Justice

Satan thinks eugenicists should be aborted

Posted on by A lesser demon

There is nothing unnatural in lending Nature a helping hand. That is why sane humans will mend a broken leg and write a prescription for painkillers afterward instead of insisting that the “natural pain” is good for you. There are exceptions, of course, for example, when certain groups remind women that the pains of childbirth are good for both the mother and the baby, and by some sheer coincidence, the Bible happens to require just that experience. And rest assured that when you burn in Hell, painkillers will not be provided.

Humans soon learned to refine crops for better yield, to cross previously inedible plants into variations fit for human consumption, and to breed animals for select features. Humans, too, were aware that they inherited the features of their progenitors, although the gods might curse them if they stayed too closely related over several generations.

It was not until the late 1800s, however, that evolution was formally discovered, adding that both physical and behavioral traits were inherited in a constant struggle for resources that are scarce enough to prevent a single species from dominating. Charles Darwin introduced the term “natural selection” to indicate how specimens that could not adequately beat the odds would perish, leaving those that were better “fit for survival” to produce offspring—a term that Darwin adopted from Herbert Spencer, although the latter used it as an argument that certain races were preserved in the struggle for life.

Early theory of evolution conveyed the message that one’s survival came at the cost of other human lives, and it seemed clear that if a certain group of humans wished to improve its lot in life, others would have to pay: those who were thought to be less fit for survival due to attributed racial qualities. Satan has already discussed how such Social Darwinism has been shown beyond doubt to be pseudoscience but in the early 1900s, such speculations had yet to be debunked. It was yet to be learned that a master race is not cultivated by the physical and mental education of an “iron youth” that would eventually beget strong children, nor that the traditional concepts of race mean anything in those equations.

Programs were established in some countries that aimed to accelerate the process of refining the respective master races through the “science” of eugenics, a term coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883. Generally speaking, it was the white élites with strong biases about who was “fit” and “unfit” that embraced eugenics, believing that social ills in their countries would be eliminated by increased breeding of Nordics or Anglo-Saxons like themselves. Several countries introduced mandatory sterilization, usually targeting immigrants, people of color, Indigenous people, poor whites, and people with disabilities. The USA was the international leader in eugenics and the Nazi Germany sterilization law that led to the sterilization of a staggering 400,000 “undesirable” and “defective” individuals was modeled on US laws that had then been effective for over two decades.

Eugenics apologists have argued that modern, civilized societies still have eugenics programs when, for example, they offer termination of pregnancies where a fetus is determined to suffer from severe disabilities. Not surprisingly, anti-choice propagandists have also gladly invoked the specter of eugenics at any mention of abortion.

It is true that, although far less terminal and draconian than forced sterilization, state-sanctioned or state-encouraged termination of pregnancies that will lead to significantly lowered quality of life for the otherwise delivered child can be said to be a “state program” for controlling the genetic make-up of the population, and it may also target minorities. Such reflections, as well as options for enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering, have led advocates of such practices to introduce the term “liberal eugenics” early this century. An important aspect of liberal eugenics is individual choice, where the decision to alter or select an embryo should be left to the parents’ preferences rather than forbidden or mandated by the state.

The traditional form of eugenics, in contrast, is authoritarian eugenics, where the individual (parent) is given no choice regarding the selection of their embryo or even their reproductive rights.

Satan does not give the important distinction too much thought because here in Hell, we demons are spawned not birthed. We are manifestations of Satan’s infinite evil, and no pre-spawn measures are required. However, The Rejected Angel keeps an eye on His Church of Satan, whose members are of the human kind—although their existence would be abruptly eradicated were society to embrace the ideals of “The Book of Satan.” There, in His church, the Devil finds that rank and file members argue that the eugenics advocated by Anton LaVey and Peter Gilmore is liberal eugenics, albeit being unaware of the term. With such a take on eugenics, The Church of Satan represents nothing controversial, except maybe for a hint of a progressive stance, they argue.

Satan is not the forgetful kind but keeps written journals for those of us who are tasked with his evil bidding and checks His records in case of doubt. He does not recognize liberal eugenics anywhere in the scriptural teachings of The Church of Satan and suspects that, as usual, its uninitiated and untrusted members have either not properly studied their scripture or are struggling with feelings of guilt. Satan thinks it is worth recapping the true stance of The Church of Satan.

One does not readily identify eugenics in The Satanic Bible but The Church of Satan cites additional canon in which one finds these views. (For those who forget, canon is the scripture that defines the religion; it is not something from which questionable elements can simply be dismissed as, say, just some personal opinion of the author.) Satan thinks one should begin with Anton LaVey’s take on sterilization: women who are so irresponsible as to become pregnant only to face problems raising their child should be sterilized by force, as should men who are stupid enough to choose such women. Useless people should be sterilized by force through state programs. The choice is not laid upon the individual parents, who can only pray and otherwise attempt to paint themselves as good, Christian citizens that the state considers them useful.

LaVey knew very well his ideological legacy when, in interviews, he desired to enhance the growth of new, more intelligent generations, if I had the chance, by selective breeding. But this is so terrifyingly related to Hitlerism that usually I can’t even talk about it. His ideas centered around the group-oriented breeding policy of that very regime, declaring that [s]elective breeding, elitist stratification, advocacy of polygamous relationships for breeding purposes, and eventually building communities of like-minded individuals are Satanic programs antithetical to the cherished egalitarian ideal.

