Matthew 4:
You are putting in your path towards truth a totally unnecessary obstacle, a straw man, when you so accuse those of us who may be called "Atheist or secularist". The Bible and its interpretation doesn't belong only to believers .8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'[d]"
11Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
So Jesus chose to serve the Father rather than be served by Man. Naturally for the Atheist or secularist, this goes over like a lead balloon. Our goal in the world is "prestige" and the ability to exert power for our own benefit. It appears ludicrous that one capable of doing so would intentionally avoid it.
Nietzsche apparently felt that the Overman was king of the world. Such a person is not bothered by fears and inabilities that stifle the normal person. The Overman is the ultimate human machine that can manipulate the world to serve its purposes. But it requires shedding all sorts of illusory fears that enable a person find satisfaction in mediocrity:
No matter, the main point is the status of Satan vis a vis God. What I as unbeliever and you as believer both believe is Satan as trickster who leads men astray. "Jesus chose to serve the Father" is true. However for me who am a 21st century person the Father stands for the ineffable high god who is not to be confused or abandoned in favour of worldly idols. For you apparently, Nick, it seems that the Father is in opposition to human reason, overrules human reason, and reveals a truth which is opposed to human reason, human reason which is one worldly idol.
According to my interpretation of the Gospel story above Jesus supports human reason which stands opposed to Satan the trickster, and this is because the ineffability of the high god, i.e. "the Father" is reasonable. There is no contest between the high god on the one hand and human reason on the other.
According to your interpretation as it seems to me the high god i.e. "the Father" denies human reason and demands of Jesus faith in despite of human reason, and human reason is Satanic.
-- Updated March 13th, 2017, 5:33 am to add the following --
"The Christ", Nick, is a moving icon. It was politic at one time in the human past for people to believe that faith took precedence over reason. That time has been over for approximately four or five centuries. If the ethical message of Jesus is to survive, man's will to power must take account of man's intelligence and reason. Nietzsche saw this and was explaining that the age of faith was dead . Nietzsche therefore supports the continuation of the ethical message and carries it forward into the age of reason. The will to power, for Nietzsche, is man come of age. Overman is not some sort of Nazi but is the man who has freed himself from blind faith and is engaged heart and soul in the quest for truth as a reasoning adult.
-- Updated March 13th, 2017, 5:47 am to add the following --
Nick_A wrote:
I don't claim we are becoming more intelligent. I claim that we with our limited intelligence have been living in , not the age of faith, but the age of reason for hundreds of years now and will continue to live in the age of reason for the foreseeable future. The human condition includes that we change our world views and our political regimes. The human condition also includes that we can lose our most revered ethics if we are not very careful. In order to hang on to those revered ethics as exemplified by Jesus we need to stop the blind faith business and engage with state of the art knowledge and reason.That is why we cannot be considered intelligent and regardless of popular opinion, are not becoming more intelligent. When Nietzsche and Simone agree, I prefer to be open minded rather than argue for the sake of righteous indignation. The advantage of Christianity and the other great teachings initiating with a conscious source is that they admit and begin with the reality of the human condition.
The advantage of Christianity over other religions is that Christianity's icon is a man, not a holy book or a set of rituals. A man moves through the ages and is not static like a set of rituals or a holy book of rules. The man Jesus is a man for our times if we understand him as such.
The "conscious source" is an idea from the superstitious past an idea which is now well past its function of social control.