About the Author - Paul Rezendes is a lawyer by profession and a philosopher and musician by choice. As this dialogue proves, he is also a father. In addition, Paul is an associate editor of The Examined Life.

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Friend: Paul, hello, come over here and have lunch with me. You're not due back in Court today are you?

Dad: No, we finished our closing arguments, and the Court has the case under advisement.

Friend: Good, then you have time to do what I was hoping for. I hear that you had quite a time the other night at Harvard, some lecture that was sponsored over there by the Libertarian club?

Dad: Oh, that, that was nothing important.

Friend: Not the way I heard it. From the reports I get, you had an entire lecture hall in an uproar because you wouldn't let go and kept arguing with a lecturer and his sponsor. You were driving everyone nuts.

Dad: Is that what you heard? I'm not sure it went quite like that. I'm just glad they didn't realize I was a lawyer. If they knew that, they would have just blown me off completely and thrown me out.

Friend: But they didn't, did they? What happened?

Dad: Well, if you have some time, I'll do the best I can to say it as I remember it.
I had just settled into my "comfy chair" in our home library to read a recent translation of Plato's Gorgias, when Aaron, my thirteen-year old son, ran in. As he started to speak, I heard the clunk of the telephone, set down carelessly on the counter and now bouncing off the kitchen floor.
"Dad, come on, we have to go right now," Aaron said.
"Where?"
"To pick up Noah and then go to Harvard University."
"I know you and Noah are bright boys, but Harvard University at thirteen?"
"Dad, Noah's fourteen. Besides, this isn't a class. Well, it's like a class, but it isn't a Harvard class. It's a lecture. It's starting in forty-five minutes, so we can just make it if we leave right now."
I started to get out of my chair, sure that I would have no peace if I simply said "no." Still, Aaron's excitement raised a mental alarm. What excited me often bored him; what he found exciting I often thought pointless or even dangerous. Aaron was excited enough for this to seem dangerous. So, I said: "Does this cost money, and do you have money to pay for it if it does?"
I started walking slowly towards the front hall where we keep our jackets, saying "... and hang up the phone."
"No, its free. Can I tell Noah that we're going?" he asked.
"Well, what is it?"
"Dad, let's go, we'll miss it. I'll tell you in the car."
I stopped. "And what happens if I don't like it and decide not to take you," I asked.
"Dad, you can either take me, or I'll find a way to get there myself. I'm not going to miss this."
"Okay, okay, we'll talk about it in the car. Tell Noah we'll be there in twenty-five minutes. If I decide not to take you, maybe we can do something else together in Cambridge."

