Well, for some reason or another this popped into my brain: Why would anyone want to be a Satanist, and what do they believe. I realized I had no clue. So anyway, if there are any Satanists, people who know about it, or people who live in California, I ask for a short explanation about the believes and practices of Satanists and (if there are any) the different types of Satanism.
Most Satanists I know are atheist sensualists with poor taste in clothing.
Oh, and here’s a link on different types of Satanism.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanism.htm
Weird, since they all seem religious, and all the people I know who are Satanist claim to be atheist.
shrugs
Kyberneticist, I’m confused. How can you tell what religion someone truly is? I’m an atheist, not a satanist, and I don’t want to talk about my fashion sense. Would you claim that I’m a satanist?
So. I’m an atheist too. 
The people I know who claim to be Satanists (as laid out by Anton LeVey) also emphasize their atheism.
They distinguish themselves from, say, humanist atheists by defining their priorities as being purely selfish motives, and hedonism.
Although I think that all motives are selfish, my goals tend towards a more global scope, and my hedonism is more long-term…
So what you’re really saying is that you’re not a Satanist, you’re the Anti-Christ. 
Hi, all. I’m a long-time lurker here on SDMB. I’ve been reading the boards for a while, and finally registered not too long ago. This is my first post, though. Yay!
I’m so not trying to hijack this thread, I swear.
A couple of years back, I got “interested” in Satanism (“interested” being defined as “curious from a purely intellectual perspective.”) I read a little bit from the Book of Satan and other pro-Satanist works, trying to get a handle on their beliefs. Turns out, as was mentioned before, they tend to claim atheism, but they spout off about Satan. I posted my questions to alt.satanism to get the Straight Dope (I’m so sorry!) from the horse’s (or hellhound’s) mouth. I got some drivel about Satan being pure symbolism for “man’s animal nature, and the self-serving urge that is blah blah blah.”
Uh huh. Great. I’m with you so far. So…why bother personifying it? Why not cut through all the crappy religious trappings and go get a beer or something? I mean, I’ve read “The Selfish Gene.” I came to the same conclusion, and I didn’t have to draw a single pentagram or slaughter a chicken. So, as they say, what’s up?
Silence. Well, silence punctuated with the occasional promise to curse me and all my progeny, which I found not only unhelpful, but downright rude.
To this day, I’ve not heard a satisfactory answer.
It seems rather odd that Satanists would claim to be atheists; if God doesn’t exist, then Satan doesn’t either (being part of the same mythos and all). A more ‘reasonable’ explanation would be that they believe in God, they just prefer the opposite viewpoint. Or perhaps they feel that Satan is the stronger of the two? Or perhaps he is simply more accessible? Couldn’t really tell you, since I don’t know any Satanists. However, I think they’re just plain silly if they try to convince anyone they’re atheists.
Precisely!
Satanistic claims of atheism are logically impossible. I wonder if most of these people just feel the need to belong to a club.
I actually have the same question about any religion, but hey, that’s just me…
Sigh.
I have answered this question before. Satanists are basically like humanists who believe that supreme power comes from within. If anything, it is more akin to Mormonism because Mormons believe in an afterlife where everyone has their own “kingdom” where they are like god. The main difference is that Satanists typically don’t have any belief in God because they can become their own god.
If you live in the Baltimore area there is an International Church of Satan downtown. Also there are two branches of Satanism, the Crowleyian and the LeVayan. I don’t believe their dogma is too different from eachother.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Er . . . y’all do know that Satanists don’t “worship Satan,” right? Or believe he exists? The word “Satan” represents everything “anti-Christian,” as it were. It doesn’t refer to any physical manifestation of the devil, or evil, or anything like that.
Fair enough. Thank you.
I’d still like to know exactly why the persona of Satan is used.
I’m finished hijacking.
I just remembered a few differences. Crowleyian (sp?) Satanists believe more in the mystical side of Satanism with higher magickal powers and such. This is evident in the use of numerology, spell casting invoking the Dark Lords, and other divinatory tools. This is not to be confused with the Crowleyian version of Wicca. Though there are some relations they are not similar since Wicca is essentially a benign form of nature worship that utilizes divinatory practices and invoking benign spirits for clarity and helpfulness.
LeVayan Satanists as Kyber so nicely pointed out earlier follow a path more along the lines that he said. In other words they practice hedonism. There is still the dogma that one is his/her own god as with the Crowleyian version.
