Does Satan exist?
No
Does the 'Thought' of Satan exist?
Yes, and it's just as powerful.
The inverse is true for the idea of a physical God.
Does God exist (as a physical or metaphisical entity?)
No
Does the 'Thought' of God exist?
Yes
I understand this treads on centuries of disembodied religious ritual, but the idea of gods exist as a meta representation of information.
Functional information.
An example: You have a successful warrior who performs well in battle. You have 100 successful warriors. What about 1000s over generations? Can you begin to pull from their descriptions certain traits that are important to have in order to replicate their success? Strength, fury, intelligence?
And how is this functional information passed through time? As exemplary stories. Dramas, poems, bed time stories.
As a culture becomes more cohesive these stories meld into a singular idea of what it means to be an archetypical warrior in that culture.
The result is a god of war. Something worshiped, emulated, spoken about.
This is a supremely powerful method of COLLECTIVIZING INTENT behind functional, successful information.
When you have an entire culture of social animals pushing the idea of great warriors in the way only that culture knows how…you get more great warriors.
Think that's important to defending the greater culture in time of war?
It's almost as our societies are meta-soverign individuals. They are organisms whos circulatory system is the medium upon which information travels. Spoken word, written word, printing press, internet etc.
So collectivizing intent around collective functional ideas that ensure the success of the culture on a social-selective landscape…that's supremely powerful.
So this god of war is thrown into a patheon of gods. God of love, god of protection, god of nature…and what comes out of it is a singular idea of what it means to be the supreme meta god. You no longer strive towards a god of your chosen archetype, you strive towards a COLLECTIVIZED IDEAL of the most functional person within a culture. This is the idea of God (or Satan). It's bipolar because we always have a choice and that string of choices fundamentally distill down to right or wrong. Good or bad, light or dark.
In western cultures the supreme idea that is the most functional example of how to live is Jesus Christ.
A builder
Logos
A healer.
So anyways, the answer is NO. God and Satan do not exist in the literal sense. They are figurative extrapolations of the collective consciousness that act as exemplary drama to guide our children into the future.