I checked him out on Amazon. Me like!

Being strongly anti-Christian works for me and makes sense Satanically, I think. Doesn't mean everybody has to do it. Indifference is fine too, and might even work as a strategy to stake the heart of the thing. Why give the competitor free advertising? But Coke and Pepsi sometimes mention each other in commercials, in a negative way. That works too, under the right conditions. Hell, TSB doesn't pull any punches.

Firstly allow me to apologize for my apparent rudeness. I occasionally use abrasive language when I'm trying to make a point, and it would appear to me that language was the core problem to begin with.


Yes, I've met plenty of people like this. These tend to be fundamentalists who sincerely believe that EVERYTHING in the Bible is literally true and that if any of it can be proven false their entire faith is shattered. Creationists are a great example of this.


I would imagine that those who have come to accept an atheistic worldview by means of logic are in the minority of said group. Most people I've encountered came to that conclusion by one of two ways: they are inherently atheistic (like myself, and by extension I am inherently I-theistic) or they notice atheism as a niche worldview and tack it on via a trending point of view. It's their "I'm an outsider" badge.


While this is definitely true I think those kids who are inherently atheistic (not needing some external source of salvation) will come around to a atheistic worldview quite naturally, regardless of upbringing. These people are no doubt extremely self-sufficient and more likely than not I-theists, and therefore very likely to be Satanists; at the very least living a very Satanic lifestyle.


Well, to avoid any semantics issues I'll agree with this so long as I make the distinction between "belief" and "assumption". There really is no way to 100% verify anything outside of your own consciousness is real. However, most rational people assume it is, and that they can learn from it. I'm sure there is a more proper scientific term for this, but I call it the Basic Assumption. Outside of that assumption a scientific understanding of the universe is to test and verify. It is also the root of skepticism. In this sense, any "beliefs" are illogical not because they are automatically false, but because they might be, and thus could be hindering any investigation into the matter.

The rest of my post got into some subjective areas and other things, which were borderline ad hominems in retrospect.

I personally don't find anti-theism or any kind of applied religious-bashing all that appealing. I spent the greater part of my teen years doing it and I got bored with it. Also, I don't like it when others do it to Satanism. There are certain things I'll speak out against (Islamic terrorism, creationism, etc.) but other than that I see it as their business and leave it alone.

But if someone doesn't see it my way, well, then that's their business too.

I agree. I like the way you've explained stuff here but rather than quote a huge endless block I'll keep it to this. I thought Krakauer nailed it too in Under the Banner of Heaven when he said: "Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component to spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for the voice of God... Faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism. "

The people that Nick is describing -- smart folks, still believers -- mystify me. It must take some ironclad compartmentalization to be, say, a doctor and a devout Catholic. Or people just get what they need (inspiration, comfort, direction of some kind) from their Sunday visits and leave the really hardcore sociopathic stuff to the Mormons.

P.S. Thought you handled the rough stuff quite well. You know, mostly because you didn't use anymore torpedo imagery.

Amen to that. I have to wonder how many wise men of history who were both geniuses and devout whatevers really believed it or just didn't want to get Churched out of their reputation. The idiots believe, the wise men are martyred for disbelief, but the best of us know when to play the game.

On the other hand, my Father is one of the smartest men I ever met and very religious to his core. But then, one day he explained to me that he didn't really know if there was a god, he didn't really care. He went for the traditions he shared with his father, for the friends and food and so on.

Religious people surprise me from time to time. It's rare, but sometimes they can turn out to be good and religious people. It's a mistake to count the two as absolute mutual exclusives or to discount a good friend from one's life over their faith.

Even if they cut half your dick off over it.

What you wrote suggested that they believed in an actual entity called God.

My wife uses the explanation that there is some balancing force in the universe, which you could label as "God", but which may be little more than a mathematical equation that defines the function of the universe...like a script written in Python that tells the universe how to operate. Is that sort of what you mean?

I am going to go back and look up what you suggested out of curiosity, but I have a hard time swallowing that they believed in a literal, conscious entity of some kind.

I suppose the word I meant to use was Pantheist. LaVey's words on God are quite similar to those of Albert Einstein. People have often debated whether or not Einstein believed in God too, but really he just used the word "God" to refer to nature and the cosmos.

As for Magus Gilmore, I wish I could remember the exact words he used. He either suggested deism or pantheism, but I don't know which.

EDIT: It turns out I was mistaken. I just watched the video clip in question and Gilmore said nothing of the sort. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I apologize for all the confusion!

