Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: August 4, 2025, 2:57 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Is Satan better than God?
#19
RE: Is Satan better than God?
(January 25, 2022 at 2:32 am)GrandizerII Wrote: For me, as a metaphor, Satan is a lot about subtle deception (including self-deception). So-called acts of kindness or responsible acts are a means to manipulate, not out of any sense of care or dignity. Satan is also not about consistency in the upholding of so-called righteous principles. Satan is about achieving one's goals, especially at the expense of others.

Satan's a really really old character, and has been used to symbolize all kinds of things in the past. 

Your reading here is far more traditional than LaVey's. In modern times the best example of this type would be Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. He flatters and grants wishes, but the goal is always to give the victim exactly what he wants in order to ruin his life, and the lives of those around him. He's the model of the sophisticated gentlemen Satan, as seen in certain Hollywood movies and Rolling Stones songs.

The other modern view of Satan would be that of Milton, which famously made the ostensible villain into a hero for the Romantic poets. More like tragic Prometheus than sly Mephistopheles. 

Blake remade Satan to fit his own eccentric theology (which was nonetheless deeply rooted in tradition). Blake thought that the Fall of Man didn't have to do with sin but with a division away from wholeness and full perception. (An ancient Neoplatonic trope.) When our doors of perception are fully open we will realize that we are one with God -- we are God. In this system Satan was made by God as a merciful lower limit below which we cannot fall -- the extreme limit of contraction into oneself. Satan was not an individual but a state of being -- as all the main characters are for Blake: Adam, Moses, Jesus, etc. 

LaVey has taken some common images of Satan, including a sort of Romantic hero of selfhood, and an individual not beholden to power, and made him into a pop-culture-level symbol of self-indulgence. There is nothing interesting about this Satan, because he's just giving us permission to do what we'd all like to do anyway -- be selfish and greedy and inconsiderate. There is no challenge involved. It's easy.

To me it's also boring because it's shallow. If you're an atheist, and Satan is just a symbol, then it's no different from dressing up as Spiderman and going to ComicCon. I mean, if people want to be furries and have sex with other furries that's up to them. But it's not a religion. This is in contrast to 19th century French Satanists, who actually believed that something was at stake -- they thought they were risking their everlasting souls.
Reply



Messages In This Thread
Is Satan better than God? - by Disagreeable - January 23, 2022 at 10:24 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Abaddon_ire - January 24, 2022 at 2:58 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Disagreeable - January 25, 2022 at 5:40 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Brian37 - January 24, 2022 at 3:10 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by The Valkyrie - January 24, 2022 at 5:31 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Peebo-Thuhlu - January 24, 2022 at 4:48 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by BrianSoddingBoru4 - January 24, 2022 at 5:27 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by no one - January 24, 2022 at 7:16 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 24, 2022 at 7:37 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Belacqua - January 24, 2022 at 7:46 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Angrboda - January 24, 2022 at 10:37 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Disagreeable - January 30, 2022 at 9:39 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ranjr - January 24, 2022 at 10:59 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by brewer - January 24, 2022 at 3:21 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 24, 2022 at 11:25 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Fireball - January 24, 2022 at 11:53 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 25, 2022 at 2:17 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Belacqua - January 25, 2022 at 1:01 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 25, 2022 at 2:32 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Belacqua - January 25, 2022 at 4:25 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Mister Agenda - January 25, 2022 at 12:12 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ferrocyanide - January 26, 2022 at 2:01 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 27, 2022 at 6:58 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ferrocyanide - January 27, 2022 at 1:30 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by GrandizerII - January 27, 2022 at 2:13 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ferrocyanide - January 27, 2022 at 6:14 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Jehanne - January 25, 2022 at 2:24 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by HappySkeptic - January 25, 2022 at 3:54 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Jehanne - January 27, 2022 at 8:14 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by The Grand Nudger - January 27, 2022 at 10:25 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Plague Happy - January 30, 2022 at 12:01 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Brian37 - January 30, 2022 at 12:10 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Jehanne - January 30, 2022 at 12:20 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ferrocyanide - January 31, 2022 at 2:32 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Abaddon_ire - January 31, 2022 at 6:31 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by Ferrocyanide - January 31, 2022 at 2:34 pm
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by The Grand Nudger - January 31, 2022 at 8:47 am
RE: Is Satan better than God? - by The Grand Nudger - January 31, 2022 at 3:37 pm

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism? vulcanlogician 147 18114 April 5, 2022 at 2:54 am
Last Post: Belacqua
  God vs Satan - Bible UniverseCaptain 5 1580 October 17, 2021 at 10:55 am
Last Post: no one
  Satan and Making Mock zwanzig 24 4408 May 21, 2021 at 7:58 pm
Last Post: Fireball
  Is God weaker than theists imagine, and is mankind stronger? invalid 6 2986 March 5, 2021 at 6:38 am
Last Post: arewethereyet
  Is religion simply more about control than a god? GODZILLA 24 4495 January 8, 2019 at 11:58 am
Last Post: Drich
  God can make infinitely more special/valuable things than this universe blue grey brain 84 15280 December 17, 2018 at 7:15 pm
Last Post: The Grand Nudger
  I am a better person than God! chimp3 56 13860 May 24, 2018 at 1:07 am
Last Post: chimp3
  Santa is an anagram for Satan goombah111 34 7150 January 27, 2017 at 5:33 am
Last Post: BrianSoddingBoru4
  Why don't Christians admire/LOVE SATAN instead of the biblical God? ProgrammingGodJordan 18 4929 January 21, 2017 at 8:13 am
Last Post: Gawdzilla Sama
  I am better than God! chimp3 24 6300 September 26, 2016 at 8:53 am
Last Post: brewer



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)