After we were in the car and out of the driveway, I asked, "So, what is this lecture?"
"Promise me you won't be mad."
"Oh boy. I promise."
"It's called 'Satanism in the twenty-first century.' Gregor DeLuciforo, the guy from the newest version of the Satanic Bible, not Anton LaVey, you know he's dead, but the guy who wrote about Anton LaVey in the front of the book, will be there to introduce him. The guy giving the lecture, he calls himself 'Lestat,' can you believe it? He's a Harvard philosophy student. Noah says that Lestat is writing a thesis about Satanism and wants to publish a book saying that Satanism is legitimate philosophy and that its basic ideas are right up there with your Plato."
I almost stopped the car and turned around. But Aaron's interest in Satanism reminded me of my own enthusiasm when, as a young teenager, Herman Hesse's novels led me to Nietzsche, and I continued driving. I noticed that Aaron was holding the copy of the Satanic Bible which he had purchased without my knowledge. He also held old copies of books by Alistair Crowley which he had retrieved from some remote shelf in our small library, copies my wife had bought when she was in her teens, kept as souvenirs of younger and wilder days.
"Well, Aaron," I said, "you know that I don't go for this Satanism stuff. I don't believe that these Satanists care at all about you, or anyone else, as long as they sell books and increase their own wealth and power. As a matter of fact, if you take them at all seriously, you have to wonder whether or not they are even telling you what they believe to be the truth. Don't they say that people are basically self-centered and out for their own good?"
"Yeah, and I agree."
"If you can say they have any morality at all, isn't it one that says you should get everything for yourself that you can?"
"Yes, and that's what most people do anyway. Satanists are just more honest about it."
"And some of them study magic because it gives them power to get what they want?"
"Right."
"Then what makes you think that the books by them tell you what these people think is the truth?"
"Because they are more honest than so-called 'religious' people. They don't lie about what the world is like, or why people act like they do. They just tell the truth."
"But if you believe that they know something about magic, then don't you have to believe that the spells they study are designed to help them get what they want?"
"Yeah, that's the point. Not all that wussey white magic healing stuff. They study real power."
"And they believe that it is right to use that power to get what they want?"
"Yes."
"And that includes getting what they want from other people?"
"Well, yes."
"But if they teach others -- their students -- their magic, aren't they giving them power, also?"
"Yeah."
"Power to get what they want?"
"Uh huh."
"Power to get what they want from other people?"
"Yeah."
"And those other people from whom the students will learn how to get what they want could include the teachers of Satanism themselves?"
"Well, I guess that's true."
"So the teachers of Satanism are teaching their students how to get things from them?"
"Yes, I guess so."
"But how can they be willing to do that, if they -- the teachers -- also believe that they are entitled to get what they want from others? Why would they go around teaching their students how to compete with them? Wouldn't it be more consistent to keep people ignorant about Satanism, and keep as large as possible the group of 'others' who are ignorant of their powers?"
"I guess."
"Well," I said, "that's why I have to wonder whether the Satanists are really telling you the truth about their Satanism. They seem to believe two things that don't sit together well. They seem to think it's a good idea to tell people about Satanism. But by doing that, they contradict their idea that it is good, it is right, for a person to be self-centered, taking for himself even if it means depriving others, because they are making themselves less able to take for themselves. Remember the story of how Alistair Crowley booby-trapped his books of spells? Maybe what these Satanists teach is just a bunch of booby-traps."
"Well, I don't know. Maybe they think the best thing is for everyone to understand the truth and live honestly, instead of hiding behind the lies of all of these religions. So even if everyone ends up competing, that's better than if there's all of this religious hypocrisy in the world."
"Maybe so, but why does it matter to them if there is hypocrisy? Look at it this way. What the Satanist says is that the right thing for a person to do is to take care of himself?"
"Yes"
"So imagine that I am a Satanist for a moment."
"That's not easy, Dad, but okay."
"I'm sitting here trying to decide whether to teach you about Satanism."
"Okay."
"What reason should convince me?"
"Because then the people you teach won't be hypocrites."
"But hypocrites, when they are discovered, aren't popular, are they?"
"Sometimes hypocrites are the most popular people."
"But even after they are discovered?"
"No, I guess they aren't."
"And unpopular people have trouble convincing others to do what they want, don't they?"
"Yes."
"And if hypocrites have trouble convincing others to do what they want, wouldn't that make it easier for me to convince people to do what I want?"
"Yeah..."
"So, if I'm going to do what's right for me, what helps me the most, why would I want people not to be hypocrites? The more the better, it seems to me, as long as I can show that they are."
"Maybe Satanists just think it's a better world without all those hypocrites running around."
"But, really, a Satanist can't think like that if he's going to be a Satanist. For him, the question isn't 'how to make this a better world,' it's 'what can I do for myself.' Right?"
"But maybe he makes it a better world for himself by getting rid of the hypocrites."
"How does he do that if, by curing them of their hypocrisy, he makes them better able to compete with him?"
"I don't know, I just think you don't get it. It's like you can't get it because you think old school. This is the new millennium, it's time for new ways of thinking, that's all."

Because I could see that I was running up against a mental wall with Aaron at this point, I allowed him to change the direction of our discussion. I said, "Do you really think that all this Satanism stuff is 'new school' and that what I think and believe is 'old school'?"
"Yeah, I do. Nowadays people -- young people -- really think that god is dead, and that it's time for a new way to see things. You're just stuck in an old way of looking at things."
"Aaron," I said, "I don't agree with you that the young people today all believe that god is dead, or even the majority of them. But even if they did, even if they all decided to become Satanists, that doesn't mean that they have found something new. I've told you already about how a hundred years ago Nietzsche wrote 'God is dead.' It's not even that new. Long before then, Thomas Hobbes wrote a book called 'Leviathan' where he tried to develop a philosophy based on the notion that there is nothing but matter -- no god, no soul, no spirit. I could pull one of Plato's dialogues off the shelf and start reading to you passages where these same issues are discussed. You should read what Thrasymachus says in the first book of the Republic. You should read what Polus and Callicles say in the Gorgias. None of this is really new. But even Thomas Hobbes ended up with a moral theory. He said that people enter into a social contract to escape the state of nature where it is a war of all against all, and life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.' I'm not saying that he's right, or that I agree with him about what the 'state of nature' really is. All I'm saying is that a lot has been written about ethics, from people who say it is nothing but a bunch of rules written by the weak to protect them from the strong, to people who believe that there is something essentially moral about people, that people really want to do what is good and right even if they fail sometimes or even most times. And by all sorts of other folks as well. What I want you to do, Aaron, is to think critically about these issues. Don't treat them as if they were a fad, and don't try to learn them by listening to rock music. They aren't fads or a fashion, but instead difficult problems. Take a look at what has been said about them by some very intelligent people."
"Well, what I want to do right now, Dad, is listen to what some living guy has to say about them, a guy who is probably very intelligent, and not some philosopher who died a thousand years ago and doesn't know what it's like to live in the twenty-first century, okay?"

