Devil - Knowledge

830:, he ordered the angels to prostrate themselves before him. Out of pride, Iblis refused and claimed to be superior to Adam. Therefore, pride but also envy became a sign of "unbelief" in Islam. Thereafter, Iblis was condemned to Hell, but God granted him a request to lead humanity astray, knowing the righteous would resist Iblis' attempts to misguide them. In Islam, both good and evil are ultimately created by God. But since God's will is good, the evil in the world must be part of God's plan. Actually, God allowed the devil to seduce humanity. Evil and suffering are regarded as a test or a chance to prove confidence in God. Some philosophers and mystics emphasized Iblis himself as a role model of confidence in God. Because God ordered the angels to prostrate themselves, Iblis was forced to choose between God's command and God's will (not to praise someone other than God). He successfully passed the test, yet his disobedience caused his punishment and therefore suffering. However, he stays patient and is rewarded in the end. 1335: 41: 1490:(1774/75) Kant gives an example of a tulip seller who was in possession of a rare tulip, but when he learned that another seller had the same tulip, he bought it from him and then destroyed it instead of keeping it for himself. If he had acted according to his sensual urges, the seller would have kept the tulip for himself to make a profit, but not have destroyed it. Nevertheless, the destruction of the tulip cannot be completely absolved from sensual impulses, since a sensual joy or relief still accompanies the destruction of the tulip and therefore cannot be thought of solely as a violation of morality. 1279:(Hell), who was also the first human. According to one narrative, Erlik and God swam together over the primordial waters. When God was about to create the Earth, he sent Erlik to dive into the waters and collect some mud. Erlik hid some inside his mouth to later create his own world. But when God commanded the Earth to expand, Erlik got troubled by the mud in his mouth. God aided Erlik to spit it out. The mud carried by Erlik gave place to the unpleasant areas of the world. Because of his sin, he was assigned to evil. In another variant, the creator-god is identified with 325: 4110: 1432:, he writes that we can a priori find out that such a thing cannot exist. Because the duration of a thing results in its degree of perfection, and the more essence a thing possess the more lasting it is, and since the devil has no perfection at all, it is impossible for the devil to be an existing thing. Evil or immoral behaviour in humans, such as anger, hate, envy, and all things for which the devil is blamed for could be explained without the proposal of a devil. Thus, the devil does not have any 417: 60: 29: 3932: 1482:), having no relation to any form of sensual pleasure. It is necessarily required for the devil to be a spiritual being because if the devil were also a sensual being, it would be possible that the devil does evil to satisfy lower sensual desires, and does not act from the mind alone. The devil acts against morals, not to satisfy sensual lust, but solely for the sake of evil. As such, the devil is unselfish, for he does not benefit from his evil deeds. 3946: 776: 1247:) created evil and inhabits the kingdom of darkness. The contemporary world came into existence, when the kingdom of darkness assaulted the kingdom of light and mingled with the spiritual world. At the end, the devil and his followers will be sealed forever and the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness will continue to co-exist eternally, never to commingle again. 1369:. They are in eternal struggle and neither is all-powerful, especially Angra Mainyu is limited to space and time: in the end of time, he will be finally defeated. While Ahura Mazda creates what is good, Angra Mainyu is responsible for every evil and suffering in the world, such as toads and scorpions. Iranian Zoroastrians also considered the 972:

is not the obstacle to humans but rather an unawareness that allows the impulsive forces to cause rebellion against God on the level of the psyche. Yet it is not a dualism between body, psyche and spirit, since the spirit embraces both psyche and corporeal aspects of humanity. Since the world is held

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Kant further argues that a (spiritual) devil would be a contradiction. If the devil would be defined by doing evil, the devil had no free choice in the first place. But if the devil had no free-choice, the devil could not have been held accountable for his actions, since he had no free will but was

