Why do you think it isn’t?
I don’t know how many people think the devil is a “real being.” Metaphysical conceits aside, however, I do believe the devil exists; its embodiment on earth is the institution known as the Vatican. Who makes the biggest stink about the devil being amongst us? Who makes the biggest claims about being able to save people from the devil? What better place for the devil to hide than as the devil’s implacable adversary? Who would suspect such a devious scheme, especially among true believers? As for doing evil, the record of the Vatican and church policies throughout history speak for themselves right up to the present day.
All of which puts the Church’s genuine good works (e.g., care for the aged and infirm) in the perspective of: it is sometimes necessary to do some good in order to do greater evil.
Just a theory, of course.
American evangelicals, hands down, no contest there. The Catholics are a distant also-ran by comparison.
The Devil exists in Judaism too, doesn’t he? The Book of Job talks about the Devil and that’s part of the Old Testament.
The Book of Job is an exercise in “Holy Shit, why would you want to worship this god?”
Even as it is supposed to be about man’s patience and inability to understand why the good suffer, because God is above men and we don’t know everything about why he decides certain things.
“Hey, watch this. I’ll just wipe out a hundred people to see how this guy reacts” :eek:
It is generally agreed that it was written in the 6th century BC and modified over the years to make Job more patient and so forth.
Specifically, that book is more or less God winning a bet with the Devil.
I’m trying very hard to wrap my head around the idea of God betting on something. Trying very hard indeed.
AFAIR it was “Bet you can’t corrupt my man Job here”, if that helps. 
Have you read Job? Satan there is far different from the one Christians believe in. He appears to be part of God’s court for one thing. Also, though the actions are motivated by Satan’s challenge of God, God does all the bad things, not Satan.
Remember, though God killed all of Job’s family and livestock, he got new ones back again, so everything was hunky dory. Cattle, children, wife. No big difference back then.
Talk about your patriarchy!
Anyone who claims to take the Bible literally, or who claims that the Bible is inerrant, is claiming to believe the version of the Devil that’s written in the book of Job. I know that the claims are empty talk, but nevertheless, people are making the claims.
Is there room for someone to take the book of Job as literal truth without identifying “the satan” in it with the Devil?
Which version? The original 6th century BC version, the @250 BC final version or the Islamic version, which is quite different?
I believe that evil exists. I don’t believe in a guy with horns and a pitchfork, any more than I believe in a old white guy in robes up in the sky, that is just childish foolishness, but I believe there is such a thing as evil, and that it is a force in the world.
The Bible is a book of many stories, many authors, composed over a couple thousand years give or take. It is even more foolishness to think that conceptions of God and Satan didn’t shift around in that time. Job is an excellent example.
I sure get tired of the people on this board thinking that all Christians are benighted literalists in the mold of willfully ignorant fundamentalism. It’s so boring. Why, one might imagine there was only one single solitary correct way of understanding the world.
I don’t believe in good and evil as “forces” in the world. I believe in the normal distribution.
Then perhaps you should have actually read this thread where we talk about different kinds of Christian faiths.
And I get tired of this unsupported assumption popping up over and over again as an excuse no to engage in nuanced discussion.
In Hinduism, Kali is a goddess, not a “demon god” (whatever that means).
Not if the same name is used for “a different guy” in other places. Claiming literal truthfulness in a demonstrably false book is the problem of the person making the claim, not the problem of the person who hears the claim.
Similar problem with the two different and incompatible creation stories in Genesis, or the two different and incompatible stories of the birth of Jesus. I say they’re made-up stories, so I have nothing to justify, but the person who claims incompatible stories are both true has a lot of explaining to do.
I’m an atheist Christian myself.
A very significant proportion of American Christians are benighted literalists, unfortunately. It would be silly to ignore that fact.
Going by this, some 30% of American Christians believe in Biblical literalism (as in, believe that “the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”) as of 2017.
Of course, American Christians only make up around 10% of the world’s Christians. So Biblical literalism might well be common among American Christians without being common among Christians worldwide. Indeed, AFAIK, it was always primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon anyway.