A Satanist Reads the Bible

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 th...

In the backstory of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe is an event called the Butlerian Jihad, a human revolt against “thinking machines.” Herbert himself provided few details of the Jihad in his books but the idea of a future without computers is foundational to many of the themes in his stories. The underlying philosophical justification for the Jihad, as later recorded in one of the Dune universe’s...

Cajete’s Native science has as much to tell us about religion as it does about modern Western science. For Cajete and for many of the indigenous peoples of the world, the entire universe is in process. Everything is in constant flux: the material world, our lives within it, and even the divine itself are all shifting, changing, evolving. Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebibl...

The Nye-Ham debate is emblematic of the broader relationship between science and religion. These two fields of discourse are generally perceived as being both fully disjunct and largely in conflict with one another. Certainly, science and religion do come into conflict—the Young Earth creationist claim and the scientific consensus claim about the age of the Earth cannot both be correct—but the rel...

I’ll open by summarizing my opinions on science: It’s good that science be trusted by the general public because science warrants that trust. As I said earlier, that’s a trust that I intend to defend over the course of these essays. That said, popular beliefs in the nature of science, scientific progress, scientific knowledge, scientific method, and the like, are generally very dogmatic, inaccurat...

How is it that evangelical Christians, who have long advocated for America to more fully endorse their strict and bigoted interpretation of Christian morality, simultaneously endorsed someone who is so clearly morally destitute by their standards, or by any standard? Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

An examination of how religion and ideology can be healthy rather than toxic. Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

I’ve never pinned down what exactly I mean by nihilism in anything more than a cursory way. This episode will remedy that deficiency and explore why nihilism, such as I construe it, is a pathological ideology. Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

This month’s series will largely be a continuation of the November series, which was originally planned to be an exposition of some of the problematic aspects of religion. Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

A look at some of the arguments for and counterarguments against antireligious atheism. This episode is available in video format on YouTube Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

Do American Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in the same god? Nominally, at least, the answer seems to be an obvious yes: I think Americans whose religion falls into the Abrahamic tradition in general identify their god as being the same god worshipped by other such Americans. But in practical terms, that may not be the case; even American Christians may functionally believe in a different go...

In this episode I’ll be examining two particularly fanatical manifestations of religious belief, with discussion on Aum Shinrikyo and a look at the Branch Davidians. This episode is available in video format on YouTube Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

I’ve generated five stipulative definitions for magic: stage magic is a performative art in which neither performer nor audience truly believes that magic is taking place; magic proper is what we find in fictional accounts such as Harry Potter; type N pseudomagic describes real phenomena outside of present scientific models which could be studied, explained, and understood, but which have not been...

The questions I’m aiming to answer are one, whether there are any phenomena like electromagnetism which might be considered magic if we considered their properties independently of their realness (in other words, whether there are any other forms of type K pseudomagic beyond electromagnetism and whether there are any forms of type N pseudomagic at all); and two, if magical practices might be incor...

This month A Satanist Reads the Bible turns to the thematically-appropriate subject matter of magic, which will be the subject of this episode and the subsequent two. This episode is available in video format on YouTube Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

Third of my three-part series on the moral theory of perfectionism as it relates to Satanic religion. This episode is available in video format on YouTube Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

In the last episode, I examined the moral philosophy of perfectionism as formulated by the philosopher Thomas Hurka. I recommend listening to that episode before this one, as this essay is a continuation and will build on the foundation that I established in that one. But to sum up, perfectionism posits the development and exercise of our characteristic human capacities—those things which are uniq...

This episode opens a three-episode series, following the structure of my last three episodes, in which I will be exploring moral philosophy from my Satanic perspective. In this particular episode, I’ll be surveying moral philosophy in general and taking a look in particular at the philosophy of perfectionism. On the 16th, I’ll be exploring perfectionism more in depth, especially in terms of its re...

A quick update on the state of the project. Normal episodes—at least as normal as they ever are—will resume September 6th.

The theopoetics of Satan the Accuser, with opening and closing invocations performed on the oud.   We need not reach into the primordial to apprehend bereshit, the continuous beginning which opens from the first chapter of Genesis. We need only wait for the dusk to see that which God has divided between.   Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

Ever since I transitioned this project from being primarily a blog to being primarily a podcast, I’ve been using the tagline, “Exploring the Bible, Christianity, and other religions and sacred texts through the lens of Satanism in order to reinvent religion for myself.” Aside from some of the early creative and constructive work, I’ve mostly emphasized the exploration part of that tagline, but thi...

This episode begins a three-episode series that will explore the foundations of Satanic religion, as I understand it. Each episode will concentrate on a different aspect of Satanism and will be written in a different style. This one will be somewhat like my typical essays, especially those that focus most closely on Satanism and philosophy of religion, and here I’ll be exploring the religious phil...

Matters of personal will, independence, and autonomy are central to Satanic thought. The central principle of Satanism is opposition, and, in my interpretation, opposition to hegemony, which often entails opposition to presumed authority. This episode is available in video format on YouTube Transcript (with citations and references) available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

I want to know why Islam has been so successful, seemingly more so than any other modern religion, in convincing people to abandon this world for some other world and to construct what remains of them in this life around what awaits them in the next. I would know, is this truly what Muhammad intended? As much as I have fallen in love with the mystical Sufi poetry of Rumi and Hafez, and as much as...

What I’m going to say next, I say without an ounce of hyperbole: rational argumentation is the most important of all human skills, because rational argumentation forms the basis not only for critical thinking, which is of paramount importance, but for affecting the world and shaping it to one’s ends. This essay is also available as a podcast on anchor.fm and other platforms. Transcript (with links...