We didn't say much to each other for the rest of the ride to Noah's house. Instead, Aaron turned on the car radio to one of those "new rock" stations where the bass end dominates and the entire effect of nearly every song is to sound like a pile driver overlaid with jackhammers. You know, "rock" deconstructed from motion to the substance being shattered.

Friend: I've heard some of that stuff. Horrendous, isn't it?
Dad: Yes, but you listen for the kids.

Anyway, soon we arrived at Noah's house, where I spoke briefly with his father. Apparently Noah had learned of the lecture from a local Cambridge paper. His father had no great interest, but no great opposition to Noah coming with us. Quietly, he suggested that this was probably just a phase, and the best thing to do was to let it play out.
"Well, it is not just the Satanism thing that bothers me," I said. "Sure, the great likelihood is that the interest in the devil and magic and all those trappings will pass, just as we outgrew the stage gear and costumes of Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. I'm more concerned about the ethical side of this. And the fact is that the fellow giving the lecture seems, from what Aaron tells me, to be zeroing in on just that. He appears to be trying to give Satanism a philosophical respectability that...."
Before I could finish, my son and his friend were in the room insisting that we leave right away, and we did.

In the car, Noah said "So, Mr. Rezendes, Aaron talked you into taking him to this? How did he do that?" "Something like that, Noah. But how did you hear about this, and why are you coming, too? I didn't know that you shared Aaron's interest in the occult."
"I saw it in the paper, and thought of Aaron right away. I knew he'd want to go, so I thought, 'Hey, why don't I go with him? I can get a better idea of what Aaron is into.' So here I am. But you didn't answer my question. How did Aaron talk you into coming?"
"It was less talking and more rushing," I answered. "Like you, I wanted to get a better look at what Aaron finds so interesting. And he threatened me that he'd get there one way or another if I didn't take him, so I decided I'd rather go with him and see what this is all about."
"Oh, no, Dad," Aaron cut in, "you don't plan to go in with me, do you?"
"I can sit in the back, don't worry."
"Don't say anything, though, okay?"
"I'll keep my mouth shut during the lecture, Aaron."

Noah gave me directions to the lecture hall, and we eventually found parking. I let the two boys get ahead of me as we walked towards the hall. We were early. A crowd was gathered outside the door talking, smoking cigarettes. Many were dressed in black. A very few actually had plastic horns on their head, red paint on their face and wore long black capes. Most appeared to me to be college or high school age, although there were a few older adults mixed in. Aaron and Noah disappeared into the crowd, then re-appeared a few moments later, heading towards me.
"I guess we're glad you came, after all," Aaron said. "We can't get in without an adult."
"I'll still sit in the back if you want," I said. Aaron thanked me and we headed back towards the door, through the smoky crowd and into the hall. On the way in I noticed the posters and placards for the lecture. They were all illustrated with leering caricatures of a gentleman who apparently wanted to look like the stereotype of Satan, were all titled "Satanism In The Twenty-First Century," and said things like "Satan speaks: The Philosophical Legitimacy Of Satanism As Practiced By The Church Of Satan." They all indicated that the lecture was to be delivered by a Harvard philosophy student who called himself "Lestat" and was co-sponsored by the local chapter of the Church of Satan and the Libertarian Philosophy club of Harvard.

