Uproar as after-school Satan club forms at Tennessee elementary school
Community members in a Tennessee school district want to banish Satan from their children’s halls after the formation of a new club was announced.
The After School Satan Club (ASSC) wants to establish a branch in Chimneyrock elementary school in the Memphis-Shelby county schools (MSCS) district.
The ASSC is a federally recognized nonprofit organization and national after-school program with local chapters across the US. The club is associated with the Satanic Temple, though it claims it is secular and “promotes self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students”.
The Satanic Temple makes it clear its members do not actually worship the devil or believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. Instead Satan is used as a symbol of free will, humanism and anti-authoritarianism.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/14/tennessee-school-satan-club-satanic-templeOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
The outrage these assholes are feeling is what the rest of us feel every time we see them trying to force their dogma into every facet of society.
Except ours is actually justified.
Way to miss the point and misunderstand it in terms of polarized politics. There is no "ours" and "theirs".
Not everything is a debate with multiple valid points of view. The notion that your right to a belief somehow encompasses a right to inflict that belief on everybody else isn't an ideological position; it's a declaration of violence.
Fuck dishonest moral relativism. 2+2=4 and one person's religious freedom ends where another person's begins. Those are facts, not opinions, and if you disagree you're just wrong.
Neither is justified, theirs is just hypocritical
Excuse me, but being outraged at having your rights attacked -- your actual rights, in contrast to the religious nutjobs' imagined "right" to inflict their beliefs on others -- is entirely fucking justified!
Sorry you're right, I misread the post. I thought the poster was saying that we feel outrage by their clubs. On reread it's clear I interpreted it wrong (my own fault) and agree.
If it makes you feel any better I was interpreting it the same way and appreciate your sacrifice.
I'm amazingly good at forgetting my own mistakes. It's how I maintain such a high opinion of myself despite being so deeply flawed.
I'm pretty sure this is how normal people maintain their self-esteem.
Unfortunately I do not have that trait myself.
Need more groups.
Every city that allows religion in a public school needs a ASS club
Me and my wife are both members of TST and we LOVE the work they do. The Tenets they promote are loving, self-respecting, and do justice towards an ideal world of Individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and critical thinking - i.e. everything that Christianity and modern conservatism in general are eager to suppress. We regularly donate to them, and we constantly purchase stuff through their store to help support them.
Same, also a member of TST and a practicing romantic Satanist. It's brought a lot of strength, clarity, and confidence to my life.
That sounds interesting, I know I can try googling but I would love to hear from the source. What is a romantic Satanist?
lights candles, opens box of wine
Well, you see...
box of wineA connoisseur I see 🧐
It just comes in a box, they're not going to drink it from the box! I'm sure they'll pour it into a mug first.
You don't know me
No, we get a box each and drink it like a Capri-Sun.
Hey now. Some boxed wines have AMAZING taste. Especially in their super-cool naming.
Oh, yeah, I love wines. Red, white, fizzy white, rosey... all the wines.
That sounds like the start of ritual to me!
Check out the book "Compassionate Satanism" by Lilith Starr. You can buy it on TST's website, I am not sure about availability on other platforms.
Romantic Satanism holds up the depiction of Satan from Romantic period literature as an ideal. The book has a nice analysis of Satan's use at that point as a rebel against authoritarianism who fought for Enlightenment. Romantic Satanists are non theistic and do not believe in the supernatural. TST is an organization of Romantic Satanists but you don't have to be a TST member to be one; the seven tenets of TST are a major guiding force as well.
Totally suggest reading the book - it's fascinating and well written.
Thank you, I will check it out!
Edit: it's available on Bookshop.org and on Amazon, too.
Out of curiosity, how does one join the Satanic Temple? I never hear anything about them except when they show up in the news, and the more I hear about them the more I love them.
Check out their website. You can join there.
Thank you! Joined!
Another member here, are donations tax deductible?
Yup
Open question to anyone: how much shit do you get being TST members? Do you just keep it on the downlow? I can very much imagine consequences if it got around at work, etc. Any repercussions may be illegal, but a lot of people are "ask questions later, sort it out in court if it gets there" types.
My work associates are all extremely liberal so they were actually pretty stoked. A couple others had no idea what it was, but LOVED the concept after it was explained to them.
A good friend of mine who's a Christian Pastor was the only one that was like...shocked. lol. After he chilled out and I got to explain it to him, he was all in favor of it. He's not a big fan of the mainstream evangalism shit that's going on, so TST being a way to fight the encroachment of the alt-right/Supply-side Jesus on our government was a big win for him.
I want the Samuel Alito's Mom's Abortion Clinic lunchbox, and I want it now! That merch is AMAZING!