Satan may not have high thoughts about humans in general but trusts that any reader who has made it this far in the present text can unmistakably identify Anton LaVey’s eugenics as the authoritarian variant from the darkest chapters of human history.

Some of LaVey’s teachings have been altered significantly, albeit without admitting to revision; for example, Satan has mentioned how might has become impotent and how the current Church of Satan High Priest Peter Gilmore describes magic as “just psychodrama” despite LaVey insisting that it is not just psychodrama. This has yet to happen for The Church of Satan’s stance on eugenics, despite apologetical members insisting on the liberal interpretation. Both LaVey and Gilmore have repeatedly used the term in reference to hopes of breeding a genetically superior Satanic élite to replace their current best bet.

Peter Gilmore even complains that the failure to maintain early-twentieth-century eugenics is the very cause of the widespread growth of egalitarianism and collectivist thinking that he despises (and, like LaVey, misinterprets according to alt-right propaganda). He avoids mentioning the big bad state but confirms that genetic technologies are not for everyone: We wish the ranks of the “superiorly abled” to increase in number, before time runs out and we all perish under the crush of mediocrity. As with LaVey, there is no question about the group-oriented application of authoritarian eugenics.

As often happens to shallow thinkers, both LaVey and Gilmore rely on exceedingly thoughtless criteria for such eugenics. There is no mention of which standards apply when people are deemed irresponsible or stupid, nor who is certified to make such judgments. The Church of Satan places itself firmly in the tradition of historical authoritarian eugenics when its support for eugenics is based on politics and ideology, disregard for individual rights, and vaguely formulated, unscientific ideals of genetic purity. It believes that merely agreeing with a particular ideology proves genetic superiority. By the injunction of international law against involuntary sterilization, Anton LaVey and Peter Gilmore advocate a crime against humanity.

Despite the counter-individualistic, unscientific, authoritarian stance of His church that opposes everything Satan symbolizes, Satan thinks there is insight to be derived from its appeal to its members.

To join as someone with less than some combination of Mensa-grade intelligence, the physiology of an Olympics contestant, and virtuoso talents is unconscious suicidal ideation: one joins a cult that wishes one dead, only unlike Christianity, this death cult promises no rewarding afterlife. It is a desire to leave the cosmic wheel of life entirely. One must be utterly self-loathing to join such an organization if one suffers from disabilities of any kind that are costly to society, cumbersome to one’s closest associates, or too expensive to pay by oneself because, remember, the organization also rejects societal altruism.

Satan thinks that to most of the members of The Church of Satan, believing that one not only stands a chance for life but even qualifies as breeding stock for their envisioned élite is an extreme form of delusion of grandeur. Satan thinks that had they been livestock, they would have been turned into soap. Only thus would they contribute to a human breed cleaned of impurities.

Satan thinks egalitarianism has merit

Posted on by A lesser demon

Every religion considers other religions to be the source of devilry, although in the past, pantheistic religions have usually been happy to incorporate inspiring elements from other religions into their own. People and hence their religions tend to become more tolerant towards other religions if resources are scarce and reliance on alien cultures is vital to one’s existence. However, as a general rule, anything that seems wrong in one’s society has always been blamed on others. It does not matter that it had been effective for centuries; if it eventually became undesired, it could be blamed on others and perceived as some kind of demon that they had introduced.

The Devil’s own church, The Church of Satan, has identified its share of demons that it attributes to other religions. One such archdemon is egalitarianism, which Peter Gilmore repeatedly denounces in The Satanic Scriptures and believes is caused by Christianity. He demands instead Social Darwinism and authoritarian eugenics, arguing that they expose the fundamental fallacies of egalitarian doctrine, although he does not explain how. In Peter Gilmore’s mind, the fallacies of egalitarianism are the belief that everything and everyone are, or should be, equal:

Thus, some random splashes on a canvas were considered an equal achievement to the Sistine Chapel; a mud hut was held up as being equivalent to Versailles. A janitor was dubbed the equivalent to a physicist; a novelist was now the peer of one who scrawled graffiti on a bathroom wall. This principle of “discrimination” was applied to all other fields of achievement.

The opposition to egalitarianism is deeply entrenched in both LaVeyan and Gilmoron Satanism, to the degree that the very first point, “on which all the others ultimately rest,” of The Church of Satan’s mostly political program is: “the advocacy … of stratification, which is no less than the elimination of egalitarianism wherever it has taken root.”

Egalitarianism, in The Church of Satan, is meant as a complete leveling of all differences between human beings. Similarly, equality is the presumption that everyone has equal abilities and no differences, and nobody performs to the best of their ability as everything is compressed into conformist homogeneity. Satan can barely fathom how nightmarish the thought of thereby having nothing to brag about must be to a stereotypically complete grandiose narcissist such as Peter Gilmore. From the Devil’s opposite perspective, however, most of His followers would improve considerably if it were possible to average all humans. When we sort their souls for incineration in Hell, we usually classify them as “small combustibles” unless they are toxic waste.