Eventually, a twenty-something young man approached the podium and called everyone to their seats. There were about thirty five or forty people in the audience, and they all eventually sat down. The twenty-something introduced himself as Bill, and began to speak:

"I want to welcome all of you to this somewhat offbeat presentation tonight. As you know, it is jointly sponsored by the Libertarian Philosophy Club of Harvard, of which I am the president. All of you are smart people, so I won't belabor the obvious. I'll just say that there is something beyond an odd pairing here. We libertarians take a relatively extreme view against governmental intrusion into the private affairs of people, and we are just short of anarchists. That means that we have a great deal of sympathy for some of the basic principles of Satanism. 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,' as Alistair Crowley said, and Anton LaVey's rejection of all 'Thou Shalt's' has something of the ring of truth to us Libertarians. That is not to say that we agree with everything Crowley or LaVey had to say. We are libertarians, after all, and not anarchists or Satanists. But it is consistent with our libertarian creed to allow a wide range of expression, just as we understand the founders of this country to have intended by the freedom of speech clause of the first amendment to the United States Constitution. And when the expression at issue shares so much of our own viewpoint concerning human liberty, we are pleased to go beyond mere tolerance all the way to helping provide the forum for it. So, without more, let me introduce Gregor DeLuciforo, priest of the Church of Satan, author of "Chicken Soup For The Satanist" and biographer of Anton LaVey, who will give you a little background."

At that, enthusiastic applause broke out. When it finally died down, DeLuciforo began to speak.

"My friends, it is such a pleasure to be here with you tonight. At last the dream of Anton LaVey is being realized: Satanism is coming out of the closet, and is being recognized as the powerful force of truth which it really is. Our cause can only be advanced when brilliant young people like Lestat, here, show the mainstream apologists for the status quo of hypocrisy how our truths have always been among them, unavoidable and ineradicable. And truth is precisely what we offer, isn't it?"
A few members of the crowd hooted in support.
"Yes, we follow in the footsteps of the Black Pope, Anton LaVey, when we insist that people take a real look at themselves and recognize what they are, what they want, and then take the ultimate step of honestly admitting that what they want, what they truly want and in fact deserve, is totally at odds with the claptrap and lies of organized religion."
More hoots from the audience.
"We have been a voice of truth and logic for decades now. Yet our literature is accorded second-class status, consigned to the marginalia of society, and scorned by the 'professional philosophers.' It is with pride and pleasure, therefore, that I welcome the work of our young friend Lestat, who as he continues his studies will bring Satanism from the margins of our intellectual life and right to the center of discussion where it belongs. Lestat, please step forward."

I inferred from the cheering that followed that the audience included friends of Lestat who wanted to provide moral support. Lestat did not strike me as sufficiently well-known to cause this hubbub all by himself - no list of publications or public awards accompanied his name on the posters.

"Friends," he said, "and some of you are my friends, literally -- I think it is important to start off by saying that my work is a work in progress.

"I have been studying the great works of Satanism for years now - LaVey, and Crowley, especially. Despite the obvious truth of what they say, I nonetheless find that these authors tend to merely assert their truths, confident that their truth will find its mark if spoken clearly enough. However, the world is full of clever apologists for religion who, using verbal play, will try to dissuade you from the path of truth.

"Before I started here at Harvard, I was self-taught in philosophy. Inspired by Marilyn Manson's references to Nietzsche, I started with "Beyond Good And Evil", then looked further into the ethical theories of other famous philosophers. I found that Satanism is no mere fluke. Its central ethical doctrines are at the core of Western Philosophy - appearing often merely as the foil or whipping boy of the apologists of the status quo, but occasionally as the openly espoused position of a brilliant mind. My intention while here at Harvard is to delve deeply into philosophy, and eventually to write a work on ethics which explicitly and openly states the theoretical and philosophical basis for the ethical doctrines of Satanism and relates them to doctrines set forth by classic Western thinkers. I would like to share with you now what progress I have achieved so far.

"As a starting point, we should consider Thomas Hobbes. This brilliant thinker recognized that there is no spirit, only the material world. In this way, he freed himself from the confines of the notion that god exists. Without god, there is no basis for the ethics of the religious moralizers. Without god above, we are free to recognize that we are each of us a god, entitled and empowered to lay down what is right and what is good. The state, according to Hobbes, was not truly an entity over and above the people who create it, but rather was constituted by them in an act of will. Thus, its powers would be defined by the consent of those who created it. Out of this line of thought came the great liberal thinkers who held that government exists only by the consent of the governed and not by divine right, the same types of thinkers who wrote our own Declaration of Independence and created this country in an act of will.

"We see much of this line of thought also in Nietzsche who said that 'god is dead' and that the supermen would free themselves of the slave morality of the followers and instead legislate their own morality.

