A Satanist Reads the Bible

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This episode is the first in what I hope will be a series in which I present and critique *Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology* by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in French in 1943. In writing these episodes, I hope to join a venerable tradition in philosophy in which a critique is not so much a negative review but rather a thoughtful interpretation which uses its source as a jumping-off point for a new philosophical position. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

On February 25th of this year, Airman Aaron Bushnell of the United States Air Force lit himself on fire outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. Prior to his self-immolation, he posted a message on Facebook: Many of us like to ask ourselves, "What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?" The answer is, you're doing it right now. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Today we'll be tracing the influence of dualistic cosmologies on the development of religious thought. In examining these historical narratives, we'll see how ancient beliefs influence modern religious thought. From there, we'll pivot to an examination of the concept of mind as it is understood in both historical and modern contexts. Challenging the Cartesian notion of isolated, atomic _egos_, we'll explore how the mind extends beyond the physical confines of the brain into the symbolic order of human interaction and language, mirroring the cosmic battles depicted in myths like the War in Heaven and positing a reevaluation of how ancient wisdom informs modern understanding. Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The word “sin” drips with centuries of religious baggage, conjuring images of fire and brimstone preachers and penitent souls begging for redemption. But what lies beneath the surface of this concept? In this episode, we'll embark on a journey through the history and philosophy of sin, tracing its etymological origins, its central role in Christian thought, and its surprising resonances with ideas from Greek philosophy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the religious traditions of India. We'll explore sin's paradoxical nature as both a stain on the human condition and a path to transformation and transcendence—the pharmacology of sin. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Within some cleft of history emerged the fallenness of humanity. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Another episode of A Satanist Goes to the Movies. As I mentioned in the episode on Hitchcock's Rope, this is a project I've been wanting to do for a while, a look at the religious themes in the films of Martin Scorsese and in particular at a trilogy of films, The Last Temptation of Christ, Bringing Out the Dead, and Silence. This episode will focus on the first of these, The Last Temptation of Christ from 1988. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

In this episode I'll be delving into film criticism with an analysis of the 1948 film Rope, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring John Dall, Farley Granger, and James Stewart. Rope has fascinated me since I first saw it earlier this year; it's now one of my favorite films and, in my opinion, and although it enjoys considerably less fame than staples like Psycho and Vertigo, Hitchcock's best. Its central theme, as I'll be arguing here, is the relation between the life-world of human symbolic reality and the Real itself, and as such makes an excellent example for exploring some of the themes of metaphysical idealism from my recent episodes. At the same time, I thought it would make an excellent warmup for a larger film criticism project I'd like to attempt, a look at the religious themes in the films of Martin Scorsese. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

For this one we'll be focusing on the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as it appears in the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I thought it might be fun to revisit the topics and themes of my earliest episodes, starting with my first essay, "Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath." It's been almost five years now and both my knowledge and my writing skills have improved immensely, and my perspective and positions have shifted as well. The circumstances certainly warrant a second look at things. Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

A Satanist Reads the Bible continues today with our series on the rising threat of Christian fascism in America. Today we'll be looking at the thought of two Christians, one early 20th century German and one from our own day, respectively, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eric Metaxas. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

In this essay, we'll see some striking and deeply troubling parallels to Germany in the 1920s, parallels which should be of grave concern to anyone who doesn't want to see genocidal fascists take control of the most powerful economy and military in the history of the world. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Today I'll be arguing that this progression is amplified by a dialectic within certain threads of modern Christianity, an internal contradiction that pushes those threads further and further in a fascist direction. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

As I've mentioned before, ecumenical phenomenology has an enormous capacity to answer a wide range of difficult philosophical questions. This episode will be exploring some of those questions and the answers that ecumenical phenomenology provides. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Human activity involves the redistribution of resources, including informational resources, to meet individual and collective needs. This process occurs through various systems, including biological, technological, and social systems, and is driven by the laws of thermodynamics and the increase of entropy over time. A distribution system is defined by its primary distributionary resource, which is the resource it is primarily responsible for distributing, and includes feed resources, which fuel the system, infrastructure, which facilitates the distribution of the primary distributionary resource, and the territory in which the system operates. Distribution systems may be analyzed at different levels of scope depending on the primary distributionary resource being studied and the purpose of the analysis. Normal order refers to the norms and expectations that govern distribution within a distribution system and is established through normative ordering cartels, which have normal order as their primary distributionary resource. Normative ordering occurs through ordering communication and results in the acceptance of a new normal order. Collaborative competition is the context in which many social systems operate, characterized by a combination of cooperation and competition within a shared normal order. The state of war is the exception to collaborative competition, involving a disagreement about the normal order and a struggle for control of ordering communication. Normal order is established through either the threat of violence or rational agreement on a non-violent alternative. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Many of my recent episodes have been focused on explicating my central philosophical doctrine, ecumenical phenomenology, a transcendental and phenomenological idealist ontology of abstract reality. This episode continues that series, but I have at this point a complex net of ideas spread over several episodes and so I think it would be worth, as my patrons have suggested, laying it all out in one place as simply and briefly as I can. Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

