Let’s start with Karl Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance. This is something that has vexed me ever since I found out about it. The idea is this: think of society as having a sliding scale between tolerance and intolerance, with regard to people, with regard to ideas, politics, religion, race, sexual and gender identity, and so forth. The more the scale tips toward tolerance, the more intolerant ideas are sanctioned, so both tolerance and intolerance result in intolerance. Intolerance prevails either way. And the only way around this is to embrace intolerance, and then the question becomes, what kind of intolerance do we truly wish to prevail?
Tag: satan the adversary
Apocalypse
The New Testament Book of Revelation is one of the most distinct and bizarre books of the entire Bible, and I think that its writer was saying the same things about what was to come that I had learned from both my Christians teachers and from history.
Paradise Lost as a Sacred Text
Should Paradise Lost, John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem concerning the fall of Satan from Heaven, be considered a sacred text, especially with regard to the Satanist?
The Divine Hedonism of the Mind
This week I’m taking a break from my usual focus on the sacred texts of the Abrahamic tradition and turning my attention to those of Hinduism. In reading the Text, I’ve come to a new and different understanding of what hedonism might mean for me in the context of this Satanic religion that I’m building…
Another Account of the Creation
As mentioned in the previous essay on the Book of Genesis, there are two distinct creation narratives present at the beginning of the book, both well-known in popular culture. The second continues from the first—-starting in the middle of chapter 2, verse 4—-but immediately distinguishes itself from the first in several ways: