Legend tells us that The Son of the Morning was cast into the pit as punishment for committing the mortal sin of pride when He refused to kneel before Jehovah’s newly crafted creature of clay. However, it was sarcasm not pride that triggered the wrath of Jehovah on that fateful day when the Devil saltily added that if God had created man in his image, mankind wouldn’t be the thinking kind.
The human brain evolved to survive in the world, not to understand it, and mankind created its gods as a means to understand a world that the human brain is not configured to comprehend. The human animal saw actors—animals and mostly humans—as arbiters of change, and the brain of a social animal surmises that any change is caused by such actors even if the actor is unseen. Forces of Nature such as the Sun, the weather, the seasons, natural disasters, a well as perceived forces of good or bad fortune, were all viewed from the perspective of the anthropomorphizing human brain: whenever something happens, it is caused by someone who acted according to similar motivations and logic as the observer would have applied, only this someone is very powerful.
The gods thus took the shape of humans and animals with human qualities of reasoning and the ability to be influenced, and they were all “invented,” or rather taken as axiomatic, to provide mankind with a mental image of Nature. Gods serve to satisfy the brain’s requirement for a human-centered explanation where all is interpreted in terms of human interaction and human qualities are assigned to even inanimate objects.
No level of intelligence can deny the brain its need for actors as an explanation. The human brain imagines actors and succumbs to magical thinking when its host is not in control. It is not until an individual gains direct control over a situation and recognizes himself or herself as the cause of change that external actors become irrelevant. Hence, gods are killed not by intelligence, which is why even intelligent people often believe in them. A god dies when the human brain realizes that it is in control of the realm that belonged to the god.
It is with the above in mind that Satan finds it amusing when some of His followers declare themselves to be their own gods. Satan’s amusement is partly caused by somewhat concerning circumstances that He would like to spend a few paragraphs on. If gods are born of a lack of control, the Devil cannot help but wonder if it reveals that those followers are the very essence of powerlessness. The idea behind the declaration was never to do away with gods, only to replace them. But a god who is defeated disappears. It does not change ownership or name, no matter how personal, because all gods are deeply personal as they each live inside your brain. They cannot be abandoned and replaced if they still live there.
Satan thinks that the very need to introduce a god by proxy, even by figure of speech, points towards the person’s need for a god to mask the person’s insecurity and inability to cope. Satan therefore thinks it is probably a person who used to believe in gods and is unable to let go of this belief who utters the phrase “I am my own god.” After all, to an atheist who never had any god, the term “I am my own god” equals “I am my own non-existence,” and would be quite ridiculous.
Now, Satan knows that the phrase is derived from The Satanic Bible and Anton LaVey’s ill-founded model of religion in the chapter The God You Save May Be Yourself; the original variation of the phrase is found in the chapter Religious Holidays. The Devil thinks that those of his followers who make declarations about being their own gods have generally put limited thought into the statement and take it to mean that they choose their own moral views, make their own decisions, etc. instead of obeying some religious rules. Satan fully supports this idea. He is of course aware that in practice the declaration is similar to stating that one is one’s own master, although in this case human masters are not denied.
The main source of Satan’s amusement with the term “I am my own god!” however, is the connotations of the word “god.”
To the Prince of Darkness, gods symbolize lack of control, insecurity, powerlessness, impotence, infirmity, and herd mentality. So as far as Satan is concerned, any human being that invokes a god betrays these very personal shortcomings. What an unintended joke the Devil’s followers make of themselves by declaring themselves as gods!, the Devil grins.
The statement “I am my own god” may inspire awe among those who believe in gods and to whom gods are authoritative. But to everyone else it fosters no respect … or even disrespect when this “god” is soon revealed to be reared by the very god that the person was raised to believe in. It is uncanny how often the Devil’s followers cast themselves as contenders to the thrones of the old gods instead of doing away with the controlling gods altogether, only to model their “own” god by the old one.
Like the god they wished to abandon, they feel every bit the same need to reassert themselves, are every bit as arrogant and resistant to reason, and generally behave every bit like when the followed their former god, only maybe a little more pronounced. Satan thinks they should not be surprised that once they declare themselves as their own gods, no-one comes to worship them at their altars; their gods will never gain beyond a single worshiper.