In article <3a6f1ca3@news.povray.org>, "Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> 
wrote:

>"Jerry" wrote:
>> In general, Christians do not worship Satan. To do so
>> ensures their eternal damnation well beyond their few
>> years as mortal beings.
>
>This is what I feared. Some says that "worship" can mean anything numinous
>and supernatural (which would include hell), but according to you, it also
>has to be something you find positive (which excludes hell).
>
>So I'm still confused... :(

Remember that the part of my post you were quoting was the part from the 
game. It's just a game. I didn't say that people only worship positive 
things, just that the beliefs of Christianity make it unlikely that they 
would worship Satan, especially in a role-playing game.

See http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanism.htm for a very good take 
on the varying meanings people have for "Satanism".

For the "Church of Satan", see 
http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanis1.htm where it is stated that 
one of the Church of Satan's beliefs is that hell does not exist. (This 
is in line with my experience, which is that those who worship Satan are 
not the same people as those who believe in Hell.)

If, on the other hand, you wanted both (a) a very negative Hell, and (b) 
real people who worship it, then, yes, I'd say you would require 
something fairly convoluted to get the connection made.

This is not to say that Christians do not believe that people worship 
Satan. The witch madnesses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
were against hordes of imagined worshippers of Satan. You ought to be 
able to find a ton of woodcuts with images of this form of Satan 
worship, as imagined by the persecutors. Anti-witch books were big 
business then. See Malleus Maleficarum (Heinrich Kramer, James 
Sprenger), Demonolatry (Nicholas Remy), and Compendium Maleficarum 
(Francesco Maria Guazzo) for some of the more popular examples.

Jerry
-- 
http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you've
depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees
(http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/Murder/)

Post a reply to this message