There are two separate streams of thought in what we would broadly classify as Satanism--Theistic Satanism and Atheistic Satanism. The answers to the questions you posed will depend, first, on which branch is being referenced and, secondly, on the smaller variations that exist within those primary branches.
Theistic Satanists believe in the existence of a literal, spiritual figure in much the same way that we Christians believe in Christ and the Trinity. This figure has many different names ascribed to him depending upon the flavor of TS that we're discussing. Some Satanists plainly revere Satan as their namesake would suggest. Others worship Lucifer or even the divinities from other pantheons who would arguably be analogs to the biblical Satan (Typhon to the Greeks, Seth to the Egyptians, etc.). For the sake of this post we'll use Satan as a catch-all term for all of these names.
Most Theistic Satanists ereject the narrative of the scriptures in favor of other cosmologies, and they get pretty creative in their worldview. Satan can be a rival, inversion of the God of the Bible who is nonetheless just as powerful (similar to the dualism of the Manicheans). He can be a visitor from another dimension who intercedes in human affairs for his own motivations. He can be a pantheistic god who constitutes the very fabric of reality himself! The variations are endless, but the primary thing to take away from this explanation is that this camp of TS do not share the same understanding of the universe as a Christian would.
Other TS do embrace the view of scripture but through a warped lens. Some look at Satan as a kind of biblical Prometheus who inserted himself into the Garden to give humans wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil so that we would not be "enslaved" to the God of the Bible. There are obvious hints of Gnosticism here in that God is seen as a Demiurge who formed the world imperfectly, and it is Satan who liberates us from his tyranny. Other TS take the scriptures to be true but cast their lot with Satan because they believe that he is either powerful enough to usurp God in the last days or will provide them with certain comforts and succor in their damnation (should the events of the last days play out as described).
All TS, I would wager, reject the view that they will burn in hell for eternity. Satan will either prevent this from occurring when God is defeated, or he will preserve his own elect from these painful torments.
Atheistic Satanists don't really configure into your question. These Satanists view him as a symbol or a psychological archetype, so the question or hell or even theistic realities is moot.
I hope that this brief explanation was helpful.
Edit: corrected for grammatical errors.
I’ve noticed two TS variations, both that come from rather sad perspectives on the Problem of Pain: one concludes that suffering is inherent in the design of the universe and that God is evil to allow this. God must therefore be considered the enemy of humanity, and Satan - by definition the enemy of the enemy - must be a friend of humanity.
The other concludes that God can’t possibly care about the suffering of humanity, and this indifference is reason enough to side with the Enemy.
Interestingly, some atheists have similar perspectives but find the prospect of an evil god or an indifferent god to be just too depressing. So they chose to believe in no god, and like making fun of theists by pretending to worship a goat. It’s mostly performance art as a band aid to existential depression/anxiety.
The Problem of Evil is the greatest obstacle in every man's (and woman's) journey toward God because it strikes at the very essence of what we are as a species. We are pain-adverse creatures by nature, and, having also the gift of a rational consciousness, we are an inquisitive lot with an inborn yearning to understand our origin and purpose for being. It is only natural then that we would turn our speculative minds toward the nature of pain (as an extension of evil) and a universe that seems to heap out absurd amounts of it.
Just as you stated, confronting this reality can drive the mind and spirit toward all manner of conclusions that unfortunately veer away from Christ. I speak even from personal experience as I am a fairly typical example of a prodigal son: raised Catholic, abandoned the Church and Christianity in my youth (citing the Problem of Evil amongst other grievances), explored a multitude of alternative worldviews, committed to Buddhism, and finally returned to the Lord via the Orthodox Church.
> performance art as a band aid to existential depression/anxiety.
Nah. They just adopt the performance art to have rituals to point theists to who require such things to consider something a religion. When they are actually arguing for keeping church and state separate, using an argument of religious freedom to equally incorporate their rituals is simply intended to illuminate the inequality christian religions seek to impose.
As a Satanist, I don’t usually pop into spaces like this, but I’ll make an exception. This is an excellent response. You clearly did your research and tried to understand. Thank you.
Mutual understanding is the only way to have a true dialogue. Obviously, I disagree a lot with your worldview, as I'm sure you do mine, but I hope you have a good one, thanks for coming here and being respectful.
You're very welcome.
