Perndog:

[Perndog]

First:

The fact that they call such a force "Satan" proves that they like to arbitrarily piss-off Christians, regardless of whether or not they admit it.

Because everyone knows Christians invented the word and the entire concept of Satan.

And the inevitable response to Helm:

At the time the Satanic Bible was written, the Church of Satan was a social club in California with no profits and no commercial goals. It took many years before they started handing out membership cards (which are not plastic, incidentally) for money. There goes your profit scheme theory. In several places in the literature and in essays by prominent church members is it stated that affiliation with the church is not a requirement to follow the religion or to practice ritual magic (though it is required if you want to be put into contact with other Satanists in real life).

Self-deceit is the fourth Satanic sin; a Satanist takes (or should take) the utmost care to keep himself correctly informed and not to lie to himself unless he's doing it on purpose (and then it's not really self-delusion).

Yes, hundreds of morons will buy into the church for the very reasons you described, and the Church's answer is "we're glad to take their money." But most of us are a little more mature than that.

And your correlation of Satanism with occultism is off base. Having read the Satanic Bible, you should know that we don't find anything magical or special about the words, the gestures, etc, and that they're just a means of arousing emotions. We use snips of Enochian rituals, etc. and we don't care if we're not doing it right because that's not the point. I would like a better explanation of what you think ties Satanism to occult "magick" or anything similar, aside from a couple of shared philosophical ideas.

And I would expect Helm and a lot of other people to tear the religion to shreds - The Satanic Bible is NOT an ultimate answer to anyone's philosophy, and is not even acceptable within most people's perspectives, if they admit to a bias or not. The point is that a Satanist is someone who thinks differently than other people. Folks like Helm dismiss it as worthless trash because a) they seem to be more interested in the origins and motivations behind the writing than the content itself, and b) it just doesn't work for them. When I read the Satanic Bible for the first time, I recognized in it some of the concepts I had written on my own before I was introduced to the religion, and rereading it with a more critical eye only reinforced this impression.

I call Satanism a valid philosophy because I can live by it and be many times happier, more stable, and more reasonable than most Christians or humanists I've met.

Oh, and Helm's going to tell me that I just picked it up because I was insecure and desperately seeking something to identify with. Watch.