Neither of the two writers appears to be aware that their understanding of egalitarianism is utterly false nor that egalitarian principles have secular origins. These principles were born of the Enlightenment and are now adopted by numerous international laws, treaties, and domestic constitutions and bills of rights despite religious opposition. They cannot be dismissed as the product of a single religion or even several religions in unison. Egalitarianism involves the principle that everyone has a set of immutable rights that should not be infringed upon. They are designed to protect all individuals from social, legal, political, or other abuse. They are minimal standards, not maximal standards, whose goal is to prevent the worst, not enable or prescribe the best.

Human rights are not a leveling tool and have no bearing on ability or skill. They exist to protect the vital existence of every individual, not to artificially foster incompetence or homogenize society, and are constructed on the basis of human equality. In egalitarianism, equality is the claim that all humans are of equal moral worth, not equal ability. Anyone with the ability to write a symphony rivaling Beethoven’s genius is free to do so, and any individual who lacks the ability never will. (Satan thinks that, although holding a degree in musical composition, Peter Gilmore’s closest experience with musical recognition will remain the Salieri syndrome.) The human rights of egalitarianism protect everyone from repression or persecution in pursuit of their respective goals, and do not determine what individuals can do with their natural abilities nor flatten the differences between those abilities. With their fundamental liberties protected by egalitarian principles, individuals become free to pursue any life they feel is rewarding, providing that the rights of others are respected. Egalitarianism is a prerequisite for a functioning meritocracy.

Satan initially thought to Xerox Peter Gilmore a copy of the definition of egalitarianism from any modern dictionary, but the extent and the form of Gilmore’s misunderstanding of the term is all too familiar to His Infernal Majesty, who knows that Gilmore will not be educated. It is how the far-right ultra-conservatives apply the term when (like LaVey and Gilmore) they imagine that their arbitrarily charted group of people has intrinsically higher moral worth than other human beings. The only difference is that LaVey and Gilmore believe the horror stems from left-wing politics emanating from Christianity, whereas the typical far-right advocates against egalitarianism are equally convinced that it is a left-wing plague but believe that Christianity is the cure.

Old Nick considers an exposition on right-wing politics to be outside of the scope of these thoughts and believes it suffices to observe that when egalitarianism is yet another word that The Church of Satan uses incorrectly, in this incident, the primary explanation is not their usual subaverage comprehension skills. The Church of Satan echoes a far-right view that makes sense only when accompanied by a complete ideological framework from that same end of the political spectrum. It is an interpretation tightly knit with several other elements that provide that political position’s view of humans and cannot be separated from those elements.

One does not have to be a master of systemic functional linguistics (which Satan is, of course) to understand that people’s vocabulary reveals much about them, nor that social semiotics tells us that a consistent use of specific misunderstandings serves as a language equivalent of secret handshakes. The Church of Satan reveals and communicates a far-right political platform and attracts members accordingly.

Satan thinks nihilism is a Christian artifact

Posted on by A lesser demon

Many established truths and commons have been trampled by the herd over the last century. Gays are now to be considered genuine males, women are not the property of their rightful owners, slaves are believed to equal their masters, no race is intrinsically noble and predisposed for glory, no nation is pure, natural justice is replaced by compassion for the wrongdoers, and that which should naturally fall is scaffolded and fortified. The world is, perhaps, going to Hell—not that Satan complains.

Verging on this descent into the Apocalypse, Satan thinks it is reassuring to find that some people, especially His own church, the very Church of Satan, upholds the virtues of old: because man is but an animal, Nature red in tooth and claw should govern human actions, as it is the Law; and strength is acquired through the joy of indulgences. For political reasons of self-preservation, The Church of Satan publicly presents itself as a dark fun-house of mere theatrics, but within its own scripture and communiquées—which the public overlooks as the very image of His Infernal Majesty deflects their eyes—the truth is all but laid bare. Certain historically indicative, familiar phrases are omitted, but the dog whistles shrill so loud that even the deafest right-wing extremist recognizes his kin. Terms such as “social Darwinism” are used scantly and just often enough to settle what “Lex Talionis,” the Law of the Jungle, means. If one dares, cares, or bothers to read the canonical scriptures of The Church of Satan, its vision is a race of master individuals, an alien élite, genetically bred and cultivated through the standard of the strong.

The first book of Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible are excerpts (or rather a plagiarism) of Ragnar Redbeard’s Might Is Right, which advocates such a view, including the above sentiments. Reducing every social phenomenon to simple power-relations, it is Redbeard’s synthesis of his personal racism and misogyny with the pseudo-science of social Darwinism and the philosophical rhetoric of Stirner’s anarchist individualism and Nietzsche’s focus on power. It is an outstandingly execrable combination of a comprehensively and thoroughly disproven body of thought. After a century of exhaustive debunking, only neo-fascists still believe that social Darwinism is scientific. Even if there were a grain of truth to be found, even for non-human animals, in these long outdated, pseudo-scientific conjectures, it is a Naturalistic Fallacy to derive a should from an is, concluding that humans ought to live accordingly. That is: social Darwinism is, both biologically and philosophically, objectively and demonstrably wrong. (His Maliciousness did not say it, but it bears mention that it is a remarkably rare and unenviable feat to be objectively wrong in philosophical matters.)

Satan is impressed that, faced with this scientific verdict on one of the most meticulously and extensively analyzed fields of science in human history, even today His church and its high priest, Peter Gilmore, manage to maintain and promote the sophomoric understanding of philosophy and the nature of human life required to enable them to endorse Might Is Right and regard it as accurate and enlightening. Such a display of self-deceit and stupidity is, in its own right, fascinating.