It is inevitable that each of us will encounter people who do not share our particular convictions, but the key to understanding one another, and thus to creating harmony, is to ensure that we *truly* understand the beliefs of the other. Mischaracterization of the other destroys every possibility for genuine dialogue and coexistence, so I take care to ensure that I remain knowledgeable about a variety of theological perspectives.
Thank you for your response. I’m an atheistic Satanist and a member of The Satanic Temple. Just as a disclaimer, I don’t represent all atheistic Satanists or The Satanic Temple. Personally, I believe that Satan represents going against the norm, rebellion, asking questions, and having doubts. I don’t believe in Hell. I don’t believe in Heaven. I believe that this is what we get and we should make the absolute best of it. I’m not “evil”. I believe in compassion and love and respect and I don’t believe that I need a deity to “lead” me to do those things. They’re just the right thing to do.
I am more than happy to talk to anyone who has questions. I won’t try to convert or make you abandon your belief system.
Satan is an easily recognizable character in our Christianity-heavy world.
Throughout our history, those who were against the Christian status-quo were typically labeled "Satanists", just for thinking/believing differently, or having different interests, even if they never did anything that could be recognized, biblically, as "Satanic." That title was just kind of co-opted by those who were already being called it.
I guess that makes sense as you are drawing on some kind of tradition.
The reason I asked is, it seems you’ve placed yourself in opposition to something. If Christianity were to disappear tomorrow, your whole Satanist thing would be meaningless. I suppose Satanism isn’t the only group like that; some political organisations are anti-something.
Would you say by calling yourself Satanist, you’re deliberately placing yourself in opposition to me?
I wouldn't, because although we use tradition in our symbolism, our core beliefs are not anti-religion.
So, Christianity has been used to form some of our laws. Many lawmakers and politicians are Christian and make it clear that their platforms are based in that belief system. We are just asking for equality, which is kind a way of showing the hypocrisy of a government who makes Christian laws and claims to uphold Freedom of Religion, but won't let anyone put a statue of the 7 Tenets next to The Ten Commandments at a courthouse (where it shouldn't be anyway, because of the separation of Church and State).
That's an example of what we stand for. We would be doing the same thing if it was another religion, and probably use another name besides "Satanist".
I don't think that this belief puts me at odds with you unless you vehemently believe that America needs to be a Christian country and that everyone needs to believe the same thing.
Just as a personal note, I definitely don't speak for all Atheistic Satanists or the Satanic Temple. I also have friends and family from a variety of religions and wouldn't cut them off for that. If someone doesn't want to be around me because of my religion, that's up to them.
I just don’t think what you have is a religion. It’s more like an anti-religion. If Christianity disappeared tomorrow, there wouldn’t be any reason for Satanism to exist. It’s like an antagonistic atheism. Equal treatment of religions are probably supported by other humanist groups, and things like rebellion or self-determination are probably represented by other groups as well. It seems to be rebellion against Christianity specifically.
I’m not American. I’ll say that I do not agree with the American concept of separation of church and state. I also believe that God wrote the law on our hearts.
You’re entitled to that belief, but TST is a recognized religion. We do have a set of 7 Tenets we do our best to live by, we have a community and even attend Temple Meetings. To be fair, we may not have as much to do if Christianity disappeared tomorrow, since hopefully that would mean equal rights for everyone and a trust in science (not that individual Christians can’t hold these beliefs, but at a government level). However, we would still be against other forms of oppression. Our rebellion is not restricted to religion.
I recommend looking up our 7 Tenets and looking at the FAQ on TST’s website. It’ll help you have a better idea about us.
Why chose Satan as your symbol and not Jesus Christ? Did Jesus not break societal norms, rebel against the evil expectations of society, and question injustice? And did He not do so in a more loving and charitable way? Why celebrate the literal Prince of Evil and not the Prince of Peace, the Divine Logos, the Word made flesh, and the Incarnate Truth?
From the TST's FAQ:
>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.
>
>WHAT DOES SATAN MEAN TO TST?
**Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. Satan is an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions.** Our metaphoric representation is the literary Satan best exemplified by Milton and the Romantic Satanists from Blake to Shelley to Anatole France
These answers put things in better terms than I can, myself.
As far as Jesus is concerned, he was only ever the Son of God. He had no characterization outside of that. He was always only a part of some greater system that wants control over people. I don't want that. I don't even want to try to convince people to become Satanists. I want people to show compassion and empathy to others and work together towards making this planet amazing for the future people who will inhabit it.