The uproar is the point.
But somehow conservative Christians believe that there are huge swaths of people who agree that their religion is 100% correct but worship the weak bad guy character.
(Which is not to mention that there are actually multiple bad guys who got combined, Satan and Lucifer and The Snake were originally different people)
This is a long standing joke - what do you call someone who believes in Satan?
A Christian.
God is omniscient and thus knew exactly what Lucifer would do. Angels don't have free will. Lucifer did exactly what God intended. God wanted Man to have free will. Free will requires the choice between good and evil. Man is the "bad guy" as well as the "good guy".
If god is omniscient they would know exactly what everyone is going to choose, nullifying free will entirely
Ok Calvin
For those downvoting the above, @[email protected] is making a reference to John Calvin, who is considered to be an OG determinist.
(Determinism: The view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world.)
Yeah but if God knows every choice that'll be made ahead of time, it doesn't mean he's taking the choice away from the person actually making the choice, they still go through the motion of making the actual choice, and hence, they have free will to make the choice. God just predicted it ahead of time.
We need better RNG, clearly. My D&D character should have died by now!
This is what happened when you don't seed your RNG.
That argument would only make sense if god wasn't the supposed creator of the universe and everything in it. If god created everything, is omnipotent and omniscient then at the moment of creation she would have known every single event and circumstance in that person's life leading up to making a certain choice and she would have been able to create the universe differently so that a different choice would have been made.
If you set up all the dominoes, you cannot claim the 100,00th domino falling over wasn't your doing because you only tipped over the first one.
This actually makes my point though.
God knowing everything doesn't mean that God made you make that choice, God let you make that choice, but knew what that choice would be ahead of time.
You still had free will, you still were the one that had the neurons fire off in your brain, and you made the choice. God was able to predict that choice ahead of time with 100% accuracy.
On a side note, I love that you use 'she' for God.
If she intentionally chose those circumstances to happen so that the choice would be made that way, which she would have to have done being omniscient and omnipotent then that choice being made is 100% her responsibility.
If I put a child alone in a room with a powered on electric band saw, is it the child’s fault for getting their arm sawed off ? They had free will and could have chosen to not go near the saw. Or is it my fault for putting a child in that situation?
Why are you assuming she chose them, versus just letting them happen via free will, mapping them out ahead of time, precog style?
The childs.
This is a great example of why I don't believe free will is a coherent concept outside of religion. It's basically a perk that negates God's omniscience as it applies to you, but if you don't believe in God, it's meaningless.
Free will is the ability to be belligerent until death.
Ah, but that is the point, until Man chose it hadn't happened, it is the precognition paradox. Until the event occurs, what is known is all the possibilities.
That's... just like your opinion man.
Then god isnt omnipotent, cause you know, it lacks the power of whats actually to come and is only good at knowing all the hypotheticals. Or may be lacks omnicience, but one could argue that knowing all the possibilities counts.
All that matters is that its lacking something, when it shouldnt
Spirituality is all opinion man.
But no, it not lacking anything.
Except all morality and empathy
How would an explanation of a religious concept have morality or empathy? Words don't generally have Human emotions in my experience.
Is that true. Could he know what we will do but what we do is still our choice without influencw
Take the garden of Eden story.
Did God know that if he put the tree there then the people would eat from it?
Did God have a choice to put that tree there?
Could God have made a world where they did not eat that fruit?
If he picked this possible world out of all possible worlds based on an outcome that he had in mind, then we're just playing out the parts that he assigned for us.
God is supposedly all powerful and all knowing. God created the universe and everything in it. He did so with the full knowledge of everything that would happen in advance. He chose to do it anyway, despite knowing all the suffering it would cause. And then he chose to create a realm of eternal suffering (either by literal fire and brimstone, or by 'absence of God', it doesn't really matter) for those fleetingly finite-lived humans that he created knowing they would screw up. Less than a hundred years of life in exchange for billions of years of torment. And he created them in a way that is fully capable of realizing how horrible a way to treat someone this is. It's nothing but cruelty of an unimaginable scale. Part of the reason I don't believe the Christian God exists is because I can't accept something that evil. It's too horrifying.
Most people that believe or even don't believe don't usually follow it to its logical conclusion like that, but I concur. The opening lines of Richard Dawkin's God Delusion says something similarly.
If god existed, my driving force would be to kill them
Like the Klingons. Lol
True, if somebody comes from the future and knows what you're going to eat tomorrow morning, that doesn't make it suddenly not your choice. But to add to the other comment, an important point is that he made us all as well. Because if a god creates you according to his grand plan—knowing full well every single decision you will ever make—it is no longer a choice. Every one of your decisions were predetermined from the start.
Something I like to think about is that it is impossible to go against the Christian god's plan. If such a thing were possible, then this god would not be omnipotent nor omniscient. As such, everybody that has ever gone to hell did so because god designed them to.
How is that a choice. If they know exactly what's going to happen I don't have the power to do anything except for what is going to happen. If you only have an apple at home, you can't get any other kind of food and your gonna die if you don't eat the apple, did you really choose to eat the apple?
My knowing what you shall do in no way invalidates your free will. That is invalidated by the futility of your choices. Totally man made and not to be confused with determinism.
I think its still possible that I could freely choose my actions and you knowing what they would be would not invalidate that it was an action I choose based on my own free will.
yup
If there exists a being that experiences time the same way we experience space, do we have any less free will just because the being can continue knowing about it before it happened? The person is making the choice, not the being that knows about the choice.
The funny thing about the free will argument is that theoretically if you could build a galaxy powered "super" computer, you could potentially track every single movement of every single particle in the entirety of the universe, so that level or scientific inquiry nullifies free will.
That's where it gets interesting though! A set of all numbers cannot contain itself! It's out of control! Call the alphabots!
That last part is intriguing. Do you have any more info that I could read about how/when their unholy trinity was combined into one evil deity?
The wiki article does a decent job. Basically the mentions of him in the texts describe different beings because they were written by different authors for different audiences with much different views. The serpent story has echos of other bronze age ones in that area and the text says as much that El put him there. The story in Job looks like a Cannite legend that got reimagined in Judaism. At some point the people of the region believed in desert spirits that would inhabit people causing them to go crazy and kill other people.
Due to the first exile Judaism started inventing an explanation for why they weren't allowed to freely practice by imagining a being that was opposed to El. Because the pattern had broken. The pattern of the past was: everything fine, Jews sin, god punishs, jess repent, everything fine. However, this time they were trying to repent and weren't able to. Which meant that something was blocking it. Hence Satan. The accuser.
By the time Paul came around the Book of Enoch was popular and to him Satan was a leader of a celestial army of angels. Which is why Paul said that had they known they were killing the son of God they still would have. That were not just following El. Off his writings we see things like Revelations and John where Greco-Roman celestial powers were merged with Satan and Lucifer together.
There was never an idea that someone had 2900 years ago and Christianity is following it. Like all myths it is a combination of different fables, attempts by people to explain their world, and thinkers continuing on a tradition.
I really wish Lilith stayed in the story, I always liked that version of the garden better.
Just curious, do you think she was part of one of the originals and not just a combo of some "heretical" Jewish texts and ideas of the Middle Ages? Legit asking.
I just think it's a better version of the story. If your going to be writing some religious fantasy, might as well make it as interesting as possible.
Which wiki are you talking about exactly? Did I miss something?
Just the regular wikipedia article about Satan subcategory Historical Development
It's now thought the number of truly matriarchal beliefs in antiquity have been grossly overstated. Your comment belies a strong Judaeo-Christian ethos and historiography, which is all fine of course, but the feminists reinterpreting history isn't divinely wise at all, but political.
I know that many of the modern misconceptions (according to Biblical canon anyway) about Hell came from Dante’s Inferno. So perhaps it’s also something like that?
Oh, it starts way before Dante. Hell is actually a sort of mismatch of different beliefs. Babylonian, Norse, Buddhist and Greco-Roman belief systems all had an underground afterlife with variable ideas of punishment for the wicked. The Bible just mentions "Gehenna" which was actually a real place on earth where trash was burned. Basically think of someone talking about the local dump. Thing about trash though is it doesn't really burn eternally, it just burns away and it was likely being used as a metaphor. The usage of it also doesn't really mention an eternity, links it with the devil or any of that. People really like rhe idea of someone getting their jist desserts after death so a idea of "bad people just stop existing" was probably kind of doomed to not be super popular. Basically that just leaves a door open for folk belief to stuff somebody else in the Hades/Hel/Ereshkigal role and carry on having a hell just like they did before.
All told Christianity and it's family of belief systems is actually a fairly late adopter of the belief in something like a hell. It's closest thematic relative is probably Buddhist Naraka which was first written about around the 400 BC but there's not a lot of scriptural evidence that anything like that was intended for Christians. At best Judaism has an idea of an afterlife where one is consumed by shame but it sounds more like what happens when a kid is told their parent is disappointed in them and to go to their room.
"Well, they are Satanists. They are just lying."
Got sources for this? Not that I don't believe you I'm just interested in reading up on exactly what you're referring to.
Short of it is that the concept of Satan didn't exist at the time Genesis was written.