People in modern societies and especially in modern Western societies tend to value individualism over conformity. This is certainly a paramount value for we Satanists, Satan being effectively the first individualist. But if we draw a simple equation between individualism on the one hand and freedom and good on the other, I think we're being catastrophically naïve and blind to the ways in which our individuality is both produced and manipulated within societies of control. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

This essay begins a series on dystopian films, a series which will explore the way our present circumstances are related to and portrayed in such films, as well as the ways in which such media actually disguise and reinforce those circumstances rather than waking us up to them or inspiring us to work against them and change things for the better. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I mentioned in a prior episode that my theory of ecumenical phenomenology, which I've been exploring over the last few episodes, is rooted in two separate theories—platonism and phenomenology—along with a third which, given a small tweak, translates between them, allowing the phenomenological ideas to answer the questions posed by the platonist ideas and vice versa. Today we'll be exploring that third theory, the connectionist theory of mind. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Heidegger wants to redirect us from our normal ways of thinking about things and he does this by using language in ways both novel and tied to ancient Greek, ways that focus in particular on processes, and he focuses on processes because he had come to see the world as something active and dynamic but found the rest of his society looking at the world as something static and dead. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Back in January of this year I released an episode, “Pema Chödrön and the Sublation of Mental Illness,” and mentioned that it marked a significant but nevertheless largely invisible shift of the trajectory of the show: instead of just collating the ideas of others, as I had mostly been doing since 2018 when I started this whole thing, I would start using episodes to develop and present my own theories. The reaction I got from that and the next eleven episodes, up through the last episode on Judas, was very positive. This episode is going to mark a similar shift: rather than using each episode to develop a different idea, I am now going to be directing this project towards the development and presentation of a single philosophical and sociological theory: ecumenical phenomenology. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The story of Judas may have been the first thing I noticed about Christianity that didn't quite add up. Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I'll be arguing that the current opposition to the basic rights of the fertile is not fundamentally about the rights of the alleged fetus people but rather a significant component of a broader campaign, fundamentally patriarchal and ongoing since the Neolithic Revolution, to enslave and exploit human labor, and that the desired status quo of those opposed to these rights itself constitutes the enslavement of the fertile so as to control the reproduction of labor. Transcription with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Resources for trans and queer people in crisis (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/sexual_orientation/resources/transgenderrights/) In March of 2022 Senator and former Florida Governor Rick Scott released his new 11 point plan to reshape the Republican Party. It's clear from this that Scott has aspirations beyond his current senate seat; with this plan, he has set out a vision not just for his home state of Florida but for the entire party of which he is a member. His plan, as outlined on his website rescueamerica.com, is not mere political strategy but rather a comprehensive vision for the future of America. Given all of this, we are led to ask from what lens he is viewing this country in the first place, and one need only look at his words in order to understand that perspective. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Mass shootings are the latent and intrinsic violence of the patriarchy spilling over the boundaries in which the patriarchs work to contain it. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

What can Ancient Egypt tell us about the development of religion and civilization? The answer is: a great deal, more than I could possibly fit into a single episode. As part of a broader research project into economics, I've been studying various histories, and the history of Ancient Egypt has been particularly fascinating and informative. One of the world's earliest civilizations, it extends over 3000 years of history, from the Bronze Age and through the Iron Age into classical antiquity. As I mentioned in a recent episode, the Great Pyramid was more ancient to Cleopatra, the last pharaoh, than Cleopatra is to us. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The situation is this: our lifespans create a partial social amnesia, in that, while we have other documentation of the past, living memories of events are limited to the generation of humans presently alive on this planet. This prevents us from getting a clear picture of how the human condition has changed over the course of our history and in particular in the very recent past (i.e. the modern era and beyond). Really only for the past century, out of three million years of human history, has media had such a pervasive role in our lives. But our individual memories don't extend back even that far, and this fog, this inability to directly compare the conditions of our existence from era to era, blinds us to the reality that our technologies and our media fundamentally change what it is to be a human being, almost always for the worse. Transcript (with citations) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The notion that the general public should have a general education is a modern one. In ancient Mesopotamia, education in writing had been reserved for the ruling class, the wealthy elite, the religious elite, and a class of scribes, and similar situations remained the norm throughout most of history. As we'll continue to see in this essay, the elite have reasons for minimizing the transmission of knowledge. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

