Who was a right?

Who was a right?

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Yeah. Satanists are just edgelord atheists trying to be provocative.

Devil worshipers have to believe in all the tenets of Christianity to believe in the D-man.

It would not make any sense to do so anyways. Why would you ever join the losing side?

Cummies and wordly things
the same reason why people sin, they prefer momentary pleasure

>dindu in charge of critical thinking and looking beyond basic concepts

Wew

But he's spot on

Satanism is the most utterly childish thing I've ever seen

NO WE DON'T BELIEVE IN SATAN WE JUST CHOSE THIS NAME SO THAT PEOPLE WOULD NOTICE US BEING CONTRARIAN REEEEEE

there's more than one type of satanism???

umm no sweetie you're not a satanist if you worship satan you're just a devil worshiper geez

Most utterly Jewish

Church of Satan are just organized edgelords, "belonging to the herd" is literally one of their 9 deadly sins.

Church of satan is just discount milk man with extra spooks.

>hahaha that stupid nignog can't even SEE the Emperor's new clothes! they're so sophisticated they probably blew his primitive mind lmao

why the fuck would you call yourself a satanist if you don't want people to believe that you worship satan.

There's two popular Satanist camps:

LaVeyan Satanists, which is the officially recognized Church of Satan that basically treats Satan as an anti-establishment symbol and spiritual focus, rather than a deity, and is more or less Ayn Rand + rituals. They do believe in power through Magik™ and the like, and thus are not true atheists, but they believe in the will to power, and thus hold no beings above themselves. That self-empowerment, putting one's self interest above all else, is key to the belief system.

Then there's the occult Satanists, which are less organized, but have a large following among the Church of Set, which, depending who you believe, is either a splinter group of LaVey's Church of Satan, or visa versa. They believe in personifications of Satan, in various forms (such as Set/Sutekh/Pluto), and believe their god rewards strength and self-reliance, in all his forms.

Behaviorally and philosophically, they are both identical to the followers of Ayn Rand, they just have differing degrees of religion and magic layered on top of it.

They WANT people to believe that they worship Satan so they can act all smug and correct them and pretend they're interesting.

they're attention seeking children

I can't really blame people for preferring momentary pleasure to an hypothetical eternal afterlife of praying a meme God that some old virgin cuck probably made up.

I don't think the Temple of Set, which branched off from LaVey's Church of Satan, actually worships Set, but rather holds him up as an example. They believe he exists, and revealed "The Book of Coming Forth by Night" to Michael Aquino, but like the LaVeyan's, strictly speaking, hold no deities above themselves.

Both religions ultimately teach supreme self-deification, so worshipping a deity kinda defeats the point.

Occult Satanists, on the other hand, don't really have an organization that I'm aware of, tending to be individuals or small covens, each with their own belief system, but the one thing they tend to have in common that sets them apart from either of those organizations is that they do indeed worship Satan as a deity.

Well, that, and they don't get tax breaks on church property nor have their burial rites listed in the mariner's handbook, unlike LaVey's Church of Satan and The Temple of Set.

>I can't really blame people for preferring momentary pleasure
I could - that's kind of the definition of a shitty animalistic person - some who lacks the self-discipline to sacrifice short term pleasure for long term gain.
>to an hypothetical eternal afterlife of praying
Oh... On the other hand, there is something to say for someone who holds reality over fantasy.

Granted, LaVey tends to teach the importance of self-discipline in obtaining one's long term goals, while simultaneously saying it takes inner strength to do both this, and enjoy hedonism to its fullest.

In the end, it's just Ayn Rand's self-interest and anti-altruism, with a whole lotta LARP'ing tossed in, which kinda makes it the worst of both worlds.

Does bother me a bit that, in my country at least, the party of the Religious Right tends to hold the Bible in one hand, and Atlas Shrugged in the other, yet no one blinks a fucking eye.

Both.

I suppose I can *attempt* to make this a Veeky Forums thread:

Satanism, in the broadest sense, has never been a single religion, but a milieu that can be divided into three groups: Reactive Satanism, which encompasses "popular Satanism, inverted Christianity, and symbolic rebellion" in that it situates itself in opposition to society while at the same time conforming to society's perspective of evil. Rationalist Satanism, used to describe the trend in the Satanic milieu which is atheistic, skeptical, and materialistic. And Esoteric Satanism, applying to those forms which are theistic and draw upon ideas from other forms of Western esotericism, neo-Paganism, and eastern teachings.

