RyanS2

</strong>

So, atheists have the free reign of calling any religion whatever they want? That's a fascinating line of logic. So, if atheists call Taoists flesh-eating goats it is obviously true on your line of logic? Wait a minute...

"Atheists do not "sacrifice" nor do we worship idols (crucifixes) and we have no "Devil"
working in the background. We have no songs and chants and we do not run around fires naked and all that stuff."

So atheists DO have the right to invent and reinterpret religions!!! That's a fascinating discovery. I guess we should all bow down and let you explain to us how you derived this conclusion. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> I'm sure this will be the debate of the century!

You didn't read any of the links I posted, so let me keep this brief.

(The origin of Satan)

First things first, Satan is NEVER repeat, NEVER the name for a deity. Satan means "adversary" in Hebrew, and according to expert testimony in Judaism, no such deity as Satan exists:

<a href="http://www.outreachjudaism.com/satan.html" target="_blank">http://www.outreachjudaism.com/satan.html</a>

If you do not have an educated reply, please don't bother. Thus far, your comments would either be "ad absurdum", or just redundancy without an argument. Now, go back to the essays and notice these valuable statements:

Now, Satan was taken from "Set", in one of many various forms, Set-an, Set-anup, and the cult title, Set-Hen, a cult title meaning the Majesty of Set.

Sooner or later, as the people continued to migrate north and became more focused on the Lord of the North Pole Star, Horus, they began to view Set as less important and Horus of greater significance. No doubt this led to conflicts. Set continued to be worshipped along the Nile, but it became clear that factions arose who desired to make Horus supreme. This ploy would be, once again, for political and material reasons. The movements of the astral bodies that corresponded with and symbolized these entities, such as the Pole Stars, and the Moon and Sun, were crucial to life along the Nile. These heavenly bodies were closely charted and calendared. Such movements provided a semblance of order in what would ordinarily seem like a chaotic and unkind world full of yearly flooding, terrific sandstorms and unbearable heat. By measuring the movements of such planetary bodies, those who later became regarded as priests of these bodies could determine when would be the most auspicious time for planting, reaping and harvesting. This was intrinsic to life along the Nile, and without it there was no life.

The Egyptian calendar was not solar but riverine: its premise was that the Nile always flooded after the star Sirius started rising in the east before instead of after sunrise. Still, it was a 365-day calendar, and except for missing the leap years it worked quite well. Sirius is the "Dog Star", the first star to rise in the east in the latitudes of Egypt. It is sacred to Set, the figure of Egyptian religion.

Satan's etymological connection puts him as an Egyptian high God who was adopted by the Chaldeans as "Shaitan", (adversary). It's amazing you couldn't find that, it was on a link I posted. That already precludes the amount and depth of searching you will do to find out information, so why be pretentious and act as if you even bothered to look this up? So please, take the challenge. Show me a published book by a Satanic author detailing these fascinating rituals involving sky-clad dances around fires with the devil in the background. Otherwise, you're just being an idiot, and I have the right to dismiss you as that.

"I claimed the a majority of
people would define "Satanists" as...[yada yada"

Good to see you already know that is an argumentative fallacy. The term is "Argument ad populum". You already know that what the "majority" of people think is worthless to prove any case. We can then let the majority of people show where Kyrgyzstan is on a map as a means of determining where Kyrgyzstan is, we will be in a whole lot of trouble. Hence the reason that is an argumentative fallacy. Likewise, the majority of people believe in a God of some sort, but that doesn't make them correct either. So, why should I be concerning myself with what other people think or define?

Posted by offa:

"I am reading a book by a Jew named Robert Eisenman and I feel that he writes like a
Jew (very narrow stream of mind, stingy) and I want to confront him."

Writing like a Jew? Let's see, argumentative fallacy of "Poisoning the well"? Also what anthropologists would refer to as a "broad, sweeping statement". Then there's the even funnier part, you say, "very narrow stream of mind". Coming from someone who hasn't made any convincing arguments outside of
"I SAY SO!", that's a hilarious interpretation of another's writings. (Argument ad stultus?)

