RE: Is Satan better than God?
January 25, 2022 at 1:01 am
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2022 at 1:05 am by Belacqua.)
Anton Szandor LaVey Wrote:1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires!
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!
I don't know how LaVey's version compares to the 613 Mitzvot, exactly, but it's pretty horrible.
These nine assertions are a license for self-indulgence, lack of discipline, reinforcement of one's own prejudices, and unkindness.
LaVey uses language to stack the deck, like "spiritual pipe dreams." Well, yeah, we're all against pipe dreams. Or "hypocritical self-deceit"; we're all against that, too. But anyone who signed on to these assertions would be in serious danger of falling into exactly that kind of self-deceit.
For example, indulgence instead of abstinence. OK, I enjoy a good chocolate cake as much as anybody. Should I go ahead and eat until I'm 600 pounds? Aren't there really a lot of cases in which self-discipline is obviously a good thing? Do you have a little Oxycontin handy?
"Kindness to those who deserve it" means we can choose when to be kind and when not to. It means that if someone rubs us the wrong way we have license to treat that person unkindly. This is America, folks, where in the news yesterday there were two stories of fast food workers getting shot because the customer was unhappy with their order.
Advocating vengeance is advocating self-indulgence.
"Responsibility to the responsible" is good old Ayn Rand talk. We have no responsibility to others, if we judge that they fall below our standard. "Fuck you I've got mine" is a common view, and explains why the US doesn't have sane health care.
Spiritual and intellectual development, he says, has made human beings vicious. I think it's the opposite -- we would be less vicious with more development.
He's for all the sins, because they lead to gratification. So go ahead and cheat on your wife. You'll be gratified, and that's all that matters.
This is a selfish, consumerist manifesto entirely in keeping with the worst of contemporary America. It was made by a showman.