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Regarding evil through free choice, Spinoza asks how it can be that Adam would have chosen sin over his own well-being. Theology traditionally responds to this by asserting it is the devil who tempts humans into sin, but who would have tempted the devil? According to Spinoza, a rational being, such

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According to Tengrism, there is no death, meaning that, when life comes to an end, it is merely a transition into the invisible world. As the ruler of Hell, Erlik enslaves the souls, who are damned to Hell. Further, he lurks on the souls of those humans living on Earth by causing death, disease and

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As in Christianity, Iblis was once a pious creature of God but later cast out of Heaven due to his pride. However, to maintain God's absolute sovereignty, Islam matches the line taken by Irenaeus instead of the later Christian consensus that the devil did not rebel against God but against humanity.

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Each tradition, culture, and religion with a devil in its mythos offers a different lens on manifestations of evil. The history of these perspectives intertwines with theology, mythology, psychiatry, art, and literature, developing independently within each of the traditions. It occurs historically

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In contrast to Occidental philosophy, the Sufi idea of seeing "Many as One" and considering the creation in its essence as the Absolute, leads to the idea of the dissolution of any dualism between the ego substance and the "external" substantial objects. The rebellion against God, mentioned in the

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In Muslim culture, devils are believed to be hermaphrodite creatures created from hell-fire, with one male and one female thigh, and able to procreate without a mate. It is generally believed that devils can harm the souls of humans through their whisperings. While whisperings tempt humans to sin,

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to seize the soul of the newborn, following him for the rest of his life in an attempt to seize his soul by hampering, misguiding, and injuring him. When Erlik succeeds in destroying a human's body, the Kormos sent by Erlik will try take him down into the Underworld. However a good soul will be

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has a variety of definitions for the meaning of "devil", supported by a range of citations: "Devil" may refer to Satan, the supreme spirit of evil, or one of Satan's emissaries or demons that populate Hell, or to one of the spirits that possess a demoniac person; "devil" may refer to one of the

296:, and are thus able to turn towards God and develop spiritual qualities or turn away from God and become immersed in their self-centered desires. Individuals who follow the temptations of the self and do not develop spiritual virtues are often described in the Baháʼí writings with the word 1029:

are responsible for impurity and capable of endangering human souls, in Salafi thought, it is the devil himself, who lies in wait for believers, always striving to lure them away from God. The devil is regarded as an omnipresent entity, permanently inciting humans into sin, but can be

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as the devil must have been, could not choose his own damnation. The devil must have known his sin would lead to doom, thus the devil was not knowing, or the devil did not know his sin will lead to doom, thus the devil would not have been a rational being. Spinoza deducts a strict

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worldview contrasting believers and unbelievers, and featuring the devil as the enemy of the faithful who tries to lead them astray from God's path. Even though the devil will eventually be defeated by God, he remains a serious and dangerous opponent of humans. While in classical

272:"malignant deities" feared and worshiped by "heathen people", a demon, a malignant being of superhuman powers; figuratively "devil" may be applied to a wicked person, or playfully to a rogue or rascal, or in empathy often accompanied by the word "poor" to a person—"poor devil". 1424:

contained a chapter (Chapter XXI) on the devil, where Spinoza examined whether the devil may exist or not. He defines the devil as an entity which is contrary to God. However, if the devil is the opposite of God, the devil would consist of Nothingness, which does not exist.

2393:"The devil is the evil spirit of the lower places, as a fugitive he made Sotona from the heavens as his name was Satanail, thus he became different from the angels, but his nature did not change his intelligence as far as his understanding of righteous and sinful things" – 1485:

However, Kant denies that a human being could ever be completely devilish. Kant admits that there are devilish vices (ingratitude, envy, and malicious joy), i.e., vices that do not bring any personal advantage, but a person can never be completely a devil. In his

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refers unilaterally to forces of evil, including the devil Iblis who causes mischief. Shaitan is also linked to humans' psychological nature, appearing in dreams, causing anger, or interrupting the mental preparation for prayer. Furthermore, the term

