[Glice]

Originally Posted by Anton 'Levite' LaVey

1. Stupidity—The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.
2. Pretentiousness—Empty posturing can be most irritating and isn’t applying the cardinal rules of Lesser Magic. On equal footing with stupidity for what keeps the money in circulation these days. Everyone’s made to feel like a big shot, whether they can come up with the goods or not.[/url] (from the nine Satanic sins)

Interestingly, I would suggest that anyone railing against stupidity must, eo ipso, be pretentious.

I don't have any problems with how people describe their religious beliefs. Well, I say that, the number of people who describe themselves as Buddhist without the faintest fucking idea of what that religion's about make my blood boil - interestingly, you don't get so many people saying the same for Ba'hai or Sikhism, both of which are far closer to the projected naive-Westerner understanding of Buddhism. Anyway, I don't, in theory, have a problem with people wanting to believe in things. But someone 'believing' in Satanism, as pbradley suggests, always strikes me as the ad hominem of religious belief. I understand a lot of people get burnt on Christianity, but these people mostly end up abiding by the core ethical epistemic of monotheism while rejecting the corporeal manifestations of same (Israel's foreign policy, so-called Sharia law, the Papacy).

It's not dissimilar to listening to Bob Marley and deciding you're a rasta - as a certain poster here has doubtless shown, there's a fuckload more to it than just weed and reggae.