Who is the prince of darkness

God knocked on the door and Satan opened it. God came in and sat at the small table. They sat there temporarily in the silence of old friends.

Satan was dressed as a seventeenth century puritan, except for a turban below which peeked the dreadlocks favoured by the extreme orthodox Jewish sect that abused an eight year old girl because they believed her dress was insufficiently modest. Round his waist was a belt holding copies of the major scriptures of the world, the Communist Manifesto, The little Red Book of Chairman Mao and a treatise on free market economics. Under the tightly buttoned jacket Satan wore a teeshirt that said "if it's fun it's a sin"

Finally God spoke, the smile on her wise black face masking the question in her eyes.

“How's it going”

Satan shook his head

“That's why I called you”

God Frowned

“Best explain. It must be bad if your came in your work clothes”

“Well”, said Satan, abruptly changing into the image of a investment banker,

“Remember when we started this project your role was to bring people together, make them better, cooperate so that they would eventually become something equivalent to us, and my role was to temper and test them, try to bring out the bad in them”

“Yes” Said God “And we decided the injustices could be remedied after 'death' so we could be tough with them if needed”

“Agreed” Nodded Satan “ And we played the game fully”

Both smiled

“Let's start at the crucifixion” Said Satan "Rather than my much earlier invention of religion, divorcing it from spiritual progress and inspiring the rulers to use it for social control"

“It took a hundred years before it was clear this could be a threat to me, and then I had to move fast to twist it to my advantage. I used greed and ego as always, and managed to manipulate Constantine into making Christianity the state religion in the Roman Empire”

“A brilliant move” Said God, “Mix power and religion and you destroy the religion. Then you bettered it by getting a collection of random books accepted as MY word and got them to worship that “Bible” rather than me and to accept the word of authority and the Bible, with all its errors and inconsistencies, over their own experience”

“And” Said Satan “I repeated the trick, till now almost any religion has to have a holy scripture or be dismissed as a cult”

"They prayed a lot" Said Satan, "The prayer on their lips was "Lord guide us", but in their heart it was "Lord guide the others to see I know the truth". I answered the prayer in their hearts

"Yes" Said God "And you used forgers like Origen to add bits that suited you."

God paused.

“I” Said God “ caused the Empire to split in two and your “Christian” Church to split in three. Then I caused schisms in the 'Catholic' Church which I hoped would lead to renewal or at least fracture your power”

“I” replied Satan “Made the Church the real power in the West and East”

“Brilliant” Said God. “I countered with printing and translation of the bible out of Latin

“Yes” Replied Satan “ I always had the people at the top and you always had the masses. And from the masses came prophets”

“Yes” grinned God “You aren't in business unless you make a prophet. But basically all I could do was contain you with other religions and branches of your church. The Reformation was a stroke of genius on my part”

“Yes” Satan showed his teeth. “But I corrupted it right away. And I invented the work ethic”

"Yes" said God, " You made them miss seeing the benefits of the sort of labour that gives purpose, like that of the artist and musician, and indeed they regarded Art and Music as sinful."

A short pause.

“The Quakers” Said God “My doing”

Satan bowed agreement “A Christian sect that valued their own experience while taking into account the Bible: pure Genius ( Of course the church persecuted them even more than it did non christians) , and they became captains of commerce, because they were honest. That led to Capitalism, a good idea I twisted and mingled with Social Darwninism of course and with the theory of evolution that led to the notion White people were the crown of creation, with Blacks and Jews being sub human. Without Capitalism and Evolution you would have got rid of slavery faster”

“And now you are making people more tolerant of each other, undoing all my diabolic work. In America, the crown of my work where so many take your name and do my work, hating Blacks, Jews, Homosexuals and so on, they are beginning to appreciate the stupidity of discrimination”

God grinned again “ I encouraged abortion rather than have children born into poverty, and the sick freaks in your church, with their sex hangups went crazy”

“But” Continued Satan “I think I over reached myself in the twentieth century. Josef Vissarionovitch Dugashvili and Adolf Schickelgruber did things more evil than I would have imagined possible. I wonder if I have created a monster we cannot contain”.

They looked at each other for a long time

“Maybe” Said God “It is time to give the ants a chance”

“Leave it a while God, I think you are winning, slowly but those two and the Chinese guy and McCarthy and the Religious right and so many others scared the manure out of me. Pass the Brandy quick”

After writing this I was reminded of the Gnostic Gospel called "The Sacred book of Judas of Kerioth" found in 1986 near the Nag Hammadi LIbrary. Among other things it claims Jesus was sexually active and bi-sexual, served hallucinogens at the last supper, faked his crucifixion (Apparently something the Koran also claims) and died in India years later.

More relevant to this article is the fact the Jesus of this gospel describes the Old Testamant God as an evil Demiurge who perverted the creation begun by the true creator. This is something Zoroastrians claimed as well, and even mainstream Christians believe Satan was given this world as his domain.