The Murderous Madness of Theism

Thoughts on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

by Magus Peter H. Gilmore

One year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks I wrote the piece below which was included in my book, The Satanic Scriptures. I think my words still ring true.

Today, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has mandated that the primary memorial observance not include religious representation, and that is some small measure or progress. While “The Freedom Tower” is still rising in lower Manhattan, around the globe we can readily observe the violence promulgated by those who have over-abundant faith in some supernatural authority which leads them to slaughter others who do not share their delusions.

For me this date serves as a time to call to mind the atrocities committed under the influence of theistic belief. While the ghastly horrors of The Spanish Inquisition are now but fodder for horror movies, even the grotesque mutilations appearing in the recent genre of “torture porn” films cannot approach the systematic abominations perpetrated upon people who had done nothing against those who exterminated them with “God’s will” as motivation. Those crimes should not be excused, nor forgotten. Human history in many aspects is a global tour of a religion-inspired abbatoire. That is the essential nature of temples dedicated to deity worship, whether overt such as the New World pyramids atop which living hearts were torn from the chests of both willing and unwilling victims, to the ornate Old World cathedrals of Europe so often adorned with images of suffering and damnation surounding the primary icon of a whipped and bleeding man, brow torn by thorns, who hangs broken upon a ancient Roman execution device. The centuries of death, pain and degradation celebrated therein should serve as a warning to any who celebrate life that such beliefs are virulent poison.

For the sensible people who embrace their existence and share the joy of it with those they cherish, it should be a duty to identify the sworn adversaries to their pursuit of happiness. It is the only way to keep them in check, exposing them for the envious monsters that they are. For you who are corrupted by the madness of theism, regardless of whatever God or Devil you believe in, you are a threat to all who value reason and an enemy to the rational philosophy of Satanism embodied in the Church of Satan. Fellow secularists, I urge your memories to be long and vivid, so that both your intellectual and emotional stances will not tolerate the pestilence of such beliefs and the inevitable consequences wrought by their lunatic adherents.

Faith kills. The proof is written in blood throughout the chronicles of human civilization.

“ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11”

by Magus Peter H. Gilmore

Today is a day of remembrance. Many individuals are recalling relatives and friends who were murdered by terrorists a year ago today in the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Satanists understand and deeply empathize with their grief, as undeserved loss of life is a tragic part of human existence that can touch us all. Our hearts are with them.

However, we also remember something of greater significance. We understand that the source of this day of mourning is the conviction, held by fundamentalist fanatics, that any act of violence against those who do not share their devotion is championed by their God. The events of 9/11 are absolute proof of the danger of such spiritual belief systems, which maintain that only certain individuals have a direct connection to a deity, and that any who do not agree with their “truth” are to be seen as less-than-human, a threat to their “faith” which supernaturally sanctions their extermination.

While the sanctimonious of many spiritual religions will enter their sacred spaces today, thanking their God or Gods for acts of heroism performed by valiant individuals in response to that tragedy, they will smugly forget that their God did nothing to prevent these human-initiated disasters. Responsibility for what they deem to be good is assigned to their deity, while responsibility for what is deemed evil must, in their limited view, originate elsewhere, and probably from those holding different beliefs. They will fail to see that such a perspective is one shared by the terrorists. More significant than that, these people will also fail to recall that, over the centuries, far more people have been slaughtered by the followers of spiritual religions—including their own—than were killed by the Islamic terrorists on September 11 of 2001. There is blood on the hands of the ancestors of those who pray in their sanctuaries today, and that is a fact they should appreciate as fully as do we. Millions have died because fanatical worshippers refused to allow that values other than their own might have validity for those who hold them.

We Satanists, as well as others who grasp the importance of maintaining a secular society which allows for diversity of belief and non-belief, will recall this grim truth today. Fundamentalist fanatics, regardless of which deity they worship, are the greatest threat to human freedom in our civilization. September 11th should be sustained as a worldwide memorial to their victims, past and present. Remember this day in fury. Bow not your heads in prayerful attitude, but raise your chins in defiance. Hear the brazen clangor of the funerary bell. It shatters complacence, serving as memorial and as tocsin. We shall not forgive nor shall we forget.