My daughter and her friends were saying they were Satanists to piss off the "normal" kids. So I had her look up TST's 7 fundamental tenets. Now she really is one.
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.
Me when I found out satanists don't actually worship Satan:
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!
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.
CoS does not worship Satan
Do they actually even call themselves satanists?
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.
Can you please elaborate? I hear this a lot but mostly from people who know little to nothing about CoS. They just read that comparison chart that TST threw together with hard bias.
My understanding, though it may be totally wrong, is TST is atheist and TCoS is theist. Everything else derives from that. TST is humanist.
TCoS supposedly isn't all that active except for their admittedly amusing Twitter. They also seem anti fun and stuffy whereas TST pushes "Satanism" as tongue in cheek social activism.
Both are atheist, tho if memory serves TCoS has rituals and associations with "magick" and the occult in the past
From their webpages, I would think they use the acronym CoS, and not TCoS. I was wondering if web searches were deliberately not showing relevant results.
my dumb ass keeps reading it as "Circle Of Steel" and wondering what any of this has to do with Fallout
CoS is 100% atheist and always has been. The "magick" people reference is mostly mentally manifesting your hopes and dreams to come true. There's no supernatural anything involved.
So, “law of attraction” type bs?
Like, "Man, I really hope I get that raise. Let me think about it really hard and focus on how to earn it," type bs.
Yeah that's "the secret" law of attraction junk
Do you think that’s how people get raises? By thinking about it really hard and focusing on how to earn it? And not, you know, by jumping ship and moving to another company where you can earn a 40% raise?
I'm sure brainstorming about how to earn more money would provide a few different options, yes. Expecting a raise to just miraculously appear certainly isn't the way to go. It's not like just thinking about getting a raise will make it happen. It's about setting it as your prime directive and thinking about HOW to make it happen. Your destiny is your own hands.
Or just a good way of triggering those damn pearl-clutchers. 🤣
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.
Seems like the kids are actually allright
🎶Jamie had a chance well she really did🎶
🎶Whoa oh🎶
🎶Instead she acted with compassion and empathy towards all creatures 🎶
🎶Whoa oh🎶
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.
🎵 Be gay, do drugs, hail Satan 🎵
Great song!!
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.
Thanks, much appreciated.
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
I think you'll find that in every thread. Personally, I've taken much deeper dives into game lore.
Well, you're missing out. There are some really interesting arguments out there for why we should or shouldn't behave in certain ways. I love that so many exist and none of them are objectively falsifiable, so you get to decide for yourself which to follow
That's the nature of literally every social issue.
Can you provide an objective, philosophical reasoning for why able bodied people should pay taxes to support disabled people?
That's something I fully believe in, but I'm not able to formulate any good arguments as to why I think it's the right thing to do. It's simply what I was raised to believe in.
I think it's important for us to recognize that most of don't actually have objective moral explanations to back up our values. For most of us, the values we hold are simply matters of belief in what's good, in much the same way a Christian believes in the good of God.
I'm setting a reminder to come back to this when I'm at a keyboard instead of on my phone. Because yes, I can provide such an argument! Multiple, in fact! You might not agree with the foundational assumptions behind the arguments but that's the point of philosophical debate. It will just take some time to present the necessary ethical and moral framework that leads to the conclusion "we should pay taxes to help the disabled".
People have been working on those sorts of questions for generations upon generations. And we can answer some of them without ever using terms like "good" or "right".
Read my username as a poor phonetic spelling of a philosopher's name for a preview of what I'll say :D
I'm aware of that. My point was that most people are either not aware of those arguments or able to formulate them cogently.
I am not arguing that there is no such justification; I am arguing that most people have not educated themselves on such justifications, and as such their values are merely beliefs, and not objective truths as many people want think of their own beliefs.
Oh ok. I misunderstood your comment. We are on the same page then. Heh
People consider their own lives to have value beyond their ability to produce wealth. Every individual has the expectation that if they were to become disabled or too old to work, they would receive assistance from society to help keep them alive. So you can try to form a moral argument about why caring for someone else is correct, or you can turn it inward and say that you expect to be taken care of if you get hurt and leave it at that. What's the point of doing all this work if your value ends when you can no longer work?