*puts on a dunce cap and goes to sit in a corner*

Speaking of Deism, go here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism

I think Anton believed in a force which is unknown or unable to be explained which is not mystical or supernatural and has a similarity to gravity. Unlike gravity, its function is to keep the flow of the universe. That is my take on it.

I could be wrong though. It's up to interpretation I guess.

I think what you're referring to is the interview he did with Wikipedia. In that he said that deism was a tolerable alternative to theism. That's a massive paraphrase, but yeah.

Speaking of deism, my brain is connecting the dots with some other things said in this thread. So bear with me.

It occurs to me that every intelligent (and logically consistent) religious person I've ever known was more or less a deist. Someone who doesn't waste too much time pondering the supernatural. The professor I was talking about, who is also a minister, never really said much of his personal beliefs other than the fact that he was a chaplain in the air force and had performed various religious ceremonies over the years as an officially recognized religious leader. His massive amounts of tolerance for other religions (including what would be expected of a college professor) was enough to make me think he definitely did not take the Bible literally.

If someone said that all Biblical Fundamentalists are illogical you'd get no argument from me.

Another strange occurrence is that more often than not these people tend to behave in a more or less Satanic manner. That may not be their personal philosophy, but their actions speak louder than their words. Of course this could be nothing more than me projecting my own values and perceptions onto others.

As for some kind of hidden "force" that balances the universe, sure. The great thing (and worst thing, depending on the context) is that the idea is so ambiguous. I am fairly certain there is nothing out there that is sentient and/or cares about us at all. But it is a big universe, and there are lots of unknowns. Whatever this theoretical force is, it's pointless to worship it; So I'm back to where I started: Myself as my own God.

And this God demands macaroni pictures!

What about those tambourines made with rice and two paper plates stapled together?

LOL. You think I will be appeased by such nonsense? Only the finest 3rd grade arts & crafts macaroni pictures will suffice!

Sure, tambourines make cool noises, but you can't very well hang them on your wall and admire their awesomeness! The only condition which I'll accept your feeble tambourine is if it can effectively double as a frizberang. And yes, that is a frisbee/boomerang combination.

I agree. I have breakfast once a month with a Lutheran pastor and Lutheran deacon, two good friends of mine. I just don't bother discussing religion with them, as that's the one aspect of them that I have nothing but contempt for. There are plenty of other things to talk about.



Ouch! I'll draw the line there, I think.

Nice quote. The last sentence especially. No one will ever argue a believer out of his faith unless the believer has already started to question, which usually happens because the believer came to faith as a little kid through indoctrination he was powerless at that age to fight against, and now, as an adult, childhood faith and adult logical thinking are at war.



I agree. It's like they turn off the part of themselves that wants facts before making a judgment. Imagine if your doctor based his medical diagnosis on his feelings!

I don't know if your wife has read TSB, but if so, maybe she's remembering this quote from The Book of Lucifer: - Wanted! - God Dead or Alive...

"To the Satanist "God" - by whatever name he is called, or by no name at all - is seen as the balancing factor in nature, and not as being concerned with suffering. This powerful force which permeates and balances the universe is far too impersonal to care about the happiness or misery of flesh-and-blood creatures on this ball of dirt upon which we live."

I know of a balancing factor that really exists. Natural selection! It balances two things: one, the attack power of the predator versus the escape power of the prey, and two, how much of any trait a creature will have. The prey sometimes escapes because the predator is almost never massively superior. A trait will be fine-tuned at a certain level, not too much, not too little, but just right, like Goldilocks said about the baby bear's bed. It's the economics of survival. Everything comes at a cost, to be balanced against benefit.

The name I use for that is Satan!* I suspect Robert E. Howard meant to personify it as Crom. Richard Dawkins writes endlessly about it. It's reality bleak and bruising. Sigmund Freud wrote about the ego as the reality principle inside our heads. My ego reacts to natural selection as something important to think about and learn from. Satan!

What better adversarial position to take? Look at the bible-thumpers. What have they chosen as their big enemy to attack again and again? Natural selection!

The balance aspect is a lesson worth learning. Cost/benefit analysis is the new theology!

*Satan is my name for other things too, of course.

I personally feel that eliminating the word "God" completely out of ones vocabulary makes life a lot simpler--maybe with the exception of "god damn!" or the occasional "oh my god!", which are mostly forces of habit.

Call me practical. *shrug*