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/how-the-serpent-in-the-garden-became-satan/
From a more literary perspective, there's nothing that directly connects the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the interlocutor in Job, and the later mentions of Satan in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures (and there's not a lot of direct mentions in the Hebrew scriptures). You can kinda make it work if you read between the lines, but fundamentalists will be the first to say you're not supposed to read between the lines of the bible. To them, you take the word as it is written and nothing else.
Naturally, this rigid reading of the bible doesn't work out so well for their beliefs.
To take the Answers in Genesis article on the subject (just because they're a prominent fundamentalist organization), their reasoning is that the bible shows that Satan can enter into a physical being and control them. Notice that they leave out any reasoning showing that Satan did so in that particular case. He could have, and therefore, he did.
So if Satan wanted to, for example, make it so everyone would fail to meet the entry requirements for heaven laid out in the old testament, and end up on hell... could he, theoretically of course, pretend to be the son of God and "change the rules" so that sin is totally ok as long as you say sorry before you die?
Asking for a friend.
Reading the outrage comments always tickles me lol. Welcome to the point, bitches!
It's a bit frustrating that it doesn't make any of them actually reflect on their hypocrisy though. They just double down on the hypocrisy with no questions asked.
I've been saying it for years, through even the most liberal of us attacking me for it -
It's because this is and always has been the point and the end goal.
You'll almost never reach the truly devoted. But, you can get them to say insane things in front of an audience.
You can't use your technicalities to push your way around and do what you want! That's our whole thing, man!
Were are they? I want popcorn! Edit nvm, The article was longer than i The post.
I can't find them :/
From the full article (had to click the link):
The Satanic Temple does a little trolling.
As a treat.
It's not trolling though. They teach kids good things.
The Satanic branding is basically the trolling and meant to be provocative, at least that's what they say on their About Us page. That's one reason other (more insane) Satanists hate the ST, because they basically openly admit to appropriating Satanic and pagan imagery in jest which is sacrilegious to "real" Satanists and some pagans who actually believe the symbols have power. It works in the sense the ST is a political advocacy group though because it freaks some Christians out.
Satan accepts everyone
Not his fault that God is picky
Satan doesn't whisper "Believe in me".
He shouts "Believe in yourself".
Satan is rad as hell.
God is the dickhead that puts a dangerous tree in the garden despite knowing exactly what's going to happen. God is the asshole that wipes out everyone (even the animals) except one drunkard and his family because God apparently fucked up again. God is the one who creates a place of infinite punishment for finite crimes.
God is the real villain of the Bible.
And Satan is the hero that fought an omnipotent being knowing he would lose because he wanted freedom more than he wanted victory.
something about better to die on your feet than live on your knees?
that part from Good Omens S2 was amazing
Preach
like Tenent/Crowley said...
If you have access to BBC content (the broadcaster not the big people) then I would surely recommend viewing the whole series there!
Satan's the one who tempted Eve to eat the apple, though. Without him, that tree would have been left alone.
Wrong. It's not satan but the serpent. BUT even so the serpent is the one that tells the truth in the story.
God lies, saying Adam will die if he eats from the tree. The serpent says he'll gain knowledge of right and wrong. Again, God is always the asshole in the stories.
Nevermind the fact that he punishes his children for eating a fruit from the fucking tree he put in the middle of the garden and said DON'T TOUCH!
The whole story is just so stupid.
God cursed him to crawl on the ground or something. That's why snakes slither and don't got no feet.
So then I guess God was just being a dick pointing out flaws.
So why did the serpent do that?
Genesis never says that the serpent is Satan, just that it's a serpent.
Also, god created that serpent knowing full well it would tempt Eve and succeed.
Genesis only makes sense from a Gnostic point of view imo. Snek was good guy all along.
The Satanic Temple is an atheistic organization that uses Satan metaphorically, mostly to troll Christians.
https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/faq
As you can see from this uproar, it works quite well too.
That is the exact goal of The Satanic Temple. They would be incredibly happy to have their own symbols removed, as it would mean all religious symbols would be removed from government institutions. They are trying to scare Christians into voting against their own legislation, basically.
The first amendment in the constitution makes it so the government has to give equal rights to all religions, so the Christians can't remove the Satanic symbols without also voting to remove their own.
The Satanic Temple isn't religious.
Thats a complicated thing to say because the ST functions as a real religion in the US which is the basis for why they're able to challenge things in court. If they didn't qualify as a sincere religion their mission wouldn't work, and that "sincerely held" qualification is actually challenged in some cases. Recently this qualification became an even bigger deal when people claimed they had religious beliefs against vaccination. In the past its been applied to people challenging the draft on behalf of sincerely held religious beliefs.
