(written with Cora Howell) Have you ever heard someone say that you should follow the Golden Rule? Even if you don’t follow the Bible or its teachings, I bet most of you would know that rule as being something along the lines of loving your neighbor as yourself or treating others how you want to…
Category: readings
Readings and analysis from various literature
Morality and Narrative in Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead
Hail, back today with another film criticism episode, this time looking at the 1999 film Bringing Out the Dead by Martin Scorsese as part of my series of episodes looking at the religious themes from Scorsese’s films. Now, when it comes to Scorsese and religion, The Last Temptation of Christ, the subject of my last…
Hypostatic Struggle in Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ
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,…
Hitchcock’s Rope and the Symbolic Order
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.
The Garden of Eden
Hail and welcome. I’m back again today revisiting the content of my earliest essays, and 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. The first things we want to ask when…
The First Day of Creation
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.
The Dialectic of Christian Fascism
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.
Judas
The story of Judas may have been the first thing I noticed about Christianity that didn’t quite add up.
The Evangelical Campaign for Queer Genocide
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.
The Faith of a Satanist
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?