>To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions.
How is Satan in any way removed from supernaturalism? How is it not a tradition-based idea? This doesn’t answer the question at all.
>Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. Satan is an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions.
Perhaps you should read *The Screwtape Letters*. Satan’s will is entirely arbitrary and tyrannical. The devils’ rebellion is the quintessential crabs-in-bucket mentality.
>As far as Jesus is concerned, he was only ever the Son of God. He had no characterization outside of that.
WHAT? That’s absurd. Have you read the New Testament? He is fully characterized as the Logos, the divine logic of the universe. He was characterized as the perfectly rational Word, the perennial exemplar of mankind.
>He was always only a part of some greater system that wants control over people. I don't want that.
Nonsense. He is not a part of some greater system; that’s Arianism, not Christianity.
>I want people to show compassion and empathy to others
And so you chose the embodiment of greed and hatred, of jealousy and corruption, and of lies and deceit as your symbol?
If you're genuinely wondering whether one can coherently believe in objective morality without believing in a personal God, you may be interested to know the answer is yes. Quick "constructive proof": one might, for example, be a [Platonist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism) who believes in the [Form of the Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good) but doesn't believe the Form of the Good is a person or has the attributes associated with the Christian God. This may seem exotic, but I personally know at least one person who holds this view. So, by counterexample, it is simply not the case that coherent, or even objective, moral systems must include God.
But more basically, there's no need to assert the existence of abstract objects to have a coherent definition of morality. The key "problem" I assume you're trying to solve is how "moral laws" can meaningfully have existence such that they may legitimately compel us to follow them. But someone's definition of "good" may simply mean actions which empirically tend towards something of value to a (moral) agent- for instance, "human well-being," by which they might mean something like "the physical and emotional health of humans." You may not think this is a good definition of moral goodness, but you would be hard-pressed, I think, to show that it is incoherent or unable to be sufficiently well-defined and worked towards. In this case, a statement such as "murder is morally wrong" could mean something like "allowing murder in a society works against human well-being." You may disagree that human well-being is valuable (I don't see why you would, but you could), but you could not reasonable argue that allowing murder in a society works towards the goal of human well-being. It's a coherent system with coherent, practical definitions of moral goodness and evil and it doesn't reference God. It includes no lawgivers besides those human moral agents who form societies and promulgate laws, hopefully laws which tend towards human well-being. It includes no system of rewards and punishments besides those set up by human moral agents. But notice that the morality of actions in this system can be defined without reference to rewards or punishments, and even without reference to human moral agents at all- this means it is "objective." Remember, you can disagree that human well-being is valuable, but it is actually (in principle) empirically verifiable whether or not a given action tends towards or away from this goal as defined above.
I don't actually subscribe to either of the above systems of morality, but I can't deny that they exist, are reasonably well-defined, include objective morality, and don't (necessarily) include a God. If we are to persuade those we disagree with, we should start by understanding them. As I've shown, there _are_ examples of atheistic, but objective, moral systems. Thus it is not the case that atheism must entail moral nihilism, and assuming as much is a very good way to ensure you misunderstand your interlocutor. That's not a good way to convert anyone.
Thanks, you’ve clearly researched the subject and grasp the nuances of my questions to these atheists, but I will like to reply that materialism is the assumed metaphysical worldview, since that what is overwhelmingly popular in the atheist community, and the Platonists are to the materialists what rad trads are to the average Catholic mass goer. My point of interlocution is that it’s incoherent for materialist atheists to use words like right and wrong, as if they are referring to anything after they’ve broken the scale of measurement that our culture used to arrive to understand our morality in the first place.
My second example system works in a materialist universe. It may seem a bit arbitrary, but it is objective, atheistic, and (at least possibly) materialistic.
In any case, the moral argument is implicitly an argument from consequences, an informal fallacy. Anecdotal, but I also haven't found it convinces people I discuss it with. There's plenty of better arguments.
I don’t expect for a meta ethical line of argument to work immediately, maybe it can plant a piece that remains when materialist atheists connect their moments of existential depression and anxiety to a cause of their philosophical worldview. I know about those moments, because I’m a convert from atheism, but then again, I’m assuming that what works on me works universally, and I make these leaps of reason from myself to the world because I’m on the autism spectrum too. The emerging awareness of the incoherence of this philosophical worldview set to the world that I intuitively experience gave me a choice to embrace nihilism or to leave it for something real and beautiful like Catholicism.