The two largest modern movements are the Church of Satan (founded by Anton LaVey in 1966), which could be described as both Reactive and Rationalist, and The Temple of Set, which splintered off from said in 1976 under the leadership of Michael Aquino, and could be described as Esoteric.

So, in the end, both those guys are right. Generally Rationalist Satanists scoff at Esoteric Satanists (sometimes describing them as "Christian devil worshippers", as in the pic), while the Esoteric Satanists accuse the Rationalists of being disingenuous unbelievers with no spiritual foundation.

So it seems, even joining Satan, doesn't get you out of ye old Atheist vs. Christian debate.

There's been others from all three camps throughout recent history. Such as Przybyszewsk, who described his Social Darwinian ideology as Rational Satanism around the turn of the 19th century. Eliphas Levi, who gave us pic related in the 1850's, believed in Luciferian enlightenment, touting that the Knights Templar worshipped Lucifer in the form of Baphomet in a more Esoteric bent. The early Theosophical Society held to the view that "Lucifer" was a force that aided humanity's awakening to its own spiritual nature from 1875 until the early 1900's. ...and I could go on, but meh, character limit.

This

What's wrong with being a Satanist

Nothing

>Sins, rules, dogmas
>Atheism
Spooks

Well, there's the social friction caused by the edgelord factor, but I suppose every good society needs a little internal criticism to keep it on its toes.

A Satanic society, however, is inherently unstable, as it's strictly an "everyone out for themselves" belief structure, with only the tiniest bit of allowance for one's immediate allies and family. Ambition to the degree of pure ruthlessness is favored, and no allowance is ever made for those who fall behind. Potentially, it becomes a mountain of corpses with a handful of men at the top, who continuously try to defeat one another until only one is left standing.

Granted, there's followers of major political ideologies who advocate for exactly that sort of society, where self-interest is all, greed is good, and altruism is a plague. There is something to be said for promoting individual excellence, but when the strong are divorced from responsibility beyond themselves, that's where you get into trouble, as at that point, the only purpose they serve is to keep everyone else down, rather than to lift everyone else up.

As another user said, I am a bit confused as to how one of the most powerful political organizations in the world can count both the pro-altruistic Christianity, and the anti-altruistic Satanic philosophy of Ayn Rand, among its key rhetoric and membership, but I suppose you don't get to that position without the ability to sell yourself to both would-be angels and would-be devils.

People read the bible and just become a satanist?

That doesn't make any sense, why dont just go for a pagan religion?

The nig has the wisdom of simplicity

Atheism isn't a spook as much as it's the lack of a particular spook.

Generally, they are forced to deal with """Christians""" who are so ignorant about their own religion they are about as un-Christ-like as you can get, and thus are driven into rebellion to the furthest regions of edgelordome, and thus pick up pick related.

The other pagan religions do kind filter out some sorts of people though. I mean Wicca is all girl-power and tree huggy. Asatru has gotten all white power. The other religions kinda have built in filters or aren't all that rebellious as well, so if you don't fit into one of those holes, and find simple agnosticism or atheism insufficiently rebellious or too vague, Satanism provides a fairly wide net for angry youth.

I guess it beats joining ISIS, at least.

So, basically, bad Christians create Satanists?

With symmetrical irony like that in the universe, how can anyone doubt the existence of a divine creator?

The only thing I hate more than people claiming Stirner was a hard-cold commie is people who don't understand what he meant by "spooks".

Those people are not human

No one does. Stereotypical devil worship is a christian meme.
People who actually believe in and worship satan have a much more neo-paganistic approach to him.

>They do believe in power through Magik™ and the like, and thus are not true atheists
Wut? People can believe in magic and spiritual things without having any belief in a deity.

At least ISIS has a project of sorts, they're edgy as fuck but I don't think Baghdadi decided to wage jihad to show mom how bad he is. They're autistic about their objectives rather than being rebellious for rebelion's sake.

They believe in the power of will and the power of symbols, the former being focused by the latter.

Meh, could claim that CoS or ToS have spiritual and social goals and thus are projects unto themselves, though each individual is to maximize his own potential and achieve his own goals... And, sadly, plenty of people do join ISIS out of sheer rebellion. In a sense, it was founded on rebellion, even if not edgy teenage rebellion - but, well, Anton wasn't exactly a spring chicken when he set up his church either.

But when it comes down to it, I'll take edgy ritualistic objectivist roleplayers over folks who want to blow my shit up, along with various ancient artifacts, any day of the week.

