The me you don’t know and the me you don’t know that I don’t know and the knowing of me I didn’t tell you and the you that I told me about but you never revealed

My own thoughts on the overly simplified religious paradigm that most people follow is hardly of interest to them, or anyone.  Religious notions become identity, and once identity is established, people become very hostile to anything that may change/evolve it.
Nonetheless, if there is someone reading who holds on to this view that the universe is good vs. evil – God vs. Satan, for example – then here’s something to consider, which may untie you from the idea of a cosmic vending machine, operating on prayer coins, that may/may not dispense what you ask of it, depending on the will of the machine (to widely paraphrase something Wayne Dyer said).  I look at the whole thing as being within each “individual” (I put that in quotes as I know we’re all part of one reality) – that is, the higher self is God, the ego (lower self) is Satan.  The higher self is always operating on the notion of what is beneficial for all, whereas Ego is concerned with image/acquisitions/rewards.
As it stands for most, the idea of “Good” is not really what serves the whole, but what benefits the particular clique of the interpreter.  In our society, Ego is not seen as “Evil” so much as an expression of individual importance.  “I’ll be my real self and fuck the rest!” as the oft-repeated mantra goes.  (I have always found this to be foolish, as adding the “fuck the rest” part still leaves someone else’s opinion involved, but I digress.)
I put it to the few (or the none, most likely) that read this that God is the higher self and Satan is the Ego.  This is less simple than Good vs. Evil, but ultimately it makes more sense.  I have never bought into the idea that we, as humans, are disconnected from the divine.  We don’t come from divinity to be disconnected for a while to see if we can become divine again.  And I certainly don’t buy into the idea that if you’re deemed to have failed, that you will be tossed into fire and brimstone for eternity.  That’s not what a loving God (whatever that means) would do with the misguided.  Nonetheless, the fact that some people want to keep it that simplified is one of many reasons I leave the interpretation and understanding of the divine to the individual (again, the term ‘individual’ meaning the consciousness that still operates on Ego and considers itself separate from the whole.)   God is a oneness (all one) and Ego is a twoness (me vs you) so I'll never see me as separate from divinity (if I want to get anywhere, that is.)
Then again, this is probably wrong.  Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you read it, if you don’t tell anybody I used to believe something else.  Actually, tell them what you want.  I don't own anything except this moment.