World Religion Day

Michael — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:36:43 +0000

Every third Sunday of January is World Religion Day… apparently. It is meant to be a day of interfaith talks and relations, orchestrated to bring unity to the human race, stressing what is common between the different faiths of the world. It is an initiative that was begun in 1950 by the National Spiritual Assembly, a Baha’i organization. Although the website says, again and again, that this is not a Baha’i event, and is attended by peoples of all faiths, it has all of the trademarks of the Baha’i perspective. Some of the central tenets of Baha’i are the oneness of God and of religion. The idea is that God is the same being in every religion, who has sent different envoys throughout history (Moses, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, etc.) to spread his message in a way that is appropriate to the context of each age and country. So the Sikh, the Jain, the Zoroastrian, all of these people are carrying around ideas that may seem different, but come from a single source.

Satanism is I suppose, by it’s very definition, not included. I fancy the Satanist in this situation could be much like the Greek goddess Eris at the wedding banquet of Thetis and Peleus. Uninvited and pissed, the goddess of discord barges in with a golden apple that has engraved in it, “To the fairest one,” and throws it amongst the most vain and callous goddesses of Olympus, who all lay claim to it. In order to dissuade the celestial cat fight, Zeus appoints the mortal Paris to choose the prettiest of Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera. They all try to bribe him with various goods, Aphrodite offers him Helen of Troy, he picks to get laid, and we all know how well that worked out for everyone.

But Satan does not exist to create chaos, he is an adversary, a counterpoint to these faiths, an example of what they tend to vilify and avoid. So I could get right in and start something here, throw in my proverbial golden apple and dig into that centuries old hate-on these religions can have for one another. I could talk about the implications of one God spreading very different images of himself and his requirements for being good and faithful to the same people, I could talk about the difference between a religious cause and a political or cultural cause for violence between different groups of people. I could talk about the sheer masturbatory nature of these kinds of talks and events. But I think Satan, rather than being the one to crash the interfaith dialogue, would be the one passing it all by to go to the really great party down the road, perhaps the same one that all the hypocritical clergymen and women would sneak into under the security of the night. The Satanist isn’t concerned with these kinds of things. The senility of their ideas robs their opinions and stances of any weight, “their words … are scattered, and their mouths are stopped with dust.” Let these people have their spiritual pipe dreams and their conferences, whilst the people who know go out, have fun, and live!

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the wise to talk; one thing is certain, that life flies; one thing is certain, and the rest is lies; the flower that once has blown for ever dies.

-The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, first translation by Edward Fitzgerald

Year of Faith » Omar Khayyam

World Religion Day