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The religion of what?Reader comment on item: Is Allah God? Submitted by John Bastile (Malaysia), Jan 24, 2006 at 21:25 Millions have perished in religious wars. People have died in the name of Zeus, Apollo, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Yahweh, Buddha, Kali, Vishnu, Jesus and Allah. All religious people seem to claim to have sole franchise rights to God's products and services. They seem to have a direct communication with God and some has even visited Him. They claim that they have exclusive tickets to His Paradise. What a journey of a lifetime.While championing their religion to be the only true religion, the rest must be the work of the Devil or Satan. Therefore, the "I'm right – Therefore you're wrong" logic is mostly applied in religious debates. Instead of asking which religion is correct, I would like to address a question – how do you know whether a religion is false? Let's take the case. Let's imagine that Satan wanted to destroy humanity. He saw that many of us are worshipping God and tried to lead us astray. Sin causes death. Therefore salvation has to be paid. Who died for you so that you may live? So, Satan decided to have his own religion!! He tried Satanism. Sadly, it didn't work. Satanists were immediately vulgar and were often neutralized quickly. The lesson learned is that pure evil cannot manifest for too long. Most humans are good and peaceful. We will not allow evil to manifest. We will defeat evil. A more effective way is to blend evil with some elements of ‘truths', so that the people will be confused. Whenever an enlightened person wanted to reveal Satan, his worshippers will quickly retort by claiming the ‘truths' or kill him. In that way, Satan is able to maintain a sustainable religion that can then par with other world religion that promotes peace. Sadly, Satan will be defeated once again because when his religion grew, many of Satan's worshippers, born into the religion, by virtue of being God's creation, are good and peaceful. Therefore, they cling to the elements of ‘truths', instead of following his core teachings – which is to kill everyone else, conquer and subjugate the entire world. God is everywhere. Even when Satan directed his followers to prostate in a certain direction, not all of his obedient followers will be doomed to hell because in their hearts, they are still good. God shall be the judge. Now, let's see how we can identify Satan's religion. There must be certain indicators. Below are the TOP TEN measures of identifying Satan's religion. 1. When Satan approached a person, it will usually be in a dark environment, like at night or in a dark cave. The person visited by Satan will have fear seizing him. He will be suicidal as the presence of evil overwhelms him. He will believe that he is being possessed by the devil. No true prophets of God will feel suicidal. Mostly, true prophets would feel unworthy or incompetent of His call. 2. Since Satan refused to accept that humans are ‘higher' than angels, Satan will want to "lower" the status of human and reduce them to "animal" level. Satan's promise is a reward to satisfy human's most basic animal instincts – sex, power and food. His Garden of Paradise will be about flowing wine, big breasted perpetual virgins and big palaces for his followers to live like kings with a big harem. There shall be no talk of any commune with him as he hates humans. Only degrading the integrity of human. 3. Since Satan is envious of human and the beauty of human, even in the physical form, he would want his followers to cover themselves from head to toe. The body becomes something to be ashamed of. God creations shall be covered and hidden from viewing. Furthermore, some of God's creations will be called dirty and cannot be touched. 4. Since money is a powerful driving force, Satan shall promise his followers that should they follow him, he shall grant them the wealth of neighbouring countries and empires. He will lead them to attack and raid neighbouring towns. Kill their men and enslaves the women and children. 5. War is Satan's favorite pastime. Therefore, his religion will be militant. There will be roles for his followers to be warriors. Rewards will be promised for those who die in battles. Deserters will be punished and killed. Satan will decree: Kill all apostates. 6. Sex is also a prominent force to deal with. Most of God's people would either deny sex or restraint from it during their spiritual journey. Satan's religion, of course, would encourage it. Therefore, it would only be complete if the followers of Satan commit all sexual crimes possible – pedophilia, incest, illicit sex and rape. His prophet would be the MODEL of all his followers, so Satan's prophet will be granted special privileges when it comes to having multiple sexual partners and incestuous partners. There shall be Satan's divine revelations to curtail any suspecting good followers when a scandal is caused by his prophet. Therefore, Satan's holy book will have verses meant ONLY for his prophet – to give him the licence to have sex with whoever he desires. Laws may be made to favor his prophet personally but cause sufferings to countless many of his followers. For example, rape victims under Satan's laws may be required to produce numerous eyewitnesses to the crime. Otherwise, it shall be deemed as a false accusation and be whipped. If the rape victim is pregnant, Satan would decree a death punishment. 7. Satan also hates the freedom of choice that humans were given. Therefore, Satan would design a method to curb his followers and enslave them with rituals. One possible ritual would be to make them prostrate to him 24 hours a day. Maybe every half hour. That would be about 50 times a day. His prophet may have to negotiate to reduce the number down. Anyone who doesn't follow the rituals will be flogged or even killed. Bonus points will be promised to those who perform more rituals or memorize chanting prayers. 8. The lesson learnt is that if Satan's religion was purely unique, it may be defeated easily with rational thinking of educated people. His prophet may spew out Satanic Verses. Therefore, he has to fuse his religion with other God's religions. You know, borrow one practice here and adopt another practice there. This gives the appearance that his followers also ‘worship' the same God. Furthermore, Satan's followers will response immediately and with hostility to any doubters or critics. Deception and assassination shall be Satan's weapons. 9. The essence of Satan is hate and his ultimate destination is hell. Therefore, one way to reveal his religion is to look at his ‘holy' book and look for signs. His holy book will contain hate verses for all those who do not follow Satan. He will call for conversion or killing of unbelievers. He will have vivid and fanciful ideas about torturing people. His ‘holy' book will be filled with promises of torments. 10. The last way to identify Satan's religion is to look at the way his prophet would die. God would ensure his prophets die only after fulfilling his requests and done his Will. Stories, either facts or myths, would normally immortalize a prophet. Satan's prophets and rulers would likely die as a result of assassinations, poisonings or other cruel deaths, perpetrated by his own people, normally due to in-fighting. Most importantly, his prophets or rulers would die prematurely without any warning or accomplishing his will. Is there any religion that fits these 10 criteria? If you happen to believe that your religion fits the bill, I recommend that you leave it as soon as possible. Please be careful, as criterion # 5 will warn you that you may be killed if undiscovered. Will all Satan's worshippers go to hell? Well, first of all, let God decide that. My opinion is no. As Satan's religion grows, many of his worshippers were born into innocent families. God's good nature will flourish. Most of them are actually victims as well. What happens to those who cling on to the elements of "truth"? These are fairy-tale worshippers that rather believe of the scraps of truth that Satan spewed in order to sustain it to par with world religions. Since God is everywhere, anyone who seeks truth shall find it. Nonetheless, Satan's worshippers will be poor intellectually, economically and spiritually. They seek carnal pleasures and hence, miss out on a much-rewarding spiritual journey of enlightenment. What about the true worshipers of Satan? Now, these people you have to be careful. They will not hesitate to kill anyone. As Satan is doomed, his followers will always believe that they are the ‘oppressed' people. Hence, they will kill innocents everywhere. Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". << Previous Comment Next Comment >> Reader comments (2034) on this item
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