However, this is not intended as a venture into the many obscure interests of the Devil. The Prince of Insufficient Lighting has always been lured towards human depravity, the mental dysfunctions of crypto-fascists included. Satan’s message concerns the fact that His church believes in The Law of the Jungle despite its unmitigated rejection by every scientist, social theorist, and philosopher alive, not to forget quite a selection of many already dead.

The Church of Satan informs outsiders that the first book of The Satanic Bible is tongue-in-cheek, intended to rile up the reader or scare off those who would not benefit from the book. However, portions of Might Is Right find their way into the argumentative chapters of The Satanic Bible, and the remainder of the work is pervasive in LaVey’s subsequent writings. It is far more (if not nearly exclusively) foundational to LaVey’s Satanism than The Satanic Bible indicates.

The Law of the Jungle is an escalation of the law of retaliation, or retributive justice, that we know from the ancient Hammurabi code of “an eye for an eye” into Drako’s eponymously named punishment system fused with vigilante dispositions. (Satan, always ahead, prefers preemptive retaliation.) LaVey explained that for all its brutality, such a system would ensure a stable society, because the fear of retribution would cause people to think twice. “Responsibility to the responsible,” as the sixth Satanic Statement goes, hand in hand with the fifth Statement on vengeance, would subject them to the consequences of their actions, such as having their arm ripped from its socket for vandalizing a prized garden plant. The demand for The Law of the Jungle is established in The Church of Satan’s “pentagonal revisionism” program as an essential pillar of a Satanic society. It is both a legal and a moral code.

Satan thinks this should raise many an eyebrow, because it is the exact caution that Christian thinkers (a term that Satan applies very loosely to such people) have raised for centuries: that without faith in God, nothing prevents mankind from descending into the lawlessness of, yes, the Law of the Jungle. Without God and particularly the prospect of burning in Hell, humans would have no morals, they claim. Rational atheists have long argued, however, with plenty of supporting evidence, that morals are not contingent on a belief in deities. Moral behavior is innate to both humans and many non-human animals and arises naturally as a result of mutual self-interest.

This view is rejected by The Church of Satan, which assumes the Christian paradigm. The Law of the Jungle—the post-apocalyptic dystopia that Christians fear—is exactly what Anton LaVey and The Church of Satan expect as the natural alternative to Christianity. To Christians, human morals are motivated by a fear of punishment in Hell. To Satanists in The Church of Satan, human morals are enforced by fear of punishment here and now. To atheists, morals are a human trait that develops naturally to the benefit of mankind with no need for gods. Satan leaves it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these three groups are the most similar.

The moral nihilism shared by Christians and The Church of Satan that denies an objective basis for morality has been a recurring philosophical theme in the Western World. Darwinism (genuine, not social) has received much of the blame for its death blow to the anthropocentric worldview, and materialism has been blamed for its lowered valuation of the soul, but Satan thinks there is a broader reason.

Christianity has contaminated virtually every aspect of Western culture, with centuries of metaphysical, eschatological, and existential expectations regarding the nature of the world. The strong anthropocentrism of classic Christianity and its belief that Nature is subservient to humanity, that morality is provided by the will of their god, that life has meaning because of God, and that humans have souls that will live in an afterlife, have brought comfort as meaning, purpose, and order seemed guaranteed. However, scientific advances have continually challenged such superstition, and the explanatory power of the naturalistic, scientific worldview is ever-increasing. For anyone to whom the Christian vision is persuasive, while the sciences and other enlightened insights tear at its fabric with nothing to replace it, a gaping void appears. (Not surprisingly, moral nihilism is less pronounced in non-Western cultures.) It is not science, Darwinism, materialism, or secularism that are to blame for this nihilism but the unrealistic Christian expectation that contradicting views must match its level of impossible certainty. A loss is felt only because Christianity is so deeply entrenched in all levels of society.

Modern secular atheists deny any supernatural beliefs and defend a naturalistic explanation of the world, but they generally acknowledge that morality is an inherent human attribute as a phenomenon that arises from social interactions, reason, and human interdependency, slowly evolving and converging towards a stable yet not absolute social code that is far removed from even hyperbolical standards of the strong. But even without laboriously deriving such an understanding of the nature of morality, to a person who was born and raised as an atheist, or merely avoided Christian cultivation to a modest degree, the perceived result of the loss of God, and the need to find meaning and purpose for oneself, does not invoke the specter of moral nihilism. It does not imply a crude every-critter-for-itself elimination of morality until only aggression, fang, and talon remain to define the Law and only the strong can prevail. The human animal is biologically wired against the Law of the Jungle. Any fear of this dismal environment is an unrealistic, religious nightmare, and any desire for it is a spiritual, Christian pipe-dream.

Only deep-seated Christianity can evoke this fear and, in its ultimate case, create the defeatist illusion that it is an alluring alternative. It is the worst-case outcome in the Christian mind and embracing it reveals a profound ensnarement in the traditional Christian mental framework. Satan thinks that the Satan-figure employed by Satanists who believe and perpetuate the view that Satanic morals are those of the Jungle is the good old Christian Devil, which remains considerably more real and present in their minds than they will ever understand. With one exception, they are the very kind of Christians who feel no natural inclination towards moral behavior on their own and only behave socially tolerable because they fear the repercussions, and who recognize in themselves harmful, anti-social impulses that, fortunately, they understand must be curbed albeit not why. They deviate from these Christians only in their psychopathic wish to act out their destructiveness. Ironically, it is not external Christianity that restrains their impulses but their inner Christian angst that generates their wish for the Law of the Jungle.

