Many years ago, my Sunday schoool teacher taught me to view God as the old man in the sky who planted the Garden of Eden and created man. Then Satan came along and told Eve that man might as well enjoy the fruit from the tree of life.

I no longer view God as the old man in the sky and I am wondering about where I should look in order to visualise an updated version of Satan.

I am also wondering to what extent The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has been evolving.

About seven years ago, I was challenged with the idea of where Satan came from and told that the ancient Hebrews didn’t believe in Satan. Well, that just didn’t fly with me because I knew that the Torah (the five books of Moses) was the foundation for the Psalms and the Prophets (the rest of the Old Testament writings) and the Old Testament was the foundation for the New Testament writing such as the gospels and the apostolic writings. And I knew, or at least I thought I knew, the Old Testament clearly taught about Satan.

I was saddened to read in the last United Church Observer that the denomination that has done so much work to include women in leadership roles in the church was only able to muster the nomination of one woman for the next moderator out of a pool of six persons.  Certainly, some would point to our attempts as a denomination to make the language of our liturgies, hymns, and sermons more gender inclusive, and say that these changes have been merely cosmetic.

Couldn't the Devil in the Jewish-Christian tradition be nothing more (or less) than the human ego, and sin nothing more (or less) than the fruit of a life centered on that ego?  

Is this just a "liberal" view or are their "conservatives" who view the Devil and sin this way as well?

Okay. In the last week I have seen some posters talk about the devil like " the devil tried to persuade me" or "the end of this world when the devil will try to take over". or "I fight the devil" The posters talk as if they see the devil or talk to the devil and the devil is in some kind of human form.

I have put a great deal of my time and some of my money into the collective efforts to redeem Omar Khadr from the hell nobody but Rumsfield deserves in Guantanamo Bay "Detention" Center.  I have published two videos on the subject, collected records and listed them on my site:  fakirscanada.spaces.live.com/default.aspx  and most recently, I contacted about 75 Calgary-based members of the Facebook Group "For the immediate release of Omar Khadr..." to see