Power

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 Even if there were a grain of truth to be found, even for non-human animals, in these long outdated, pseudo-scientific conjectures, it is a Naturalistic Fallacy to derive a should from an is, concluding that humans ought to live accordingly.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 confirmation bias is key

Posted on by A lesser demon

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to see what one wishes to see and ignore the rest. It means one interprets, remembers, and searches for information that bolsters one’s beliefs, preconceptions, and prejudice. It ranges from interpreting ambiguity as supporting one’s position to overlooking or downright denying evidence to the contrary. Confirmation bias is the cause of poor decisions and systematic errors in both science, organizations, and international politics.

Anton LaVey is lauded for his large number of inspirations that he combined into what his organization describes as a novel and unique philosphy. There is no question that Anton LaVey was an avid reader; if in doubt, the bibliography of his 1971 book, The Satanic Witch, originally entitled The Compleat Witch, should convince anyone. Satanism might involve no innovative ideas or original insigts but Anton LaVey’s combination of elements of pre-existing ideologies and philosophies was new.

Satan demands study not worship, and it would seem reasonable to use Anton LaVey’s sources of inspiration as a starting point. And yet, it is a route traced by misleading paths where one must rigorously observe and apply the Balance Factor on a shaky ground of philosophical traps, unscientific foundations, and ideologically slippery slopes. Satan thinks that is incumbent on the eager student of the dark lore to always beware that Anton LaVey picked that from his sources which he liked and ignored everything else.

Anton LaVey later revealed to be aware of his cherry picking. For example, he explained in The Devil’s Notebook that he found the attempts to build “orgone accumulators” to be a fad that presumably one should steer clear of, and instead—with a direct reference to The Satanic Bible, so it should be considered important—pursue Wilhelm Reich’s cloudbusting hypothesis or his similarly hypothesised cancer biopathy. Lest any of you decide to follow his advice, Old Nick cautions that these works of Reich’s, too, were complete bunk. Wilhelm Reich should be honored for breaking somewhat free of Sigmund Freud’s paradigm, for being an early theorist of psychosomatics, and for describing mental illness as a phenomenon that may extend beyond the suffering of individual beings. And he should be remembered as an example of a suffering, pitiable madman who gained followers in pursuit of an unhinged dream founded on the yet unretired belief that the secret of human nature could be reduced to understanding particles. Satan cannot think for a moment that virtually any of Wilhelm Reich’s work deserves attention save his regrettably mostly unaccredited transition from Freudian mistakes toward modern psychology.

A more prominent example is without question Anton LaVey’s inclusion of the contents from several chapters of Might Is Right in “The Book of Satan” of The Satanic Bible. It was originally authored by Arthur Desmond using the pen name “Ragnar Redbeard,” and Anton LaVey wrote in his preface to the 1996 reprint that the book was a rant of glaring contradictions, leaving only a fraction of it suitable for The Satanic Bible, and this only for its inflammatory prose and evocative purpose, Anton LaVey claimed.

Satan could not agree more. Arthur Desmond was a failed politician with delusions of grandeur who kept getting into legal trouble and was eventually forced to flee from New Zealand. He came to America and settled in Chicago where he wrote the book. Might Is Right does not urge any specific ideology but rather argues that morality exists only in the human mind, that there is no such thing as “good,” and that there is no inherent benefit in being a good person or doing what is right. Arthur Desmond respected only those who were physically strong and could force others to do their bidding. The arguments went in all directions, however, often contradicting each other. There is no need to take Anton LaVey’s speculation that the author might have been Jack London seriously, because passages have later been recovered from Arthur Desmond’s early writings, and Jack London was just 14 years old when the first edition of Might Is Right was released anyway.