300:. The Baháʼí writings also state that the devil is a metaphor for the "insistent self" or "lower self", which is a self-serving inclination within each individual. Those who follow their lower nature are also described as followers of "the Evil One". 973:

to be the mirror in which God's attributes are reflected, participation in worldly affairs is not necessarily seen as opposed to God. The devil activates the selfish desires of the psyche, leading the human astray from the Divine. Thus, it is the

221:. He does not claim to define the word in a general sense, but he describes the limited use that he intends for the word in his book—limited in order to "minimize this difficulty" and "for the sake of clarity". In this book Russell uses the word 740:

to be a son of God and a brother to Christ. To explain this, they used the parable of the prodigal son, with Christ as the good son, and Lucifer as the son that strayed into evilness. The Catholic Church responded to dualism in AD 1215 in the

1257:, founder of the Manichaean sect in the 3rd century CE, identified Jehovah as "the devil god which created the world" and said that "he who spoke with Moses, the Jews, and the priests … is the of Darkness, … not the god of truth." 945:) of an individual. If the devils take over the soul of a person, this would render them aggressive or insane. In extreme cases, the alterings of the soul are believed to have effect on the body, matching its spiritual qualities. 903:

Further, although Iblis is generally regarded as a real bodily entity, he plays a less significant role as the personification of evil than in Christianity. Iblis is merely a tempter, notable for inciting humans into sin by

728:, dealt with the problem of evil, and developed ideas of dualism and demonology. The Cathars were seen as a serious potential challenge to the Catholic church of the time. The Cathars split into two camps. The first is 1474:, only when the sensual is consciously placed above the moral obligation can something be regarded as morally evil. Thus, to be evil, the devil must be able to comprehend morality but consciously reject it, and, as a 1179:, the greatest of the five Mandaean Lords of the underworld. He dwells in the lowest depths of creation and his epithet is the 'mountain of flesh'. Prominent infernal beings found in the World of Darkness include 1348:

probably introduced the first idea of the devil; a principle of evil independently existing apart from God. In Zoroastrianism, good and evil derive from two ultimately opposed forces. The force of good is called

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by remembering the name God. The devil is regarded as an external entity, threatening the everyday life of the believer, even in social aspects of life. Thus for example, it is the devil who is responsible for

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is remote, beyond the material universe; therefore, this universe must be governed by an inferior imposter deity. This deity was identified with the deity of the Old Testament by some sects, such as the

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uses the devil as the personification of maximum moral reprehensibility. Deviating from the common Christian idea, Kant does not locate the morally reprehensible in sensual urges. Since evil has to be

1283:. Again, Erlik appears to be the first human. He desired to create a human just as Ulgen did, thereupon Ulgen reacted by punishing Erlik, casting him into the Underworld where he becomes its ruler. 690:, the 2nd-century AD Gnostic, of considering the Inspirer of Old Testament prophecies to be not a god, but an evil angel. These writings commonly refer to the Creator of the material world as "a 1312:

is rejected by Yazidis, and evil is regarded as nonexistent. Yazidis adhere to strict monism and are prohibited from uttering the word "devil" and from speaking of anything related to

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as little as possible. It is only God who has the right to say "I", since it is only God who is self-subsistent. Uttering "I" is therefore a way to compare oneself to God, regarded as

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45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." The devil does not exist in Jewish scriptures. However, the influence of

669:, who was god, in a sense, but not the supreme God; he was just, rigidly just, he had his good qualities, but he was not the good god, who was Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 292:

is not believed to exist. However, these terms do appear in the Baháʼí writings, where they are used as metaphors for the lower nature of man. Human beings are seen to have

519:) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any 'adversary' and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation. 1678:

where it is more common among the religious, regular church goers, political conservatives, and the older and less well educated, ... but has declined in recent decades.

