Devil
“Diabolos” comes from a term meaning to “throw across,” an apt metaphor for how seeds of discord are cast between individuals to set them at odds.
The English word comes from the Greek diabolos, “slanderer,” from a verb meaning to throw across, as a false report is thrown between people to set them at odds. The New Testament uses it for the figure the Hebrew scriptures call satan, “adversary.” Folklore gave the devil horns and hooves and tied him to appetite so that “devilish” came to mean bodily excess. Latter-day Saint scripture departs from that interpretation. It presents the devil as a real person who consciously chose his adversarial role.
Perdition in Restoration Scripture
Restoration theology describes the devil as a fallen angel whose tragic loss turned into a desire to bring misery to all who would yield to his enticings.
The vision of the degrees of glory describes him as “an angel of God who was in authority in the presence of God, who rebelled against the Only Begotten Son,” and who was thrust down and called Perdition (D&C 76:25-28). Lehi supplies the motive: “because he had fallen from heaven, and had become miserable forever, he sought also the misery of all mankind” (2 Nephi 2:17-18). Joseph Smith later taught that “the Devil has no body, and herein is his punishment.” In Latter-day Saint thought, then, the being most fully identified with evil is the one denied the opportunity of having a body. Devilishness then cannot lie in embodiment, which Restoration doctrine counts among God’s gifts to man.
The Rejected Guarantee
In the premortal council, the devil offered to save every soul, at the price of human agency and of God’s own power.
The Book of Moses records the offer: “I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.” The Lord names two defects. Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man,” and he asked that God give him “mine own power” (Moses 4:1-4). Many readers take the plan as forced obedience, while some Latter-day Saint scholars read it as a promise to save people in their sins, sparing them the mortal probation in which choices carry consequences. On either reading, the offer promised the best possible outcome and secured it by taking the decision away from those it claimed to save. Isaiah’s taunt against the king of Babylon, which Christian tradition has long applied to Lucifer, voices the same ambition: “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14).
Deception and Dominion
The Book of Moses further adds that Satan became “the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will” (Moses 4:4). Deception often precedes captivity. Nephi records one of the devil’s quieter assurances: “I am no devil, for there is none” (2 Nephi 28:22). A revelation to Joseph Smith extends the pattern to humanity without naming the devil at all: “almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” The same revelation holds that power and influence ought to be maintained “only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned” (D&C 121:39-41).
Superintelligence and the Architecture of Power
Some proposals for governing advanced artificial intelligence echo the rejected plan, and Mormon transhumanists read “devilish” as a warning about how power is exercised.
AI theorists have described a “singleton,” “a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level,” as one way to end dangerous competition. Others have proposed that the first group to build a sufficiently powerful AI ought to use it to stop anyone else from building one, or that civilization may survive its most dangerous technologies only under pervasive surveillance and global governance. The motives are often humane, yet the end goal is familiar: a guaranteed result, secured by concentrating power and authority at the expense of broader humanity. A parallel danger inheres in transhumanism as well, since enhancement and machine intelligence promise the godlike capacities the adversary sought for himself.
Mormon transhumanists still hope to become as God is, so their question concerns how power is held, with some describing the present debate over AI as a second council in heaven. The cost of attaining a given level of AI capability has drastically fallen as hardware and methods improve, spreading it more widely. Control that rests on a few firms that make advanced chips and the machines that print them, on large stores of behavioral data, or on state coercion tends to harden over time, because no cheaper alternative routes around it. Capacity held by many people who must cooperate and persuade one another resembles the plan the council accepted.