I don't think they're a religion like Christianity though, maybe a pseudoreligion or civil religion.
As someone planning to move to this area soon I want my kiddo involved!
Be careful you don't encourage it, or else they won't want to. :P
People are cats.
The number of adults in the US that think Satan is a literal being is way too fucking high.
It started as an editor using 'adversary' in the place of what was probably the goddess Anat appealing the head of the pantheon to kill the son of the protagonist like in the earlier Canaanite A Tale of Aqhat as an intro into what was an adaptation of the also earlier Babylonian Theodicy in Job.
But we couldn't have a polytheistic holdover, so suddenly there was a supernatural 'adversary' ('Satan') in a story.
Which in turn spawned fanfiction during the prophet ages where they referred to the supernatural adversary of Job.
Then Hellenistic ideas around Hades (both the place and figure) get added into the mix, and we get the Enochian literature about fallen angels, where the guided katabasis influenced Virgil which later informs Dante's Inferno.
Then King James messes up translating Isaiah and the Latin for the morning star (Lucifer) gets mistaken for a proper name, further tying the supernatural adversary to being one of the Enochian fallen angels. And we get Milton's Paradise Lost.
It's all just mistranslations and fanfiction.
And yet millions of people believe it's actually a thing so much so that they freak out at the idea of any references to it as literally being dangerous.
In 2022.
An age filled with things beyond the wildest imagination of those in antiquity dreaming up miracles and wonders.
We're so beyond fucked as a species.
To those people, if there's no Devil then it means all the bad stuff in their heads and hearts is just them. All the temptations are them. All the hatred, including self-hatred is them. There's no Devil that made them do it or think it, no external tempter or defiler to resist. They can't take that.
It is 2023
STOP MAKING IT WORSE.
It'll be 2024 in like a couple of weeks
💀
It'll be 2024 in a couple of weeks...
Well you can't believe Satan is real without believing God is real, and that number is too high too.
Observe:
I just did it.
All I did was was choose to believe a different version of the fairy tale.
For what's it worth, it was a take on the "The Throne Is Empty" mythos, fucking Metatron, always lyin'
I understood some of these words.
But that was fun to read
Could say similar things about the monotheistic Christian God who seems to have originated in Cannanite polytheism. At some level everything is "made up" though and that doesn't prevent it from having power. Just look at race for instance.
Thx. Phone autocorrect is a pita.
There is no way you expect the average person to know this.
I expect the average person to know that there isn't a supernatural evil being controlling the bad things that happen in the world.
They can't spell, and even if they can they can't read and don't listen.
Oh the irony.
After School Satan Club would be such a great name for a band.
Check out the Mountain Goats song Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton
Hail yourself.
ASS Club.
Nice.
Sad that something like this is even needed but the US is full of bigoted hypocrites that want to turn the country into a religious state.
Sad that something like this is even needed but the
USworld is full of bigoted hypocrites that want to turn thecountryworld into a religiousstatewasteland.The majority of western countries are nowhere near as religious as the US. Maybe something like Poland.
Italy, especially south Italy, is ridiculously religious. We’re also one of the few modern countries that actually have laws on blasphemy.
We keep telling people we’re not a religious state but then everyone brings out the knives when someone says maybe having a cross in every class isn’t exactly peak neutrality.
Hahahah good luck to them if they try to pull any of this shit in Western Europe 🍿
Conservatives always want to have a free "marketplace of ideas" until it's something they fear.
Which, unfortunately, is everything they don't understand, and absolutely for lack of trying.
Yes I love freedom, but not like that.
Of course Tennessee Christians are outraged. The after School Satan Club is most likely way more Christian than they are so there's stiff competition.
Lmao.
good, the more noise they make the more this will spread
Actively missing the point......... "In a meeting with more than 40 pastors and other religious leaders, the district board chair, Althea E Greene, said: “Satan has no room in this district.”"
The kids are alright 😃
They can't without getting rid of all other extra curricular activities & I love that for them.
Don’t underestimate the evangelicals, they will ignore the laws and act like martyrs when punished for it. Then they will run for office as defenders of the constitution and church, get elected, push even more evangelical agenda on everyone, be exposed as homosexuals, retire and live comfortably ever after.
This guy understands evangelicals.
Yeah they don’t want fair universally applies laws. They want preferential treatment.
They literally can't get away with cancelling all after-school programs.
Yeah but then they won’t have a nose and we’ll have a court case to win so
If SCOTUS did that then I'm sure there would be (checks notes) no consequences whatsoever.
Yeah, I'm not convinced they aren't itching for the right case to come along to strip seperation of church and state to declare an official state religion.