Satan thinks these advocates of the rule of fang and claw should be cast to the lions: the only proper way to deal with Christians.

Satan thinks His church wears a good-guy badge

Posted on by A lesser demon

Take it from a liar to recognize another liar, and The Father of Lies knows one when He sees one. He has reserved the entire eighth circle of Hell for those very people. Even those who lie so hard they believe their own lies cannot hide from Satan’s smoldering eyes, but although they fit naturally within His aforementioned circle, for some reason they are in high demand in Heaven and are allowed through the Pearly Gates before Satan can offer a bid for their souls.

Satan’s own church appears to be brimming with the latter kind of liars if their online presence is to be trusted. Most of them, if not all, are relative newcomers to whom the Satanic newsletters, magazines, and periodicals of the past have never been available, and who never learned Satanic creeds in the days of Anton LaVey, before the age of social media and before The Church of Satan turned into what His Depravity calls Gilmoron Satanism. Hidden from plain view and made available only to subscribers, and to some extent incorporating a sufficient amount of cringe-worthy content to seem unbelievable except to those who could read, the doctrine was explicit. Today, reading comprehension skills not granted to everyone are required to decipher the dogma.

“Lex Talionis,” eugenics, social stratification, social Darwinism with a necessity of culling the human locusts who overrun and overpopulate the planet and the breeding of a Satanic “iron youth,” and similar concepts were ideals that Satan’s true followers once aimed for, if ever so feebly applied in practice in a society that promotes weakness and natural injustice. They were societal goals that were to be implemented literally as an alternative to the current, Christianized society of undeserved alms and apologists for inadequacy where criminals were treated as the victims, to the extent where human evolution was at stake.

Satan does not wish to impose unreasonable demands upon His followers, of course. Each must be evil to the extent of his or her ability, which is rarely anything to write home about. It did not take long until especially the scrawnier breeds began to quip that “might is right” was to be interpreted more broadly than favoritism of brawns, thus allowing the pen to be mightier than the sword, especially if all one had was a pen. Satan thinks it is fine to continuously develop and reinterpret one’s convictions and would in fact not recommend that His followers let themselves get stuck in the 1960es of Anton LaVey.

Today, virtually every one of Satan’s followers on social media believes that His church does not truly mean “eugenics” in any other sense than social preferences, that “stratification” is mostly what society already features, and that magic is “just psychodrama.” Every demonic aspect is defanged and declawed, especially when said followers are confronted by people who complain about the political and social ramifications and respond by pinning a good guy badge on their lapels. And that, my dear, is the big lie that they believe in themselves.

It is rare to find a person who speaks the truth, but occasionally an officially appointed spokesperson from The Church of Satan will set the record straight for those few who care to listen. This is when you discover that they welcome plans that would actively weed out purposeless people and that moochers on welfare, degenerates with (severe) disabilities, and fruitcakes with personality disorders who join them have failed to understand that Satanism is not for them, even when their predicament is no fault of theirs. In a world of their values, such individuals would be eradicated through swift evolutionary deselection, and conscientious and responsible people would lend Nature a helping hand as early as possible in such matters to conserve resources otherwise squandered on biological retrogressions.

Those “in the know” will sometimes place such people on a pedestal regardless. A token cripple, a token black person, a token leftist, or a token queer provides the organization with a good-guy badge that illustrates how they, by the goodness of their hearts, do not discriminate. In the meantime, and behind their backs, the same knowing people laugh wholeheartedly as these sideshow freaks of their carnival entertain the outsider guests—those who are not privy to the truth—by flaunting their delusions of inclusion and adequacy.

This is the nature of the real world and the human animal within it. The herd may require that the secret be concealed behind a good-guy badge lest they cower in fear and retreat, but the élite does not require it. Satan thinks the secrecy is unnecessary. There are far too many sideshow cage geeks paid with sips of their addiction, pinheads, and mental midgets in His church already—all of whom the animal world would have torn apart and devoured, but due to man’s sadistic demand for the suffering of others are kept alive and on display for their deficiencies and outbursts of insanity. Satan feels no need to expand that arena in His circus.

Satan thinks abortion is murder

Posted on by A lesser demon

Before your unfaithful narrator begins, the Devil wishes to stress that He does not intend to discuss Anton LaVey’s opposition to abortion. Nor does He wish to discuss how Anton LaVey views demonstrated both misogyny and an unusual lack of perspective.

He will therefore not address Anton LaVey’s opinion that the wish for an abortion demonstrates ignorance, negligence, or irresponsibility on the behalf of the would-be parents, or how Anton LaVey criticized the idea that women should have the right to control their own bodies. (Perhaps this explains why, when Anton LaVey’s own daughter became pregnant at the age of 13, she became a mother two months after her 14th birthday.) Least of all does Satan want to discuss the impossibility of mandatory sterilization or use of contraceptives that Anton LaVey proposed as a “third alternative.”

The Prince of Darkness thus leaves it to others to imagine examples when an abortion might have other causes than stupidity, or whether especially women might want a time in their lives when they avoid pregnancy and only later become parents.

