{"id":3654,"date":"2018-03-04T05:02:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-04T13:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2018-03-04T05:12:31","modified_gmt":"2018-03-04T13:12:31","slug":"the-greatest-trick-the-devil-ever-pulled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3654","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Jared:<\/strong>
\nFirst of all I want to apologize if this has been asked before. Unless it’s just my browser, there doesn’t seem to be a search function at the top right of the page as mentioned. (I didn’t see a “devil” or “Satan” tag so I guess it might not have been asked.)
\n
\nSomeone I know has an argument that goes as follows (more or less): “The devil’s ultimate goal is to get people to believe that he and God don’t exist and if you are an atheist, you’re playing into his trap”. How can you rationally respond to that?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nThis is not an argument for God, it is an assertion. Specifically it’s an attempted rationalisation of the very existence of atheism in a universe with an all-powerful god who wants everyone to believe in it and is nevertheless failing<\/em> to achieve this. The rational response to it is to call it out as an assertion and ask for evidence, not only of the existence of God and the devil but of the devil’s specific intentions. How does your acquaintance know any of this?
\n
\nThe alternative, which you might or might not bring up, is that the ultimate goal of churches is to get people to believe that God and the devil do exist, because new believers bring publicity, money and social and political clout, and if you’re a Christian you’re playing into their<\/em> trap.
\n
\nThis had not been asked before, but there’s at least some material on Satan here, this piece<\/a> for example. The search function should appear as a grey magnifying glass in the top right hand corner. If you see it, give it a click. The tags in the tag cloud are not the only ones in use, just the most common ones. If all else fails, Google “ask the atheist” in quotes, and outside the quotes put in your keywords. That’s what I do to find my own stuff sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Jared: First of all I want to apologize if this has been asked before. Unless it’s just my browser, there doesn’t seem to be a search function at the top right of the page as mentioned. (I didn’t see a “devil” or “Satan” tag so I guess it might not have been asked.) … Continue reading “The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[563,560,6],"tags":[24,491,492],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-faith-2","category-text","tag-belief","tag-devil","tag-satan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-WW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3657,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions\/3657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}