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What’s everybody’s opinion on Satanism? (Specifically the Satanic Temple)

I’m not a Satanist and don’t really know much about them but I just heard that a movie has come out about them. It’s not available anywhere near me so I can’t watch it but it got me thinking, what does the atheist community think about Satanists in general? Edit: I specifically mean the Satanic Temple.

thegabster 5 Aug 18
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13 comments

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1

I know the church of Satan and the satanic temple are not about worshipping the biblical Satan. They are both humanistic and atheistic associations. I have been a member of the church of Satan for almost 30 years.

1

i do not think the satanic church is actually about satanism, despite the name or any claims. i do not think the satanic temple worships satan or any other imaginary creature. i think it exists to taunt those who violate the separation of church and state by demanding equal treatment. when someone puts up a statue of jesus, for example, on public property, the church demands the right to put up some satanic thing or other. thus i think satanism is as silly as any other religion, but the satanic church appears to be doing pretty well for all of us reasonable people.

g

2

there are 3 kinds of "satanism"

  1. The religious one that is a religion, and one of the dumbest ones, they worship a divinity that wants to destroy them and create chaos.

  2. The philosophical and ethic group that uses the symbol of Lucifer to make a point against the poor moral standards and hypocrisy of christianism.

  3. The group of atheist that use Satanism and the "equality of religions" to show how absurd is to give privilege to religions, creating a back door to talk about rationalism, science and critical thinking when christians try to occupy public spaces like schools or events.

My opinions:
Type 1 is a religion and as I said a dumb religion
Type 2 is a valid point, but maybe we are giving too much credit for chistianism only and treating it as a special kind of fairy tale.
Type 3 is a genius maneuver that can neutralize any attempt of religions to occupy a public space that they have no right. If a cross is in public space, so a baphomet donated by satanists must be. If the kids on school will listen chistian preaching, so they will listen about the real science and rationalism of the satanists.

0

I ultimately don't trust Satanism's core. I think that "Satan" is a word that, because of the nature of words to unpack into categories of sometimes contrasting definitions, inevitably will always stand for the avatar of the ultimate evil. I understand that pagan religions are cool, right, maybe even holy but I simply can't ignore what I have learned about it.

Ultimately, however, I'm no authority on this stuff. I'm one brain for one body. I can't extend much past myself to say what others may do, think, etc.

I have a notion of ethos and other stuff. To me, language has a domain of meanings for each term, almost exactly like a mathematical function. That's it.

But, who defined Satan as evil? The Christians? Because they aren't exactly known for being right about much of anything... For me, and according to the supposed deeds committed by him in their Bible, God is the ultimate evil...

@Kafirah

I don't know who defined Satan as evil, but consider this truth:

Asking "who" is just avoiding how the image works with the definition, and all the knowledge coming off of that. We want to reach BEYOND meaning and create illustration, because meaning comes from meaners, which are just tools of the work of grasping terms, they are not the real matter of the work.

So it's not about who defined it, than with the actual meaning of the word. If I'm correct, the source of the word describes a character that is always doing something wrong, but it's moreso about the social aspect of wrong, in very basic and simple terms. I can imagine why "evil", "wrong" and other negatives are delineated from the concept of Satan but I don't think there's a single scripture where he's not embodying literally every negative quality a self can assume to be like.

People like to put him in real context or to create some world view, but hermeneutics doesn't work like that. In fact, the Bible is literally just a bunch of words strung together and you have all these "interpeters" using the process of meaning to completely avoid what is actually being told.

@DZhukovin Good point. But considering your own logical argument, Satan is a bastardization of the word Shaytan which means "Adversary". The definition of adversary is merely opposite or opponent. Therefore, with god being the most malevolent character ever created, and Satan is his opposite opponent adversary, that would, by default make Satan the good guy, and any other definition can be chalked up to misinterpretation and misinformation at best, and sheer conjecture at worse. Basically, fake news. So what has become the association of the word is not the same as the definition of the word because it is attributed to the wrong source. Satan, even in the bible, was only ever a scapegoat... which is exactly where the word scapegoat comes from, when fictional people in a book of fairy tales would magically cast demons into the body of a sacrificial goat... which is all a bunch of bullshit, just like associating evil with a fictional character. But, to better illustrate my point, Satan supposedly killed 11 people in the bible... either mankind or god killed all the rest. Just because some people praise god for doing it doesn't mean he isn't the real monster in those books. Sometimes you just have to think for yourself about some things. This definition problem being one of them.

@Kafirah

Okay, but if you're whittling the concept of Satan down to "adversary", and filtering it through a translation "Shaytan", then why would anyone take your input seriously? It's a word. Like any other word, it's referrable, and an image can be built. If it turns out that Satan is evil (which I think is the more likely conclusion, given that he's antagonistic), then so be it. If not, so be it. But "evil" works like an effect, moreso of a complete characterization anyway. So if one person says he's evil, and one person says he's not, then those come together, but only because "is" is multifaceted. Even in Math, which would be the analytical way of looking at this, "is" can be retranslated into other operators.

If we place the idea not only in the process of assigning properties like "evil", "good", "blue", "red", then we can also make analytics, but if we limit our analysis, then we kind of lose out on the ability to reconcile that binary paradox. We can do that by saying that an excluded middle only excludes within its own image, and then we can reason that that's why not everything is binary.

@DZhukovin Why would anyone take Satan seriously? And people would take my well-reasoned and knowledgeable input seriously because it makes logical sense to those receptive to such things. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about those who have no use for logic and reason, or what they think of my input one way or the other. Unreasonable people can fuck off.

@Kafirah

I don't know, and okay.

2

I had the great opportunity to watch the Hail Satan film and I met the Satanic Temple members. The film helped me to understand that they are fighting for equal rights, justice and stop Christianity to take over the government or the government give adventages to the Christians groups.

2

I'm a member. We are all atheists who do not believe in the supernatural in any form and the same goes for pseudoscience. We are a nontheistic anti-religion religion determined to keep church and state separate and pointing out the hypocrisy of religion by fighting them on their own turf. Fire with hellfire, as it were. We choose Satan, or in my case, Lucifer, as a symbol of rebellion against arbitrary authority as found in literary works such as that of John Milton.

3

The Satanic Temple does not worship Satan. I'm a member because they believe in the strict separation of Church and State.

3

The only people I know who believe in Satan are Christians. It's nonsense, but it is extremely frightening to children--as anyone who's ever been to Sunday school can attest. I don't think Christianity is by any means all bad but as far as I know, it is the world's scariest religion precisely because of beliefs in Satan and everlasting Hell.

0

Could not be as evil as Islam!

7

They are non-religious group fighting to get rid of religion in government. They take advantage of loopholes made for churches, so they exploit them to force the city/state to back off. good examples are church displays in state capitals, oh a manger? enjoy our Baphomet statue.

4

Satan is as real as god, in my book. 👹

0

Malarkey! Also in my reading of the bible, I find Satan/Lucifer/Devil much better than Yahweh.

Thank you. Kind of you to say.

5

well, which form of satanism?
There are different types:
Theistic
Polytheistic
Non-theistic

I usually think of The Satanic Temple..a non-Theistic activist group, which means that they don' believe in Satan, or god for that matter. But they fight the good fight against religion trying to take away our rights .

The Theistic types? I can only ask why?

I was thinking more Satanic Temple. I edited the question to make it more clear. 🙂

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