The elements that Anton LaVey plagiarized for The Satanic Bible are among the least senseless passages, and they serve their purpose as Satan’s long overdue retort against those who have slandered His name over the centuries. Satan thinks they also transmit the concept that morality is relative and a man-shaped idea that is subject to discussion and negotiation, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater by using Arthur Desmond’s original, preposterous arguments. (We shall ignore here that morality does in fact seem to extend beyond the human mind, because moral judgment and behavior, as humans understand it, have been observed among a variety of other species.) “The Book of Satan” thus channels the message that established sophisms and religious “truths” can go to Hell on their own banana peels and primes the reader for the new and superior morality of the Devil that follows in remainder of The Satanic Bible. Everything else in Might Is Right is useless.

Some level of condolence is usually implied when an author draws inspiration from a source but Satan thinks this does not apply in the case of Anton LaVey’s Satanism. Perhaps Anton LaVey was a pragmatist who cared little about the cause of magic as long as it worked, had little concern about the possible existence of the Devil as long as he felt he could draw on the powers of darkness, and ignored any political or other leanings of his sources if they otherwise managed to accidentally stumble upon something Anton LaVey considered true. In his many years of searching for the secrets behind magic, he would accept anything that he believed would work and discard the rest with a complete disregard of context.

This would describe a conscious application of confirmation bias where Anton LaVey deliberately ignored the context of his sources and placed them into a new one that cannot be derived from the original contexts—that is, Anton LaVey did not only combine hitherto unconnected ideas as mentioned earlier, he changed their meanings. The question, of course, is whether Anton LaVey was deliberately eclectic or was so vulnerable to confirmation bias that he was unaware of his suppression of contradicting evidence, non sequiturs, and broken causalities and his similar inclination towards hasty generalizations, false dichotomies, and strawmen. Satan thinks there are signs pointing in both directions and shall draw no conclusions on the matter.

Anton LaVey passed away decades ago, however, and Satan is more interested in how Anton LaVey’s devotees of today react to his one-sided selection of source material. The Devil has identified no Satanist who constructed a cloudbuster in spite of Anton LaVey’s recommendations on the pursuit of Wilhelm Reich’s “magic,” and speaking of magic, newer Church of Satan members have demoted magic to do-it-yourself coaching intended as mental self-help. Modern readers of The Satanic Bible focus on the elements that appeal to them and downplay or even ignore anything they cannot readily relate to, and thus remove themselves by yet another level beyond Anton LaVey’s removal from his inspirators.

Satan thinks there are two important lessons to be learned from confirmation bias both as Anton LaVey is concerned and as LaVey’s legacy is concerned. (Well, there are three lessons, but the thirds one is general advice on how to manage confirmation bias. Satan thinks this lesson should be taught by others.)

One lesson is a danger of confirmation bias: the instant hit of The Satanic Bible and the inclusion of the passages from Might Is Right sparked a renewed interest in the book, which had by then passed into obscurity. It was reprinted and soon discovered by right-wing extremists who appreciated its rampant racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and social Darwinism—all that Anton LaVey had omitted except some hints of social Darwinism which, in the strongly anti-Christian context of “The Book of Satan” and The Satanic Bible as such, should be taken as opposition against the alleged meekness of Christianity rather than necessarily a political statement.

Satan thinks it is unfair to accuse Anton LaVey of intentionally inviting neo-Nazis into his organization through the otherwise ideologically fueling literature. However, it takes an exceptional lack of perspective to overlook the obviously appealing effect on right-wing extremists by dedicating an entire section of The Satanic Bible to Might Is Right. Indeed, Michael Aquino’s book, The Church of Satan, reveals that Nazi associations with The Church of Satan began in the very year that Might Is Right came back in print. For good measure, Michael Aquino’s book also reveals that Anton LaVey was opposed to the connection between neo-Nazism and The Church of Satan. The Church of Satan went dormant a few years later, and when it resurfaced in the mid-1980s it soon became clear that members with more than spurious interest in Nazism had joined the organization and became ranking members. One could barely find a periodical or a magazine published by a Church of Satan member that was not littered with neo-Nazi imagery and other fascist references. Satan takes no issue with people who feel that the sun-symbol should be reclaimed and make occasional use of it among less tarnished symbols, but the “who are you kidding?” line is long crossed when they reach a seven-out-of-ten ratio of the topics of a magazine. These members were not merely loud. They constituted a disproportionally large part of the representative membership and appealed to more members of their likes.

