[Perndog]

The First Church of Satan is a defunct group of wannabes. You probably mean the Church of Satan.

If the people you know spend a lot of time studying the occult and pretend they kill nuns and burn churches, you haven't met any Satanists.

Satanism has little to do with the occult except for the use of ritual magic, which is seen in quite a different light by us than by occultniks. Most Satanists openly ridicule said occultniks. Have you actually studied the religion? If not, you should probably get yourself a basic understanding before you start asking questions.

And as for the matter of definition, it's simple, really. Before Anton LaVey, there was no Satanism. There were devil-worshippers, there were occultniks, there were Thelemites, and there were all manner of assorted weirdos. Then he came along, got a little social club together, and eventually formulated a religion out of it, which he called Satanism. To be as terse and blunt as possible...finders keepers. Explain what right the pretenders have to the name. Regarding "every part of Satanism is built off something else," well so is Thelema and you don't see a lot of debate over what is really Thelema and what isn't.

I notice your link has a copyright date of 2000. As for what it is: mostly, a bunch of pretentious bullshit. For one thing, Dr. LaVey had a popular quote which I quite agree with: "Those who spell magic with a k aren't."

No, I do not have an online link to the Satanic Bible. We have things called copyright laws around here, and if you can't afford an eight dollar book you should have more important things to do than discuss philosophy.

And I hate when I forget to log out of my character accounts before posting.