>They believe in the power of will and the power of symbols, the former being focused by the latter.
And how would this in any way mean that they aren't true atheists?
Atheism and spiritualism/magic-belief are not mutually exclusive.

I should say hard atheist, I suppose, as yes, technically true. Though there's still some fuzziness there, as they believe in the power of gods as symbols. Albeit, if you look into the list of names for Satan, it doesn't seem to matter if they were ever actually worshipped or not, just that they or their nature is or was well known. (Cthulhu, for example, is on the list.)

I suppose they share that with Discordianism - which can be atheistic in the same fashion, sometimes, save maybe that the Satanists take themselves at least slightly more seriously.

>But when it comes down to it, I'll take edgy ritualistic objectivist roleplayers over folks who want to blow my shit up, along with various ancient artifacts, any day of the week.
Well but that's a pragmatist approach. On pragnatic terms I would agree. But spiritually the wahabbism/salafism of ISIS is, while objectively wrong, way much more grounded and respectable if only because it doesn't have rebellious reactionarism as it's basis. Salafists are just trying to follow islam the way they think it should be followed. LaVeyan satanism is not even an actual cult as much as a secret gentleman club without any spirituality.

I should mention that I don't know shit about the Temple of Set and didn't know they existed, I don't think they exist in my country. From what I read they may be more concerned with spirituality than with giving a cool face to a philosophy.

tl;dr ISIS is more dangerous but nobody would call their ideology LARP

Hard atheist can still be spiritual and believe in magic. As I said, there's no mutual exclusion. You might aswell say that ateists can't believe in santa or proper dental hygiene.

>much more grounded and respectable if only because it doesn't have rebellious reactionarism as it's basis. Salafists are just trying to follow islam the way they think it should be followed
How is that not rebellious reactionism as its basis?

They are both saying, "You shouldn't live your life like X, you should life it like Y, fuck those guys!" - only ISIS has replaced the word "fuck" with "kill".

I mean, yeah, ISIS is drawing up from an existing religion, but technically speaking, the concept of Satan's been around for longer than Islam.

There maybe some better roots in there, and sadly, ISIS is probably more popular than Satanism, but in the end, they are both larping, just one group's making more demands than the other and taking more direct action.

Then again, the whole world's an act.

Hard atheist is a colloquial indicating no belief in the spiritual, non-objective, non-material or at least non-phenomenological. Rigid materialism. Santa's out too. Closest you'll get them to admit to is the power of the Jungian concept on the social psyche.

But as long as we're pretending to be autistic, what is an "ateist" anyways?

Atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s).

Hard atheism is a synonym for gnostic atheism, i.e someone who claims to know that there are no gods.

Spirituality and the belief in magic have nothing to do with the god question.

Well, I guess I'll have to tell the atheists at my local UU that their colloquials have been wrong for the past fifty years and they'll have to redraw the camp chart.

What does UU signify?
And yeah colloquials can be wrong but as long as everyone involved know what they mean that shouldn't be a problem. It's only when you talk to someone outside of the 'group' that you want to switch to the actual meaning of words.
In other words, it's fine to call someone an autist online for sperging but doing so irl can lead to misunderstandings, especially with fucktarded spergs.

>tl;dr ISIS is more dangerous but nobody would call their ideology LARP

I actually would, since Al-Baghdadi proclaims he is a direct descendant of Muhammad.

>salafism
>*reads book* woah dudes you didn't read this well enough, this is how it is
>Laveyan Satanism
>*reads book* woah dudes this is literal shit, stop
Since both the mentioned books are spiritual works, one is for spirituality while the other is against it.

>but technically speaking, the concept of Satan's been around for longer than Islam
This could be a point if satanists gave a fuck Satan instead of picking the name because it was the most antagonistic option towards their designated enemy. This would be the equivalent of salafists calling themselves "Fuck Shia Group".

Plenty of muslims do that tho

IIRC most proclaim they belong to the same tribe, as Muhammad did, but to be a Calif you actually have to directly descent from Muhammad personally, not just someone from his tribe.

The local Unitarian Universalist Church has an atheist group that's been meeting up once a week for just over fifty years. They do various debates every so often, and actually have a name chart ranging from soft to hard, using those definitions, among others, that they use to reference. (Though it seems some are also agnostic - in the loose sense, and someone's always playing devil's advocate, so I dunno why they bother.)

