Tolerance vs. respect

[lederhosen]

I believe one should make an effort to tolerate others' beliefs, as long as they're not being forced on anybody else. And when the same religion can produce Raoul Wallenberg and Jack Chick, it seems inadvisable to judge a faith en masse; much better to take each individual on their own merits.

That said, I can't help but view some faiths as irredeemably silly, and LaVeyan Satanism is high on that list. It's not because of its values - which I haven't really examined in detail - but because building a religion around somebody else's Adversary is the same sort of lame as listening to Marilyn Manson because your parents hate it.

Nice irony here:

"Satanists are encouraged to perform devil worship rituals, to fulfil their sexual desires and to change situations or events in accordance with their will. Leading hand Cranmer, 24, is single..."

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's not so silly.

There's a few Satanists on the convert_me list and I've discovered a fair bit about them.

Basically, the adversary (of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim God) is the individual within. Satan is not an external, independent force, but rather the individual will and desire itself.

Satanists object to the idea that their individual morality should be determined by an external authority, and especially that mediated through a institutional spokesorc.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Satan is not an external, independent force, but rather the individual will and desire itself.

Yup, I gathered as much from Wikipedia. And it's not the focus on individual will and desire that makes me see them as silly; they wouldn't be the first to base a philosophy on that.

What I see as silly is that by naming themselves for another faith's adversary-figure - one they don't even believe literally exists - they're casting themselves not so much as a faith as an anti-faith.

That seems very odd to me. It's like 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' - defining oneself as a negative of something else is inherently a little absurd.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

they're casting themselves not so much as a faith as an anti-faith

Exactly - and that's why it doesn't seem silly to me. So we're probably going to disagree on this one (oh no!)

The other aspect I suspect is that it's a very good marketing ploy and guarateed to get a rise out of people...

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

On the latter, absolutely. There's a *reason* Marilyn Manson's records sold so well, and it didn't have much to do with talent ;-)

On the former, I should be more specific. I don't think there's anything silly about atheism, or even rejecting a specific faith. What's silly to me is making that rejection into a religion of its own, reliant on a figure from the rejected religion.

I dislike Tweety Pie, and I don't believe he really exists. But that doesn't seem like a very good reason to go off and found the Church of Sylvester the Cat...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Look at it this way. "God" represents an external superego of moral authority. "The Devil" represents an internal expression of the will and "evil" desire. Both, in that sense, exist. Tweety Bird and Sylvester are not appropriate analogies. To the Satanist (and the Xian, Muslim and Jew), God and Satan are real, in a metaphorical sense.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

"God" represents an external superego of moral authority. "The Devil" represents an internal expression of the will and "evil" desire. Both, in that sense, exist.

But we already have words - 'ego', 'superego', & 'id', for instance - that describe such concepts without relying on someone else's religion to give them meaning.

I could attempt to rationalise the Church of Sylvester by noting that Tweety is representative of a particularly obnoxious ideology - he *is* a vicious little bastard, and all the more odious for his pretense of niceness, much like the people who steer towards war while making a show of sorrow for its victims. (The bulldog can be Karl Rove, or maybe John Ashcroft, if you like ;-) Meanwhile, Sylvester exemplifies the virtues of perseverance and creativity.

Sylvester and Tweety aren't real in a literal sense - nor does the LaVeyan Satanist consider God and Satan to be literally real - but in a metaphorical sense they *are* real, representing important archetypes that everybody recognises. (Which is a big part of their popularity - everybody knows a Sylvester and a Tweety).

[unsworn-nomore.livejournal.com]

I have read a fair amount of LaVeyan Satanist material. It is painfully obvious that it was written by an ex-Catholic who decided in high school that he was going to be Eeeevil and hasn't grown at all since.

[jazzmasterson.livejournal.com]

I don't know anyone like that.

*deadpan*

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add to the Satanist thread here... I just wanted to say that "Nazgulls" made me laugh so much I nearly turned blue...