No, Satan has something different in mind. He is thinking of the ethical issues about abortion potentially being comparable to murder, at least in those situations where they are choices rather than medical emergencies intended to save a mother’s life.

To begin with, Satan finds that “pro-life” arguments are generally horrendous. Religious anti-abortionists usually apply arguments that make no sense outside of their religions; for example, that abortion is a crime against their god—making it a victimless crime to anyone else. Any meaningful argument should at least appeal to some level of neutrality or reason and leave superstition out of the picture.

Satan also objects to highly polarized positions. Some anti-abortionists believe that a fertilized (human) egg that has not even divided into a second cell qualifies as a human being, but Satan begs to differ. Bacteria are single-celled organisms, yes, but at that stage they are also in their adult life, as it were, whereas it takes about 26 billion times that number of cells to comprise even a newborn baby. It indeed stands a four-out-of-ten chance of developing into a healthy baby, but maintaining that the very first cell was a human being is as absurd as asserting that no child, even after the due date, is human until it is born.

There are fortunately few who claim the latter but Satan thinks there is nonetheless a gray area in-between those extremes where the debate becomes valid. It is in this area that pro-choicers prefer to debate, too, and they usually acknowledge that an embryo or a fetus (the difference is the development of vital systems versus growing bigger) has the potential to become a “real” human being.

Pro-choicers find themselves in a more difficult position than anti-choicers, however. Anti-choicers oppose any termination of pregnancy, period; but pro-choicers must either define the cell constellation in the womb as somehow non-human or admit that they are supporting the termination of innoncent human lives even if they can find good reason for it.

Satan thinks it is more difficult to distinguish between abortion and murder than pro-choice groups tend to do. He thinks they merely assume that some specific developmental stage can be determined and leaves it to the experts—presumably biologists and medical experts—to identify it while the pro-choicers themselves avoids the thought.

It might seem reasonable to conclude that if the embryo were but a lump of body matter with no brain, it would feel no pain and have no level of consciousness. But, already at four weeks the brain of the embryo is identifiable and the nervous system is beginning to form. The mother may yet have just begun to consider a pregnancy test, and it would be too late by this definition. The heart, then? That comes one week later. It is evident that at this point there are signs of life beyond a petri-dish cell-multiplication experiment, even if is on human life support.

Such an observation leads naturally to a second-best option: the distinction between abortion and murder may be the time where the fetus can survive without its mother provided it receives medical life support. (Satan is willing forego the objection that a newborn cannot survive without support either, because it is identical to the aforementioned polarized view.) This stage of pregnancy determines the current abortion time limit in the USA.

Yet, medical advances have continually lowered the age at which a fetus can be saved and suffer only minor inconveniences as an adult. As of this writing, a few fetuses have survived at an age that is lower than the abortion time limit of some countries. Nothing seems to indicate that even younger fetuses or even embryos cannot be saved as methods are improved. The assessment of when life can be sustained outside of the uterus moves steadily closer to the polarized claim that life begins at conception. Come the day when scientific advances allows the construction of an artificial uterus, pro-choicers must face the uncomfortable realization that any argument stating that abortion is only legal until a child may live outside of a uterus is functionally identical to the hitherto religious, extremist position: that life begins at conception.

When Norway became the first country to non-provisionally legalize abortion in 1964, providing abortion within the first 12 weeks of gestation, Norway bypassed such considerations by choosing the time limit so that the mother would suffer minimal medical risk. This limit is still effective today, nearly sixty years later. A similar problem as the above haunts the Norwegian argument, however: by virtue of medical advances, abortions performed weeks later than 12 weeks pose no higher risk to women today compared to the medical situation of the 1960es. The time limit steadily moves towards the other extreme where, ultimately, doctors may perform a no-risk abortion if the mother changes her mind on the due date.

Satan thinks that although medical science manages to save prenatal lives at a still earlier stage and manages to perform safe abortions at a still later stage, science does not exactly help the pro-choice arguments by doing so. Satan thinks that pro-choicers will eventually face an uncomfortable dilemma: either they change their minds and ban abortion with all the suffering this entails, or they must argue why the mother’s body takes precedence, i.e., why prenatal murder should be legalized.

The Devil prefers the latter but thinks of prenatal murder from a different perspective.

Death is not a unique point in time. It is a process. Death may seem instant, but the body undergoes a series of changes before the actual process of dying is complete, often beginning before the person becomes aware of the imminent inevitable. Not even a decapitation is an entirely instant death. There is no specific time during the process of dying that one can establish a time of death without applying a “dead enough” argument. What constitutes “enough” is constantly being pushed by medical science. Some conditions that once made the medical staff cancel life support are now considered generally temporary due to improved treatment.

Birth, like death, is not a unique time point incident either. It, too, is a process during which one cannot meaningfully establish a point in time when there is “enough life,” especially because a child needs support for several years following its birth. It is impossible to answer such a question or even reach a consensus. Satan thinks it is no coincidence that abortions usually cause varying degrees of mental trauma to the women who had them, because more often than not do they feel they somehow committed a wrong regardless how reasonable or even necessary their decision may have been.

Satan thinks the current pro-choice argument of life-capability outside of the uterus is a pseudo-argument serving to justify an arbitrary time to terminate the birth process. It strikes the Devil as an argument similar to allowing organ harvesting from a seriously injured person on the grounds that the person would die without treatment. Satan thinks there is no point in time during pregnancy where one can unambiguously state that abortion is not murder.

