He probably had sex with someone. Christians hate it when people have sex.

all I know is he went down to Georgia lookin' for a soul to steal. I heard he was behind on his quota and rather desperate.

I think he owned a chain of hotels, and golf courses.

I'm pretty sure he invented Rock & Roll.

So the story goes, The Archangel and most beloved of God, Lucifer attempted to usurp the throne of heaven and led a rebellion of one third of the other angels in a war in heaven, thus mass expulsions, to earth for the renamed former Archangel, Satan and his legions. Nice garden spot to drop the lot off, don't you think?

satan set up the electoral college and banking!

Told a dictator "No".

I have never understood if we are doing the things the Devil wants us to do, why would he torture us for doing so. You would think he would welcome us with open arms and a party.

Satan (Lucifer) was the most beautiful angel of all, but he wanted the other angels to worship him rather than God. He lead an unsuccessful revolt to overthrow God and God kicked him and his minions out of heaven. His only satisfaction now comes from subverting God's will, tempting God's human creation to do evil. His first success was Eve and Adam but he's still at it tempting you and me and everybody else. That's the story I was taught--but I think it is more from Paradise Lost than from the Bible.

Is not what Satan did but what Satan does. What does he do? Privides a service. Which service is that? Justify God/religion crap existance. You're welcome.

Satan starts out in the Bible as an advisor/confidant to Yahweh, but over time is depicted as more of the "adversary" and eventually the wicked tempter and deceiver. It isn't until late in the New Testament (Revelations, I think) when Satan is retconned as the serpent in Genesis — but there's no reason to think that was the intent in Genesis. One of the early references to Satan in the Old Testament is in the Book of Job, where (at worst) Satan helps Yahweh torture Job, as Yahweh is proving a point for his own ego. It's speculated that Yahweh, a god from earlier traditions, originally maintained his good and bad traits, but over time it was necessary to paint him as benevolent and that meant having an adversary. So, gradually, the evil was attributed to Satan and death became the suffering pit of Hell over which Satan presided over the damned. With the New Testament, Yeshua (Jesus) has that message of peace and love, but there's the insideous introduction of eternal, agonizing punishment for those who don't believe. Satan here becomes a much more formidable character, with great power and influence. So, to me it's less about what Satan did than about what the Hebrews and Christians needed him to be over time. They wrote his story arc as they needed more conflict in the plot.

Every good piece of literature needs an angst driven villian with father issues and an asshole father, who only later, realizes he is to blame.

Well....After the contradictions made me an unbeliever, i continued to study the bible finding more and more absurdities. i noticed that the book had god doing things that we were specifically told were evil, sinful, and wicked. So i wondered how many...and kept finding more. Then I wondered...does Satan do any evil. And the worst thing i could find him doing was smiting job with boils. Everything he was accused of, GOD is found doing. So, WHO created evil, brings forth evil, speaks evil, has evil thoughts, sends forth evil spirits, murders, threatens to spread poo in his people's faces AND make them eat their babies, has smoke coming out of his nostrils and fire coming out of his mouth, and horns????? Not Satan. god.

I could be mistaken (I often am) but I don't believe Satan appears in the Bible at all. That character could be implied by the snake in the Garden of Eden story, but it isn't clear.

I thought Satan was invented by Danté or Milton or somebody.

"Satan," and "God," are mythological figures created by MEN who had NO concept of science. NO concept of how everything came into existence, and so they feared everything, and began to create answers to explain the unexplainable (we still do that today. It's a Human thing). In their understanding there must be powerful figures who created and control everything. They didn't think in terms of "A" God, but in terms of "gods." So volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, plague, WHATEVER, must be the work of these "god's" that man has angered somehow.

Modern day phony "Christians" STILL try to use that argument (but of the ONE "god" ) to convince people that homosexuality, for example, is evil, and that hurricane that just devastated your state was caused by an angry (vile) "god" as retribution for trying to implement gay rights. And so on.

These "true-believers" NEVER grew out of that ancient mindset and religious indoctrination ensures that they never will.

When I was 12 I was looking through my dad's bookcase for something to read, and I happened up a catalog entitled "The Hunter's Bible." WHOAH! It stopped me dead in my tracks! That sacred book I carried every week to Sunday School was the only "Bible" I had ever heard of! This was a catalog of books or other catalogs, etc. that you could order.

Hmmm, in that same bookcase was a Webster's Dictionary, so I looked up "bible," and read the definition, and the scales, as they say, dropped from my eyes. It said "Bible: A book of books." It was then I realized the cherished "Bible" was not a sacred book, written by the hand of "God," but a book...of BOOKS! Written by MEN! scientifically ignorant men, thousands of years ago.

Sorry I digressed, but, in reality, in order to keep people in FEAR and in CONTROL, leaders must have an evil force that can be presented to the masses. "God" and "Satan" and infinite pain and punishment and suffering in "HELL" filled the bill for centuries. Today it still exists, but along with more realistic, believable evils, such as "Communism," "Socialism," WOMEN! GAYS! MUSLIMS! Brown and BLACK people! In all cases, "people" should be in quotations, because, as we see, especially today, the very humanness of these evil enemies are called into question on a daily basis. It's nothing new, it's just a return to 5th century thinking, in the (certain) knowledge that the "poorly educated," "happily stupid" citizen will fall for it. And they DO! Over and over and over again!

As a former Mormon, I was taught that Satan was selfish and wanted to take all the glory of God on himself and he would guarantee every soul would return to heaven. Jesus had other ideas and God chose Jesus plan over Satan's.So Satan rebelled against God and was tossed out of heaven (or pre-heaven). Satan then vowed to do everything he could to frustrate and disrupt Jesus' plan which God accepted. Sounds so silly explaining it now.

He's another biblical creation of man, I'm not a bible expert, but I think they use that to bring cristians to obediece through fear of eternal damnation, I've heard that people have had nightmares from that, that would be part of the psychological damage that it causes.

What I was taught was Satan decided he was equal to God. God didn't like that, so he cast Satan and his followers out of heaven.

Satan, the "fallen" angel created by a perfect god?
Well, apparently he questioned god and tossed up the B.S. flag a few times pre- creation.
Lucifer (the most prized angel, also had followers)
They say Satan's favorite song was "Anything you can do, I can do better". God got pissed and tossed him (SATAN) and his followers out of heaven.
Long story short.

Satan dindu nuffin!

This popped up in my YouTube list tonight. Good timing!

I know Satan drinks a lot of bourbon and smokes a pipe.

What does Satan do? Mislead. This is a wonderful subject and you don't have to be a religion follower to get into this. Satan is a "way" or a process that can start from a tiny drop which grows. Satan presents a picture of the "truth" (as does religion) that seems right and logical but is false and leads to bad consequences. Satan provides ways to express jealousy and greed, often in the name of God. AND Satan enables the plundering of the planet and senseless killing and torture of people and animals in spite of the fact that the bible tells us to take care of the animals and the planet. Humans are destroying life on earth, a fact of which not enough people are aware. Wild life has decreased immeasurably, the earth is warming, the ice is melting. Satan is another word for evil. Satan is also apathy. So where do we atheists and agnostics stand?

Other than what Maturin said I have no idea.

It has never occurred to me to ask it this way.

So okay, he pissed off the mighty creator of him. Now he is in charge of, or banished to, hell. So, why would he help the creator punish people? Why does he get off in torturing people? Wouldn't he get bored after awhile?

You think listening to people screaming as they burn for eternity would get boring after a few millenniums.