this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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For those unfamiliar, The Satanic Temple is an atheistic organization. Here are its tenets. I often ask people what they disagree with and get very little in the way of meaningful response.

THERE ARE SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL TENETS

I

One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.

II

The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.

III

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

IV

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

V

Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

VI

People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.

VII

Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.

https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets

DO YOU WORSHIP SATAN?

No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The Satanic Temple believes that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse.

https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/faq

She's 13. Does anyone know if she's allowed to become a member? The website isn't clear on that.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Me when I found out satanists don't actually worship Satan:

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

TST is different than the Church of Satan, which does worship Satan. If you’re looking for a place for more literal satanism.

Edit: Might be wrong about CoS. But if you really wanna worship Satan you don’t need to have a specific church name for it, I say fill your boots!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

CoS or Levayan satanism does not worship Satan. Like TST, they don't even believe in a literal Satan. Although they do have a concept of magic. Some in CoS take that tongue-in-cheak. Some take it more literally.

IIRC, Luciferins do believe in a literal Satan.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

CoS does not worship Satan

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Not to be confused with the Church of Satan.

The Satanic Temple is way better.

Just putting it out there for anyone who doesn't know.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago

The Satanic Temple is incredibly based. I've been a member since they started trolling Iowa legislators a year or two ago with Iowa Satanic Temple School in response to the school choice nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like the kids are actually allright

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

🎶Jamie had a chance well she really did🎶

🎶Whoa oh🎶

🎶Instead she acted with compassion and empathy towards all creatures 🎶

🎶Whoa oh🎶

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Me and my wife are both Members of the TST and we're wholeheartedly proud of it. They are doing such great things for religious equality and attempting to stop the overreach of Christianity within our schools and government. We donate to them regularly and I'm so happy to be supporting a group that is genuinely doing great things for our individual rights and the betterment of our communities as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

🎵 Be gay, do drugs, hail Satan 🎵

Great song!!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As far as membership goes, yes kids are allowed. You can buy a membership card and certificate on their website, or you can just go and participate in one of their public events as long as the event doesn't mention any age requirements. My local chapter definitely does family friendly events.

They organize events on Facebook groups in my area typically. Just search for TST and your state name and you should be able to find a local chapter that does some sort of events.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (9 children)

In this thread: people who have never taken a deep dive into the myriad forms of ethics and morality that have existed throughout history

Like, a whole bunch of the arguing in this thread boils down to "when does utilitarianism overrule moral absolutism" or "is it always the case that one should use deontology, vs consequentialism, vs virtue ethics"

These are really complicated questions that have been considered and discussed at great lengths and I see a lot of comments in here making statements assuming one or the other is absolutely correct, without addressing the underlying justifications for their personal ethical and moral convictions

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As someone who grew up in a conservative Christian church and became an atheist as an adult, I still have an innate emotional reaction to the name The Satanic Temple that I struggle to get over, even as I’ve fully gotten over earlier emotional reactions like making jokes about Jesus the same way I might about anything else (which I couldn’t do at the beginning of my atheist journey).

Good on your daughter for not caring about that and fully evaluating it based on its tenets.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It might help to better understand the origin of the term.

It first appears in Job in reference to a supernatural 'adversary' who petitions Yahweh to be able to kill Job's children and ruins his livelihood causing him to tear his clothes in grief and setting up the rest of the book which is a dialogue on the injustice of suffering.

The later dialogue part of Job is pretty much a direct adaptation of the earlier Babylonian Theodicy, a dialogue on suffering.

But this earlier opening has a remarkable parallel with the earlier Canaanite Tale of Aqhat, where in the opening the goddess Anat petitions El as the head of the pantheon for permission to kill the son of Danel, which he finds out about at the same time he finds out his livelihood is ruined, when he tears his clothes in grief.

So it pretty much looks like what we have in Job was a combination of two earlier polytheistic stories where a lazy editor under later monotheistic reform needed to get rid of a different god in the story while keeping the role, so switched out the name for a generic term of 'adversary' (Satan).

This addition of a supernatural adversary caught the imagination of later development of the theology and led to a great deal of fanfiction, much like how the failure to translate 'Lucifer' falling in Isiah back to "the morning star" led to even more fanfiction because of parallels to the Enochian apocrypha.

TL;DR: While you may no longer have a faith-related uncomfortableness about some supernatural 'evil' entity, understanding that the very origin of all that warning and indoctrination you suffered which has left a remnant avoidance of the term was itself an adaptation of polytheism in the tradition - something you were likely also conditioned to reject by the same indoctrination - might help in further distancing yourself from that remnant concern. 'Satan' is not only silly in a rational consideration of cosmic forces, but is a ridiculous part of the Abrahamic tradition down to its very first appearance in the tradition.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My wife has the same issue as you do because of the same reason (although she became an atheist in her teens). She's working to get over it because she knows my daughter is firm on this.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Fuck yeah hail satan 🤘

In a TST kind of way.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't list an age at all. membershp is fre and it doesn't look like they ask.

they probably don't care.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I know they didn't on their website, I just want to make sure. I'd hate to give her a membership card and then tell her it was withdrawn because they found out she was under 18.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I didn't know they were purely atheistic. I though it was religious, but subverting the christian interpretation of the bible so that Lucifer/Satan would actually be the good guy, written about by unreliable narrators.

I even had a whole circular theory about it. Like, Lucifer being the angel that brings the light of reason, and the serpent who argue that humans should, in fact, know right from wrong... and who would have been cast out for rebelling against a malevolent god who thinks wanting to use reason to determine and enact justice rather than blindly take it on "faith" that the unfair natural law is part of an inherently good yet unscrutable "plan" is an unforgivable sin of pride worthy of eternal damnation... A malevolent creator who'd have used this 'faith' flaw in our brains to build an army of authoritarian followers, and manipulated the narrative to systematically assassinate the character of an "adversary" that is actually our best ally in any struggle for self-determination and justice against the oppressor.

I read waaaaaay too much into the name. Now I'm actually a bit disappointed.

Edit: wait am I thinking of another form of satanism?

Edit2 : nevermind, apparently I'm describing a blend of Luciferianism and the Church of Satan. Imma take whatever appeals to me, add a bit of discordianism to make the incompatible bits stick together better and I think that's gonna be my religion for a while.

Edit3: apparently it gets me even closer to the Our Lady of Endor Coven.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I'll be honest, when opening this thread I was not expecting people to not universally agree on tenet number 3 there. I was even going to make a joke on your first paragraph and how they might take issue because of that tenet because nobody can be that absurd, right? RIGHT?

Humans, man...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I'm a fan of TST, and agree with all of their tenets, but I have no intention of ever "joining" or affiliating myself with it as my "religion."

I don't need or want anything like that in my life. I don't want to be a part of any kind of temple or church, regardless of how atheistic they are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

their gross childhood indoctrination, our funny based memes

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