Little disingenuous to call secular atheists satanists, but I guess they sort of asked for it when they picked the very troll-ey name for their organization.
I don’t think volunteer and charity work is very satanic, at any rate.
Well, the only strong source for what could be satanic would be the various Abrahamic religious texts. I’m no expert, but I haven’t heard charity work being frequently associated with satanic principles in those pages.
Considering Satan is a fiction, I’d say Satan can be whatever you want him to be. It doesn’t help that the Bible doesn’t actually explain what happened to cast Satan into Hell other than there being a war in Heaven. Pretty much all we get is Revelation 12:7-10.
7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Also, there’s Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
So if God creates evil, what does Satan even do? Carry out his work for him? That seems to be what Twain thought when he wrote Letters from Earth. Seems as good a source as any.
Considering Satan is a fiction, I’d say Satan can be whatever you want him to be.
This is probably also true for the Christian God. But let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the Bible is a factual account: the Book of Numbers already refers to the worship of the Semitic god Ba’al in the “ancient” people of Israel. Etymologically speaking, Ba’al is identical to what later became “Beelzebub”, one of the names of Satan; it is reported that the statues of Asherah (the wife of YHWH) and Ba’al were destroyed. Ultimately, according to the Bible, the followers of YHWH waged a “holy war” against the followers of the other gods and declared these gods to be the “Antichrist” by a mere act of speech.
It is not known whether the followers of Ba’al were really less merciful than those who later waged crusades.
The problem with treating the Bible as a factual account is nothing adds up in it. Saying Beelzebub is a “name of Satan” is really misleading and a result of later negotiation with the text. Just like the serpent in the garden of Eden wasn’t Satan until folks decided it was - there is no support for that in the text at all.
Satan is more like calling someone enemy - you can have lots of enemies without them all being the same entity.
Also I’m not sure how the “god” (Satan) that wanted humans to have freewill is the bad guy, when “God” for some reason was purposefully trying to keep humans as puppets (or play things) in his little garden. And then had to punish the humans as soon as they could do what they wanted instead of the story laid out for them.
Reminds me a lot of President Business from the Lego movie. He wants everything to be perfect but people keep doing whatever they want to and screwing it up, so he wants to use the “kragle” to “fix” the plan and make everything perfect again.
Ignorance and subservience is a key point of Christianity, and if you can stomach interacting with them long enough more will say it out loud than you’d think, especially anti vaxxers and other super right dinguses -
it boils down into “something something gods will,” science and knowledge are sinful, our poking around in the ways of the universe are the cause of all the ills in the world, and we should return to a time when all our information is disseminated exclusively by religious leaders.
Thats why, while there are of course more fantastical/“biblical” bands, a lot of black metal is actually more humanist and pro knowledge, pro living, pro freedom. Darkness, the left hand path, etc are just metaphors for rejecting blind faith and obedience.
I didn’t say ignore old sources but at the same time i’m not sure what old source you are referring to. The Bible will not tell you anything about the satanic temple so I guess you mean something else?
I would say the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot.
Well, like I said, I don’t know a lot about religious studies. If there are any sources about satanic doctrine provided by people that actually believe he is real, then those should be included as well.
So the burden of proof is now tied to people who actually believe in X entity existing (don’t move the goal post)? How does one validate that a source in this context (you cant, or there arent any)?
Thats the whole point, you cant philosophically prove anything.
Well, proving something that doesn’t actually exist being in favor of a specific doctrine would certainly be challenging. Generally with questions involving things like history, mythology or literature we would look to original source material for our answers though. I just don’t know enough about this specific topic to say if that is possible or not, you would need someone knowledgeable about religious studies I imagine.
Thats exactly it, you have flipped the burden of proof.
