019t do. Would that our Christian friends would do the same.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday night ABC\u2019s Nightline featured a debate on \u201cdoes Satan exist?\u201d I didn\u2019t see it. For one thing, it didn\u2019t look interesting enough to keep me up past my bedtime. And I had a pretty good idea what it would look like. Dallas Morning News Religion Blogmeister Jeff Weiss said \u201cThis was to real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nNo Devil in the Craft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last Thursday night ABC\u2019s Nightline featured a debate on \u201cdoes Satan exist?\u201d I didn\u2019t see it. 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