Thoughts on Peter Gilmore? | Forum

As far as them being elitist I have no obvious issue with them on this as I tend to be a socialdarwinist myself. And Zach is the only CoS member, whom later resigned, I know of that I could possibly contact easily short of doing some kind of google search or email the CoS and actually get a nonautomated response though I've never attempted either-or nor desire to do. That said I'm sure you are correct I would think that amongst the CoS member camp that there are very entertaining and intelligent people amongst them. I just feel it to be illogical to stereotype a whole group of people because of a few well known bad apples.

I've actually contacted the CoS before via email, to request for permission to use their copyrighted material (Sigil of Baphomet).

I actually got a non-automated response.

As for elitism..., Satanism was founded on elitism. It's a belief system that is non-beneficial to the weak, and may even be harmful.

It can and often is elitist - but elitism in Satanism is neither universal nor is it a core aspect.

Gilmore, however, tends to take the works of LaVey to dogmatic, not to sound like I'm dissing dogma in and of itself but when the world has hosted the likes of jim jones and David keresh (hope I spelled the last name correctly I'm referencing the whole Wako event way back in the early  90's) it proves how religion and dogma can be taken way to far and even to the point of distruction. Simply put that educating yourself through the use of Internet searches, hell even the History Channel hs made at least one two hour documentary on The People's Temple, can go a long way.

Not saying the previous paragraph as a whole is what we have with the CoS but history tells when dogma goes to far how long will it take before people start to die as a result? Just consider this aspect as it may or may not apply to the CoS. Probably and hopefully not but what if though.

@MReynolds and @katnbrown I agree with the both of you. I read the Satanic Scriptures and watched the Inside the Church of Satan documentary and yes Gilmore does come off as being an intellectual. My two biggest issues that I have with the CoS, and this is likely due in part of the leadership of the CoS, is that the Church tends to be vary reclusive and underground at a time when they ought not to be. And the other being that they tend to have an unspoken but actions speak louder attitude of "owning" the term "Satanism" when in fact Satanism is more generic then they would care to admite and is generic in terms of Christianity but the CoS, at least the leadership and spokesmen tend to take a xtian approach in the sense that any given denomination of xianity such as Pentecostals claim that they know the true path to heaven and all others are devils while the Methodists and Baptists say the same thing.

But then again given the fact that we are here discussing anything associated with the Church of Satan demonstrates there relevance, which is probably nothing if not on it's final breath.