The group making the statement does not have the onus of providing proof that disproves their own statement. This goes for all logical statements. The proof of actual satanist doctrine (What that actually is and where in their dogma it resides) within the TST in a logical argument would be something that you would need to provide in this context. Otherwise the request is illogical and their point stands that they are as legit as any other religious entity until proven otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care nearly enough to seek proof one way or another, this is why I am not strenuously pursuing the argument. However, when we do have historical documentation, which I am simply presuming we do, not asserting we do with any certainty, then disregarding that material in favor of modern interpretations is not sound. If I really cared I suppose I could google satanist doctrine, but religion just doesn’t interest me that much.
I don’t get where you think I am making any sort of request, at any rate. Have I come across as having a strong position on any of this?
As someone brought up initially in a primary RC school I always find the fact that while they had a top notch reputation for giving you a “better education” than general comprehensive schools really ironic because their science dept actually taught me, that there are no fairies in the sky and it’s actually where we end up, as Earth burps 🌨️
I for one welcome these chaplins, elves, and umpa lumpas in our RC schools. Gives a bit of diversity.
If you want to go on the Hebrew side, ha-satan (the satan) means something like 'the adversary' and it's arguably more of a title than a person. There are plenty of cases where actual charity would be against the pain the system is causing
Or maybe the serpent that only told Eve that there’s nothing stopping her from eating the fruit that would allow her to understand the difference between good and evil?
How many people did Satan kill in the Bible? And Yahweh?
Still, Ms Ellis has sometimes turned to risky payday loans (short-term borrowing with high interest rates) as she grapples with grocery prices that have surged 25% since Mr Biden entered office in January 2021.
Payday loans caused such a problem for young and dumb military members that there’s a law about how much interest they can charge military members, and subsequently won’t loan to military members.
We need those predatory interest laws to protect everyone.
But it’s depressing as fuck the rates are so predatory it literally had a negative impact on the US military.
Because the military is mostly young guys with no financial literacy who are suddenly handed more money than they know what to deal with. It’s just the extreme scenario of the average American. (Maybe your average person, or even your average animal, but I don’t know enough to say.)
A friend went through the army program starting at med school around 20 years ago. She just got her Oncology surgeon cert, which is ridiculously deep in the medical doctor qualifications.
Seems like the program was effective to me. She had to move around quite a bit, but she also got access to the best hospital programs.
I definitely was dubious about the entire idea of signing with the army, but it worked for her.
Yup. And for most of those guys, they haven’t had that before. (Also food and housing is generally free for junior enlisted, so they don’t really have much in the way of bills, either. Cell phone, Xbox Live, and that girl’s onlyfans who is really into me I swear)
“We’re on the right track,” says Sarah Foster, who follows the economy for Bankrate.com. “Wage growth has slowed, price growth has slowed but, you know, prices are slowing at a much faster rate than wages.”
total horse shit
went to the grocery store two weeks ago and prices were higher than the previous week and this week the price seems higher still and wages seem like they are getting smaller
They, the owning class whose mountain of wealth just keeps growing at our expense, and their short sighted mouthpieces, are. That’s all that matters to those who value money more than people.
For me they are higher than a year or two ago and has been somewhat steady this year. Still you can sorta tell its rocky. Ironically I find nicer stuff is actually sorta a bargain now vs the lower quality stuff. The difference in the price is not as much. Basically there is more competition for the rock bottom and not as much for the somewhat decent. You really see this in restaurants where fast food is just kinda slightly less than getting a real meal now.
This is why I worry that Republicans will win: bc they have mastered the “truth” that facts don’t matter so much as campaign commercials.
And apparently journalists also, e.g. that line "They can’t buy groceries anymore. They can’t.” - I mean… there are cheaper options that don’t involve going into debt to purchase goods on a literally weekly basis.
Even here in the Fediverse, we send them clicks and spread the message for them. E.g. when the woman says:
“I know he’s a big fat mouth,” she says of Mr Trump. “But he at least knows how to run the economy.”
Whereas in response the reporter tried to be “fair & balanced” by saying that:
Mr Biden has claimed, incorrectly, that inflation was already at 9% when he entered office. It was 1.4%.