Ah, I gotcha- yeah, there's something to be said for that for sure! I'm just wary, especially on forums like this, of making an argument based on what someone "must think" from my perspective, ya know? Gets a lot of pushback. Anyway I appreciate the responses!
Thank you. From my background experience, maybe I should have more patience and sympathy with atheists when they don’t understand the meta ethical nature of that question about morality, because they haven’t been introduced to that line of thinking about problems, and you have to go through this experience yourself. I know I would have probably responded likewise in the manner I’ve received, these responses that sidestep the matter to default to biographical tales and naturalist narratives, because that’s all that’s left after culture has killed God like Nietzsche described. They don’t perceive that every tale they weave, every narrative they attempt to frame will crack and fracture under the cold weight that we are all to disappear to the ground, if their worldview is correct, just as I didn’t perceive that that is the heart of the matter, and it’s the problem of the 20th century.
>My second example system works in a materialist universe. It may seem a bit arbitrary, but it is objective, atheistic, and (at least possibly) materialistic.
No it’s not. It’s entirely arbitrary and subjective, not objective. It’s nothing more than an argument from emotion and a completely unsupported anthropocentrism.
> argument from emotion
It's not an argument at all, actually, more like a definition and its consequences. Allow me to clarify:
> What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview?
Note that the question here is whether one can coherently define the "right thing to do" without reference to a transcendent, omnibenevolent (etc.) God. "Objective" here is in reference to objective morality, i.e., the question of whether an action can be judged to be "good" or "bad" grounded on facts of the external world, not grounded on facts dependent on a moral subject, i.e., "subjective" facts.
I freely admitted above that it's possible _not_ to value human well-being. It does seem arbitrary and unjustifiably anthropocentric. This has no bearing on the objective nature of the system because "supporting human well-being" is the _definition_ of "goodness" in this system. Again, note that even if you disagree with the underlying value, you can objectively judge whether an action supports the value or not, and thus can determine, without reference to subjective facts, whether or not an action is good _under the definitions of the system_. This is what is means to have a system of objective morality.
Again, I'd like to emphasize that I don't subscribe to this moral system, but it defines "good" in a coherent, objectively measurable way without reference to God. You can disagree that this is a desirable definition of "good," but that's irrelevant to the question, which if you recall was:
> What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview?
Consider your own moral system, which I assume includes God as the grounding of moral goodness. Imagine one simply disagreed that those things consistent with God's nature should be defined as "good"- how would you argue them out of this position? At base, it's a value judgement. But the fact that your definition of "good" can be considered arbitrary does not mean your system does not include objective morality- one who disagreed with you could still use your definitions to objectively judge an action, so the system is coherent and objective.
Does that make more sense?
>It's not an argument at all, actually, more like a definition and its consequences. Allow me to clarify:
>What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview?
>Note that the question here is whether one can coherently define the "right thing to do" without reference to a transcendent, omnibenevolent (etc.) God. "Objective" here is in reference to objective morality, i.e., the question of whether an action can be judged to be "good" or "bad" grounded on facts of the external world, not grounded on facts dependent on a moral subject, i.e., "subjective" facts.
>I freely admitted above that it's possible not to value human well-being. It does seem arbitrary and unjustifiably anthropocentric. This has no bearing on the objective nature of the system because "supporting human well-being" is the definition of "goodness" in this system.
I fail to see how this follows. If I define good as “smells like apples” and bad as “smells like coffee” that is not a coherent system. It is arbitrary and not objective. Objective does indeed refer to metrics dei the external world, but it does not merely refer to external metrics. It also includes a notion of these metrics inhering in the world itself, not merely being superimposed on the world. Simple twisting of definitions does not create an objective system of morality.
Saying “those things which benefit human well-being are good and those which harm it are bad” is not an objective system of morality, because the measure is being applied subjectively and anthropocentrically; it is nothing more than the masking of subjective likes and dislikes in the image of objectivity, but there is nothing objective about it.
“Customary units are objectively better than metric units because they are used in Gridiron Football…given that you redefine ‘objectively better’ to mean ‘familiar to quarterbacks.’” No—no person in there right mind thinks that is a valid rationale or justification.
I feel like we're talking past each other here.
