In my honest opinion Satanism isn't an organized religion.
@Catholics: why is the Catholic church so lax these days? They basically changed what they believed in for hundreds of years to be all main-stream and shit.
Catholicism, like any faith is run by men. Men like power, Church had power. Church went crazy to maintain power. Truthfully, the Church has been lax since the second Vatican council in 1962. The collapse of summum bonum took some major re-adjustment. The last few Popes have actually been really well educated and promoted scientific research and such. John Paul II specifically made it his mission to modernize the Church realizing that the old archaic approach ostracized people for arguably no reason.
Heck the leaders of the Catholic Church sat down with the leaders of Hinduism and established both faiths worship the same God. The Church is working hard to throw off close minded restraints that power politics forced on it and is simply focusing on making a message of love and morality as accessible as possible.
Yeah, to most people it isn't but i think it is. It's a real religion there's probably a few in the whole entire world who believe in Satan.
Satanism not a recognized religion because there are a bunch of "Santanisms". Few of them really have any thing to do with Satan. Satanism is organized there are churches. I've been to a black mass. I've read the Satanic Bible by LaVey and all of Aleister Crowley's work. Crowley made Satanism what it is, don't care what the officials say, Crowley invented sex magik, espoused the indulgence of the self and equivalency and most of the practices that the occult use today long before LaVey wrote any thing down.
Honestly, I as a Christian don't believe in Satan(Church does, I don't). Satan represents a force equal to God, that God created...see the logic problem there? If God creates Satan then Satan is not as powerful as God ergo Satan can't win. Aside from the fact for God to be God, God must be goo and God therefore can't create or do evil, creating Satan is evil. On top of that main message of Christianity is God loves you more than is humanly possible, if that's true why would he send any one to "hell"?