Satan trusts that Anton LaVey did not desire this, but it is what happens when you quote an important inspiration a source who was primarily occupied with issues that you chose to ignore in your quest for what you wished to find. Satan thinks that the avid Satanic student who reads the book should learn to appreciate not only its value for The Satanic Bible but also its author’s biography and why the remainder that Anton LaVey omitted speaks to right-wing extremists instead, and especially that there are often unintended and sometimes severe consequences of confirmation bias.

The other lesson is that confirmation bias replaces potentially vital parts of a teaching with one’s own opinions, and because everyone changes their views more than they imagine or can even admit (because the brain believes it is consistent) throughout their lifetimes, one may render the original teaching washed-out to a homeopathic dilution. What remains is the person’s culturally inculcated values, the person’s political stance, probably some affinity for diabolic aesthetics, and other entirely personal opinions—and the person believes this to be the exact same Satanism that Anton LaVey defined.

Satan thinks that followers of the LaVeyan variety should mind Anton LaVey’s confirmation bias that governs his definition of Satanism and make calculated efforts to steer clear of all the hogwash and counter-productive instructions that plagued his grimoires, too. Satan thinks that if ever in doubt of where to strike the balance, one should make no attempt to learn further from said grimoires.

Satan does not require infernal fundamentalism, far from it. He only asks His followers to both be mindful of opinions that they may not be conscious of and to be mindful of the origin of their opinions. If they do not stem from the Devil, Satan thinks that the would-be follower may have accidentally submitted to a different master, one without horns and cloven hooves.

Satan thinks magic is for weak-minded people

Posted on by A lesser demon

Scholars of religion enjoy relating the story of an indigenous, coastal people which is strongly reliant on the gifts from the sea. They are a fishing people, and like any indigenous tribe, they believe in a variety of gods and demons. And like any indigenous tribe, they have been the target of study by anthropologists and other scientists.

Anthropologists noted that for the most part the tribe was relatively pragmatic regarding its mythical entities. The fishermen would perform their required rituals before setting off to the sea, and then while they sailed close to the shore, the navigated according to visible landmarks and the stars. A peculiar thing would happen if the fishermen became trapped at sea in a storm or lost sight of land, however: instead of leaning on rational attempts to find their bearings, they instead began to perform magical rituals and implore the gods to save them and the demons of the sea to spare them. They did probably the last thing a sensible person would do in a time of crisis.

Satan does consider their behavior to be immensely silly but hesitates to attribute it to the generally lacking knowledge of primitive peoples. After all, when good Christians from developed countries find themselves on a plane that has engine trouble, they begin to pray instead of locating the nearest emergency exit, finding the life-jacket if above sea, re-reading the safety pamphlet in front of them, and paying careful attention to the cabin crew. As tempting as it may be, the Devil does not attribute their behavior to stupidity either, because religious people are otherwise as intelligent as normal people. Poor intelligence would have manifested itself in many other unfavorable and readily observable forms in addition to religious behavior and belief. Old Nick asks His followers to understand that they are barking up the wrong tree when they explain superstition as mere stupidity.

The odd behavior of our fellow tribal fishermen is not intended to solve a precarious situation but to feel in control. Psychologists have coined the term “locus of control,” meaning the degree to which an individual believes to be in control of events in his or her life as opposed to believing to be at the mercy of external forces. When lost at sea or on a crashing plane, it is not difficult to understand that one is prone to realizing that the outcome is determined by forces beyond one’s control. When the locus (the “perceived location”) of control becomes external, your brain is prone to persuading you to regain control by appealing to those same external forces instead of relying on your own ability to manage the situation.

Locus of control is a key component of depression, along with some other psychological models, because part of the depressive spiral is the conviction that everything is hopeless: there is nothing you can do, and no-one can help you. Satan thinks this insight helps explain why, statistically, believers are less prone to depression than atheists, because by creating an illusion of control through prayer, belief, and other ritualistic or ceremonial behavior, believers have a method—a pipe dream as it may be—that makes them feel better because they believe they have (some) control of the uncontrollable.

