Introduction to talk.religion — A scholarly introduction to talk.religion, the founding discussion group of Usenet's talk.* religious hierarchy, active from August 1986 and captured here in its first weeks of existence.
Lucifer is the Patron Saint of Science and Philosophy — A structured philosophical argument that Lucifer's three Biblical acts — rebellion, the gift of knowledge, and questioning faith — make him the proper patron of scientific inquiry, by a philosophy student at the University of Alberta, 1986.
Satan, Prometheus, Shelley and Christ — Gene Ward Smith of UC Berkeley draws on Shelley's Prometheus Unbound to connect the Satan-Prometheus comparison to Christ, showing how Romantic poetry explicitly linked all three figures — the rebel angel, the fire-bringer, and the crucified god — as variants of the same archetype.