What if the devil is not angel, nor beast of the fiery pits? All of dante's shameless artistry aside, The devil is a sticking point for most Athiests. Some athiests use the folklore of the infernal to merely make christians look like fools, and diminish any intelligent moral decisions. (As if mistakes actually indicate intelligence, which they don't. Mistakes indicate levels of competency.)
The devil of which I speak is not the conglomeration of a thousand religions swallowed by the church and their need to ridicule what they fear, but a personification of evil and destruction of a massive scale.
It is the devil of lies, of corruption of flesh and souls that I speak. Don't look for further meaning of souls here, I don't know if they exist and am not well versed in spirituality to define them. I say souls to name the identities, the morality and likes, dislikes, friends the whole of a human's identity. The devil that seeks to change us, from within by poisoning us with an apple (pomegrante) is what is at front and center. Christianity, the menagrie of people that encompasses comes from innumerable tribes, cultures, and was really effective at incorporating those disparate elements of cultures into a loosely homogenous faith. The dark ages sought to standardise these struggling differences in practice, in faith, and even the bible itself. As soon as it did, the reformation occured which shattered uniformity once more. I say christianity worked best as a loose group of people who used jahweh like esperanto was intended to be. A meeting point.
The mythology differed, but almost all the groups who christianized (westernized) had fears, and morality they wished to be protected and propagated. Should they become diluted, or destroyed, the culture would end, and indeed it would be a mini apocalypse. So the wisest men put forth a devil, a djinn, a boogeyman, who was the archetype of diplomatic evil, a conman of epic proportions, because while all feared subjugation through force of arms, the less intelligent were unaware that subjugation could be a voluntary act of the uninformed and weak. This devil could bring about apocalypses by making men weak through fullfilling their desires, by granting their every wish, so instead of becoming strong by struggling towards their desires, they would be fat dullards who were in no shape to defend their land. (Culture) pain built men, while pleasure weakened them. This devil wouldn't chop off heads, but give it and give it freely so that the men no longer desired their cultures women. The wise men gave a name to the realization that true death was that of an entire group, and that the smartest of all adversaries wouldn't use an arrow. He'd give it an angry man so that in his angered weakness, he'd kill.
This devil was man in its baser states, in his weakest roles. If all is pleasure, than nothing is accomplished. Men will keep on humping and impregnating women but produce no grain (or happy meals) to feed said children. This is the devils work, a worthless lot of men so drunk on pleasing themselves that they venture nothing, and make nothing. Surely an evil to be avoided.
They may have been unscientific but intelligent is a different matter. They knew something of evils of men and made something to scare men away from their beastly instincts.
So when athiests say what god would let a devil exist, say that he made man and then man made the devil.
I for one am an athiest, but I'm tired of the halfwits who don't believe simply because Sunday is their video game day, or whatever else. Morality is an essential aspect of humanity, and without it, we are destined for oblivion. Athiests who are immoral only prove the case agianst them, and drive people further into camps in the shadow of crosses, and spread the hate that christians assume that has spoiled them.
Just don't be a dick, and the world will live as one. John lennon would be sick of my non poetry, but I can't sing. I write and hope my nonpoetry speaks to your soul.