It's symbolic more for impact. Plus humanist was already taken.

@JoelLovell Understood, but for a fairly narrow, deliberately confrontational sort of impact. It's perfectly valid, but not super flexible positioning. I honestly can't blame people in this particular case for assuming a Satanist has something to do with belief in Satan.

Sure humanism was taken, but if you're a humanist, why not present as one.

That said, you gotta love the way they troll Christians. Every time a Ten Commandments monument is approved for the local courthouse, there's the Church of Satan applying for a Baphomet statue. Lately they've been going up against Christian "release time classes" in public schools by starting up Satanic versions. I even saw the coloring book somewhere, it has a bunch of children walking happily through a meadow with Satan, cloven hooves and all.

Often these things don't go through but they have the advantage that the Christians are forced to allow equal access or else not have their own activity / statue. The Church of Satan is dead serious and willing to go through with it, the only way to prevent that from happening is that NO ONE gets their private club activity. It really drives home and enforces the notion that you can't have religious activity in the public sphere unless ALL [a]religions are allowed. Satanism is useful here, as there's little that is more effective at making a Christian fundamentalist's head explode than Satanism, even if in name only. The irony is that they can't get past the name; if they could, they probably wouldn't mind allowing it in the interest of having their own release time classes. Instead they cut off their nose to spite their face.

So ... I am alternately baffled by, and admiring of Lavey Satanism.

@mordant in my case the reason why I don't just identify with being a humanist is because Satanism is more dogmatic as it incorporates a number of viewpoints; existentialism, realism, athiesm, nihilism, hedonism, antithiesm, elitism and sometimes misanthropic. it's deeper than an outsider would garner & deliberately so. It's an order. It's a way of life. It's a public, yet secret society. You might not subscribe to it because of its contentious & provocative nature but Lavey realised that there was a gap in the market for people that would gravitate to such an natural ideology. I found Satanism since I was 18 and I actively seeked it. It wasn't taught to me growing up, Christianity was, that shows (for some) the actual need for a philosophy like it. I would advise you to read the book. The first part is the poinient part the second section of curses and spells are just for those who want to delve into the romantic mysticism that some expect from Satanism so having the name Lavey obliged.

Find people think they are one in the same thing.

all bullshit is bullshit so I guess they're partly right.