Because leaving it at that doesn't provide an external justification for my feelings. That's literally the exact problem I was trying to explain: people are more concerned about subjective internal opinions than they are with objective external reasoning.
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.
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.
Thanks for this! Today I learned
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.
Yeah I think if my daughter was interested or wanted to join it that would definitely spur me in that direction more.
Fuck yeah hail satan 🤘
In a TST kind of way.
They don't list an age at all. membershp is fre and it doesn't look like they ask.
they probably don't care.
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.
https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/join-us
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.
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.
I'm only aware of LaVeyan Satanism as an alternative.
There's actually a bunch
https://satanicdelco.com/ Satanic Delco? 🤷♂️
Please note Church of Satan (LaVeyan) is strictly atheistic.
Thankfully I can ignore this detail by the power of Our Lady of Chaos and Discord, Hail Eris.
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...
No worries, I expected them to. Thanks!
their gross childhood indoctrination, our funny based memes
The pro-eugenics stance that Lucian has is obviously very problematic and it would be nice if he were removed. Otherwise, yeah. Never met a Satanist I didn't like.. My mom even sent me a tshirt she bought while passing through Salem a little while ago.
well cool bro
theres no age limit on existing cults.. i mean religions. so i cant imagine one here. good luck!
Hail Satan!
Ave Satanas!
Y'all should watch "Hail Satan?" by Penny Lane.
That's very interesting. Sounds like satanists should be vegan.
Everyone. Everyone should.
You're breaking the fourth tenet my friend, but I forgive you because I know you just want what you think is best for people.
Not everybody should be a vegan. There's plenty to gain from eating meats and vegetables, and humans evolved to be capable of eating both. Some day in the future I hope meat is replaced with either fully synthetic or lab -growth meats simply because I don't think any living creature should have to live the way food animals (I forget the word) do currently. But for now I will continue eating meat because I am just one man and meat is very tasty.
You're breaking the first tenet my friend but luckely this is not about salvation but about the path everyone takes. I would like a world where we show compassion to all around us (that includes animals) and ourselves. I wont try to convince you here because convincing yourself is not something i can do. There is no need to tell me your reasons for consuming animals because you do not have to justify your actions before me. But are not really talking to me, are you? Seems more like you are convincing yourself why you will continue to do what you are.
I agree that hopefully one day we will have lab grown meat because people are very bad at change (that includes me, it is kind of a "miracle" that i stopped this one thing). It is the only way for people to not change anything and still stop the animal abuse.
I feel like you didn't really read what I said. I eat meat because I like it. I have no desire to go out of my way to not eat meat. If I don't feel like eating meat with a meal then I won't. I have no internal struggle or "convincing myself that it's ok". I despise the way food animals are treated, like they're not even living creatures, but I feel no guilt in eating the end result.
Frankly you have no right to make such assumptions about my character. You have no idea of my situation any more than I have of yours. If you can be a vegan and be happy, good! I'm happy for you. But I am not a vegan, and I am also happy. Saying "Everybody should be a vegan" is no different than saying "Everybody should run a mile every day". Sure it's a generally beneficial lifestyle, but it's just that: a lifestyle, and it's not for everybody.
To get this right, your entire argument for continuing to fund the horrors that are inflicted on animals is: I like meat?
No, my argument for continuing to eat meat is "I like meat". I haven't made any statements about my eating meat funding the animal-murder machine because we're not talking about that, we're talking about how "everybody should be a vegan".
Once again you haven't really read what I said. But this time I'm not going to explain myself except to again say: you don't know me, you don't know my situation, you don't know my station in life. You have no right to place these single-minded assumptions upon me.
Edit: you're not the person I responded to initially, but my point still stands.
Edit2: Ah, I see you're the one who started this thread.
Hey man, I am not the same person and I have just asked you a question trying to understand your position.