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Bullard, A. (2022). Spiritual and Mental Health Crisis in Globalizing Senegal: A History of Transcultural Psychiatry. US: Taylor & Francis.

745:, saying that God created everything from nothing, and the devil was good when he was created, but he made himself bad by his own free will. In the 413:. He is described as hating all humanity (or more accurately all creation), opposing God, spreading lies and wreaking havoc on their souls. 2740:

Into the realm of smokeless fire: (Qur'an 55:14): A critical translation of al-Damiri's article on the jinn from "Hayat al-Hayawan al-Kubra

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sent by Ulgen. Some shamans also made sacrifices to Erlik, for gaining a higher rank in the Underworld, if they should be damned to Hell.

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introduced evil as a separate principle into the Jewish belief system, which gradually externalized the opposition until the Hebrew term

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due to his disobedience, but because of attributing injustice to God; that is, by asserting that the command to prostrate himself before

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Hendrik Klinge: Die moralische Stufenleiter: Kant über Teufel, Menschen, Engel und Gott. Walter de Gruyter, 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-057620-7

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dualism, which held that evil was completely separate from the good God, and that God and the devil each had power. The second camp is

502:, lit. "Lord of Flies") but is also used in the New Testament as a synonym for the devil. A corrupted version, "Belzeboub", appears in 83:

as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force.

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Guthrie, S. L. (2018). Gods of this World: A Philosophical Discussion and Defense of Christian Demonology. US: Pickwick Publications.

1963: 1163:. He is portrayed as a large, ferocious dragon or snake and is considered the king of the World of Darkness. Together they rule the 119:—and attributes: it is portrayed as blue, black, or red; it is portrayed as having horns on its head, and without horns, and so on. 3061:

The Concept of Sainthood in Early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by Al-Hakim Al-Tirmidhi – An Annotated Translation with Introduction

456:, the devil is identified as "the dragon" and "the old serpent" in the Book of Revelation, as "the prince of this world" in the 3685:

Jarrett, C. (2007). Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed. Vereinigtes Königreich: Bloomsbury Publishing.

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who, along with one-third of the angelic host (the demons), rebelled against God and has consequently been condemned to the

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developed into a specific type of supernatural entity, changing the monistic view of Judaism into a dualistic one. Later,

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Polka, B. (2007). Between Philosophy and Religion, Vol. II: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity. Ukraine: Lexington Books.

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Woodward, Mark. Java, Indonesia and Islam. Deutschland, Springer Netherlands, 2010. p. 88

250:, Henry Ansgar Kelly discusses various considerations and meanings that he has encountered in using terms such as 4342: 4029: 87:

states that the different conceptions of the devil can be summed up as 1) a principle of evil independent from

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could be forgiven at any time by God. According to the Quran, Iblis's disobedience was due to his disdain for

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the Old Testament was a scandal to the faithful … and … accounted for it by postulating a secondary deity, a

1148: 1120: 742: 3198:"Lasset uns in shaʼa Allah ein Plan machen": Fallgestützte Analyse der Radikalisierung einer WhatsApp-Gruppe 818:. Iblis is the proper name of the devil representing the characteristics of evil. Iblis is mentioned in the 640:

Gnostic and Gnostic-influenced religions postulate the idea that the material world is inherently evil. The

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are present as symbols for uttering "I" in ones own behavior. Therefore, it is recommended to use the term

706:, not only demonized the Creator God but also called him by the name of the devil in some Jewish writings, 4483: 3429: 1640:

Opinion polls show that belief in the devil in Western countries is more common in the United States ...

