I was just wondering this today. When we talk about God, we don't say "the God", but no one ever says "Devil" like that.

You might say "He's a devil", but when talking about the unholy one, it's always "the devil". Why?

Saying 'the God' means admitting that there is 'a God' and in most religions that's kinda heretic? And most religions do not care about the logistics of evil, so they go around saying 'the devil', 'a demon'?

Dunno, just guessing.

My guess is that back in the day they would have said, "the god" as in "the god of my people tells us..." or in polytheism, "the god of the underworld..."

Now, believers use their monotheistic god as being the only god like what the Gnasher said and athiests and agnostics use "God" as a theoretical entity that generally encompases whatever is necessary to address a point about an actual manifestation in reality of the imagination, thus no need to say "the god" as in "if God is all good and all powerful then how can there be..."

Probably also with "the Devil", it would have behooved one to know which tempting entity was actually the truly responsible temtpting entitiy, i.e., THE Devil (so as to avoid him) so whereas "a" devil might have a negative effect on your spirit, "The" Devil would have a negative effect on your soul.

Because monotheism is awesome like that.

Because demons are also commonly known as devils. Speaking about the lord of darkness with just "devil" could lead to confusion. Hense the prefix.

Ex: Devil brought chaos into the home. (This could be any demon. Astaroth, Asmodeus, Amon, lesser demon, etc.)

The Devil brought chaos into the home. (This way it is clear which one it is. However, if you don't capitalize the D in "devil" then it loses this meaning in most cases.)

cus god's name is god and the devil's name is lucifer.
you don't go around saying the lucifer.

like you woudln't say to someone else 'i talked to lord' you would say 'i talked to the lord' but if you were actually talking the lord you would just say 'lord, i am talking to you' or 'god, i am talkin to you' but if you talked to the devil you would not say 'the devil, i am talking to you' you would probably say 'devil, i am talking to you' though people don't really talk directly to the devil much so i guess it's not really common .. at least you don't hear anyone talking to the devil much. i suppose if people did a lot then maybe everyone would start calling him 'lucifer' more often. one to one basis and all.
but then you know how in all books with great evil beings it's kind of the same like LOTR has sauron but mostly people say 'the dark lord' or something like that. and in harry potter nobody says voldemort they always say 'he who must not be named' or some other sort of euphemism.

so for those who don 'want to read all that i can't blame you it's mostly just faffle. it's because 'the devil' isn't his proper name we just call him that because we like to use euphemism's for evil.
^__________^

Sumi wins...

'God' is to 'the Lord' as
'Lucifer' is to 'the Devil'

Also, didn't "The Village" also do some kind of "name we don't metion" type deal?

... What we eventually came to refer to [spoiler]cockroaches[/spoiler] as, having lived together in Arkansas all of this time, right?

Village People?