Chapter 1: The Devil Came Down to Campus

On a Sunday evening Blinker and I were sitting in the student union cafeteria with pie and coffee bemoaning the fact that the campus was so dull. Out of idleness we were brainstorming ways to stir up a little controversy in the heart of the bible belt. I don't remember which of us thought of it, but we agreed that it would be the height of apostasy to hold a black mass in the Remembrance Chapel. The chapel occupied a central location on campus and was revered by many of our fundamentalist classmates and alumni. It had been built from the bricks of a building that had been destroyed by a fire in which someone had lost his life. There was no way that we could actually organize such an event much less get permission from the university to hold it. We could and did put an ad in the student newspaper implying that a black mass would take place at a specific date and time. We crafted a vaguely worded announcement that the followers of the Prince of Darkness would meet at the chapel at sunset a few days hence. It was easy enough to surreptitiously slip the handwritten notice into the community announcements box in the newspaper office. Later we found it quite comical to read that the newspaper had no idea who had submitted the ad nor how it had passed editorial review to actually be published.

The upshot was that on the announced day hundreds of members of the Baptist Student Union gathered at dawn to encircle the Remembrance Chapel and to pray to God to keep the devil at bay. Throughout the day there was also a large group of on-lookers who gathered no doubt to see what devil worshippers looked like when they showed up. Blinker and I were in the crowd too enjoying the entertainment that we had caused. When no satanists arrived at the scheduled time, the Baptists celebrated the efficacy of their prayers thanking God for keeping away the forces of evil. Blinker and I had a good laugh on the sidelines. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it because we couldn't resist the temptation to take credit for the spectacle among our friends.

A couple of weeks later I was approached by Cal Simpson, an associate professor from the Educational Psychology department. He started to tell me that he was a member of an adult group at the First Baptist Church that was studying comparative religions. He mentioned that they had had as guest speakers a Catholic priest, a Jewish Rabbi and representatives of other religions. Then came the shocker; he invited me to speak on my religion. I had been raised a Christian but as I pursued my education and matured, I had come to the conclusion that all religion was a travesty. I considered myself an atheist. I told him that I doubted he was aware of my religious views.

Then he said, "Oh yes, I know all about you. You are a devil worshipper."

Momentarily stunned, I quickly assumed that he must have heard about the prank we had played on campus and had taken it seriously. My first thought was to refuse, but then I reconsidered. It occurred to me that it might be entertaining to beard the Christian lion in his den. I asked him to tell me just exactly what he wanted me to do. He told me that the group was comprised of about 20 to 30 adults mostly college educated. I would be expected to give a summary of my religion and then answer questions. He emphasized that it would be very informal and friendly. Thinking that Blinker and a few others might want in on the fun, I asked whether I could bring a few friends.

"Sure," he replied. "Bring anyone you like. The next meeting of the group for which we need a speaker is in two weeks. We meet Sunday evenings at 7:00. Shall we schedule you for that date?"

"Yes," I agreed, "I can be ready by then. Do you need to know who will accompany me?"

He said that as long as he could count on me, it wouldn't matter who else came. He told me the exact room at the Baptist church annex where the meeting would occur and we parted company.

Now I faced a dilemma of what to say about my religious beliefs. Not really being a Satanist, I didn't want to portray myself as one. I did own a copy of Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible" but I didn't want to present myself as a follower of LaVey either. Moreover atheism is simply disbelief in the supernatural. Atheists, in general, have no atheistic code of beliefs to proselytize, as do the theists. I did have a pretty strong sense of what I believe and what I considered to be a useful basis for morality. I would later come to understand it as the Non-aggression Principle. In the end, I pulled some talking points out of LaVey's book without attribution. Intending to stir up maximal controversy, I selected a passage from "Man and His Gods" by Homer W. Smith to close the presentation:

"Many reasons have been given for the 'fall' of the Roman empire, most of them but partial answers or mere guesses. Be the true causes what they may, it was not in the nature of the new faith to oppose the process of disintegration. At the opening of the Christian Era there had been schools in every considerable town, and many advanced academies in the great cities; these the Christians gradually allowed to die out, maintaining only a few theological seminaries. They were from the first not interested in the examination of nature, since the end of the world was so close at hand; by the time they had become accustomed to an indefinitely continued existence all natural knowledge had come to be identified with paganism, or interpreted as contrary to revelation and, in either instance, savoring of evil. Galen (?130-200) the physician, Ptolemy (?100-160) the geographer, and Diophantus (fl. ca. 250) the mathematician, were the last in their respective fields to follow the classic traditions, as Lucian (125-200) was the last exponent of Hellenic skepticism, and Julian (331-363) the last emperor to defend religious tolerance. The temple schools of Asklepios had been shut and public lecturing by nonofficial teachers had been practically prohibited in Rome and Constantinople in the fourth century. Under an edict of Theodosius, Bishop Theophilus in 389 destroyed the Serapeum in Alexandria, and with it nearly all the works in the only remaining pagan library of importance in the world. In 529 Justinian closed the schools at Athens, the last to teach Greek philosophy, and the intensity of this emperor's persecutions brought about within a short space of time the forcible baptism of 70,000 persons in Asia Minor alone, and so alienated the population of Egypt and Syria that the way was paved for the spread of Mohammedanism. The Christians preferred prayer and exorcism to pagan magic, religious to geometric theorems, the gospels to any other literature. So fallible was reason held that Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) condemned all literature and intellectual effort, and in the East the laity were forbidden to read even the sacred book.