I would think that if a person was going to denounce another’s work then they should at least get their own facts straight first.
Religion in Russia
Could you please post a link to where you got that from? Only if it’s the whole ‘Divine Comedy’, though. I found it before but it wasn’t a great translation. I’d greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Nevertheless, still and all, if the relevant options were seriously and sincerely offered, it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.
He was quoting book 10 of Paradise Lost, as he said.
Paradise Lost - John Milton - English
Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri - Italian
No relation.
Actually… the point of church is to gather with other believers and fellowship and praise God. Just 'cause someone may go to church once a week doesn’t make them a Satanist. Christians can fellowship outside of church. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I (God) with them”–Matthew 18:20.
You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian… but it can and often does significantly help one to grow spiritually for Christ.
I do agree with you that Christians are guilty of worshiping Satan by how they live… but it’s usually unintentional and unnoticed.
:smack:
my bad… Paradise Lost**
I still would like the link if possible… but I was talking about ‘Divine Comedy’…
Here’s a link to the Comedy, in Italian and English:
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
It’s a very simple cost-benefit analysis really. And to anyone who is devoutly religious, but is still reasonable enough to perform the analysis, the choice should be obvious.
Take two variables. The first is your choice of object of worship (i.e. God or Satan). The second is your ability to stay on the prescribed path of that line of worship. Regarding that second variable, remember: God demands perfection, and you will be damned for the slightest infraction. On the other hand, Satan only demands vague allegiance. It’s not like you’ll flunk out of Satan-worship for rescuing a kitten.
Now we “multiply” these variables by each other and get ourselves a table of the results:
Choose God/Stay on path: Heaven!
Choose God/Stray from path: Fucked for eternity by razor-condomed demons in Hell
Choose Satan/Stay on path: Easy (after) life at Satan’s elbow in Hell
Choose Satan/Stray from path: Easy (after) life at Satan’s elbow in Hell
So you see, it’s basically a prisoner’s dilemma, except that the win/win result is nearly impossible to achieve. You might as well choose the guaranteed non-loser.
I liked your analysis. Very well done. However I must point out that God doesn’t demand perfection. It is impossible for any human (besides Jesus) to be perfect. In fact, the greatest commandments are, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as you love yourself”-- Luke 10:17.
Also… wouldn’t being a Satanist and straying from the path technically be choosing to worship God?
Grazie, Captain Amazing.
oh… and grazie a lei Sage Rat for the link to Paradise Lost.
Well the whole Matthew 5:48 thing sure sucks then…
Or rescuing a kitten. But I think Satan will forgive the slip up. Nobody’s perfect, eh?
I haven’t particularly been following this thread, so perhaps it’s been decided to ignore the fact that Satanism isn’t worship of the Christian Satan but—well Satanism isn’t worship of the Christian Satan. You may as well say that straying from the path of Buddhism is choosing to worship God. That doesn’t make sense, because there’s no relationship between Buddhism and Christianity, just as there isn’t between Satanism and Christianity.
I wasn’t sure about posting in this thread, since most of my points have already been made, but since no one in this thread has actually claimed to be a Satanist, I thought I’d put my two cents in. You see, I am a Satanist.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I literally worship the christian strawman that they call Satan. In my case, it is more a sense of complete rejection of the entire Christian mythology. For almost everyone raised in North America has had large amounts of Christian bullshit shoved down their throat from an extremely young age, to the point where even most agnostics/atheists still follow the general moral code that Christianity laid out. When I was a teenager, and old enough to realize that the entire thing was a system of social control, I decided to reject Christianity. Not just the notion that some dude with a beard in the sky was watching me, but the entire system of morality that it endorsed. I explored many of the worlds religions, and while I found that Taoism had some wisdom in it, nothing really clicked for me, until I stole a copy of the Satanic bible and read it. There I felt for the first time that this is what I was looking for.
I didn’t do this to piss off the Christians. If they ask about my faith, I usually lie and say I am an agnostic. I don’t have the time or patience to correct their misconceptions on my beliefs. (Which follow fairly closely to the list that jacksteele linked to upthread) I did it solely for myself, to free myself from the chains that Christianity has tried to impose on me.
The Christians say “The Lord is my Shepard.” Well I’m not a fucking sheep.
So you’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints? 
And to be fair, Randy Seltzer, I was NEVER taught that God demanded perfection.
*goes out singing “I’m on a Highway to Hell.”
Which of course triggered my Weird Al Derangement Syndrome and gave me the “Nature Trail to Hell” earworm. Thanks.
That’s almost as cool as how they claim they’re God. And convince people utterly! (Even if they’re only internal mental ‘demons’ with no objective existence.)
To present a variant take on things, I present the impression I’ve gleaned from Mormons. (I was raised by them and they did their damndest to press me into the fold. Didn’t work.) Now, I will disclaim this by pointing out that Mormonism varies rather a lot between adherents, both because untrained members are put into the position of teaching others (from standard manuals, but I’ve observed a lot of opinions spread as well), and especially because members are encouraged to do personal study, which has resulted in some extremely variant opinions being developed, as people basically roll their own religion based on loose personal interpretations of the books and resource materials. (I have heard it seriously proposed that the final judgement isn’t actually final, for example.)