There is no reason to give either of these statements the time or day, but instead they spread them as “newsworthy”.
I guess it’s my own fault for remaining subscribed to this community, if this is the content that regularly appears here.
Such a misleading way the story is written. Also a failure to mention that inflation was a global phenomenon, that it was brought down faster in America than most other places, that it was able to be brought down without a recession as was widely predicted which would have been far more devastating, that wage growth has compensated for inflation and then some, that wage growth was highest for hourly and low income workers, and a failure to mention the responses made by congress and the president to help inflation. So much important context left out.
Barely a mention of the fact that all of Trump’s polices are the exact opposite of what you would do to help inflation. That his tarrifs alone will raise this person’s costs by $1700 a year. Why don’t they ask her what she thinks of Trump’s tarrifs costing her $1700 more a year if he takes office? They could mention how his first term policies including pressuring the federal reserve for unnecessarily low rates created a dangerous environment for inflation before the pandemic kicked it off.
But all they can say is, just, I dunno, inflation was fine when Biden took office. In March 2021 prices were already increasing by 0.6% a month from the month before, a 4.8% annualized rate. Comparing to the year before is an average of the past 12 months of change combined. The month to month rate is a much better way to see how it’s changing when it’s changing rapidly. They were begining to accelerate before Biden did much of anything, and not to mention this occurred simultaneously around most of the globe.
Anyways, journalists can’t be bothered I guess. Everyone always wonders why people think Republicans are better for the economy despite all the evidence to contrary. I think a lot of it is lazy journalism that just regurgitates opinions and polling instead of researching facts.
I’ll add to my other reply that pointing out that the TST has a history of co-opting issues and covering up abuse is a recognition of reality, and that dismissing criticism is exactly the problem with organised religion.
While it’s true that theism is inherently harmful, The Satanic Temple isn’t a theistic organization. The problems with TST stem from the shithead that runs the org.
Despite that, they seem to be a problematic, but necessary force to fight religious extremism in the US. I’d prefer it if other secular orgs had the same reach and capabilities, but it seems TST is the best we have at the moment.
This is the Satanic Temple, very different organization that only ever brings itself into the picture when Christians are trying to ram religion down people's throats.
It’s a shame people are downvoting this, the satanic temple has ties to the far right and is not the great thing people think it is. They make bold claims to get news attention and donations but don’t follow through with action, and in the case of abortion rights claim that joining the temple will grant religious immunity when this is in fact false and actively harmful. Overall they distract attention from real activism without taking any real action. Watch the video essay in the parent comment to get the full picture.
This is discussed in depth in the video linkrd by the subthread post.
Stop thinking in dualities and binaries. It’s not so simple, but to my own dismay, Greaves is indeed a grifter, a chauvanist and all the bigotry that comes with it.
If you give a shit about the downtrodden, for whom the metaphorical Luci Morningstar is held up to empower (it is just an extension of christian lore after all), then listen to the non-men, non-white and queer folks who saw first hand how TST, following in CoS’ footsteps, took advantage of us.
This is discussed in depth in the video linkrd by the subthread post.
Stop thinking in dualities and binaries. It’s not so simple, but to my own dismay, Greaves is indeed a grifter, a chauvanist and all the bigotry that comes with it.
If you give a shit about the downtrodden, for whom the metaphorical Luci Morningstar is held up to empower (it is just an extension of christian lore after all), then listen to the non-men, non-white and queer folks who saw first hand how TST, following in CoS’ footsteps, took advantage of us.
I appreciate you saying this! I didn’t want to type up anything specific myself because it was pretty late and I didn’t have the energy to check any claims.
How much money can we pull together for Clarence Thomas?
I heard the corrupt shithead also likes free vacations, so maybe we can chip in on a Royal Caribbean cruise or something, and maybe get him a snow cone and a breath mint on the side.
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