I've never heard that the Devil punishes anyone. As I've heard it, the Devil tricks us into doing bad. And so, we have millions of Christians blaming the Devil for provoking them, and they pray to God to deliver them from The Evil One.

It's sad that in order to get people to do good, someone had to come up with the concept of an Evil One they ought to resist.

I think that both the question and the first answer are too broad to be of any use. For an obvious starter, they beg the question; assuming the existence of a god or a devil and assuming that the 'personalities' (if you will forgive the term) of both this thing called god and devil can be identified. Probabaly a better question might have to do with how we go about defining both good or evil.

in the beginning, when satan battled with god, he lost. however, what if he had won? would we have still viewed him as evil? would there have been a christ? in addition, Satan has two uses for the rules of christianity: a fear of punishment, and a scrapegoat.

Okay, I'm going to return to the original post and give it some thought so I can repost something of substance later. For now, I'll say that in this case, it's just difficult because the topic appeared to be evil in the philosophical sense, but the questions seem more theological in nature. I know many religious folks who'd tackle them well, but as a non-religious person, I have a difficult time taking devils, gods, afterlife, and the like seriously. As someone suggested above, is there anything in particular about evil you (original poster) want to discuss?

"Good is that which pleaseth man, evil that which pleaseth him not," Hobbes

There is no Devil! Only man made! Evil is what man constructs! But everything must be relative: black/white, male/female, good/bad