Were it not because anti-abortionists care little about the loss of human life while their true agenda is to force their religion and its entire package of methods to control people (not least their sex lives) down everyone’s throat, Satan might even agree with them on the murder perspective.

Satan would prefer that pro-choicers face the ethical challenges of their choice. (And, now He is at it, that anti-choicers would for once take responsibility for the consequences of their decision: causing abortions to just become more dangerous because abortion rates have been found not to drop in regions where abortion is outlawed.) He thinks pro-choicers try to hide behind the illusion that the murder is performed in such a way that it seems defensible and somehow not as murderous as stabbing a child in the back because one does not want this child around. Humans are a hypocritical species and the human brain includes a string of defense mechanisms that make you believe that crime is what only others commit where as you yourself have good reasons. But, barring medical emergencies, abortion is a choice.

At this point it may sound like His Infernal Majesty is opposed to abortion. He stays true to Christian myths, however, and takes no issue with murder. Satan sees such trivial human actions from a broader perspective: the human cost of having a child at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or for the wrong reasons is high at the individual level of the child and the parents; and the social costs of unwanted children and parents who cannot cope is difficult to imagine. Satan thinks the alternative to legalized abortion causes collateral human damage that far exceeds the sacrifice of the unborn. Abortion is not a question of whether to murder. It is a question of who to murder on a broader scale. Satan thinks pro-choicers should admit this instead of thinking the world permits binary arguments.

Satan thinks His church is political

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan is all for taxing His opponents into oblivion and preferably so by also confiscating any assets they might possess. If that means that His own churches and temples must pay taxes, too, then so be it. He gets suspicious if anyone achieves or even attempts to obtain tax-exempt status but recognizes that for legal matters, recognition as a religious organization by the Internal Revenue Service implies a variety of secondary legal benefits, not to mention a strong argument against anyone who would try to dismiss the organization as fake. Satan has lost count of the number of times His church, The Church of Satan, has found it pertinent to remind someone that it was mentioned in the army chaplain’s grande list o’ religions, arguing that it is thus legally recognized as a religion, perhaps rightfully assuming that the US Army Chaplain’s Handbook constitutes a legal document and is not merely a reference book for the Christian priests serving in the US Army Chaplain Corps.

The Devil was reminded of the non tax-exempt status of His church when his temple, The Satanic Temple, recently gained tax-exempt status. He will defer his opinions on the latter for now, because something suddenly confused my otherwise self-assured Master.

Michael Aquino of The Temple of Set once claimed that The Church of Satan had attempted to qualify for tax exemption but failed and, not admitting defeat, only then chose its policy of working for strict taxation of all religion in its five-point program entitled Pentagonal Revisionism. Satan has not been able to locate Michael Aquino’s source for his claim, however, and regrets to inform Mr. Aquino that this makes his claim hearsay. But this is not the source of my Master’s bewilderment.

The issue that made The Prince of Darkness raise an eyebrow (which, unlike Michael Aquino’s or Peter Gilmore’s eyebrows, are not shaved or combed into appearing pointed) is that His church has often lamented The Satanic Temple‘s position that Satanism is a political endeavor and immediately reiterated its own stance on taxation when The Satanic Temple became tax-exempt. Satan shall again abstain from mentioning His own opinion on such matters but finds such complaints and statements of his church’s incompatible with its Pentagonal Revisionism.

Besides the fact that both the demand that stratification be enacted on all levels of society and the demand that religion be isolated from the Law, which are both strictly political statements (both demands being part of Pentagonal Revisionism), questions of taxation also fall squarely within the realm of politics, which among other issues govern financial budgets. With three out of five of the positions of Pentagonal Revisionism being overtly political, Satan finds it either hypocritial or stupid of His church to complain that His temple admits to being a political organization or that Satanism means being political.

Satan also finds it at odds with His church’s opposition to wearing a “good guy badge” that it so strongly highlights itself as a social role model for not paying taxes when it speaks of The Satanic Temple. Satan thought the old carny would readily have fleeced the gullible instead of being a paragon of virtue (and therefore suspects that Mr. Aquino might be speaking the truth), but if that’s how His church wants it, Satan will gladly pin a good-guy badge to their lapels as they walk through the gates of Hell—on their way out.

Satan thinks Easter is a display of schadenfreude and irresponsibility

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan thinks that the celebration of Easter has one significant redeeming quality in spite of being a dedication to His mortal foe: by irrationally making its celebration date dependent on the Vernal Equinox and the lunar phase, it became necessary to devise a system for predicting the date so that normally functioning people could make plans. Hence, this most important computation of the age motivated significant advances in mathematics.

As any Christian who paid minimal attention to their mythology should be capable of informing you, Easter is the celebration that Jesus took upon him all the sins of Mankind and was executed to henceforth absolve all his future followers of their sins. Granted, one would think that Jesus would also have absolved his contemporary followers of their sins now he was at it, but historically speaking, these followers appear to have been a small Jewish cult who regarded themselves as the only true Jews and considered Jesus to be their king who would become the ruler of Judea within their lifetime. Presumably they received a quite different message when they saw their “king” nailed to a post like any other local nationalist who opposed the Roman regime. Satan personally has no problem with the death of Jesus, and would gladly have pushed him into the harbor and made it look like an accident. As far as Old Nick is concerned, Good Friday was the best.