Please tell me that's sarcasm? The GOP literally just refused to confirm anyone he nominated.
How? What political calculus results in McConnell releasing the hold?
Not all, right? Just the religious ones I hope.
Usually the way it works if the school district digs in it's heels is, TST sues the district. The district realizes it cannot win in court because there is a staggering amount of precedent and law against them. Then the district itself shutters all after school programs officially. Except of course the teacher running the Christian club invites kids to off campus gatherings that occur after school. Then the district gets sued again.
No because this isn't a religious club.
The Satanic temple is a non-theistic religious group, that's the entire point. They use religious groups' own tactics against them. If the school allows the Christian church to host a club, then they must allow the Satanic temple to host a club. TST doesn't have anything against after-school clubs and the school could simply choose to ban activities funded by religions.
This isn't a Temple though, it's an After School Satan Club.
It's more of an anti-religious club really.
Right, because they're not evil, but it is still a club organized by a group that is recognized as an organized religion by the US government and has all the protections that come with it. The school will have to choose between allowing all religious groups into schools or none.
I'm just pointing that out since other commenters are insisting that they will have to ban all after school activities as a result which isn't true
Alright, gotcha. Good point.
If it wasn't registered, "After School Satan Club" would be a great name for a punk band.
ASS Club does have a certain ring to it.
Especially if there were 7 band members.
Ain’t no party like an ASS club party
A comparison between the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple
Watching the Church of Satan get exasperated when they're tagged about this shit on Twitter never ceases to amuse me
Yeah I kind of love how the Satan churches hate each other, CoS basically calls the ST pussies and ST calls the CoS insane.
Is the blue cheese thing in their comparison chart thing real?
if liking blue cheese is gay then call me fabulous, idgaf. y'all can fight over your basic-ass ranch when the wings come out.
Says right beneath the infographic:
In my defense the site was only sorta loading on my phone, the text was kinda broken.
It's from one essay in The Satanic Witch.
Published by The Satanic Temple. That's a very important distinction to make.
Very true.
Low IQ Christians never learn. They must be old dogs.
God bless the Satanic Temple!
People always fall for the obvious troll.
Satanism is to Christianity as Jim's beach day team "Voldemort" is to Dwight's team "Gryffindor"
What do you call someone who believes in satan?
Christian.
Yes, yes, there are other Abrahamic religions... The point is that the only group who actually believe in Satan and therefore are the ones who afford Satan a place in their society are the ones complaining.
Nice to read. I'm agreably surprized and relieved the kids are displaying this level of creativity. And all for a cause that does good in ways that are not at all obvious at first sight for so many people who see themeselves in grey zones. My only fear is that going such a point of controversy will provoque violent reactictions where other ways of fighting may not have, and thereby not causing to swap contless more enemies they (or we) didn't need to have. But then again, can anything happen without it being the case?
In the 60s my best friend started the Organization for Atheists or OFA in response to the young christian group in our high school. They even had a chant" OFA OFA OFA goodness sakes!!!
All hail Satania!
Obviously a red herring. The Devil went down to Georgia, looking for a soul to steal.
well this is gonna end in violence that gets ignored
Maybe not
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/the-satanic-temple-saucon-valley-school-district-aclu/
That definitely shouldn't be allowed no more than Christian clubs. (This seems much worse than a Christian club)
That's the point. Are you aware of The Satanic Temple and their work on the separation of church and state?
Then why are they creating a club at a school? Anyway religion forces us to care about our neighbors over ourselves. You can blow off religion all you want but at the end of the day we need more love in the world.
Because the christians have an after school club. The point is to see if they are actually going to follow the law.
If you have to be forced to care about other people, you don't really care about them.
Agreed
Religion teaches you to hate and distrust people who don't believe the same thing as you.
The fastest growing sect of Christianity in the world are the Evangelicals. The biblical literalists that hate everyone.
Well I don't hate other religions. Actually part if my conformation was attending a Jewish service at a synagogue. I think today's world lacks love and compassion which religion used to provide. You don't even need to be Christian you just need a reason to love the world.
Christian's don't love the world, if that were true climate change wouldn't be an issue.
Christian's treat the world like a motel they'll only be staying at for a couple of days.
Christians have nothing to do with the world. Its a fairly broad religion with many different secs and organizations.
If a Christian club is allowed then a Satan club should be allowed. It shouldn't be up to school administrators and politicians to deem which religions are moral enough to benefit from tax dollars. None of them should.
Honestly the school should be semi against both. Religion shouldn't be a part of a public school.
They should be against both, that's likely why the satanic temple is trying to get a club established. There's probably already a Christian club and if the school allows one it should allow the other. They are unlikely to be doing it to be getting a new club, they are doing it to try and show people how hypocritical it is and how it shouldn't be allowed.
