Feeling evil feelings is different than doing evil. Everyone likes something evil now and than. Satanism is about the aesthetic of darkness

Gurk, getting a feeling and what is fact are different things.

Judaism started as a violent religion but was subdued by greater cultural forces. It was Jesus's apostles who turned the religion Satanic. The New Testament is about soul swapping. Jesus buys your soul from the devil and implants his soul in you by destroying the old soul on the cross. Their leader was killed so they invented truly demonic doctrines like actually swallowing Jesus entire and gulping him down with more Jesus and God blood. These are the roots of our civilization

Actual Satanists (not evangelical boogiemen) seem to value freethought knowledge and individual freedom over being a follower either doctrinally or morally. In that sense, the seem basically Nietzschean, advocating what is basically a “master morality“ over a “slave morality”, and likewise what we might call a “master epistemology” over a “slave epistemology”.

They see Satan, as the mythical first rebel, as symbolizing that, making himself the master of his own domain rather than being a slave to God.

Whatever the truth about Satan, in some ways, he's the only one who stands between us and moral chaos - it appears that the pain from the stick is a better motivator than the pleasure of the carrot. A case can be made that religions that have in them a powerful evil entity that feeds on the souls of the immoral depend on this very entity to keep it running smoothly. In short, morality, given present realities, depends more on Satan than God. :chin:

:naughty: :point: :halo:

Worship Satan, friends. He's just God in a bad mood :lol:

It's possible, though unlikely, that Satan could be worshiped truly independent from God. Satan is certainly presented as the antagonist of the Bible. He serves as the inverse of God. If God is just and loving, then Satan is unfair and cruel. If heaven is filled with joy, then hell is filled with suffering.

So if you agree that God is an expression of human ideals, its seems odd that anyone would be genuinely interested in idolizing the non-ideal (in the form of worshiping Satan). It's more likely that a self-proclaimed Satanist is just expressing a negative opinion of Christianity/religion. I also can't respect someone who wears an ideology strictly for the purpose of style. That seems like a pseudo-ideology to me.

If God is just and loving — Bird-Up

The Christian God isn't. Being Satan, he told Abraham to murder his innocent son. Satan also (allegedly) sacrificed his son Jesus in order to save a whole bunch of evil people.

Nobody said that God is just and loving. But that's how he's advertised in the Bible. In order to worship Satan, one would first have to subscribe to the beliefs of the Bible. If you think the Bible is fictional, then you would also think Satan is fictional. That's the main reason why Satanists strike me as confused. It is possible though, there could be some "true believer" Satanists out there.

Reading the book "The Secret", talking to Satan though you don't believe in him, and being sexually perfect seem me like the right road to me. That's my life goal. I don't like how Christianity is such a gang (literally) of people using ancient texts which they can't prove they can translate to troll the world. They believe in a God that can command murder and genocide at any time. Christians are not normal people. They can think that this is because their religion is special, but a special aura can also such. They are about narcissism thru self-hatred in front of a mirror of the Platonic form of Justice

Jesus implants his soul in you by destroying the old soul on the cross. — Gregory

You know those facehuggers from the Alien movies, which lay eggs in your throat which then hatch and burst out your chest? I always wondered where they got their inspiration from...


Yes, they worship Milton's Satan.

if you agree that God is an expression of human ideals — Bird-Up

Does anyone on earth with an IQ over 80 actually believe the Abrahamic God is "ideal"?

You know those facehuggers from the Alien movies, which lay eggs in your throat which then hatch and burst out your chest? — gurk

I have decided that this is how I want to start every conversation from now on.

Does anyone on earth with an IQ over 80 actually believe the Abrahamic God is "ideal"? — gurk

Shame and guilt work wonders when you need to distract from your own glaring imperfections. It's the foundation of the Bible; and most abusive relationships in general.

Those practices--and let's be real here, Christians aren't eating a person--are based upon pagan religions much older than Judaism, in which the sun was worshiped or human bodies were consumed regularly. To call it 'Satanic' is weird considering that its doctrine and those of Judaism both outline what that means. Also, it was God who granted Satan permission, actually implored him it seems, to ruin Job's life, fill him with sores and have his family murdered by bandits. Satan often seems to me like a spoiled rich kid who asks 'why' and talks back a lot and is impatient about taking over the family business.

see my new thread on this

Could someone here tell me if/why Satanism would continue to exist without Christianity? Or would the Satanist churches collapse without their raison d'etre? Are there any sects of Satanism that have some ideological substance to them, beyond just Ayn Randism/Humanism/Atheism? — gurk

It's probably a modern invention. You need the characters for the foil itself to exist.

Satan, just means "adversary" in Hebrew and first shows up in Job- a pretty old Hebrew text even for Biblical works, most scholars think. He seems to be literally an "adversary" in the form of a prosecutor who convinces the godhead to test his adherent's worth. He is possibly an explanation for why unnecessary evil happens to good people in ancient Hebrew society. It should be noted that this text shows how in early Judaism, there seemed to be notions of a "council of angels" or "heavenly council" (probably originally various lower gods), which God presided over.

Satan's association with some sort of "fallen angel" occurs in ancient Judea around 2nd century BCE during the Second Temple Period. Here, the story comes from Enoch 1 where there are "The Watchers" who are a contingent of angels who watch humans and want to show them various skills and eventually have sex with some of the human women and have giants, etc. etc. These angels are eventually cast down to an underworld and are basically seen as the cause of evil in the world. It was some apocalyptic Jewish sects' response (like Dead Sea Scroll sect) to constant evil in the world and injustice, even to the pious. The previous ancient Satan is combined with this more elaborate angeology, and we thus get a more robust version.

Judaism eventually turns away from more escoteric emphasis on angels in everyday practice, but retain it through kabbalistic practices reserved only for the most scholarly men. It probably also remained in common folklore that was not "official".

Christianity, stemming from more apocalyptic traditions of Judaism, and having a home in similar stories in pagan religions that bolstered its appeal, lived on more openly in the traditions and thus "hell and brimstone" and such is quite emphasized in traditional forms of Christianity.

Agree completely. LaVey was interested in combining his interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy with Aleister Crowley’s mysticism/philosophy.

To play devil's advocate (heh...)

Satanism seems to have begun as LaVey's atheistic pseudoreligion, but over time the word "Satan" has come to mean vastly different things from the Abrahamic definition. The Temple of Set is a form of Kemetism wherein Set (aka "Satan" according to them) is the main deity of reverence. Other forms of Satanism equate Satan with hundreds of other beings from Nordic paganism, Babylonian religion, or the greco-roman pantheon (Typhon). If Satanism were truly just worship of the biblical Satan... perhaps my OP accidentally implied this... then the answer would obviously be "yes", Satanism is nothing more than anti-Abrahamism. But that's a false premise.

I'd also like to add that there are some (very few!) Satanic religions which revere truly original deities, mostly inspired by lovecraft. I was not aware of all this when I wrote the OP... unfortunately the Church of Satan has a near monopoly on Satanic definitions and publicity, and uses their power to define these things however they want.