Quinton Posted: April 1, 2008 I will say, although majority of this book is very short-sighted and selfish, it does have a few good points and reasonable claims. However, I sense this is from sheer luck rather than actual substantiative value. Pretty much anyone could throw together 100 pages of their philosophical beliefs and hit on a few good points.
After reading through majority of the book and really trying to fully understand LaVey's point of view it almost seems as though he's just messing around. Sometimes it seems like he's serious, but other times it seems like he's just having a fun time poking fun at most religions. Granted the book has been around a while and is fairly popular it would seem fair that the book was written as a serious approach to life, although I still get the feeling that even LaVey himself may not agree with everything in it.
I suppose this book may have some value if you just evolved from a monkey (and yes, I'm serious), although even that may be a stretch, but for those of us who are innately kind, loving, helpful and considerate it seems like a forced devolution down the spiritual ladder. There are many problems I have with the Satanic Bible and they are presented as follows.
Promotes short term over long term
Questions: When building a business should you go for the short term or long term? When building a relationship with an individual should you go for the short term or the long term? Who's more likely to be a better doctor, the one who was a short term student, or a long term student? The list goes on and on.
Almost everything in life is geared toward the long term being the better decision. More time = more data = more experience. I'm not the one who wrote these rules (or maybe I am), that's just the way science is. Long term generally takes more experience which is a scientifically favorable attribute. It's obvious - the more you know about something the better decision you will make about it.
For instance, when you are a kid you usually are more impulsive and do things based on your physical urges rather than on thought and experience. You may think it's okay to touch the hot stove because you don't know that it burns you. Your scientific vehicle, aka your body, clearly tells you that being burned by the hot stove is bad, but your impulsive nature has to experience this unfavorable circumstance to understand that your body is really telling you no.
This same logic can be applied to pretty much any of the anything from the Satanic Bible. Most of these things sound like something a kid would say who has very low experience and knows no better. Have you ever looked back on your life and gone, "Man I thought I was so smart back then, but I was really a moron", yeah it's kind of like that.
How could indulgence be favorable?
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| Anton LaVey indulges in a Big Mac. Full image > |
I mean seriously, I think this is the part where LaVey may be joking because it just sounds so illogical. How could you honestly think that indulging in fleshly desires can be something that actually makes you stronger? Does eating lots of food to become fat make you better? Is that really worth it? Does not exercising really make you healthier?
You don't get from Kindergarten to First Grade by indulging in your desires to not go. Many times the things you don't want to do are the things you need to do most. For it is by conquering your weaknesses that you grow as an individual. If you sit around indulging all day you remain a non-progressing and more commonly regressing being that is simply existing rather than growing (Illuminati anyone?).
I know LaVey is a big fan of action reaction and it must be knocking the Satanists into shape day in and day out. Some people learn the hard way.
Selfish
All these traits found in the Satanic Bible are extremely selfish. I know they think being selfish is a good thing and in some ways it can be. However, in most cases all it leads to is isolation and destruction. Working with others is key to growth. When people get connected together things multiply. By applying peoples strengths to other peoples strengths you create a synergy that would otherwise be left severed. To satisfy LaVey with a scientific explanation it would be fair to ask are we not all atoms and expressions of electricity? How are we really any different than one another and why do we need to isolate our energy?
No Afterlife
I'm not one of those people that would be terribly hurt if there wasn't an afterlife, but the fact of the matter is there are so many sources that solidify an afterlife it is hard to believe anything but. Near death experiences give credibility towards afterlife, quantum mechanics and science give credibility towards afterlife, logic and spiritual understanding as well as many many documents.
To put it more bluntly - Fact: you are energy. Fact: energy is neither created or destroyed. When you "die" you are still energy, your energy went nowhere. What happens to this energy? It's still there. Everything in our universe is connected. You were never really "here". It's all just a form of consciousness. Afterlife is extremely scientific and logical. The only scientists who fight it are the ones who are like Christians trying to defend heaven and hell. Go with facts and logic.
Conclusion
Sadly, this book caters entirely to less developed individuals and I suspect it does very little to actually help them. Be it lack of experience, lack of guidance or being a new spirit, this is clearly the audience that this book is meant for. I'm not saying it's an entirely bad thing, but I am saying that rather than helping people progress in science and truth The Satanic Bible enables people to fester in a lower vibration of consciousness.
The book is not satisfying or helpful. It reminds me of the goth kids you see at school - they're not evil or mean or anything, they're just "there". This book is the exact same way. It seems like it would be useful for very, very few people. If it was called anything other than the Satanic Bible it would never have gained any attention whatsoever. The title is the only thing the book really has going for it and as science has so elegantly shown us, it is quite hard to write a good book on such a bad subject.
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