Why is a Satan club worse than a Christian club when we know both belief systems are bullshit?
Well for one I pray for you if you think so poorly on Christianity or other religions for that matter.
Anyway worshiping the devil is just silly at best and has no place in society. We have religious freedom but that shouldn't apply at a school. Especially since these people sound completely nuts.
Pray for me all you want, the only one who's going to suffer from any of this is you. Personally, I feel flattered you're wasting your positive energy on me.
TST doesn't worship the devil.
What if God's real test is being able to think critically for yourself, not giving into idolatry (ie the church), and actually appreciating the message that Satan was trying to provide us? It'd be real awkward if the true entrants into heaven end up being not devout Christians, but free-thinking Satanists. 😁
You can be a free thinking Christian as well. It really depends on your denomination. We are not all devoted Catholics you know.
If the founders didn't just want to stir the pot, they would call the club "free-will humanitarian anti-authority club".
After a bit of prodding ChatGPT suggests: "Free Spirits for Global Empowerment and Liberty" (FSGEL), which is a million time better then invoking satan, just to get on people's nervs.
Isn't pot-stirring the whole point?
Highlights religious indoctrination doesn't really belong in schools. I can't really speak to the organization ASSC and what they do, but that's the point of including Satan in school. Trying to make a club for (just an example here) your Jedi church doesn't have the same punch because Jedi haven't been a part of culture for hundreds/thousands of years. Maybe I'm off base here, but it's easier to make a legal argument in court that your religion is real if it's been a part of culture for a while.
Gives kids who are athiest/nonreligious an outlet away from all the christian stuff. Christianity can feel very oppressive in school, depending on the location. Calling it the "free spirit" club or atheist club isn't enough. Christians tend to go out and find non-believers to bother, so designing your club as a big metaphorical middle finger can help with that. It'll keep the young evangelists out, and it's a reasonable outlet for feeling rebellious.
Missing from the article is this group's primary, unstated motive: they only attempt to create such clubs in schools that actively promote similar, religious clubs. This tactic only works in schools that have previously demonstrated their intent to promote religion.
Any school can insulate themselves from this tactic by not becoming a church.
Yes, and?
I don't quite understand, Satan is a contentious figure in Christianity (and maybe other Abrahamic religions? idk, not knowledgeable about it) and it's reasonable to be worried or concerned as an adult about what interests the youth might have. And it really seems the opposition is simply speaking platitudes. They haven't demonstrated 1. it is not a faith, and 2. it causes harm. The folks who are opposed surely can't have their preferred beliefs determine the beliefs of others in areas where it's clear there is not immediate harm.
Sorry, I don't understand your post. Who are you arguing for? Who are "the folks who are opposed"? Those opposed to the ASS-Club?
Been a while since I used lemmy. Yeah I don't remember what I meant, sorry.
Satanists: No no no we don't actually worship Satan. We just picked that name to be antagonistic towards christians.
Christians: That's creepy either way.
Satanists: SEE? SEE? I told you they would complain.
Satanists: We picked the name to bring attention to all the things you can get away with if you call yourself a religion
Conservative: I'm not listening! THEY WORSHIP THE DEVIL!
Satanists: See? It's working.
The "After-school Humanist Club" would not be having articles written about it.
Things you can get away with such as starting a club? That's never been against the rules.
So why are people concerned that The Satanic Temple is starting a club? Are they concerned that they are indoctrinating children and teaching them about Satan? Because that's the After School Christian Club doing that.
Why are christians concerned about a group who's stated purpose is to be hostile to them? One reason jumps out at me.
Existing is hostile? What have they done besides start a club?
That is not their stated purpose. You invented a purpose, then pretended they stated it.
Of the two groups, a Christian Church/group is far more likely to have long conversations or services about how TST is bad and wrong, than TST is to have the same conversation about Christianity specifically.
This is Christians believing they are the One True Faith so anyone trying to get religion out of politics and policy must be targeting them specifically.
Why does they call themselves Satanists then?
Do you not read other people's posts, or are you being completely disingenuous?
https://lemmy.ca/comment/5701962
It seems like a lot of effort to create a situation with little upside and most certainly, 100% chance of blowback. If you want Christian Nationalist riled up and mobilized, then this is how you do it.
The upside is religion out of school entirely.
Yeah, we really ought to just ignore them and let them do whatever they want.
/s
Wait, are you referring to the well documented, sprawling history of child sexual abuse committed by clergy and covered up by the church?
You talking about Christian churches right?
I'm talking about the edgy title of the club which competely contradicts its description.
