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- I don't think this interview is going the way Ray intended. Besides the fact that Malebranche has still not said, "We worship Satan," he also has said that the Church of Satan is choosey about who they allow in; for the "drag lots of people down to Hell" group that Ray and Kirk claim it is, you'd think they'd accept anyone with open arms. Note, too, that Malebranche states explicitly that the Church of Satan is not really all that interested in young kids, which directly contradicts what the last clip tried to make the viewer believe.
- Though Ray and Kirk make repeated claims that Satan is a real tangible being who can directly influence the world, they provide no evidence for this beyond metaphorical lines from Anton LeVey and cryptic song lyrics from Slayer. Similar to their God, skeptics are expected to take the existence of Satan on faith. This episode does the following:
*Seriously misrepresents the humanistic philosophy of Satanism.
*Relies heavily on anecdotal evidence from the supposed Satan worshippers themselves to prove Satan's existence
*Takes quotes by Aleister Crowley and Anton LeVey completely out of context
*Demonizes those who disagree with Christianity.
- Right off the bat, Kirk incorrectly associates Satan worship with Satanism. Satanism, also known as the Church of Satan, was founded in the 1960's by Anton LeVey with "Satan" representing the carnal part of man and its opposition to religions that deny the self; it's a metaphor not meant to be taken literally. Two of my close friends are Satanists and I can assure you, they don't worship Satan or any other supernatural being. Secondly, I've never heard of or seen a murder scene with "Satanic symbols" scrawled in blood above a corpse. As always, Ray and Kirk are big on assertions and short on evidence.
- Kirk's argument is a type of argumentum ad populum that assumes because many people seem to approve of the listed actions that everyone must approve of them. Nonetheless, Kirk isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with him that these things are sinful; Atheists tend to see things as wrong that cause damage to a person or to society, and the majority of these things don't do that. Thus, he'd get our agreement that murder and rape are wrong, but we wouldn't see any inherent problem with gossip, jealousy, greed, etc.
- Again, despite the creepy sculptures and drawings, this man is only advocating a non-violent way of spreading ideas. The part where the viewer is supposed to gasp is when he mentions directing information at kids; as we all know, only Christians are allowed to target children!
- The Book of the Law is the central holy book of the religion of Thelema, not Satanism. The Book of the Law mentions numerous Egyptian gods and goddesses like Horus and Ma'at but oddly enough, no Satan, the Devil, or Lucifer. Kirk practically had to use this quote because it's about the only coherent thing Crowley wrote; beside cryptic metaphors and incomprehensible gibberish, the Book has a section that is literally random numbers and letters with Crowley insisting, "Someone will come after me and interpret this." Um... sure.
- Kirk is referring to the Book of Revelation, which is a letter to seven churches in Asia as well as a recording of a vision seen by a man named John from Patmos. The Seven Churches are never referred to as being chronological indicators of what the church would be like as time went on, nor does the author ever call the Laodicean church the "church of the last days." Plus, as always, even if we accept the Seven Churches as prophetic, they're vague prophecy
::"Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it and repent." The Church of Sardis
::"Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer." The Church of Smyrna
You could apply this to any church at any time, because there's plenty of Christians who think other Christians are being "worldly" and plenty more who scream, "Persecution!" at every imagined slight.
- Though the shirtless man is clearly wrong, this still does not prove that Slayer has any connection with the Devil... unless one takes their word for it, which seems odd for Ray and Kirk to want when they reject all other religions that say "Take our word for it." As for the murder case, I found several articles: one had a quote from one of the three boys involved in murdering the girl According to Joseph Fiorella, one of the murderers, "The fact is that Slayer music didn't have anything to do with the murder. The police went into my house and saw some Slayer posters and records and they made up a motive that it's this devil thing. They don't have a motive -- so they make up their own." Another article reported that the supposed confession was "unrecorded." See "Facing the music" and "Are Slayer to blame for teen's murder?" on www.ew.com
- More fear mongering from the terrible twosome. Don't trust your friends, don't trust your neighbor, don't even trust your pastor... they're all out to get you.
- Though Insane Clown Posse can look a bit freaky, band member Violent J stated in an interview with the Metro Times, "I believe in God" and insisted, "We're just telling scary stories." This aside, the implication from Ray and Kirk is that if something looks scary or confusing, it must be from the Devil.
- This is a terrible analogy that fails immediately. A terrorist is simply a title for a person that creates/causes terror, and we have ample evidence of people who like to do that. Unfortunately for Ray and Kirk, we have absolutely no evidence to suggest the existence of an evil immortal being who goes by the name of Satan. Their argument is basically an appeal to emotion which is intended to scare the listener into acting irrationally before he/she can actually take the time to consider whether or not Satan is real.
- Jeesh, and I thought it was going to be "Kill all the Christians." Also note that he didn't say, "Worship Satan" or "Try to trick people into going to Hell."
- While the footage is intended to show how ignorant these two concert goers are, all it really does is show that one rock star doesn't like Christianity. But to Ray and Kirk, the rejection of Christianity and supposed allegiance with the Lord of Hell are one and the same; in the words of Jesus, "he who is not with me is against me."
- So far, so good. Supposedly, LeVey saw the same people at risque circus shows as he did at tent revival meetings and this gave him a cynical outlook on religion, especially Christianity.
