Quote:
Originally Posted by reed067
Umm, you do understand that Satanist are more or less Atheist right? They don't believe in ANY God/s. They worships themselves so to speak.
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Personally I think Satanism is as silly as anything else.
But you are right-- many Satanists (of the "Anton LaVey" variety) don't believe in gods or devils. They are more humanists in a sense--don't feel as though we should suppress or feel guilty about our basic human (animal) instincts. They claim to believe strongly in personal liberty so they would not go around torturing, raping, stealing, etc. as they view that as impinging on the liberties of other people.
There are some Satanists who do seem to believe in the "good/evil, god/devil" paradigm literally and actually believe in The Prince of Darkness and so on. These are usually pimply-faced 15 year old boys who think they'll make Satan happy by killing a cat in front of a candle altar or some such ridiculous nonsense.
My (admittedly limited) knowledge and experience with this sort of thing is that the latter are greatly outnumbered by the former.
Still, I think it's all silly. If you disbelieve in gods, devils, etc., why then the pomp and circumstance? Why the rituals and so on? Seems like a way for a bunch of geeks to hope to hop in the sack with some impressionable young girls out to rebel.
This leaves aside a discussion of magic(k) (with an added K for extra occultishness!) which I find an interesting area of study--the history of it, at least. I'm not a practitioner.
Many people conflate it with demonism, Satanism, etc., but in practiced magic, those things are viewed largely as symbolic. Magic of this kind has more to do with the idea that nothing in the universe happens without someone or something's will acting upon it, and that a person can use their will to cause an effect in nature.