Ok, so are you saying that the meat you eat does not include funding the murder of animals?
My statement wasn't "everybody should go vegan" my statement was that if you hold these tenets that you should go vegan.
Yep, it sure is compassionate to do what we are doing to animals because we like it.
Problem with them is while you can admire their core values, the shock value imagery and unnecessary allegories taint what would be an otherwise great idea.
You mean imagery from the Bible? The majority of images that they use are symbols taken from Christianity. They are about as shocking as Halloween decorations or goth kids.
Also, a big part of the reason TST uses the Satanic imagery is to fight for the separation of church and state. To give an example, Christians wanted to pass a law to make courtrooms display the ten commandments in the US. The Satanic Temple argued in court that they will have to be allowed to display statues of Satanic demons in courtrooms. This made the Christians repeal the law forcing religious imagery into the courtroom, which is what TST really wanted all along.
There are many examples similar to this, too.
Try Pastafarianism than.
It sounds perfect for teenagers for those exact reasons
Maaaan I hope you don't live in the Bible Belt.. because if so, you just royally screwed your daughter when it comes to meaningful associations in school.
When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras.
When the majority of people hear Satanist, they think Anthony LaVey and the Church of Satan - Satanism.
I hope she makes that distinction instantly and incredibly clear to everyone around her.
Seeing as the OP's daughter and her friends were telling people they worshipped Satan just to piss them off in the first place, I suspect she's already got a healthy amount of social support. Besides, the Bible Belt is chock-full of hyper-religious, xenophobic idiots, and they don't count as "meaningful associations." Nothing to be lost there.
Pretty sure there’s no such thing as a meaningful relationship with a person who would judge you based on your religion, and she’s better off finding out early who her friends really are.
We're talking about 13 year olds here, not 30 year olds. I have one. They judge each other based on the absolute dumbest shit. The site they got their Jordans from, how many followers they do/don't have on whatever platform, whether someone's text message bubble shows a certain color.
Don't get me started on the 'shooters' that worship Satan and don't even own a pair of Jordans.
Thankfully mine is aware that none of that stuff matters, and I try to convince them not to get it any thought, and always be friendly to everyone regardless, but they're still heavily judged by their peers for all of that, they feel it and to them societal rejection is still one of the worst emotional pains they've experienced so far, so we still get constant requests to buy this thing or that thing for them because it's what's cool this millisecond.
Kids aren't the brightest, their brains are still developing until they're in their 30s, and the emotional turmoil it takes is still incredibly real to them, regardless how little thought you want to give it.
Just because to you "it's just middle/high school" and "it won't matter to them in 10 years" doesn't negate the tears and heartbreak that are so very raw and real to them, right now.
There is a tremendous amount to unpack here. I’ve got my fingers crossed that this is satire.
When you are able to think for your self, school is always going to suck. Best you can do is encourage them to find a friend or two on the fringes.
There are no meaningful associations to be had in school other than friends gained. Take your tongue off that boot for a moment and try thinking for yourself for a change.
Their entire head is up their ass, so I’m not sure the boots are a problem anymore.
Friends gained is what I'm talking about, numbnuts. You associate with people before you become friends with them. Friendship doesn't happen overnight, and it happens much less if you're the school outcast because "she's a Satanist and her dad baptized her in blood" or whatever rumors are about to start flying around once her current friends confirm it's true.
By then, no amount of explaining the rationalization of the difference between the CoS and TST will un-outcast her.
Thankfully middle- and high- school aren't forever, but many outcasted kids just off themselves because to them, so far it has been forever and they don't know any better.
Signed, the formerly outcasted middle schooler from the Bible belt who is fine as an adult but wishes my parents would have thought about the consequences of their actions.
When was the last time you were in school, 1965?
2008... In the bible belt as specified and clarified in the initial comment. You?
Edit: I didn't even realize this was the atheism sub. The collective of teenagers and adults damaged by religion and still haven't found a healthy way to cope, so they circlejerk about it to seethecope.
Protip: talk therapy works, and fits within a staunchly materialistic worldview.