4180: 747: 436:. The goat, ram and pig are consistently associated with the devil. Detail of a 16th-century painting by 33: 2140: 4251: 703: 3196:

Michael Kiefer, Jörg Hüttermann, Bacem Dziri, Rauf Ceylan, Viktoria Roth, Fabian Srowig, Andreas Zick

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is in many ways a symbol of spiritual impurity, representing humans' own deficits, in contrast to a "

267: 751:, Lucifer, just as in prior Gnostic systems, appears as a demiurge, who created the material world. 4407: 4134: 1739: 1626: 1586: 1084: 461: 398: 364: 4472: 4094: 3950: 3485: 1391: 896: 441: 378:, and shall be condemned, together with the fallen angels who follow him, to eternal fire at the 3736: 2084: 2076: 4540: 4355: 3107:

Salafismus in Deutschland: Ursprünge und Gefahren einer islamisch-fundamentalistischen Bewegung

2108: 1585:: a colloquialism for the devil, as indicated by the name of the character in the short story " 1096: 536: 214: 84: 20: 3106: 47:(the dragon; on the left) gives to the beast of the sea (on the right) power represented by a 4450: 4349: 4243: 4084: 3996: 3967: 3175: 3152: 3129: 3083: 3060: 2998: 2959: 2473: 2450: 2060:

A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Introduction, Supplement, and Bibliography

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influence), which depicted the devil as an independent force of evil besides God. After the

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In Islam, the principle of evil is expressed by two terms referring to the same entity:

258:, etc. While not offering a general definition, he describes that in his book "whenever 4502: 4478: 4375: 4317: 4059: 3219:

Salafismus und Dschihadismus in Deutschland: Ursachen, Dynamiken, Handlungsempfehlungen

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also refers to beings who follow the evil suggestions of Iblis. Also, the principle of

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The pig, goat, ram—all of these creatures are consistently associated with the Devil.

2251: 2204: 2180: 2146: 2118: 2088: 2039: 2012: 1947: 1923: 1899: 1878: 1854: 1832: 1811: 1767: 1433: 1072: 787: 687: 658: 405:, and with some minor variations. Some modern Christians consider the devil to be an 332: 217:

discusses various meanings and difficulties that are encountered when using the term

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Ginza Rabba: The Great Treasure. An equivalent translation of the Mandaean Holy Book

1563:/ the Morning Star (Greek and Roman): the bringer of light, illuminator; the planet 4427: 4310: 3753:

wenn ich dén sehe, wäre es mir immer, der leibhaftige wäre da und wolle mich nehmen

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Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History

3321: 2359:"But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world" – Book of Wisdom II. 24 2006: 1616: 1603: 1378: 599: 555: 550: 481: 473: 437: 226: 184: 76: 3961: 1155:. She is considered evil and a liar, sorcerer and seductress.She gives birth to 848:

to the judgment of God, and that those who did not submit to the law of God are

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Al-Saadi, Qais Mughashghash; Al-Saadi, Hamed Mughashghash (2019). "Glossary".

619: 336: 4524: 4443: 4328: 4099: 3992: 3775: 2815: 1467: 1036: 991: 827: 673: 583: 504: 433: 379: 319: 59: 3936: 3356: 545:, the devil is represented as the one who brought death into the world. The 156: 4422: 3914: 3894: 3866: 2980: 2960:

The Human Symbolic Construction of Reality: A Psycho-Phenomenological Study

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Houtman, Alberdina; Kadari, Tamar; Poorthuis, Marcel; Tohar, Vered (2016).

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is used as the proper name of Satan", he signals it by using "small caps".

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Probing the Depths of Evil and Good: Multireligious Views and Case Studies

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Probing the Depths of Evil and Good: Multireligious Views and Case Studies

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Probing the Depths of Evil and Good: Multireligious Views and Case Studies

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History of Religious Ideas, Volume 3: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms

1578: 1445: 1350: 1236: 1108: 975: 909: 782:(top right on the picture) refuses to prostrate before the newly created 560: 491: 340: 143: 3931: 2661: 1540:

The Father of Lies (John 8:44), in contrast to Jesus ("I am the truth").

147: 4437: 4417: 4385: 4224: 3772:"Vísindavefurinn: How many words are there in Icelandic for the devil?" 3625: