Bob Thiel still is struggling to find everything in life one pagan festival after another. Thiel is hyperventilating over the connection he sees with birthdays and Anton Lavey's
Satanic Bible. Because Lavey mentions birthdays Thiel assumes that the rest of humanity is sitting there worshiping Satan as they light the birthday candles.
Back in 1969 Anton Lavey wrote The Satanic Bible. On page 96 (in the 1976 version) it mentions birthdays:
THE highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion is
the date of one’s own birth. This is in direct contradiction to the holy
of holy days of other religions, which deify a particular god who has
been created in an anthropomorphic form of their own image, thereby
showing that the ego is not really buried.
The Satanist feels: “Why not really be honest and if you are going to
create a god in your image, why not create that god as yourself.” Every
man is a god if he chooses to recognize himself as one. So, the
Satanist celebrates his own birthday as the most important holiday of
the year. After all, aren’t you happier about the fact that you were
born than you are about the birth of someone you have never even met? Or
for that matter, aside from religious holidays, why pay higher tribute
to the birthday of a president or to a date in history than we do to the
day we were brought into this greatest of all worlds?
After one’s own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are
Walpurgisnacht and Halloween (or All Hallows’ Eve). (Lavey A, Gilmore P.
The Satanic Bible. Avon, September 1, 1976, p. 96–note it is on page 53
of an online version I found also).
Bob then has to drag his perception of what he thinks the Bible says about it:
The Bible never encourages the celebration of birthdays. Instead, it
tends to speak in a negative manner concerning them (cf. Matthew
14:6-11; Jeremiah 20:14-18).
Of course, early Christians did not celebrate birthdays nor did the
early Jews. Nor have real Christians ever celebrated Halloween. As far
as the Jews, notice what the first century Jewish historian Josephus
noted that Jewish families did not celebrate birthdays:
Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals
at the birth of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drinking
to excess (Josephus. Translated by W. Whiston. Against Apion,
Book II, Chapter 26. Extracted from Josephus Complete Works, Kregel
Publications, Grand Rapids (MI), 14th printing, 1977, p. 632).
Then Bob has to admit that there is NO prohibition in the Bible against birthdays. In spite of that, he dances around and says that birthdays should not be observed. Just because he can find no reference to an early Christian observing one, does not mean that they didn't. There are a lot of things the Bible does not record about the early Christians. Just because it is not there does not mean they never did it. The Bible is NOT a history book, when will Bob ever realize that?
Was this review helpful? 6This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.Armstrong_Auditorium, Manager at Armstrong Auditorium, responded to this reviewMarch 11, 2013How wonderful that you and your new husband had some dates here. Uncovering Oklahoma's 2012 Date Idea Book listed Armstrong Auditorium a top dating destination in Edmond, Okla. Looks like it worked for you!