I know many Christians don't read the Bible but I didn't know atheists can't read at all.
Nobody thinks you're making a good faith argument here, dingus.
Be gone, troll.
Irony
I think you've completely missed the point. It is in bad faith, and the fact that people get mad about it demonstrates Christian hypocrisy.
Just because YOU don't like their name, or why they chose it, doesn't make it bad faith.
It highlights your hypocrisy.
Statistically speaking its usually a bible thumper thats also a kiddie humper
You do know that people are allowed to use names from things they don't actually believe, right? If someone called their club The Zeus Club, would you think they believed in Zeus or just that they thought it was a cool name?
If they were called "The Zeus Worshippers" I would indeed believe they worship Zeus.
It's called "Satanic Temple". This isn't a vague reference to atheism.
Oh, so with that logic you believe the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a democratic republic.
I guess you’ve also never heard of the English idiom “don’t judge a book by its cover”.
Did you know that Cub Scouts isn't compromised of bear cubs?
Did you know that the only baseball teams that take part in The World Series are North American?
Did you know that Dr Pepper is neither a doctor nor a pepper?
So what's really up your craw?
In both your examples at least half the name is relevant to what it is about.
This club is not about Satan nor about a Temple.
I understand that atheists have to be really edgy but there are actual Satanic temples and people who worship Satan so using that name is plain misleading as it's stealing a different religion.
Lol. I love how consumed you are with trying to argue about this, insisting that this is just atheists trying to be edgy...
They are trolling stupid assholes and you are absolutely taking the bait.
Congratulations, you're a stupid asshole.
Really? I mean maybe think about it in a different context, what if you saw an album from a band called The Zeus Worshippers, would you think "ahh yes, religious music" or would you think "ooh, sounds like an interesting metal band"
Q: What do you call people who believe in the existence of Satan?
A: Christians.
I mean anything will sound insane once you stripped all meaningful context from the situation. Clearly you can see the difference here now, right? Like even if these people did worship satan who cares? They should have religious freedoms right?
After school accuser club isn’t associated with Christianity but is actually there to call out their hypocrisy? Weird huh
It's not called "secular philosophy club" it's called "satanic temple".
And so does religious freedom only extend to deistic religion? Or does Buddhism count?
No the question is why they're calling something not related to worshipping Satan a Satanic Temple and then pretend that this name doesn't directly imply they are worshipping Satan.
You're all doing your very best to avoid to the actual argument.
They literally chose the name to be antagonistic to Christians, and judging from your comment chain, it appears to be working as intended.
If anything, it's weird to see it work so well.
Yes that was very obvious. But chosing an antagonistic name or literally lying to be edgy are two different things.
They aren’t pretending they don’t imply that. They’re explicitly stating that they don’t, but that it shouldn’t matter even if they did.
No, you're doing your very best to prove the ENTIRE POINT of all of this -
That Y'all want Christianity to be the official state religion that can be pushed on children by the state, and all other religions or belief systems should not be allowed in public arenas, areas, etc etc.
I'm reading that they have religious clubs. Did they ban other religious clubs?
It's much the same way christians say they worship Jesus, but in reality most of them worship wealth and power, then cover up for pedophiles as long as they say the magic words.
Satanists pay lip service to Satan exactly the same way, and dare I say because, Christians pay lip service to Jesus. The difference is Satanists arent hypocrites about their disbelief.
And the worshippers of the flying noodlemonster believe in the noodlemonster too? No of course not. These are political groups that exists to point out the hipocrisy in the understanding and application of the first amendment or similar laws in other countries (mostly favorably to christianity, disfavorably to other religions).
The flying noodle monster isn't an actual existing group. Satanic temples are a real thing.
It is. And they take their faith just as seriously as the satanic temple
https://www.spaghettimonster.org/
What? It's sad watching people do what you do on both sides.
Just say your words, man. Make your own arguments. Don't be like "THEY REALLY MEAN THIS: XXX" and then it's a bunch of bullshit just to support your agenda.
It's a tell-tale sign that someone is reddit-brained beyond belief.
Do you think The Satanic Temple actually believes in Satan, or are you just upset that they call themselves that despite not believing in Him?
You are a dumb fuckwit.
So should we put in jail kids from the cited Christian Evangelical Bible Club because they believe in a book which exalts sexism and rape, or are they allowed to play the “well, actually” card because they’re a majority?
Sorry man, it's probably not gonna go well for the folks you are siding with (thankfully) based on recent precedent.
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/the-satanic-temple-saucon-valley-school-district-aclu/
You should reflect on the fact that the ASS club has essentially laid out idiot bait and your ended up taking it.
Consider that for today