Your thoughts on Satanism and the petition for a Satanic statue.

[Esquilax]

Yes, I do think it would be hateful to put a Satan statue next to a Christian monument. I understand that to the Satanists, it means something other than evil and hate, but it still came from the bible as those things.

You are aware, of course, that much of the meat of ol' Beelzebub's iconography finds its source in early christian attempts to discredit and demonize Baal, the god of the Philistine religion, by corrupting him into a demonic figure within the christian religion, yes? I mean, if you wanna talk about hate, the biblical version of the character was configured as much as possible to be an insult to the enemies if the Israelites, and didn't come from the bible at all.

If your problem is with hate, then an accurate knowledge of the history of the christian religion shows that there's plenty of hate there toward other religions, but also that christianity doesn't have sole ownership over the devil conceptually anyway. Your religion cannibalized other religions for its devil figures to insult them, you can't possibly now claim that what the figure means within your religion is the only legitimate version, nor that it's worthy of taking offense to when somebody else uses it for other purposes.