They seem to have the same complaint I do about the whole double-axis gnostic-agnostic theist-atheist thing that's become popular in recent years, in that it doesn't cover things as well as the colloquials, glosses over various nuances, both common and important ones, at that, and that it technically leads to some positions that are self contradictory and/or simply don't happen.

But this place only deals in absolutes, so as you were (damned siths everywhere, I swear).

>this would be the equivalent of salafists calling themselves "Fuck Shia Group"
Well, more like a bunch of Muslims getting together and starting an Iblis cult, that says everything Mohammad claimed was crap, as they have a similar concept of Satan in Iblis. (Which, incidentally, is another one of Anton's chosen names.)

I suppose it'd be a bit harder for Jews, since their version of Satan is actually a servant of God, rather than a rebeller or opposing force.

I do like that we've reached the point where we're defending Satanists and ISIS though. Truly the Internet is a blessed place.

>a bunch of Muslims getting together and starting an Iblis cult,
WAY AHEAD OF YOU:
youtube.com/watch?v=nohkEo6IWdw

Well the question of belief is a binary question and as such is by definition absolute in its groupings. Either you believe in something or you don't.
I also see no need to infuse such a simple term as (a)theism with a bunch of additonal things that only serve the purpose to confuse the useage of it.

>The local Unitarian Universalist Church
Okay, never heard of them. Thanks for telling me.

Could you elaborate on >that it technically leads to some positions that are self contradictory and/or simply don't happen.
I don't really get what you mean.

Both statements are false. All who claim to be sayyids are (claim to be) descendants of Muhammad through Ali and Fatima. They are well respected among all muslim denominations, specially among the more traditional folks.

In shia islam, only descendants of Muhammad can be imams and rule mankind and therefore if there's a caliph he must be sayyid and if you're a shia ruler you will try to present yourself as sayyid even if you don't want to be the Caliph. But Baghdadi hates shias with passion and his organiation considers them apostates who should be killed on spot so he clearly doesn't give a fuck about shia requirements for leading the umma.

From what I've seen of most Satanists are either pagan edgelords or atheists using Satanism as a test of religious freedom laws in America. Like whenever a town or city decides to put something biblical on or near government property they pop up to say "hey that's a mighty nice ten comandments/nativity scene/etc you've put up in the name of freedom of religion. We want in here's the devil statue you should put next to it!"

>Well the question of belief is a binary question
It's really not, that's part of the problem - there's a whole lotta degrees and conditionals in there. It's quite common, for instance, for someone to believe in the possibility of a god or gods, but only if they don't violate certain logical principles. They may, for instance, refuse to believe in a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenign, believing that combination to be logically self-cancelling, but believe in the possibility of a god existing that does not violate that principle of logic.

Granted, the chart isn't supposed to be binary, it's supposed to indeed be a sliding scale - but where do you put the dot on the chart for that? It isn't even simply a matter of degree, there's a whole lot of soft and hard conditions involved.

In the end, people just don't work that way. Indeed, even logic doesn't work that way. It's just not that simple and leads to the sort of assumptions of absolute beliefs that no one, or at least very few, in fact hold.

Also should mention that Unitarian Universalists are not, in general, atheists (indeed they usually get dropped into "Christian-Protestant"). It's just that they've reached this level of "extreme tolerance". So, the local chapter, being fairly large, actually has a Buddhist gathering, a Pagan gathering (CUUPS), and an Atheist gathering, on different days of the week, in addition to good old disgustingly liberal Christian Sunday morning, the last of which remains the most popular.

>edgelords or atheists using Satanism as a test of religious freedom laws in America
youtube.com/watch?v=wGA4I2nInO4
(Granted, this is a gag - but well, the whole religion kinda is.)

Literally, dice on the altar. At least TRY to look like you're not LARPing.

But I suppose it's good to know that even the Islamic world has access to Mind's Eye Theatre games.

>It's really not, that's part of the problem - there's a whole lotta degrees and conditionals in there. It's quite common, for instance, for someone to believe in the possibility of a god or gods, but only if they don't violate certain logical principles. They may, for instance, refuse to believe in a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenign, believing that combination to be logically self-cancelling, but believe in the possibility of a god existing that does not violate that principle of logic.

You're completely missing the point I was making. No one is arguing that there aren't different god claims floating around. The degrees and conditions you talk about are only relevant in figuring out what deity a person could accept as possible. Believing in the possibility of something is not actual belief in the thing. An atheist is someone who is not a theist and a theist is a person who believes in one or more gods, no matter what qualifiers they put on them.

