No really, I don't believe in him either.

[thaiboxerken]

What gets me is that they don't understand that Satan is just another god in their belief system.

 

[angrysoba]

Hmmmm...this sounds very odd to me indeed, because I don't think I have ever met anyone who has said, with a straight face, that they believe in the existence of Satan. I have met plenty of believers in God, but almost all of them seem to think Satan is something metaphorical rather than a literally existing being.

 

[MikeG]

Are you sure? I know that most people don't go to church or pray and may have put 'No religion' on the Census Form but I would bet most of them would profess some kind of vague belief in a God.

No. Not in my experience.

The over-riding response to religion in the UK isn't pro or anti, it is disinterest. No-one gives it a thought. It is a non-subject. You'd get the same blank looks if you started asking the populace about religion as if you started asking them about hydro-thermal vents or the governance of Botswana.

I should nuance that a bit. There is certainly a different attitude amongst older people, who were brought up differently. Ask people over 60 or 70 years old and they will be more pro-religion. These are the only people who go to church (them and recent immigrants from eastern Europe). My village church has room for about 500 people, I'd guess. There is a note pinned to the door saying "next service in the village hall" because with 6 regulars in the congregation, all over 70, they can't justify having the heating on for 2 days in advance of a service, which is what it takes to get the place warm.

And as for satan, well, you've just got to be kidding. I have never met in my entire life anyone who has ever taken the idea even the tiniest bit seriously. It is a ridiculous nonsensical idea to most people, but again, a non-subject. If you tried to have a sensible conversation with an adult about satan, it would get the same sort of reaction as if you tried to talk about the tooth fairy. Seriously.

I can't fathom the concept of the "leader of the western world" having large numbers of its populace taking this nonsense seriously. Surely most people who hold to the notion, do so on the grounds that it is an analogy, a metaphor?

Mike

 

[Craig B]

Huh? Are atheists supposed to believe in ghosts?

Probably yes, except the Holy Ghost of course. More seriously, are there any significant number of atheists who while rejecting gods, can believe in other elements of the supernatural?

 

[angrysoba]

And as for satan, well, you've just got to be kidding. I have never met in my entire life anyone who has ever taken the idea even the tiniest bit seriously. It is a ridiculous nonsensical idea to most people, but again, a non-subject. If you tried to have a sensible conversation with an adult about satan, it would get the same sort of reaction as if you tried to talk about the tooth fairy. Seriously.

Yeah, this is a good way of putting it because a lot of religious people get very irked if you ask them "Do you believe in God?" and the next question is "Do you believe in the tooth fairy?" They would say that the second question is a deliberate attempt to ridicule their perfectly respectable belief in God. I think the reaction to "Do you believe in Satan?" would be almost always the same, something like "Oh! Will you stop being so childish! Christians don't believe in the literal existence of the Devil!"

It's certainly true of Church of England people. That said, I grew up as a Catholic, and Catholics are supposed to believe in Satan even though many of them publically tell their congregations that nobody believes in that kind of thing any more.

Interesting article here that seems to have just been republished is an obituary of Pope John, written by Hitchens in 1978:

It was only in Lent last year that the Pope insisted, in case of doubt among the flock, that the devil was an actual being, who dominated the temporal creation of God.

 

[The_Fire]

Not as an atheist, but as a neopagan, I've watched more than once as people I've talked with wrap their brain around the concept that satan/the devil is a christian concept.

You can almost SEE the little hamster running the wheel in their brain trip, slam into the side of the wheel and ping-pong all over the place. It's kind of funny.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

You don't believe in Superman? When did you become a henchman of Lex Luthor?

 

[Quinn]

I can't fathom the concept of the "leader of the western world" having large numbers of its populace taking this nonsense seriously.

Oh how I wish that were true. I'm sure it's quite different in the UK, but here in the USA, you might recall a certain Rick Santorum, who came frighteningly close to securing a presidential nomination. Here's his take on Satan:

Satan has his sights on the United States of America. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? [...]

He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they’re smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say “what could be the impact of academia falling?” Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I’m going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

These are words that he actually said out loud, in public, into a microphone that he knew was turned on. To him, Satan is not some vague concept or personification of human evil, but a specific, conscious entity with a will and the ability to affect the world. And for a while it looked like that guy had a very real shot at being one of the two people the USA would elect president. That fact should give you some idea of the number of people we have enough people here who don't think the above is utterly yipping crazy.

 

[Recovering Agnostic]

Yeah, this is a good way of putting it because a lot of religious people get very irked if you ask them "Do you believe in God?" and the next question is "Do you believe in the tooth fairy?" They would say that the second question is a deliberate attempt to ridicule their perfectly respectable belief in God. I think the reaction to "Do you believe in Satan?" would be almost always the same, something like "Oh! Will you stop being so childish! Christians don't believe in the literal existence of the Devil!"

It's certainly true of Church of England people. That said, I grew up as a Catholic, and Catholics are supposed to believe in Satan even though many of them publically tell their congregations that nobody believes in that kind of thing any more.

Interesting article here that seems to have just been republished is an obituary of Pope John, written by Hitchens in 1978:

This needs further definition. The Church of England covers masses of theological ground, from woolly hopeful agnosticism and belief in Just Being Nice To Each Other, all the way through to the conservative charismatic evangelicalism of Holy Trinity Brompton and beyond. The average parish church is likely to include a lot of people whose Christianity is more cultural than creedal, but I'd put a lot of money on there being at least some who believe in Satan as a bare minimum. At the HTB end, such a belief is effectively mandatory. The CofE even had a bishop, Graham Dow^WP, who believed that anal sex caused demons to enter the rectum.

