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Because it's an organization for LaVeyan Satanism, which is atheistic, or agnostic in nature. They don't welcome demons because they don't believe in them; they aren't even a Left-Hand parallel to Christianity. The use the word "Church" was a means to A) gain publicity and B) mock Christianity. LeVay had a flare for that sort of thing.

They don't literally worship or even directly believe in Satan, unlike Christians or Theistic Satanists. The Church of Satan isn't even a literal church, it's an organization. And LeVayan Satanism? Doesn't worship Satan or believe in demons, Satan is just their primary symbolism to represent their Left-Hand path.

"Church" is used to regard to holy places of worship by Christians. No other religion uses the term. Muslims have mosques, Druids have.. circles, or something, and Jews have their synagogues. LaVey's use of "Church" has nothing to do with a literal church.

Now, a Church can still be called a church once it's been corrupted or something, I mean.. if it was originally a church, it doesn't magically change shape. But it would be more accurate to refer to it as a "former church" or "cathedral", because it was used as a church at one point, but no longer is in terms of religious meanings. But, building wise, it would still be a church or cathedral. Just depends on HOW you're trying to describe, it, probably.

{That's one church of satan, I was refering to the mad oldbies of the religion obviously..

The one's whom drink blood after ritual sacrifice and have nasty orgies amongst the coven?

XD

yea..bad image to bring up, but the left hand path hardly qualifies as a religion, and I know well enough about it thank you.
^_^

Though, I was more refering to the analogous sense; as I always do; in the way that any place of worship, or spiritual focus, is a church as appose to a building, designed to be such...}

Uh, it's THE Church of Satan. There is no other "Church of Satan", LeVay probably has that s**t ******** copyrighted because he was huge on plublicity. There's "The First Church of Satanism" and The 600 Club, but - specifically - The Church of Satan refers to LeVay's organizations. If you weren't referring to them, you obviously ought to have used the proper term for whom you were referring to, which would be Theistic Satanists on the whole. Because I know Atheistic Satanists do not like to be lumped in with their theistic counterparts.

But Theistic Satanism is decentralized and in no way, shape, or form cohesive like other religious viewpoints. So, the only thing you're talking about is.. myths and hearsay? SOME Theistic Satanists might commit to orgies and blood rituals, and in the Middle Ages the use of grimoires to summon and bind demons was certainly about (though not via the means you just described). Some Theistic Satans might have "covens" (more attributable to witchcraft, really), or something similar, but that's a pretty generic, generalizing way to look at them.

And The Left Hand Path is an overarching term for several belief systems, both religious and otherwise. It's basically the dichotomous counterpart of Right Hand religions or belief sets, like Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and your normal Atheism. The "Left Hand Path" refers to both atheistic and theistic principles, and can hardly be considered religious or atheistic in nature, because it covers the whole spectrum. So, it would be wrong to say it doesn't qualify as a religion, because it most certainly does when you think of Theistic Satanism, the Followers of Set, and other groups. It isn't a religion on its own, but it is a philosophy heavily involved in several religions.


As for Church, any place of Christian worship is referred to as church. But it's improper and ill-informed of someone to use it to refer to places of worship by other religions, as I just previously explained. You have Covens of Wicca, Synagogues of Judaism, and Mosques of Islam. Church is a Christian term for a place of worship, and therefore it would only be considered a church in the religious sense so long as it remained holy.

A church that is no longer holy isn't a church. Now, a building built to be a church, and that was church, but no longer is? Sure, you can still call it a church, that was what it was designed to be. From a religious outlook, it wouldn't be one, but from the perspective of "What is this building?" it would be a church or cathedral, sure. Which was the point I was making. Religious outlook? Not a church. Nonreligious, or from the standpoint of what a building is? Yeah, it's a church, or was a church.

I'm agreeing that it could still be called a church, just not from the religious stand-point because it would no longer by holy by the standards of the religion that uses churches. So you could easily call it a church, a cathedral, or just.. a building. But it's not longer a church from the standpoint of being a proper place of worship for Christianity. So you could probably call it whatever the hell you liked.

Yeah.

He got school'd hard by DA DURF.

AND Y'KNOW WHAT, COG? VINCE VS. EBRIS, GOOOOO!

Round II of dragon axe-mining? xD

That was both interesting and it had the word orgies in it. Your sir win todays "That post was awesome!" award from Saphen.