So any given mormon might come and post that I’m full of crap. So be it. 
So: afaict the ‘standard’ mormon story of Satan’s fall is that after creating all the spirits, God rounded them all up and proposed a plan, called the “Plan of Salvation”, where he’d send everybody to earth in a state of ignorance, people would screw up to various degrees, and then afterwards people would be judged by how much they screwed up and some people would get to hang out with God, and some would be locked up in various lesser ‘kingdoms’ with varying priviledges and quality of life based on how bad they were and whether they managed to get forgiven. An individual would need to be sacrificed to make it possible for anybody to be forgiven, though.
Given that, Satan stepped up and proposed that he be the one sacrificed, but that everybody be given forgiveness as a result, so that none would be faced with eternal imprisonment or punishment for their time on earth. He also wanted to be credited for doing this. (Note that his proposal basically negates the entire effect of the “Plan of Salvation”, and is thus kinda oppositional to God’s intent.)
Then, Jesus stepped up and proposed that he be the one sacrificed, but that God’s plan of limited forgiveness, standards of judgement, and punishment, would be retained. He also proposed that God get all the glory for the plan and the sacrifice. (Which is probably why you’ve never heard of him. :D)
With these two plans put forth, there was then a “war” in heaven amongst all the spirits over which would be implemented. (I have heard theories that this “war” was actually more like a simple show of hands…which makes rather more sense, if you think about it.) Regardless of the method, God won the “war”, with two thirds of the spirits having sided with him. One third of the spirits had sided with Satan. God then threw the losers out of heaven, damning them to wander as bodiless spirits until judgement day hit and they were rounded up and tossed into the worst of the prisons (reserved pretty much exclusivel for them).
Of course, the character of satan supposedly then turned bitter after having lost and thrown out and sentenced to eternal doom, and now wishes to make everybody fail to get salvation too, an explicit reversal of his earlier goals. It’s kind of unclear what influence, if any, his bodiless form now has in order to achieve his new goals…but he still gets blamed for all sorts of stuff, assuming the usual role of ultimate scapegoat.
In this origin story, the emphasis is put on how Satan wanted all the credit, which makes him “bad”, and how Jesus humbly handed the credit to God, making him “good”. The actual differences in the proposed plans themselves is only glossed over…but if you actually think about it, Satan’s plan is a lot better for nearly everyone. Under God’s “Plan of Salvation”, there’s actually a lot less salvation going on; most people don’t qualify for the top slot. Satan’s proposed plan was far more benevolent, as it was nonjudgemental and punished nobody.
It is worth noting that under this model, he is explicitly “first prisoner”, with no explicit authority in “Outer Darkness” (Mormons use the word hell/hades to refer to a different place than the ultimate bad destination), but one supposes he may have the prestige, clout, or simple power sufficient to establish some sort of rule in there.
As far as I know nobody explicitly worships the Mormon variant of satan; I certainly don’t, as I don’t believe in these fairy stories. However, lack of belief doesn’t stop me from thinking that as a character, he’s a lot less of a jerk than the God character is presented as being. Ultimately he’s a sympathetic character, whose opposition to God is rational and justified. If I did believe in this fiction, then I still wouldn’t worship anybody, but I’d rather hang out with the Satan character than the God character, given a choice. The God character’s motivations are suspicious (at best, he considers a lot of his created children to be types he doesn’t want to associate with, and is exiling them apparenlty to keep the standard of company and property values high where he is. That, or he just wants only compliant servants…your call.)
(As a side note, I’ll add that in the Aa Megami-sama (“Ah! My Goddess”) movie, they present a satan character with exactly the same benevolent motivations as I above describe the Mormon satan having. His methods are dubious though, and he gets his butt whooped for them.)
Some sects view Satan’s sin as refusing to bow down to Adam because Adam was an inferior being to God, and thus would only bow down to God. God apparently didn’t like this, even if Satan’s heart was in the right place.
According to the popular View of Revelation, Satan is supposed to corrupt the earth so badly that the old earth will have to be destroyed in the end. Is it really wise to let someone run around and screw shit up that badly?
Granted, it would fit with God’s Modus Operandi so far. I mean, he let things get so bad in the beginning that he had to wipe out 99% of life on earth to fix things, or so Genesis would have us believe.
Yes, I was quiet surprised when I read them. I was irresistibly drawn to them like a moth to flame or a hypnotized bird into the gaping maw of the cobra. I hope I won’t end up regretting it.
Has there ever been a documented case of a child being murdered as part a Satanic ritual? To the best of my knowledge there has not.
Not to mine, either, but I wanted to hedge my bets in case someone came in and posted a gotcha, “There was one in my hometown in 1973!” kind of thing.