Is Satan better than God?

[Ranjr]

No, that's like asking if Ben Grimm can beat the Hulk.

[brewer]

The Church of Satan lays out the following 9 statements:

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!

Are these 9 Satanic statements better than the 10 Godly commandments?

What's your opinion?

[GrandizerII]

You know, for fun, I started typing counter statements that make Satan sound really really evil. But then upon rereading what I had typed, I realized it wasn't worth posting. It was meant to be in humor, but some of the statements turned out to be a bit disturbing and not really funny. So I'm just going to not post it.

[Fireball]

You know, for fun, I started typing counter statements that make Satan sound really really evil. But then upon rereading what I had typed, I realized it wasn't worth posting. It was meant to be in humor, but some of the statements turned out to be a bit disturbing and not really funny. So I'm just going to not post it.

Mainly because "god" was worse?

[Belacqua]

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.

[GrandizerII]

You know, for fun, I started typing counter statements that make Satan sound really really evil. But then upon rereading what I had typed, I realized it wasn't worth posting. It was meant to be in humor, but some of the statements turned out to be a bit disturbing and not really funny. So I'm just going to not post it.

Mainly because "god" was worse?

Nah, I wasn't even thinking about the OT God. I was just focused on the statements in the OP, not on the question posed by the OP.

[Jehanne]

The Point of Inquiry podcast years ago had, as I recall (if not, it was another podcast), an interview with a Satanic high priest, who is an atheist. A lot of Satanists are atheist; they just like the rituals, kind of like the Masons.

[GrandizerII]

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.

[Belacqua]

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.

[Mister Agenda]

This is a selfish, consumerist manifesto entirely in keeping with the worst of contemporary America. It was made by a showman.

Reminds me of Objectivism....