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The Church of Satan’s ‘11 Rules of the Earth’ Are Actually Pretty Reasonable
#3: When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there
I was recently listening to the Stuff You Should Know podcast episode on Satanism.
It turns out that Satanism isn’t quite what I thought it was. It’s not the same as devil-worshipping, and the Church of Satan isn’t quite the group of evil maniacs you might have assumed them to be.
To quote learnreligions.com:
“Members of the official Church of Satan are best described as a devoted group of skeptical atheists who don’t celebrate Satan as a biblical devil or even as the character of Satan as described in Christian and Islamic scripture. Rather, they see Satan as a positive symbol representing pride and individualism.”
According to the podcast, when humans first invented God, they hadn’t created the character of Satan alongside him. Instead, the early concept of God considered him to be everything, including all good and bad things. But later on, when God became regarded as all-good, they needed an evil counterpart to explain all the bad stuff. Hence, Satan was invented.
The Church of Satan is an unfortunate name, considering that their beliefs aren’t that bad. It’s as if a bunch…
