Seinfeld26 wrote:
FrigidSymphony wrote:
Really, LaVey is to be admired, the man was smart. Really. But laveyan satanism isn't some deep, intense hidden occult thing, it's basically humanism with some ritual thrown in for provocative purposes.
I don't know if I'd even really call it "humanism", since it doesn't have the whole "peace, love and understanding" mantra secular humanism has. I'd say another poster was correct in that it's more individualism with some rituals and anti-Christian propaganda thrown in. Really more of a philosophy than religion, if you really think about it.
It is a religion because it has fantasy, dogma and philosophy. It just is not a political movement in the sense that many of different kinds of thinking co-exist. There's no arguing the finer points of life itself, somethign that has schismed other churches over and over again so that none of them really have any power and almost anyone can belong to them. Satanism isn't like that, you either are a Satanist or not, your stance on political issues is largely irrelevant.
I guess a lot of this goes back to how you really define "religion", per see. Some people (myself included) define religion as simply holding a common faith/belief and following it. While others define it as also a social/political movement. I consider myself a Christian because I hold the basic Christian beliefs in God and Jesus, and try to act on them best I can. But I know some people (Southern Baptists, etc) would probably say that I'm "not a Christian", because some of my political views and my general open-minded/non-isolationist attitude towards life are frowned upon in the "hardcore Christian community." So again, some people have stricter definitions of what "religion" is than others. Zad and I actually had a fairly interesting discussion about this a few months ago in another thread.