Laveyan Satanism is a step better than gothic satanism (that is, enemy cultists in Hollywood movies, and what churches imagine they're fighting against).
That's true, Lavey is meant to be like an antidote to Christian guilt, however I've met some real arseholes with giant egos who were super into it.
Laveyan Satanism hasn't aged well, but it seems to have come out at the same time the Necronomicon was published in paperback (ghostwritten, I think) and we were seeing all the allegedly factual books like Michele Remembers (featuring SRA) and The Satan Seller in which Mike Warnke confesses to be a part of the cabal of the Satan industrial complex (and admits to participation in some pretty serious violent crime, if the book was assumed to be not fiction).
These days, my take on Satanism is to look at the things that the churches have attributed to Satanism (Rock-and-Roll; TTRPGs, particularly Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy fiction like Harry Potter, but once including Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, LGBT advocacy, marital aids, sexual health, video games and so on.)¹ Contrast Jesus' résumé (same sources) that suggest the Peacekeeper nuclear tipped ICBM is godly, as are the two Bush-led wars in Iraq, the presidency of Donald J. Trump and the bench appointment of Brett Kavanaugh. Comparing the two, I think Jesus is the god of established hierarchies, and Satan is the god of the people. I guess it makes sense, since Satan is something of a revolutionary.
¹ Among the fun contributions by Satan (according to the Church) are tandem bicycles (which allowed common folk to travel about and see other cultures and get cosmopolitan ideas) and trashy romance novels, which encouraged women to read and were accused of the same things TTRPGs and video games would be accused of later, particularly confusing vulnerable minds about what is real and what is fantasy.
If they would just have chosen a different name, their beliefs would have gained much more traction.
Unlike actual religions, they aren't trying to recruit the world. They are just trying to shake up all the others.
The local school leads a Christian prayer circle every morning? The law roughly says that if you let ONE religion practice, you must let them ALL. So, when the SATANIC TEMPLE shows up and says that they want to talk to your kids, the school decides that maybe it isn't worth hosting Jesus if they also have to invite Satan.
The name scares the shit out of those who believe in it, and just makes the rest of us laugh. It's perfectly effective as it was intended.
I’m with you on most of that, but please don’t imply the Satanic Temple is not an “actual religion.”
It is removed from the baseless superstitions that plague most religions, but it is important that it be recognized as an “actual religion” so that it can actually fight these legal battles effectively to retain rights for all people, whether they are religious or not.
Valid points. Perhaps "Traditional religion" would be better.
The name is sort of the point.
Why? The name serves the purpose they use it for exactly.
No then it would just be another atheist club no one cared about
Without the name it's just a flavour of humanism
Justice is not always preferable to laws and institutions. If you deliver justice to one, but weaken an institution that materially helps thousands, is that desirable?
This I strongly disagree with. The community has a right to the use of individuals, according to the needs of the community. If your arm is stuck blocking an essential passage off, even if through no fault of your own, the community does have a right to remove your arm, if need be, to serve the needs of the community.
You're getting caught up in the minutiae of definitions and are missing the big picture. These tenets were put in place to counteract anti-abortion laws under the guise of religion. It's a subversion of religious and conservative tactics with a much better message.
I have no dispute with that as a strategic choice (since lying about one's values is conditionally acceptable), just figured I'd offered a bit of dissent for the OP.
Alright, yeah. Fair enough. Have a good day!
You too!
Snarky response: Human sacrifices were a thing once and served the needs of the community.
Serious response: TST Satanists don't treat the tenets as absolutes. More like guidelines. There are situations where tenets can be in conflict. The individual is supposed to work through that and make the best decision they can.
Observation: No, that would be the Sith
The point is that justice is the end goal. Institutions and laws are solely means. And one should never confuse the means with the goals.
Note that the very tenets are an example of that. In some cases you need to go against them, and that's fine - focus on what the rule is supposed to achieve, not the rule itself.
Contrast it with Christianity and its "BUT IT'S IN THE 10 COMMANDMENTS! You're supposed to follow it even when unjust! The law is the law!"