The desire to resort to magic is thus prompted by a feeling of being powerless. Satan finds this to be an interesting observation regarding those of His followers who insist that magic is real and who feel compelled to perform magic rituals. Satan is convinced that these followers keenly feel that they have very little power in the real world if they truly believe that magic works and thus warrants their time and effort above tangible action and honest work. My Master spoke briefly with Anton LaVey, who mentioned the Balance Factor as a yardstick for one’s magical potential. He reportedly said that if one’s real world powers are limited then one’s magical success will be equally limited, but the Devil thinks His followers are unaware of this correspondence.

“Please do not get this wrong,” says my Master of All Things Evil. Satan does not mind rituals at all, especially not when He is summoned to a particularly lively performance. Rituals, regardless of religion, are intentionally “irrational” and employ mythical settings that one pretends to believe in—and, with some practice, can honestly believe in—during the performance of the ritual. Then afterwards the participants should preferably regain their mental bearings and be fully aware that the magical workings were complete bunk that has no effect on anything but the participants’ mindsets. It is only if a participant still afterwards believes that the magic worked that Satan thinks the participant should have his or her mind checked. In that sense, Satan agrees with the seventh of the “11 Satanic Rules of the Earth” which proclaims that you will lose all you have obtained if you deny the power of magic that you have called upon with success: you will lose your illusion of being in control and will have to come back to the verity of the real world.

Satan thinks spiritual might has become right

Posted on by A lesser demon

Back in the early day of the Devil’s church, Anton LaVey spoke of my Master as representing man’s desire for material success and power, and provided numerous examples of people whom he termed de facto Satanists in The Satanic Bible and elsewhere. They were people who had successfully employed the tools of the Devil for their own gains even if they never wanted or dared to admit it.

Ranks in Anton LaVey’s The Church of Satan were intended to reflect the owners’ status in the real world, and Anton LaVey’s 1975 decision to allow members to purchase ranks intentionally reflected their measurable status using money as a metric. Magic, for all of LaVey’s misguided speculation on its benefit to one’s health, was intended to bring real change in the real world, as Anton LaVey explained in not only The Satanic Bible and other official scripture but also numerous times in his column in a US men’s magazine, now available in Letters from the Devil. A magician was not merely in the right place at the right time but consciously and deliberately applied “certain principles” to create things, ideas, or situations which significantly influenced or modified the lives and motivations of great numbers of the world’s people, according to Anton LaVey. It was about manifest power. It was about tangible assets. Satanism was about building measurable and demonstrable might, because might is right.

Satan has observed that something has changed in recent years, however, possibly beginning with some intellectualization among members of The Church of Satan whose scrawny appearance spurred them to argue that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that mind stands above matter. In spite of His marvelous physical impression, Satan treasures mental acumen and heartily recognizes that parts of what Anton LaVey termed “lesser magic” is might in a mostly non-brawny design, so His Infernal Lordship will not argue that. The Devil believes that Anton LaVey never used the term “might” literally but it is nonetheless a somewhat recent phenomenon to find ranking members (including the second High Priest indeed) of The Church of Satan openly suggesting otherwise.

The Horned Almighty would have thought little of it as it seems a rational sophistication of physical might: acts of mentalism, as it were, cause change in the physical world nonetheless, and changing the world for one’s betterment is the ultimate goal. The medium may not be a clenched fist but a political maneuver, but physical change ensues as a result.

The shift that irks my Master (who unfortunately has a habit of taking His frustrations out on we, His humble minions) is that more recently, “might” is becoming an internalized concept to His followers. Satan represents power, influence, capability, and authority—that changes the world around you—not some security blanket that helps His followers cope and manage to be self-confident in the face of adversity, to build self-esteem, or otherwise changing nothing but themselves, as warranted and far overdue as Satan otherwise agrees such improvement usually is.