- This is a complete reversal from Ray and Kirk's usual argument that everyone knows that God is real but atheists/nontheists just pretend that they don't It also raises the question of how just a God these two serve; a God who would damn everyone to Hell for breaking the law without revealing to them that they'd done anything in the first place is not a deity that I want to be groveling in front of.
Incidentally in another section of Way of the Master Ray and Kirk, especially Ray insist that our sense of right and wrong is inborn. A hypothetical case is presented of a man who grew up without human contact, without moral instruction and committed terrible wrongs. Ray asserts that this man would be responsible for his actions and Kirk does not disagree. Here Kirk quotes Saint Paul saying that without the law he would not know what sin is and Ray does not disagree. Ray and Kirk cannot rationally have things both ways.
- Ray and Kirk are presenting a false dichotomy that the only possible choice is serving God or serving the Devil There are many atheists, agnostics and nontheists who live life for themselves rather than for a supernatural being; of course, our dynamic duo would simply argue that such people are deceived and are actually serving Satan.
- One wonders why the supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe would create people with these wicked desires and then punish us for having them. And a desire is not the same as an action; Ray and Kirk are essentially advocating a thought crime in which simply wanting to have sex with someone is as "bad" as actually having sex with that person.
- The issue of Satan in the Bible is a bit fuzzy. Though he is featured as a prominent bad guy in the Book of Revelations and makes a few appearances in the gospels he comes out of nowhere and is mentioned only 3 times in the Hebrew scriptures. In two of his old testament book appearances he's clearly an angel who works for God. Christians also typically interpret Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 38 to be about Satan to give him a little back story.
- Ray and Kirk are apparently trying to use this to show that people are being tricked by Satan, which is a form of begging the question.
Query: "How do we know that Satan exists?"
Answer: "Because he's deceived so many people into believing he doesn't!"
- Ray and Kirk are cherry picking the old testament; in the verses immediately after the Ten Commandments the reader will find commands to stone gay people, unruly children, and promiscuous daughters, as well as instructions for how to properly conduct slavery and genocide. You can't have it both ways: either we accept that the commands given by God in the old testament are still just and fair in our modern day and age, or else Ray and Kirk are suffering from moral relativism, a claim that they repeatedly throw at nontheists, see Christian morality for more about moral relativism among Christians.
- We're beginning to see a pattern. Ray and Kirk want the viewer toconclude that, "Because people say that they worship Satan, he actually exists and they really do worship him." Let's try this again with slighty different words: "Because Hindus worship Lord Brahma and the Hindu pantheon of gods, the gods really exist and they really do worship them." As for the quote, I don't have the album handy, but there's several ways one can interpret this.
# because Black Sabbath had Anton LeVey as a guest, people thought they were associated with Satan worship.
# just like Christians Black Sabbath is attributing their success to Satan; but again, just because someone says something doesn't make it true.
- Wow, this is one evil dude Rays got on his hands! He likes to read!? And to be left alone!? Gosh, I bet he's so wicked that he enjoys fresh air and rainbows! But, to be serious, what Malebranche is talking about is the real basis of Satanism: each person is their own "god," in the sense that each individual Satanist is the only one who makes decisions for his or her life.
- Rock music is a vast genre, the people involved have varying beliefs and varying motives.
#Do Ray and Kirk seriously imagine that Gospel Rock is Satanic?
#Some rock music and some rock performers are against Christianity, in other cases it is not clear if performers believe what they sing or if they are doing stuff for show. Only a small proportion of rock music opposes religion.
#Other rock music promotes ideas which most people believe are good, like environmentalism.
#Most Rock music is secular and is simply music, people enjoy it and dance to it.
What this video does, is stereotyping that means taking a few examples of something, then imagining that everything connected with those examples is like the cases given. In this case the stereotype is bad because the examples used are not typical in any way of rock music.
- Well, I'm glad we've got that cleared up; now that Ray's discovered that Satanism is actually a self based philosophy, we can just forget about the whole first part of the episode.
- I could not find where this quote came from. However, please note that the "devil's advocate" is a well-known term for a person who argues a side just for the sake of the argument that was supposedly created by the Catholic Church for canonization hearings. And, even if girls are offering up their bodies as living sacrifices, this only proves that the girls are worshipping the musicians, not Satan.
- Since we already understand what Satanism is really about, what LeVey is saying in context is, "People within religions are moving away from worshipping God/gods and beginning to follow their own will." As expected, Ray hasn't learned a thing from this discussion.
- Ray and Kirk have really upped the paranoia with this Bible verse. That's right, Christians: be careful when you're in church, because there's bad guys who have nothing better to do with their time then sneak in and trick you so that you're not really worshipping God. Come on, no one does this! And this over-the-top suspicious attitudes towards friends and strangers alike is what that led to things like the Red Scare, the Salem Witch Trials, etc.
- Yet again, none of the actions that Kirk mentioned cause inherent harm. Frankly, I think most people would agree that it's better that pornography exists as a harmless way for people to relieve their sexual urges rather than do so in worse ways, like rape. Also, blasphemy means nothing to a person who doesn't believe in Ray and Kirk's god, just like the "sinfulness" of saying "Allah damn it!" would seem trivial to a Christian.
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