....got talked into sharing that apple with Dumb Old Adam, everybody and his brother have been gunning for the snake.
The snake, BTW, earned the wrath of the garden's owner by leading the unhappy pair of renters into temptation and getting them to sample the Tree of Knowledge, which everybody knows is bad for people. They saw they were naked and grabbed the nearest fig leaf (or leaves) and the world's been getting worse ever since.
In a zealous mood, we started a contest to give the snake more names and came up with a bunch of them: Satan, Old Scratch, the Devil, Father of Lies, Lucifer, Shaytan, Prince of Darkness, Wicked One and hundreds of others. And, in doing so, declared war on the lot.
Some of the anti-snake skirmishes have been relatively mild - pages on Facebook, books taken out of school libraries due to "satanic influences" (including Harry Potter), condemning the celebration of Hallow'een, campaigns against topless bars, etc.. Others have been more virulent, such as attacks against doctors providing legal abortions, bombings of "evil" places such as houses of worship that differ from the bomber's and beating up people with "evil" sexual preferences. Some of the attackers recall that America's first laws providing for public education cited the necessity to teach children the Bible to protect them from that old deluder, Satan (see Old Deluder Satan Act).
Go back awhile, and you see real all-out battles. Thousands were burned at the stake for holding the "wrong" beliefs about good and evil. Many cite the parade of human torches that lit the way for the Spanish Inquisitors, but it wasn't just the Catholics who lit the flames. In his book, "A World Lit Only by Fire," William Manchester reports the reaction, known as the Reformation, which waged its own battle against the Devil by burning great numbers of Catholics who refused to see the truth as seen by Luther and Calvin.
Methods of fighting Lucifer were nothing if not imaginative. They included flaying people alive, stoning other to death, amputating limbs, cutting out tongues and other ways of showing the merits of Good vs. the pitfalls of Evil. When it came to battles against Old Scratch, the end definitely justified the means. You could see it all over the world. Satan was in the eyes of the beholder and there were many eyes.
Where all this is heading is not an attack on any particular religion and certainly not on any person's belief so long as it isn't forced down anyone's throat. My main point is that all of the hideous anti-evil tortures and persecutions seen through the ages have been rooted, for the most part, in sincere and earnestly felt beliefs by sincere and earnest men who felt called upon to do whatever it takes to subdue the Devil.
Just like some of the people who'd like to be president of the United States.