36. The Church of Satan is an atheistic belief system, paradoxically
You read that right. The Church of Satan no more believes in a bipedal goat-man than it does a bearded deity sitting on a cloud. ‘Man has always created his gods, rather than his gods creating him‘, writes LaVey in the Satanic Bible. Satan is essentially a mascot or logo for LaVey’s belief system, which is best defined as rationalist-materialist philosophy, and centers on self-indulgence and selfishness. For the Church of Satan, the here-and-now is all we’ve got, and so we need to make the best of it. ‘YOLO with lots of goats and stage magic’, if you will.