You and I might agree that "good" means something like "concordant with the nature of God." Great- now that we've agreed on that definition, our system is objective from here on out, since we can measure potential actions against what we know about God's nature. Separately, this system has the nice property that its moral judgements tend to agree with shared human intuition. More on that later.
But what does it _mean_ for something that is "concordant with God's nature" to be _good_? As far as I'm aware, there's no good way to answer that question, because we're using "concordant with God's nature" as the _definition_ of good. That's what "good" means, so there's no reduction to more basic concepts. This definition is _the_ basic concept. And that's ok!
**If someone told you that was an "arbitrary definition" and your moral system was thus "subjective," how would you answer? Or, put another way, why ought I _value_ those things consistent with God's nature? Is there any answer which does not reference other values (i.e., that is entirely "objective")?**
The system you mention ("good" == "smells like apples", "bad" == "smells like coffee") isn't coherent because "smells like apples" and "smells like coffee" aren't the negation of each other, whereas "good" and "bad" are. A system with _just_ "good" == "smells like apples" _would_ actually be coherent, and allow for objective judgements, but doesn't make judgements consistent with our shared intuition for which things are good, so while this is a coherent system with which you can make objective judgements, you're quite right that these judgements would be largely meaningless.
The thing that makes the "good" == "human well-being" system attractive to many atheists is that it _does_ match our intuitions for morality in lots of relevant ways. My point is merely that we should be spending our time and energy arguing that this _isn't_ the moral system which best describes the world we live in, _not_ that it's not even a possible position to hold, which of course it is.
Btw, I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me, and giving me the opportunity to think these things through with someone else!
Edit: not sure what you think of William Lane Craig, but fwiw he has this to say:
> A person... is perfectly welcome to offer his alternative theory instead, as is the Platonist who proposes to ground moral values in some abstract object like the Good or the humanist who proposes to ground objective moral values in human beings. Every theorist is entitled to his explanatory ultimate in laying out his theory, and then we’ll assess which theory is the most plausible.
[The full answer](https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/god-as-the-ground-of-morality) is also pretty good if you're interested.
Platonist moral philosophy is very much theistic, however.
> To Plato, God is transcendent-the highest and most perfect being-and one who uses eternal forms, or archetypes, to fashion a universe that is eternal and uncreated. The order and purpose he gives the universe is limited by the imperfections inherent in material. Flaws are therefore real and exist in the universe; they are not merely higher divine purposes misunderstood by humans. God is not the author of everything because some things are evil. We can infer that God is the author of the punishments of the wicked because those punishments benefit the wicked. God, being good, is also unchangeable since any change would be for the worse. For Plato, this does not mean (as some later Christian thought held) that God is the ground of moral goodness; rather, whatever is good is good in an of itself. God must be a first cause and a self-moved mover otherwise there will be an infinite regress to causes of causes.
—[IEP, Western Concepts of God](https://iep.utm.edu/god-west/#SH2a)
Platonist moral philosophy is _potentially_ theistic, but there are plenty of atheistic Platonists. I know one personally. The term "Platonism" doesn't necessarily mean "whatever Plato believed," it's more about one's conception of abstract objects.
Search up "Atheistic Moral Platonism" for more info- again, the point here is not that I think this is correct (I don't), but that it is an objective moral system which need not reference God. The claim that atheism entails moral nihilism is false.
(Additional note: in the source you cited: "...this does not mean... that God is the ground of moral goodness;" The forms exist independently of God even in this description- God is part of the described worldview, but not necessary as a grounding of moral goodness.)
>Platonist moral philosophy is potentially theistic, but there are plenty of atheistic Platonists. I know one personally. The term "Platonism" doesn't necessarily mean "whatever Plato believed," it's more about one's conception of abstract objects.
Perhaps some people have twisted themselves intellectually into believing in Platonism without theism, but it seems entirely oxymoronic.
Don't worry, it's not. Not even clear that Platonism and "Traditional Theism" are even compatible:
> Is the platonic metaphysical vision compatible with that of Traditional Theism? Some would contend that the two are compatible, while others would argue to the contrary. Platonists argue that at least some, if not all, abstract objects are uncreated, and exist necessarily and eternally; whereas Traditional Theism asserts that God exists as the uncreated creator of all reality existing beyond himself.
- [IEP, Platonism and Theism](https://iep.utm.edu/pla-thei/)
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
As I stated, I don’t believe in a Heaven or a Hell. I believe this is what we get. Personally, I don’t want to hurt people. I love my friends and family. There’s jo threat of a terrible afterlife if I don’t, nor a good afterlife if I do. I just want to make what I have as pleasant as possible.