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: RyanS2 ]</p>

CX

&lt;flame&gt; Wow, are you an inarticulate bigoted piece of crap! Jews are narrow minded and stingy? I trust you've applied the same razor sharp critical thinking skills to your examination of god. What an idiot. Please don't bother to respond and I won't bother to address you ever again.&lt;/flame&gt;

Any admin that wants to delete this ad hom diatribe go ahead, but this guy is a grade 'A' asshole.

Toto

He said it, I didn't.

Thanks Offa

Vorkosigan

"I am reading a book by a Jew named Robert Eisenman and I feel that he writes like a
Jew (very narrow stream of mind, stingy) and I want to confront him."

That's funny. I am reading a book by Eisenman too (James the Brother of Jesus, and it's beyond question the farthest from "stingy" I have ever encountered; in fact, it is an overwhelming cornucopia of data.

Michael

Vorkosigan

First things first, Satan is NEVER repeat, NEVER the name for a deity. Satan means "adversary" in Hebrew, and according to expert testimony in Judaism, no such deity as Satan exists:

What do you think differentiates "Satan" from subordinate deities in a hundred other superstitions?

Michael

RyanS2

That depends on what position you take. The Hindu's have deva's which aren't really deities, likewise, the Jews and Greeks had daimons or malek, but these were supposed to be "intercessors", and thus not actual "deities", or at least that's the excuse that we've always been given by (Catholics, Christians, Muslims, etc.) when asked how you can declare a monotheism when there are other spirits that would fit the role of it being polytheism.

"What do you think differentiates "Satan" from subordinate deities in a hundred other superstitions?"

Satan has the best fashion coordinator, though he did have lots of helpings from Pan. Also, Satan is a champion dancer of both ballet and traditional tap-styles. His formal title in the dance world is El Distendo Tortuga, ESQ - and no other subordinate diety in the form of intercessoral worship can take that away...

If you wanted a more "meaty" answer:

""The exalted "Devil" (also the "other" secret Eye) by the formula of the Initiation of Horus elsewhere described in detail. This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest.

Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the sun enters when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south. A third; the tyranny of hot, dry, poisonous winds; the menace of deserts or oceans dreadful because mysterious and impassable; these also were connected in their minds with the South. But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors. We see no enmity between Right and Left, Up and Down, and similar pairs of opposites. These antitheses are real only as a statement of relation; they are the conventions of an arbitrary device for representing our ideas in a pluralistic symbolism based on duality. 'Good' must be defined in terms of human ideals and instincts. 'East' has no meaning except with reference to the earth's internal affairs; as an absolute direction in space it changes a degree every four minutes. 'Up' is the same for no two men, unless one chance to be in the line joining the other with the centre of the earth. 'Hard' is the private opinion of our muscles.

'True' is an utterly unintelligible epithet which has proved refractory to the analysis of our ablest philosophers. We have therefore no scruple in restoring the 'devil-worship' of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, and the phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of 'Gods' whose names are based upon Sht, or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph; they are the words which express the creative and paternal will.

Thus 'the Devil' is Capricornus, the Goat who leaps upon the loftiest mountains, the Godhead which, if it become manifest in man, makes him Aegipan, the All.

The Sun enters this sign when he turns to renew the year in the North. He is also the vowel O, proper to roar, to boom, and to command, being a forcible breath controlled by the firm circle of the mouth.

He is the Open Eye of the exalted Sun, before whom all shadows flee away: also that Secret Eye which makes an image of its God, the Light, and gives it power to utter oracles, enlightening the mind.

Thus, he is Man made God, exalted, eager; he has come consciously to his full stature, and so is ready to set out on his journey to redeem the world." [Source: Aleister Crowley, "Magick in Theory and Practice," Chapter V.]

Jayhawker Soule

Well said!