hello…im new at this…idk how to post a comment or if im doing it now…anyways…i saw that thing you wrote on why the devil has goat like features…idk how long ago you wrote it but…on onw part you put that “Pan also had the advantage of being pagan”…why do you say that?..im not saying your wrong or rigth cus idk at all…im just curious as to why you would say that???
(1) You are posting a comment, so welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board.
(2) We like having a link, and you are talking about Why is Satan often shown as having goatlike features?
Well, I certainly can’t speak for Cecil Adams, but it looks to me like he’s simply pointing out that Pan was part of the Greek/Roman pantheon that the early Christian church was displacing, and co-opting some of their iconography to represent the oppositional forces within the new religion was just good marketing technique. This use of ‘pagan’ is historically common–see, eg., the Wikipedia article, which states that the term pagan “is primarily used in a historical context, referring to Greco-Roman polytheism as well as the polytheistic traditions of Europe before Christianization.” It’s only fairly recently that the term has started to be used to refer to any specific, active religion. (Or as an acronym for ‘People Against Goodness And Normalcy’. 
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lala8989, I’m puzzled by your question. What about Pan being pagan do you want to clarify?
If your question is why Cecil would describe that as being “an advantage”, he was speaking from the context of Christians wanting to label Pan as the Devil - it makes sense to pick an icon from a competing religion and equate it with your form of evil. Makes them pesky Pagans all the more easy to brand as evil. It’s also a kind of carryover of the Monotheism thing, basically a repeat of Baal the cow god (moo)*.
- Inside joke.