How does Satan use doubts to promote evil?

One major area, which Satan plays on, is of creating doubts – tashkeek. Satan, satanic forces work amongst us in misguiding, in causing people to disobey God etcetera by working on or playing on the doubts. Doubts that human beings may have. Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) had said that,

"Satan will come to one of us and say “Who created the Heavens?”, we will say “Allah” and he will go on to say “who created the earth?” and we will agree and say “Allah”. “Who created the trees?” “Allah”. And then he will say to us “and who created Allah?”[1]

This is the attempt to put that doubt in our minds. Whenever we have this we seek refuge in Allah from Satan and carry on, stop that thought and carry on in our lives wherever we are headed.

And we can see that when we look at the world today, the most powerful civilization around us, western civilization, it is fundamentally a materialist civilization. One in which God has been denied. God’s existence has been denied. It is a secular civilization. One in which God and things connected to God has been removed. And in its place, materials become the most important thing. People focus on wealth, money, success, all of these things become the focus of our lives. Things which we seek to find happiness from, which in fact really don’t give us the happiness. It gives us maybe temporary happiness but not real happiness. But these have become the focus as God has been taken out of our lives. And as a result, the whole systems of morality have been undermined and destroyed where corruption now is the order of the day. That materialist society promotes corruption because it’s a source of pleasure. How to enjoy? We enjoy through accumulation of material things. This is the first area in which Satan comes. There is no God. We’re here by evolution. The evolutionary process explains how we are here. The big bang. But if we think about it, what is the big bang? An explosion of matter. If one were to drop an atomic bomb in a junkyard, could that explosion create a car or a refrigerator or a toaster? Could it? Or even a spoon? No. Such an explosion, such a devastating explosion, it creates chaos. It doesn’t create harmony. So though the big bang and the factors of the big bang seem to be very real to us, that big bang was planned by God. If the big bang actually took place, already planned, where it was going before it took place, every atom, every molecule, everything that expanded already was assigned a place to be. That’s why we have the earth the right distance from the sun, properly tilted, turning at the correct pace, that life could be produced here. Without all those factors being already in place, then we would end up like any of the other planets around the earth not being able to sustain life.

The primary doubt is of, the doubt about God’s existence itself. And those who have fallen at this point have lost the meaning of life.

Reference:

[1] [Sahih Muslim: Book of Faith, 243]