Article in Question: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychological-power-satan&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

As someone who is fascinated by ideas of Christian mythology as well as psychology, I couldn’t resist reading when I found this article. I was a little bit of a lost, at first, as to where Satan was involved in all of this, but then the article tied it up all together at the end.

The article basically elaborates how studies show that the belief that people can be pure evil correlates with harsher punishments. The idea that someone is unredeemable makes one feel that penalties need to be harsher. At least, that’s what the studies seem to indicate.

Personally, I believe in pure evil, but I don’t believe that it can manifest in human form. I believe that it can distort the way that people see the world and cause them to do evil things, but they may not have entirely evil intentions and/or they are not entirely in control of their actions.  I highly recommend the article if you enjoy psychology.