Just saw the flick Drive Angry. Like almost all Nicholas Cage movies it had no artistic or socially redeeming qualities whatsoever, a weak plot, and was a hellovalot of fun. Fast cars, hot chicks, and lots & lots of guns and explosions!
At one point in the movie the “Accountant” refers to the devil as “Satan”. Which brings me to my question:
Somewhere in the world there are people who actively worship “Satan”. Why? If one believes that the devil of the bible exists, isn’t this an admission that the god of that bible also exists? Therefore, wouldn’t worshiping said devil be the most dangerous risk in the universe?
Also, would “Satan” actually want to be called “Satan”? Wouldn’t he rather have his worshipers call him Lord, or at very least his original name of Lucifer?
Are you sure of your premise, that people actually worship the Satan described in Christian lore? The church of Satan certainly doesn’t. It’s a counter-Christian movement, sure, but they don’t believe in Jesus or Satan as actual entities. They don’t actually worship anything, as far as I know.
I understand that some Satanists see the world as dualistic, with evil being equally as powerful as good. By that logic, worshipping Satan is no more risky that worshipping God.
I suppose they think it’s cool to say that they worship the Enemy (Satan in Hebrew) of God. Besides, it’s not as if “God” is His real name, either.
The Church of Satan is basically comprised of two sets of people. The first group are bright but fairly narcissistic libertarian-sorts who feel that anyone stupid enough to think the whole Satan Worship thing is real deserve what they get, and so they sell merchandise, books, and ceremonial equipment to the second group. At a guess, the second group are probably mostly sycophants and while they probably don’t reaaaally believe that they’re studying magic, they think that they’re supposed to keep the image alive and tell everyone that magic is real, etc.
None of them think that they’re worshiping the Christian Satan. They will quite pointedly tell you that the name just happens to be the same, and nor are they lying.
There are certain heretics, the name escapes me for the moment, who worship Lucifer due to thinking he created our spirits, while the Abrahamic god created the world, the physical world which they see as evil and burdensome upon our otherwise pure and free spirits. Therefore the god is evil and the devil good, to their way of thinking. Bogomiles, maybe?
Sort of. Bogomilism was part of a larger movement called Gnosticism that often believed that the world was created by a lesser evil god, which they sometimes considered to be Satan. As Sage Rat says though, they didn’t approve of him.
As Mark Twain said:
“I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English. It is un-American; it is French.”
You’re looking at this from the wrong point of view. First, I can’t speak for thiestic satanists. They seem to me like wiccans bad-ass brothers, and I have a hard time taking them seriously. (The theistic satanists, not the wiccans) The general gist I have gathered is that they don’t believe that God is involved in this universe, while the devil is. Thus, serving the devil can have rewards in this world, instead of waiting on pipe dreams for the next one.
Any of the ‘real’ satanists I know (myself included) don’t literally worship the christian character known as Satan. We are more athiest or agnostic than thiest. Our problem with north american culture is that it is dominated by judeo-christian thinking and moraility. Satanism is a complete rejection of that. It replaces the sheep/herd mentality that has been pounded into you by society since the day you were born with self-empowerment as the ultimate goal of life. Replace abstinance with indulgance, replace turning the other cheek with vengance. I’ve heard it called egotism with ritual, which is probably as good a description as any.
I read a 19th century travelougue where the traveler was making his way through Turkey. He described some of the foothills people as being active Satan worshipers. The reasoning they used was that God (Allah) was a nice deity and wouldn’t do anything to them, but the Devil was a meanie and would make their lives miserable so they effectively worshiped the Devil to keep him away.
Doubtless you could find a few people, scattered here and there, who actually do worship the Judeo-Christian Satan. Those people would all be crazy. As for why they do it, well, see the previous sentence.