"It does not end there, however. The great utilitarian thinkers of the eighteen hundreds also recognized that there was no god to legislate what is right or wrong. What is right or wrong is not defined in advance but instead must be determined by considering what people want for themselves. The principle of utility - that what is right is what produces the greatest good for the greatest number - was simply a way of letting people decide for themselves what they want. Each person would determine what was good for him or her, and let the largest producer of good prevail. Oh, certainly, there are those who would pollute the principle of utility by demanding a definition of what counted as the 'good' in this calculation, but the most enlightened utilitarians realized that the only thing that could count as good was pleasure.

"Now, Hobbes also was right to point out that people act always in their own interest, and one of Satanism's clearest visions is its recognition of this point. But we go further. Not only do people pursue their own interest, but we recognize that it is right for them to pursue their own interest. This too is an ethical doctrine of Hobbes that overthrows the hypocrisy of religion. What we have conjoined in Satanism is the recognition that the good is pleasure, and that each person seeks his or her own pleasure and is right to do so. Indeed, we assert that the good person, the healthy person, is one who throws off the artificial constraints of religion and common morality, and pursues his or her own pleasure as their right. Satanism would thus be called, in philosophical parlance, an ethical hedonistic egoism.

"Certainly there are philosophical arguments against this view. But they all fail for simple reasons. Any effort to refute egoism and hedonism requires some notion of 'right' or 'good' which transcends the material pleasures which we Satanists say should be our goal. However the concept is dressed up, we are asked to believe in 'god' in some form - as a personal spirit from whom this unearthly 'good' flows, or as the impersonal 'force' of good itself.

"But why should we accept any of this nonsense? There is no need for god in the form of religious doctrine or in the disguise of an impersonal but transcendent "good." Science has shown us that there are material explanations for all things, and saying that things happen 'because god wills it' or 'because it was for the good' amounts to a confession of ignorance where science should be. Sophisticated philosophical thinkers of the last century considered such talk of god or of 'good' as metaphysics which is the same as nonsense. And nothing has been done to show that conclusion to be false.

"And where is this god and what kind of god must he be? There is too much suffering in this world for any sensible person to believe that if there is a god he is a benevolent god. The old philosophical problem remains: an all-good god would not suffer evil to exist. But evil exists. Therefore, there is no god. A similar argument disproves the existence of any transcendent 'good' guiding our lives.

"The apologists for religion and mainstream ethics find their gods dead, and no support there for their notions of right or good. What else, then, could there be? These things, right and good as used by the moralists, they cannot be measured or touched. People cannot agree on what they are. Let us instead join with the western tradition of materialism which rejects them as fanciful notions and nothing more. Let's look behind the language and ask the hard question which Satanism has always asked: isn't 'good' and 'evil' nothing more than 'do this' or 'do that,' 'I like this' or 'I like that,' just as modern ethical non-cognitivists and emotivists, just like behaviorists like B.F. Skinner say? That is not just mere assertion. If there is no basis in science or experience - no natural basis -- for saying that such things as god, good and evil really exist, then we have to ask what these words have meant when they have been used in the past. And all they have meant is that one person or group of people was controlling another through the smoke and mirrors of religion, dressing up commands and tools of oppression with fancy words.

"We Satanists stand in a proud, but minority, tradition of Western Philosophy which throws off that tyranny, and opens its eyes to what is really around us. We celebrate the forces that truly motivate people, the dark churning desires that lurk behind the fancy words. We pray to and conduct rituals around those forces because they are real and the only thing that deserves to be called good or right; they are what leads to fulfillment and satisfaction.

"What I have said about Satanism has all been tied to western philosophical tradition. There is nothing in Satanism which cannot find firm footing in reason and sound philosophy. I recognize and admit that my own expression of it here may be flawed. I do, after all, have some years of study left. But I am confident that after my education is complete, I will be prepared to put these thoughts into better shape, and present a new version of the Satanic Bible, one which approaches this wonderful religion from the basis of a critical reason which, in all honesty, is the very force that brings us to it in the first place.

"Thank you."

The crowd let out such a roar of approval I was deaf for a moment, and surprised by the volume that could be generated by this size audience. Lestat turned and accepted a handshake from DeLuciforo and another from Bill the libertarian host. Bill stepped up to the microphone and invited any interested members of the audience to come up and meet Lestat on more intimate terms.

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