We certainly should not follow Kierkegaard so far into faith that we abandon reason, but we must recognize that this was the failure of Kierkegaard and his beliefs and not of faith, which he saw clearly. Rather, we must ask, given our belief in reason, in what may we have faith? Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The study of emergence in philosophy and the sciences generally concerns properties which do not exist at the individual level but which emerge at the collective level. I posit the existence of a contrary phenomenon, demergence, in which properties that exist at the individual level disappear at the collective level or transform at that level into something very different. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Hail and welcome. Over the month of December I put a great deal of time into working on a new music project, Cyrus Dark and the Symbols of Reverence, which I've mentioned a few times on the show and on my Patreon feed. During breaks between tracking parts and mixing songs, I surfed various musician subreddits (ostensibly as a way of keeping my brain in a musical mindset during a break; more likely it was just an excusable means of procrastination). I became fascinated in particular by certain patterns I was noticing in the questions posted on the music theory subreddit, patterns which matched up with sentiments expressed by many of my music students. I've been studying music and music theory for decades and worked primarily as a professional musician up until the pandemic, so this is an area in which I consider myself to be an expert, and I spent some time answering questions on the subreddit by way of correcting various misunderstandings about what music theory is and how it works. As I thought about it, I began to develop a theory about the nature of those misunderstandings, and that theory is the subject of today's episode. Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

The focus of today's essay is on an idea I'm calling the sublation of mental illness. In many ways, this will be a follow up to an essay I published in January of 2020: “Satanism, Mental Health, and the Search for Happiness.” I consider that one of my best essays, and it took on a special meaning for me over the two years following its publication as my everyday struggle with mental illness transformed into a struggle with mental illness in the context of a catastrophic global pandemic. Transcript (with citations) available at https://asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I think that certain groups, my audience among them, should exercise caution and should pay very close attention to what's being said on the radio, at political events, and in popular books. By way of doing exactly this, I'll be looking at a recent book by popular Christian pastor John Mark Comer entitled Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies that Sabotage Your Peace. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Today I'm going to be returning to the subject of Critical Race Theory, which was the subject of my recent episode The Critics of Critical Race Theory. The focus in this episode will be on a particular idea that is not one that I came up with but was rather hit upon by my partner during a long nighttime drive, an idea which I'll be referring to as the divine reward attribution fallacy and which we explored and developed through several conversations. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

'Let's begin with a simple metaphysical proposition: Satan exists. In order to determine what we can say about this proposition—whether it's true or false, whether it's knowable or unknowable—it's hardly surprising that we have to determine exactly what is meant by the word “Satan;” perhaps more surprising that we also have to determine exactly what is meant by the word “exists.” In the immortal words of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.' Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

This episode concerns the recent activities of the Satanic Temple, which is likely the most popular and most well-known Satanist organization. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Reading the Phaedo, it struck me how similar Plato's ideas about the soul are to those of Christianity, and this in turn led me to an investigation in which I compared ideas about the soul and the afterlife held by the ancient Hebrew people to those held by the early Christians, and those in turn to those presented in Plato's dialogues and the other works of Ancient Greek philosophy. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

This essay, and likely others in the future, will focus on... the music of Deathspell Omega and its relationship to my religious Satanism. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I find that LaVey's ideas clearly fall in line with those that were either exclusive to Rand or shared between her and Nietzsche, and this is the thesis that I'll be defending in this essay. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I'll be looking into the history and tenets of Critical Race Theory and the opinions of its critics, and seeking to determine whether it is indeed a “prejudicial ideological tool,” as the GOP suggests. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

I thought the best way to get back to work would be to get back to my roots, and indeed to the roots of all Western philosophy, that being the ancient Athenian philosophers Socrates and Plato, whose work is of central relevance to Satanism, as I'll be exploring in this essay. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

This is the question I'll be examining in today's episode: do artificially intelligent programs or entities have souls? And furthermore, what does AI mean for our own souls? Transcript with citations and references available at https://asatanistreadsthebible.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Artificial intelligence is not something that emerges into the world in a neutral way, or which affects the world in a neutral way. Artificial intelligence is something created by humans within the context of a particular society and period of history; that context determines the nature of the particular artificial intelligence that we create, as well as the environment in which it operates and the scope of its potential influence. This being the case, a proper understanding of how artificial intelligence influences human society and the possibilities for how it may do so in the future begins with a study of human society as it presently exists. This is a very broad topic and a full survey is well beyond the scope of the entire Satanist Reads the Bible project, but we can hone in on some key points that are particularly relevant to the subject of artificial intelligence. Transcript with citations and references available at https://asatanistreadsthebible.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support