And yes, there are plenty of other churches where this sort of stuff is taken very seriously indeed. I've been at Christian events with thousands of people all fervently praying against what they saw as demonic attack, because something bad had happened to someone. (With 10,000 people in one place for a week, someone had an accident? No kidding.) In one case, on a large campsite full of tents and caravans, a gas canister exploded. No one was hurt. Hardly a surprising event, and no serious consequences, but they were scared out of their minds.

 

[ehcks]

Oh how I wish that were true. I'm sure it's quite different in the UK, but here in the USA, you might recall a certain Rick Santorum, who came frighteningly close to securing a presidential nomination. Here's his take on Satan:

I took it more as an "I'm stupid and I'm proud of it" speech, using religion as a defense against people calling him out for saying educating yourself makes you a bad person.

 

[joesixpack]

I knew one fundamentalist Christian who told me that every single other Christian religion outside of his narrowly defined theology were actually devil worshipers, and that every non-Christian religion were actually atheistic. I was unsure where that left self-identifying atheists. I said "I think you're mistaken"

"MY MINISTER TOLD ME!!" was his answer. I didn't pursue the argument past that.

 

[Loss Leader]

Hmmmm...this sounds very odd to me indeed, because I don't think I have ever met anyone who has said, with a straight face, that they believe in the existence of Satan. I have met plenty of believers in God, but almost all of them seem to think Satan is something metaphorical rather than a literally existing being.

Had an ex-girlfriend from Union, South Carolina who believed that Satan was as real as you or I. She believed people could be born without souls. She believed in just about every crazy medieval pagan concept that got imported into Christianity.

 

[godless dave]

I can't fathom the concept of the "leader of the western world" having large numbers of its populace taking this nonsense seriously. Surely most people who hold to the notion, do so on the grounds that it is an analogy, a metaphor?

Nope. I wish more people outside the US understood this. If they did, they might stop looking at us as their "leader".

 

[angrysoba]

Had an ex-girlfriend from Union, South Carolina who believed that Satan was as real as you or I.

I hear he had a rough childhood, fell in with the wrong crowd and really just didn't get enough love. He's into origami; he can't be all bad.

She believed people could be born without souls.

I hope you told her she got that right.

She believed in just about every crazy medieval pagan concept that got imported into Christianity.

Uh-oh! Without wanting to pry or anything, why did things not work out?



Of course, I do know that there are people who believe in the Devil in a literal way, I just don't remember meeting any.

 

[angrysoba]

This needs further definition. The Church of England covers masses of theological ground, from woolly hopeful agnosticism and belief in Just Being Nice To Each Other, all the way through to the conservative charismatic evangelicalism of Holy Trinity Brompton and beyond. The average parish church is likely to include a lot of people whose Christianity is more cultural than creedal, but I'd put a lot of money on there being at least some who believe in Satan as a bare minimum. At the HTB end, such a belief is effectively mandatory. The CofE even had a bishop, Graham Dow^WP, who believed that anal sex caused demons to enter the rectum.

And yes, there are plenty of other churches where this sort of stuff is taken very seriously indeed. I've been at Christian events with thousands of people all fervently praying against what they saw as demonic attack, because something bad had happened to someone. (With 10,000 people in one place for a week, someone had an accident? No kidding.) In one case, on a large campsite full of tents and caravans, a gas canister exploded. No one was hurt. Hardly a surprising event, and no serious consequences, but they were scared out of their minds.

Hmmm... I remember that Dot Cotton in Eastenders used to quote the Bible all the time. Can you remember if she said a lot about the Devil? Also, I remember Parson Nathaniel in War of the Worlds thought the Martians were demons.

 

[MikeG]

.........She believed people could be born without souls. She believed in just about every crazy medieval pagan concept........

Well, she was (almost) right about this one. There is no such thing. If she had said "people are all born without souls" we could have said "bingo".

 

[marplots]

I try to go with the more general, "I don't believe in the supernatural."

Seems to cover the gamut well enough and avoids the atheist label without dropping the idea. It's also a good way to connect with people, since there is very likely at least some bit of woo they don't accept either.

 

[gabeygoat]

A majority of people in the US believe in a literal Satan and Hell. Not sure how people don't know these people. according to this one, it's more than believe Darwin's theory of evolution.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/29/us-usa-religion-beliefs-idUSN2922875820071129

 

[Mark6]

I took it more as an "I'm stupid and I'm proud of it" speech, using religion as a defense against people calling him out for saying educating yourself makes you a bad person.

You may see it that way, but I am quite sure Santorum does not consider himself in any way stupid, does not feel any need for self-justification, and meant every word of it.

 

[Tormac]

To the OP

I think that if you took the time to have a conversation about this, you would find that you and the theist are using incompatible definitions of the word “believe”.

I have heard this notion before from Christians, that atheists are actually Satanists, and once, after a convoluted conversation trying to understand how this is logically possible, it came down to the fact that the Christian was using a definition of “atheist” that came from a narrow and specific use of the word “believe” to make the leap that atheists actually know that God, Angles, Satan, and all the other supernatural stuff in the bible are real, only atheists have decided to rebel against God and side with Satan.

She chose to use the definition of belief to mean that someone has full faith in the love, honor, and steadfastness of a thing, as in “I believe totally in my wife, she would never have an affair”. Whenever they heard that an Atheist did not believe in God, it registered in their mind as the atheist did not trust God, or love God, not that the atheist was questioning the very existence of God. Talking with her was a semantic duel, and as long as she could find a way to define things the way they should be in her own mind, she felt that she was “winning” the conversation.