The way that faggot spoke is just amusing as fuck. That's quite the stage performer.

Edgy LARPers. There is no evidence of Satanism existing historically, just accusations. And modern "Satanism" is a joke like Wiccans, they're literally just contrarians. I mean, the word "church" itself is rooted in the phrase "the Lord's".

If you're not a theist, you shouldn't be be using the words "church" and "Satan" and if you're a theistic Satanist, it just means that you're theologically illiterate and didn't even bother looking deeped into the Judeo-Christian teachings that you want to rip off.

Yes, it doesn't cover belief in possibility - but that's fucking important. It doesn't cover nature or variable or conditional degrees, or even simple things like pantheism or naturalism. It's even worse than the left/right authoritarian/libertarian chart in that sense (or, while we're on the subject of LARPing, Gary Gygax's alignment chart.) Hell, even Myers-Briggs make a better attempt, despite being written up by two lonely housewives with no education based on a book they apparently hadn't finished reading.

When it comes to any real discussion on the topic it causes to center around hypothetical positions that simply don't exist in reality, rendering said discussions worthless, save maybe as propaganda to increase tribalism. The whole concept is pure poison to any honest intellectual debate (as anyone in that UU group will tell you).

Well, no, various flavors of luciferians and satanists have actually been around since at least the 1850's, even if, yes, most accusations of satanism before then were probably hysterically or politically motivated. Technically, some of those foundations from back then still exist, they just aren't as widely popular, or inclusive, as those set up in the 60's and 70's.

Besides, "Gathering of Satan" just doesn't have as nice a ring to it, and would make it harder to get tax breaks. It's still at least as much a religion as the Church of Scientology, maybe more so, in that they hold beliefs in spirituality and magic - and then, yes, there's the Temple of Set which is literally theistic, even if they deny worship of their patron god, who they claim also goes by "Satan".

So in other words your beef with the term is that it doesn't include other terms within it. To that I can only ask why you'd want to confuse such an entry level question with a bunch of unecessary bagage? Not all labels need to be all encompasing, it's perfectly fine to keep tight definitions, in fact I'd argue that it's better than the opposite. After all there's nothing stopping you from asking further questions to get a better understanding of person's believes.
And btw it does cover variable and conditional degrees and even pantheism to a degree. It's just up to the person promoting a particular proposed god to clearify the deity. How else could you honestly respond to the question?

Aren't satanists just a way to trigger Christians after they try to put their religious symbolism on public government property, so since the courthouse has the ten commandments it has to allow other religious symbols on its property so the satanists get to put their goat but that triggers the christians so then no religious symbols are on the property?

>So in other words your beef with the term is that it doesn't include other terms within it.
It doesn't include those terms within it. You cannot trace lines from every possibility within and arrive at any one of the external combinations.

>it's perfectly fine to keep tight definitions
Not if the definitions are so tight as to be non-existent and indeed exclusionary at the broadest level they allow. There's not only a lot of definitions of God, capital "G", there's a whole lot of different definitions of God, lowercase "g", which is also true of spirituality and mysticism in general, and all that make the definitions even more meaningless when placed on individual belief systems.

>And btw it does cover variable and conditional degrees and even pantheism to a degree. It's just up to the person promoting a particular proposed god to clearify the deity. How else could you honestly respond to the question?
So what's a pantheist who believes in the divinity of reality itself? How would the chart handle that? I mean, most everyone believes in reality, so from his position, we're all gnostic theists.

>How else could you honestly respond to the question?
You can't honestly respond to the question using that chart, you can really only provide misinformation, or at best, misleading information. You'd be much better off just naming your religion, or describing your position, likely using almost any other two words, if not simply in detail.

It's really the equivalent of asking, "What's your favorite color, Infrared or ultraviolet?"

Frankly, I consider it a public service when they do this.

It's useful, because everyone already hates Satanists by default. It's pretty much the worst thing you can think of (except maybe ISIS as previous posts have reminded us). So it raises the issue, without making it a real problem.

I mean, if someone demanded passages for the Talmud or the Koran be put up next to it, you got yourself fuel for a religious war. But if the Satanists point out the hypocrisy, you're pretty much golden.

Unless, of course, you're so retarded you actually let them put up their statue, rather than simply moving yours off public property.

The Church should actually read the bible more, Crowley sets out that you can believe or not believe in God or Satan or whatever else you want and still be a Satanist.

The latter day church just screams of edgy liberals trying to get money from other edgy liberals.