Personally I think they both give a lot of credit to actually make the person feel they are responsible for their own actions. You never hear a real Satanist say that the devil made him do it. You hear many people who claim to be Christians pray for them to beat the crap out of the other team and say Jesus made me do it and things like that (in sports). The one example that I can think of that contradicts that is the Son of Sam serial killer. I can’t remember my source on this one but I remember watching it on some learning channel (discovery, PBS, Learning, or something) where they claimed the Son of Sam in fear that he was soon to be caught went into his house and started trying to plant anything that he could to make people think he was a Satanist (hence all the writings on the wall and in the journal). I believe they said it was to prepare for an insanity plea. He may have known for a month or so beforehand about his impending capture thus he had more time to prepare.
HUGS again!
Sqrl
Looks like there were several replies while I was typing. Phil answered your question Ogre. The only reason why most Satanists use the image of Satan is because it shows that it is anti-Christian. Also, the goat is a representation of sexual freedom. You can look into the thread entitled Goat Porn in MPSIMS from the other day and see why.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Theres ain’t no such thing as bad publicity.
Actually, from long discussions with a formerly Satanist roommate of mine and reading The Satanic Bible, thats about what it boiled down to.
SqrlCub: I seem to remember that LaVayan Satanism had a fair about of mysticism to it as well. IIRC, one of the funnier parts of one of LaVays books was him saying that he could move a cup with his mind, but not if any non-believers were watching. If there are non-believers in the room, its OK to fake the trick to get them to believe.
When I looked into Satanism a while ago, I came away with the impression that it was largely a Neitszchean sort of self-realization school, where self-realization comes from breaking the bonds of commonly held morality (read: Christian morality). In other words, to free oneself from the illusions of a belief in God, symbolically worship his alter-ego.
Thus, they’re atheists insofar as they don’t actually worship a personification of some entity or force in the universe; they use the symbol of Satan and his ethic for cathartic, edifying acts.
However, as I continued looking into it, I found some sects that seemed to believe in real supernatural powers that were controllable by the fully realized Satanist. The self-realization stuff is not particularly challenging, conceptually, but how is that rationalized with a belief in supernaturalism - it seems to come full circle, like Satanists start to really believe in the devil they pretend to worship.
pldennison wrote:
OK…so if Satanists wish to separate themselves from Christianity, why do they choose an icon which is essentially part of Christianity? There are plenty of other religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Wiccan, etc.) which are not Christian in nature; why not identify oneself with these?
Or do they just wish to mock Christianity by choosing its ‘evil’ icon (even if it is symbolic)?
Yeah thats pretty much it. Mock it and attract all those 14 year olds who are pissed at their parents. Like I said before, its essentially 2000 years of free advertizing. You don’t get much better name recognition than Satan. Hell, thats gotta be up there with McDonalds and Micky Mouse for universal recognition.
Anyway, the stuff I read and my former roommate went to great lengths to justify it as an offspring of a 4000 year old Babylonian religion. And then, says I, pretty much missing the advertizing point, “but then why choose a name that no one, except for other Satanists and the odd historian associates with that Babylonian religion”
“Uhh” my roommate says, “Because Christians have taken a perfectly good religion and turned it into a symbol of evil”
This went around and around for a while, until I realized that the whole point was to piss people off and get instant publicity. How many books would people buy on “LaVeyism”?
Perhaps because they don’t believe in the tenets of those religions, and thus joining them wouldn’t surve much purpose? Hinduism, for example, is not set up as a rejection of Christianity, but rather as a whole seperate religion that apparently has been practiced for quite awhile (who would have thunk it?). The fact that someone wishes to reject Christianity doesn’t necessarily mean they wish to embrace some other religion. Of course, you could say that is exactly what they’re doing by becoming Satanists, but Satanism is not a religion, as I understand it (I’m not a Satanist myself), since religions are the worship of supernatural beings, and Satanists don’t literally worship Satan.
Anyways, way back when LaVay and some others hit upon the idea of using Satan as a metaphor for the type of person they wanted to be and what they wanted to promote to others. If people share those ideas and wish to be part of a philosophic society (that sounds odd, but I’m not quite sure what else to call it, as Satanism is more of a philosophy then a religion) that promotes them, sounds fine to me. Personally, while I somewhat share the ideas as I understand them (I can’t claim to have done indepth research on the subject), I don’t care for the organizational trappings.
As for the free advertising bit, I’m not sure that was exactly LaVay’s motive, but I agree he was being delibritely controversial by picking Satan as a fake figure of worship rather than creating his own.
Exactly my point on why wiccans call themselve “witches”. Wiccanism, or neopaganism, is a perfectly good “religion”, but many insist on using “witch” to: attract those 14 yr olds, piss off the Christians, & sound “bad”. Then somebody accuses them of doing something "witch-like’, and they all whine: “why does everyone get us mixed up with the satanists?”, when it is their very choice of a name that they share with the satanists that gets folks mixed up. Either stop using the term or stop whining. I suggest stop using the term.
But there are some “Satanists” who actually DO worship Satan, etc, do black sabbats, etc.