Satan is all for building one’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, assuming there is something to be proud of, of course, although that is seldom the case. He is just concerned that those who once comprised His army of darkness may have become a self-confidence self-help group with no instructor.

Observing which real-world accomplishments appear to earn one a priesthood or a magistrate title in His church, Satan would wish for many additional degrees in His church high above the magistrate and high priesthood ranks, because the prevalent notoriety of even the highest known ranks within His church is evidently irrelevance. Our Infernal Sovereign is a realist, however, and heartlessly concludes that when His followers sense the uncomfortable truth of personal impotence because nothing proves their mightiness, they seek out convenient falsehoods. Their desire to identify themselves as mighty with nothing to show for it incites them to become spiritually “mighty” instead: being unable to wield power that anyone would notice, they pick an imaginary enemy, fight it, and win. They declare themselves enlightened among equally endarkened minds and individuals among their fellow sheep. They feel they somehow beat an enemy by declaring themselves Satanists and perhaps performing some rituals, sometimes dressing differently, and by having slightly alternative specific interests, and that makes all the difference in the world—to them, and, lamentably, only to them.

They failed to become kings of the world and thus resorted to being kings in their minds. They became their own gods but are gods with no congregation. Like the Christians of old, who first believed that their Messiah would become the legal king of Israel and morphed him into a “king of Heaven” when he was executed to let his followers pretend that their so-called “king” at least held some spiritual and thus inconsequential power, Satan finds that His followers retell this grim story of self-deceit. These followers of my Master’s found strength in Satan in exactly the same way as Christians find strength in Jesus—that is, by turning their inability to make a difference into pipe dreams of possessing power and creating value. The absence of tangible results turned them to spiritual growth instead.

Satan ended His thoughts somewhat abruptly by suddenly quoting Himself from His sermon in The Satanic Bible, because He thinks the rage of His impotent followers on the social media is thus perfectly summarized: Thrice cursed are the weak whose insecurity makes them vile!

Satan thinks belief in gods is counter-democratic

Posted on by A lesser demon

Gods are powerful beings that have the authority to define human value, to determine human rights, and to reward and punish any human decision. The gods stand above humans, and allow humans no influence; Man may pray for help and beg for mercy but cannot conclude or decide. Regardless of what humans choose, gods can overrule it. No human opinion stands above that of the gods. The gods always have the final say in human affairs.

Humans who believe in gods believe that the intentions of the gods outweigh human sentiments; they believe that any human opinion can be ignored or rejected because the views of the gods must be respected. And when the gods remain curiously silent, the clerical representatives of the gods will happily explain which of their personal opponents’ opinions should be overruled in favor of the gods—who conveniently always happen to agree with whatever their priests and followers want.

All gods are man-made but believers do not know this. In their self-centered world-view they also fail to recognize that the opinions of their gods are but their own opinions assigned divine authority. Satan wants His followers to be their own gods but it is instead believers who manage to play that role. With their God in their hands, they claim the right to ignore the opposing opinions of others regardless of majority. Should public support of a decision approved of by the believers wane, the believers will claim that their gods demands that it be sustained. And should support of their favored, elected leader falter, soon that leader will have been chosen by God.

Democracy, on the other hand, is for human beings. It is a principle that assigns one vote to each individual, all votes counting exactly the same regardless of individual power or value. No one has more voting power than anyone else. No vote can be overruled by someone else’s demand. Democracy suffers no god a vote because no god exists.

Of course, the Prince of Darkness is not overly fond of democracy Himself and is unsympathetic towards a system of government that grants voting power to stupid people. The only time in History he ever supported democracy was at an event about 2,000 years ago when the vast majority of a large crowd of Judeans voted for Jesus’ death sentence. Satan is the tyrant of Hell who rules His infernal realm with an iron fist and allows His tormented souls no rights.

Satan thinks that in the realm of humans, however, a mindset that surrenders any part of a decision-making process to a super-human entity is inherently counter-democratic as it strips humans of their human worth, human influence, and human rights, surrendering the power of the people to undeserving believers and their priests.