The Satanic Temple has established international headquarters in a former funeral parlor in Salem, Massachusetts. It is fascinating what social networking and public stunts can accomplish as this group is merely three years old. It is fascinating what happens when, for some odd reason, a group gets to have their say unchallenged by the media and alleged interviews with them are really nothing but PR platforms to have their say unchallenged and with not even any follow up fact checking.
The seven “fundamental tenets” of the Satanic Temple are:
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone. 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 your own. Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
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.
Note that since they are generic meaning not well defined and also un-premised it is not only difficult to understand what the Satanic Temple means by them but they leave a lot of wiggle room—room to wiggle out of them.
For example, “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures” but only “in accordance with” undefined “reason.” Thus, as per my very own personal reason my manner of striving to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures could differ from yours. For example, the Satanic Temple is very, very openly in favor of human child sacrifice which is called abortion. They are actively in favor of the brutal dismembering murder of innocent, defenseless, healthy and beautiful human babies.
Thus, when they claim to believe, as a fundamental tenet, that “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone” they betray both the generic manner whereby they communicate and by supporting abortion they most certainly do not believe that “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”
Moreover, when they claim that “we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused” then what about the harm of brutal murder? And yet, that was within the context of “If we make a mistake” and abortion is not a mistake but purposefully ending an innocent human life.
Now, one fundamental problem with basing beliefs on “our best scientific understanding of the world” is that we are not told to whom “our” is. Is “our” the unquestionably infallible experts (who are at least treated as such)? Is “our” the experts who held to the now debunked Steady Sate Theory of cosmogony? Is “our” then whatever the experts de jour tell us?
Yet, more fundamentally, there is hard science and soft science, there is also scientism, and there is subjective interpretation of evidence. For example, biology is a science but evolution is a worldview-philosophy and as such it is employed as an interpretive lens whereby to view biology. Thus, the history of evolution as a theory is a history of mistakes, jumping to conclusions, hoaxes, frauds, etc. all attempting to “distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.”
Also, they are open about the fact, or the claim, that they do not worship Satan (more on this below) and yet they constantly display imagery which has historically been created and employed by Satanists.
Now, they can make the excuse that it is simply a ploy but it is that which it is: displaying imagery which depicts things in which they claim to not believe. This is why I argued that On freedom & logic of Satanic & Atheist holiday displays in Boca Raton, FL
So, they claim that “The freedoms of others should be respected” but they are open about seeking to erect such displays not so much to have their say but to have their displays disallowed so as to reach the goal of having Christian displays be not allowed as well—find an admitted example of this sort of tactic here. Thus, they purposefully seek to forgo their own freedoms by encroach upon the freedoms of others. The point is that the freedom of displays such as during the holidays are meant to be displays of things in which one believes and not a mere platform to offend.
One of the Satanic Temple co-founders is Doug Mesner aka Lucien Greaves who may have been working with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation as a journalist. He stated that one of their tenets is “Personal autonomy” and another is “freedom of belief” which means that a member of the Satanic Temple has the freedom, as an autonomous person with freedom of belief, to worship Satan as a personal being.
Greaves was asked “So are you Satan worshippers?” and replied, “Definitely not” so there goes the flase claim to bleieve in “freedom of belief” and “Personal autonomy.” Moreover, he stated, “In fact, the idea of ‘worship’ is antithetical to our anti-authoritarian philosophy” and so he is 1) authoritaively defining “worship,” 2) authoritaively demanding that Satanic Temple members do not and perhaps are not allowed to worship Satan (or he was speaking for himself alone) and 3) again, he is violating personal autonomy.
Greaves was asked about the After School Satan Club and replied “It’s helpful for children to see that people can hold diametrically opposed religious points of view, but still be good, productive members of society, be noncriminal and friendly.” But why presume that Satanists are noncriminal? Are they some sort of special humans who commit no crimes or do not commit crimes in keeping with their beleifs? Of course they do—they do both, see here.
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