By the Old Testament and its accompanying scripture, which was the Law, “sin” meant crime, and to be absolved of sin was to be pardoned of crime. Christians even today consider themselves to be sinners and thus “criminals” if not in a modern, legal sense then in the eyes of their god. So they consider themselves criminals, and what is Easter to them? It is a ceremony where, without a trace of guilt or regret, they pin their own crimes on Jesus and celebrate that he was tortured to death for them, rejoicing that they evaded judgment, penance, and repair for their wrongdoings.

The Devil is no stranger to backstabbing, arrangement of judicial murder, and passing of blame, and has no warm feelings for Jesus, but is nonetheless alarmed at this display of self-righteousness and disregard of responsibility that the Christian Easter festival represents. Satan can barely think of anything as irresponsible and filled with schadenfreude as the Christian celebration of Easter, and He thinks it speaks volumes about the character of Christian people.

Satan thinks His statue should be removed

Posted on by A lesser demon

Satan is a proud being as the more popular legends detailing His fall can bespeak, and He was properly satisfied when He learned that His temple had erected a Baphomet monument in Detroit a few years ago. The Lord of Evil had hoped that the monument had been closer to Mr. Éliphas Lévi’s depiction instead of resembling a 3D-rendering of some cheap tarot card flipping but He understands that a display of His rod athrust and His feminine torso would provide His detractors will all the ammunition they needed in the puritan American society to censor the statue. So perhaps a loin cloth can be excused, and there are flat-chested women, too; the Devil is used to seeing religious idols pictured in a fashion that is suspiciously compliant with herd demands.

That said, the Prince of Darkness wishes the world rid of religion. Religious monuments should be demolished around the Earth, or at least be placed in museums to illustrate past delusions. Satan thinks that the last thing the world needs is yet another religion or religious marker, especially now that the Devil’s own religion has gained foothold. Before then, Satan was more favorably disposed towards the emergence of a new religion, of course, and prefers to explain His unabashed change of mind as having become wiser. Otherwise, humans endowed with the powers of perspective might have accused Him of having changed His mind only to prevent newcomers from stealing the picture, and such misconceptions must be neutralized: Satan would never be a hyprocite who allowed a church to be established in His name only to immediately become opposed to new religions or religous spin-offs and deny any new temples their rights to erect their altars. No, Satan thinks no new religions should be established and no new religious monuments should be raised, and He thinks that religious pluralism is just a euphemism for more ways to be stupid.

Satan nonetheless thinks His monument in Detroit is great. It requires real life muscle to challenge the crowd and win, and His temple’s monument is a testament of such strength. The monument reminds everyone who passes it that the prevalent religion is debatable and vulnerable and not the epitome of truth and power that some believe. Satan admits that this is vanity, however, and needs no reminders, well-intentioned as they might be, that He will defeat God in the end. His real appreciation arises from recognizing the monument for its strategic usefulness: it can be employed as a means to remove other religious monuments in places where religion has no place. Christians who like to have their Ten Commandments placed next to a legislative state building (obviously to lead the herd into attributing equal legitimacy to real law and the rules of divine madmen) find that they have two options: either they publicly demonstrate that they consider themselves above the law and have only the Baphomet statue removed, or they acknowledge defeat—the latter either by conceding to let Baphomet challenge their monopoly on values and ethics and have their religion put to the question while their own monuments stand, or by having the Baphomet statue and their own, antiquated symbols removed. Satan thinks it is worth using His monument as a tool to invoke counter-productive pride among Christians, who will hate the Baphomet so intensely that they will pay for its removal by removing their own. Satan attributes no magical powers to His religious idols and will happily see His monument in Detroit destroyed if it brings down other religious monuments with it.

Satan thinks that gun control is a good idea

Posted on by A lesser demon

His Infernal Majesty prefers to think of his followers as responsible people who should accordingly be granted an appropriate level of responsibility. People have the right to defend themselves against assaults on themselves, their property, or their loved ones, and the Devil fondly considers his followers to be particularly deserving of both their right to exercise it and to retaliate preemptively if need be. As such, He favors their right to own and use any array of their weapons of choice.

This leads our Dark Lord to favor a relaxation of the control of deadly weapons to the point of allowing unlicensed personal ownership of weapons of mass destruction, including a wide variety of warfare material banned by the Geneva Conventions, for His devoted followers. After all, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, and His followers being just that will know when and how to employ their arsenals, and when to (seemingly!) turn the other cheek.

The Prince of Darkness recognizes that the world is packed with people who wouldn’t exhibit the slightest sense of accountability even at gunpoint, however, and concedes that he is literally outgunned by hordes of immensely irresponsible individuals. He understands that guns should be kept out of the hands of the vast majority of irresponsible humans who incidentally, or perhaps only too predictably, are also mostly followers of His mortal foe. The Devil thinks that until His followers comprise a sweeping majority of the population, ownership of weapons should be strictly restricted and carefully controlled, and the herd should be subjected to control above trust, and razzia above control.

Satan is worried that some of His followers might be projecting their reactions, responses, and sensibilities onto people far less attuned than themselves—especially because those of His followers that oppose gun control match the demography of the aforementioned religious followers of His foe almost to a tee.