Crowley wasn't a Satanist, he was a Thelemist. He was just such an edgelord he occasionally played along when someone accused him of being a Satanist - but he'd never advocate atheism like that. He believed in the existence of various spiritual powers and deities (mostly Egyptian in origin).

LaVey borrowed a great deal of his esoteric teachings, but makes it clear that the will to power is absolutely self generated from within, not without (save when affecting another subject, in which case his own beliefs come into play as potential weaknesses), that being key to his entire philosophy, and why the schism between The Church of Satan and the Temple of Set ultimately happened - some folks wanted to believe in actual gods, rather than purely symbolic or Jungian ones.

Well, Crowley was the originator of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." (which Anton is also fond of), so he's not entirely wrong, though the rest of his teachings made it clear that, yes, if you want to get shit done, you must believe in various deities and powers, and that very law, and all his other writings, were divinely inspired by said powers.

>Anton Szandor LaVey[1] (born Howard Stanton Levey; April 11, 1930 – October 31, 1997) was an American author, musician and occultist.[2] He was the founder of the Church of Satan and the religion of LaVeyan Satanism.
>born Howard Stanton Levey
What a coincidence!

Trust in me, just in me
Shut your eyes and trust in me
You can sleep safe and sound
Knowing I am around

I love Siouxsie's cover of that... But please don't start spidermanning threads, regardless of how shitty they maybe.

(I dunno if I wanna shatter /pol/'s dreams by pointing out that LaVey and Ann Coulter share a common ancestor via his mother.)

>It doesn't include those terms within it. You cannot trace lines from every possibility within and arrive at any one of the external combinations.
It's not meant to do that, unless I misunderstand your comment. The god question is just meant to answer the simple question of belief in a diety. All you need to do first is to define the god.

>Not if the definitions are so tight as to be non-existent and indeed exclusionary at the broadest level they allow. There's not only a lot of definitions of God, capital "G", there's a whole lot of different definitions of God, lowercase "g", which is also true of spirituality and mysticism in general, and all that make the definitions even more meaningless when placed on individual belief systems.
You're completely missing the point of the term. It's not meant to answer any other question than: Do you believe in god(s)?

>So what's a pantheist who believes in the divinity of reality itself? How would the chart handle that? I mean, most everyone believes in reality, so from his position, we're all gnostic theists.
That's correct. The follow up question would ofc be what makes it divine or if that's even a relevant term to use in that scenario.

>You can't honestly respond to the question using that chart, you can really only provide misinformation, or at best, misleading information. You'd be much better off just naming your religion, or describing your position, likely using almost any other two words, if not simply in detail.
I'm feeling a tad repetitive here but atheism is a responce to a claim of existance regarding a particular diety. As such the person making the claim would by necessity have to define the deity in question before any honest answer can be given. How would a yes/no answer to that be misleading unless the person giving the answer is being dishonest?

>equivalent of "What's your favorite color, Infrared or ultraviolet?
That's wrong. A proper equivalent would be: Have you finished reading 1984?

the only /pol/ posters who would care about that are r_thedonald plebeians who desperately need their worldview exploded anyway so go to town

The Virgin Church Of Satan
>libertarians who want to act like it's Halloween all year round

The Chad Gnostic
>full understanding of the nature of the universe and the human soul

>Wisdom lewd

>That's wrong. A proper equivalent would be: Have you finished reading 1984?
There's a near infinite number of ifs, ands, or buts, as well as degrees, involved with "Do you believe in a god?", unlike "Have you finished reading 1984?"

If you're a Satanist, you believe in the existence of angels. If you believe in angels, then you're not an atheist.

The Church of Satan. Everyone knows actual Satan-worshippers are Catholics

>If you believe in angels, then you're not an atheist.

But what if angels are, in fact...

my sister goes there lol. she chickened out when they did this last winter

How many times must I repeat that you're missing the point?

>There's a near infinite number of ifs, ands, or buts, as well as degrees, involved with "Do you believe in a god?", unlike "Have you finished reading 1984?"

It's a necessity of the question to first define the deity before asking. As such the question is really: "Do you believe in x?" or, alternatively, "Have you been convinced that any god exists?" In the former the response is about a particular deity, proposed by the one asking the question, while the latter is a statement that the person haven't come across any god-concept that they believe exists. A defined god, or a limited set of defined gods is equivalent, for the purpose of the discussion to, asking about a certain book seeing as the answered have a definition of the thing in question or, if the person isn't aware of that particular book, atleast can 'check', given a perfect memory, if the description, i.e '1984' matches one of the books previously read by the individual. If the description doesn't match any of those books she can't have read it. The same is true for gods. If you come across a concept of a deity that you haven't known before it's impossible for you to believe that being exists.