Exactly! Which is why all women are sent to the breeding farm as soon as they have their first menses, it's for the good of the community! /s
Tenet 3: One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
I don't know how you got "Everything every community decides is absolutely correct and should be obeyed without question" from that, but go off, I guess.
So the community has a right to the use of you, but you also have a right to deny the use to of to the community, based on your judgement?
What remains in a conflict between individual autonomy and community need is morality, not rights. The community has a right to make what judgement calls it deems necessary - whether any particular judgement call is right or wrong, or whether it is reasonable to resist it, is another issue entirely.
So you extend that right to the community, but no to the individual.
So even if their morality is wrong, you think a community should have the right to force an individual's actions.
The community has the power, by virtue of majority usually, but not the right. You cannot simply disentangle rights from morality and assign 'immoral rights', that goes against the concept of rights and this sort of scope creep is how we get into present issues in the first place (see the current elephant in the western world - abortion, for instance).
To quote Motorhead -
This is the response of somebody who just wants to argue about religion. Common sense prevails.
I know a bunch of horny dudes that need to bang something. Pull down your pants and services the community.
Did you even read the original comment?
Laws and institutions generally follow public opinion. If the public finds something unjust that laws and institutions cannot address, it can affect change and make those laws and institutions stronger.
Generally, but not always - and that presumes that the public interpretation of justice is the correct one. If you're in early 19th century Britain and the public is 95% in support of executing homosexuals, then obviously no amount of institutional responsiveness to public opinion will fix this unjust situation. So what is the answer? To preserve the institutions in the hope that someday, they may be used to defend the lives of LGBT folk, or to oppose the institutions and tear them down even at the cost of the welfare of millions and against the will of those same millions?
Of course, most of us will never be in such a position, and early 19th century Britain had fairly robust institutions that most individuals would struggle to damage. But again, these are questions of principle.
You are assuming there is such a thing as a "correct interpretation of justice", but there really isn't
So this applies to all institutions?
Does... weighing the pros and cons of an action with regards to justice vs. utilitarianism apply to all institutions?
Uh. Yes. I suppose it does.
Vll
I think I would ask, if you deliver justice to one, but weaken an institution that materially helps thousands, is that actually justice?
I mean, probably, right? Justice is generally transactional (he stole my cow, he gets me a new one), while institutions are more generally following overall utilitarian policies.
I can't really think of any real overlap scenarios here where literally just one person could meaningfully damage the system other than "you are the only one immune to the zombie plague, we have to remove your brain to become immune because science"
I would say that it could be. Justice and utilitarian results are not necessarily synonyms. It is intuitively unjust to allow a ruler to get away with literal murder, yet the dissolution of their rule could mean the deaths of many thousands. An institution may lead to the death of an individual through negligence, but the resulting dissolution of the institution, should it be revealed, could lead to the deaths of many more, ironically, through further negligence.
Obviously, in functioning modern societies, these are less concerning, as there is a much greater capacity for reforming or remaking institutions, or diverting resources until an alternative can be found; institutions and their effects are generally robust and can handle whatever scandals are revealed, and thus it is a duty, rather than a question, to reveal abuses as openly and loudly as one can.
But in principle, in the abstract, they're valid questions to be asked.
Definitely valid questions, good things to think about
So you agree with the legality and the morality of abortion bans then?
Tenet 3: One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
Yup, I agree.
PugJesus doesn't. As I found out, he also has some more... unfortunate opinions.
Don't know where you got that from.
So if you want to abort the fetus, but the community decides the birth of it serves the needs of the community, it was a right to the use of you.
The community would have the right to make that call and attempt to enforce it. Bodily autonomy is not an inviolable defense against a decision by the community to violate it.
Whether that particular call would be morally correct is dubious.
So for example, if china wants to genocide all uygurs, you argue they should have the right to do it.
My argument there would be that genocide is wrong, not that every violation of bodily autonomy is wrong.
Answer the question:
According to you, should china have the right to genocide uyghurs?
Yes or no.