I've done quite a few updates, here are some of them:
Prayer to God in Christianity and Islam: It is Useless and Satanic!: I've added a quote from Voltaire (1764) to the section "2. Praying is Against God's Will" and massively expanded section "3. Praying is Magic" with commentary of Justin Barret's investigations into people's choices of prayer in emergency situations. And to section "5. How to Pray in Islam, According to the Qur'an" I've added notes on several more Qur'anic verses, such as Qur'an 3:191, 5:6 and 17:107,110.
Is God All-Powerful? Can God or Anything Truly Be Omnipotent?: I've added a 6th (important!) item to the list of things that an all-powerful god cannot do: omnipotency is incompatible with benevolence. Responsible for making every aspect of evil and suffering possible and for creating the long chain of cause and effect that results in disasters and influences people to choose wrongly, god is so absolutely responsible for all evil and pain that it renders it an amoral being at best, and at worst, an immoral one. And on that note, I've added Section 2 on The Problem of Evil. On a sociological bent, I've added section "5. The Ineffectiveness of God to Answer Prayers", which is about the way choices of prayers give away the fact that people are saying them more as magic words rather than saying them with the confidence that God itself can change the laws of physics (i.e., a link to the text mentioned in the first update mentioned in this entry!).
And three updates to my Satanism website:
Misanthropy, Nihilism and Self-Worth: People are Shit, Boring and Stupid: Added two new paragraphs, including: "People attain varying shades of greatness. Some become great and lead humankind forward, successfully encouraging others to shake off their shackles and dogmas, and face the wondrous world with imagination and open-mindedness. Some become great through beauty, acting, entertainment, or other temporal endeavours, and find their egos drag them onwards. Both the humanistic greats and the egotistical greats are prone to thinking themselves better than others, and both can often be found bemoaning the state of the masses. Are you with me, or are you part of the deluded herd? Because of the two types of greatness I mention above, one is formed of breakable china, and the other is formed from rock, upon which we build humankind's greatest scientific, technological and moral victories. When looks and talent fade, who has left the enduring legacy on which others can build? They are the greats, and they are ones who have permission to announce their disgrace at the state of humankind! Follow them, copy them, be inspired by them and read their books!"
Moojan Momen's 8 Pathways to Religious Experience: Categorizing Satanism: I've added this paragraph to section "1.7. Gnosticism". Momen's use of the word "gnosticism" is a little problematic, as, nearly all gnostic documents discvovered archeologically have been largely Christian affairs, having as a saviour a Christ figure who comes and reveals the necessary secret knowledge, and, being heavily centered on the ways in which the Old Testament god is defeated by the Good News. Momen's category mostly describes what are called mystery religions, rather than gnosticism. For this reason, although in 2007 when I first published this text I stated that there was a 4 out of 5 match between this category and Satanism, I am not revising that to 3 out of 5, due to the poor choice of category title by Moojan Momen. I follow this with a good description of actual Gnosticism.
Righteous Satan Theologies: When Satan is Good: I've added section "2.3. Classical Gnosticism". Just added a few paragraphs on the Gnostics who were caught occasionally identifying with bad-guys such as Cain, Kresh and Judas. Because it turns out that if the God of this world is actually evil, then, those who oppose that god are in fact the good guys.
Scroll around these updated pages and look for the little "New" graphics as always, which Ziggy will leave in place for ~ 6 months for any new paragraph, quote, or section.