Only if you by angels imply a divine maker. If you're arguing that then why not just stop at the much more worldy human as it according to the abrahamic faiths also is derived from a creator god.

>just a way to trigger Christians

Is that supposed to be a good thing? Sure, some American protestants are pretty retarded,but there's no need to go against them. What's the point?

>If you come across a concept of a deity that you haven't known before it's impossible for you to believe that being exists.
Which might work, if there was only one person in the universe, and only they could ask themselves the question.

But language and debate is about communication between individuals. Lots of folks hold concepts of divinity that are completely alien to other folk's concepts of divinity, as well as to others by proxy. Indeed, it's kind of amazing how often this is the case and how many misunderstandings and oversimplifications arise from this. Leave two folks from an occidental and eastern religion together to talk about their gods for long enough, and you'll eventually get to the point where each is no longer describing the same sort of entity when they speak about "gods".

To make matters worse, even if you define god in the same way, and are indeed asking about a specific god that both individuals involved intrinsically know, insomuch as is possible, it still isn't a black or white question. There's still degrees and conditionals involved, even if the subject itself is static, particularly with the traditional Christian deity, who is, by most variants of the religion, ultimately unknowable, save through Christ, and even then, the ultimate relationship is invariably personal, and often incommunicable.

Neither agnostic and gnostic, nor atheist and theist, in the end, is completely binary in every, or even most, individuals, which is why the chart, as it was originally proposed by Richard Dawkins in 2006 is *supposed* to be a sliding scale to begin with, despite your claim it is a binary function. Even the original creator of the graph doesn't make such an overtly simplistic claim about belief systems. ...and that doesn't just apply to gods.

But unlike, say, dark matter or some such, there's a whole lot of other factors that go, far, far beyond what even a scalar version of the system can account for. It's dangerously misleading.

>There is no need to corral retards
Clearly you've never dealt with a bunch of retards.
youtube.com/watch?v=aUl_o3lwCdA

Granted, just pissing them off doesn't help, and yeah, folks that just do that are indeed being destructive. But if they highlight the fact that, yes, there are indeed folks with multiple belief systems here, and yes, you have to take that into account if you're going to lord over them all, and further, they can do it in a fashion that doesn't result in those groups trying to kill each other... More power to 'em.

...Even if they are retards themselves.

>Which might work, if there was only one person in the universe, and only they could ask themselves the question.
Are you actually saying that people actually can believe in things they aren't aware of? How would that even work?

>even if you define god in the same way, and are indeed asking about a specific god that both individuals involved intrinsically know, insomuch as is possible, it still isn't a black or white question.
Sure it is. Person A proposes the existance of a thing and person B either believes that to be the case or doesn't accept it as true. There's no room left for any other conclusion.


> It's supposed to be a sliding scale
How would this exactly work? Please tell me how you can partially believe in something without believing in it. That's some intense double think.

>Neither agnostic and gnostic, nor atheist and theist, in the end, is completely binary
Atheism and theism are binary. Agnosticsm and gnosticsm aren't.

If I start a church can I get some tax breaks?

Fuuuuuu... 1/2

People can believe in things that others are not aware of, in case that wasn't clear, and visa versa. Knowing and belief are two separate issues, and not always mutual. Faith in the unknowable is a thing.

From the book in which Dawkins describes his two axis Spectrum of Theistic probability:
>Theist: 100% "I do not believe, I know." (Also invariably gnostic)
>Theist/Atheist: ~90% "I don't know for certain, but I strongly believe in God."
>Theist/Atheist: >50% "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."
>Theist/Atheist: 50%. "God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable." (Knowledge shifts.)
>Theist/Atheist: Theist/Atheist: Atheist: 0% "I know there is no God." (Also invariably gnostic)
>There appear to be plenty of individuals that would claim themselves as "100%" theist due to religious doctrine, most atheists do not consider themselves "0%" because atheism arises from a lack of evidence and evidence can always change.

...

...

Fuuuuuu... 2/2

Or as he quotes J. J. C. Smart in a later book, using the more traditional colloquial:
>Let us consider the appropriateness or otherwise of someone (call him 'Philo') describing himself as a theist, atheist or agnostic. I would suggest that if Philo estimates the various plausibilities to be such that on the evidence before him the probability of theism comes out near to one he should describe himself as a theist and if it comes out near zero he should call himself an atheist, and if it comes out somewhere in the middle he should call himself an agnostic. There are no strict rules about this classification because the borderlines are vague. If need be, like a middle-aged man who is not sure whether to call himself bald or not bald, he should explain himself more fully.

Mind, there's a fuckload of other possibilities in here, like "I know there's no god, but I believe in the teachings of Christ.", ie. gnostic atheist Christians, which, without explanation, sounds impossible, but is actually pretty common. Ignosticists, who don't really believe in God, but want to, or pretend to, neither knowing or unknowing. "My god is unknowable, thus I can neither believe nor disbelieve in him directly." (also common), or, similarly, "I have a God that precludes disbelief as I am my god, or reality is, etc."

In the end, which system is superior? One that allows you to describe that veritable cornucopia of variations and details of your religion, by simply naming that religion, or simply using any few words to describe your system as completely as possible in brevity... Or a system that restricts you to four words, which will, in addition to really communicating nothing, will often lead the listener to assume the exact opposite conclusion of your intended stance?

The system is inferior and broken set next to the old colloquial with descriptors, doubly so, if you go against the intentions of its creator, and make it binary.

Not the guy you were talking to, but there's also internal and external factors -- like there's a lot of “atheists” who believe in the existence of god in the collective consciousness and the ability of that collective construct to exercise his will through his followers, but not in the external existence of that god.

And also yonder ( ) folks always raise the question as to whether Scientologists are atheists or theists, as they don't believe in gods, they believe in aliens with god-like abilities and consequences. Nevermind the degree of knowledge and belief that would vary with level of initiation, or money invested.

>like there's a lot of “atheists” who believe in the existence of god in the collective consciousness
Yes, and I know one of those, who also believes in collective solipsism (or effectively so, or close to) in that he believes collective consensus is as close to reality as we can come. So, to him, the Christian God exists, as collective belief is pretty much reality. At the same time, he refuses to believe in God himself, and calls himself an Atheist, as he believes that collective construct is indeed harmful, and does not believe it is anymore omnipotent or immortal than any other belief, and thus this God can be removed from this reality. Though, he also sometimes slips towards this odd floating belief about collective realms in the afterlife, that rather suggests he damned well better undo that collective belief in God before he dies, or he's gonna be in trouble - and believes that the universe was literally re-arranged at the dawn of the age of reason (ie. that it was geocentric until the collective changed their opinion.) ...so yeah, a bit of a twisted bloke.

Still, under Dawkin's spectrum, he's a Gnostic Theist, 100%/100%... Despite generally describing himself as a militant Atheist. It's not wrong, per say, but it's painting him as his polar opposite, which wouldn't happen using colloquial speech, even without the extended explanation.

Why is twitter feed relevant to Veeky Forums?

Stop please. Stop. Stay back in the cancer boards and sites that you use.

>People can believe in things that others are not aware of, in case that wasn't clear, and visa versa.
Ofc, however, what you said, atleast if I understood you correctly as you seemingly argued it, is that people can in fact believe in something they have no notion of. or even a concept of. This is ofcourse by definition impossible. You cannot believe that a flipidifluup exists if you're not even aware of it as a concept.

>Knowing and belief are two separate issues, and not always mutual. Faith in the unknowable is a thing.
This is what I've been saying throughout this conversation.

>Dawkin's model
My problem with this is that it's unecessarily complex as he is intermingling two different concepts, belief and the claim of knowledge regarding said belief, into one instead of keeping it simple and handling them seperately.

>Philo-thingy
The problem with this is that it's not talking about his belief at all but rather speaks of his claim to certainty regarding that belief. People can believe things even though they know that they are unlikely to be true. How hard you believe in something doesn't necessarily correlate with your own understanding of your knowledge regarding it.

>In the end, which system is superior?
The system that doesn't muddle things by minimising the possibility for misunderstandings is clearly superior if we're after a mutual understanding of what's been said. This is why I support the strict definition of (a)theism.

>One that allows you to describe that veritable cornucopia of variations and details of your religion, by simply naming that religion, or simply using any few words to describe your system as completely as possible in brevity... Or a system that restricts you to four words, which will, in addition to really communicating nothing, will often lead the listener to assume the exact opposite conclusion of your intended stance?

Who here have proposed that people shouldn't further define their stance regarding their religious believes? Have you been arguing against a strawmen this whole time? That would certainly explain a thing or two.