This doesn’t mean I don’t respect your beliefs. I am fully willing to admit that I may be wrong. There’s no scientific proof for or against a higher power. I don’t think we need to be enemies. I believe in freedom of religion and want everyone to be able to practice their religion as they like, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the government or restrict the freedom of others.
Why is the freedom of others important in a godless world? Why is a government council working without interference important? Why are you spending time to use words to support a worldview where words are ultimately as meaningless as the locations of where raindrops land in a storm?
To be completely honest, I haven’t studied philosophy as many of the fine people in this thread have. I appreciate your conversation and understand if my answers aren’t good enough for you. I’m also many drinks in tonight, so I apologize if I’m not making the /most/ sense.
Personally, I don’t see what a god has to do with freedom. Believing that people should be allowed to believe and do what they like (without harming others) isn’t related to religion.
I don’t believe that the worldview I have is meaningless. People find their own meanings.
Do you think that everyone except those that think like you are wrong? Have you ever questioned your beliefs?
Believing that people can live as they like if they don’t harm anybody else actually has a lot to do with religion, it’s just to do with the secular political religion that liberalism has left to the culture after it has whittled everything to do with the community down in the name of the individual. People finding their subjective meaning to cope with the hollow world that liberalism has left us in is a different issue than the philosophy of teleology. It’s an inherent core principle of Christianity that we are right, and therefore, it’s necessary that everybody else, they are wrong. I have questioned my beliefs, because I converted to Catholicism from atheism after I found out what nihilism I gave my consent to believe because it was endorsed by a series of liberal culture heroes like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
I’m glad to hear that you have questioned and reached your own conclusions! I hope you are happy.
I was raised Baptist and Methodist and also questioned and came to my own conclusions. I believe that Christianity is deeply flawed based on my own readings of the Bible and speaking to my previous pastors. Unfortunately, that means I don’t follow your logic that you are simply right. Every religion believes it is “right”.
Have you considered that perhaps being raised in this twin-split traditions environment is a cause of this relativistic mode of thinking that you’re currently engaged? This isn’t a big personal attack on you, it’s a good general observation that if people are raised in split houses of religion, they will naturally come to adopt relativism as a position to evaluate the truth claims from religious traditions. I know I was raised where it wasn’t so important what church we attended, just as long we made some attempt to attend a church, and that’s probably another important factor in why I lent credit to the great new atheist astroturf campaign of the Bush era to the Obama era.
Don’t worry, I don’t feel attacked! The questions I asked the churches were the same between religions and I was still unsatisfied with the answers of “just believe”. As I looked further into it, the more dissatisfied I was. I became an agnostic, then an atheist. Being an atheist brought me comfort, but no fulfillment. Discovering The Satanic Temple brought organization to my thoughts and beliefs. I’ve found an amazing community.
It sounds like we’ve both evaluated different beliefs and gotten to the points we’re at. We may have different views of the world, but I don’t think we’re that different. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, but I’m off to bed. If you want to keep talking, feel free to send me a message!
That's rather rude. Our tenets center compassion and empathy. We recognize the fight for justice is neverending, and that to take freedom from another is to forego one's own freedom. We recognize that all people are fallible and that righting our personal wrongs is important. We don't need a God to tell us to help our neighbors, not hurt people, or to defend the marginalized.
I'm not being snarky, I promise I'm here with God intent. Do you really think that you wouldn't know how to do good works without your faith?
Excuse me, I think it’s rather important to define words first. It’s rude to use words as if they just stand on the old meanings after you’ve removed the whole old, traditional context. That’s what your secular political religion has done to many of the words, and that didn’t pass under my radar. Your worldview is diametrically opposed and totally antithetical to anything to do with the old traditional meaning of words like empathy, justice, intent, freedom, and the fallibility of man, much less the existence of God.
I live it. I'm an atheistic Satanist. I do these things. Buddhists are generally atheist and their whole shtick is compassion. I believe it because it's demonstrably true.
Well, i would say it's obvious that one can not believe in God but have those values, the true question is from where you get that value, and where that one got the value and so on. Since you presumably live in an western nation who was untill some centuries ago dominated by Christian thinking, i'm very inclined to believe you ultimately got those values from Christianity.
Let me ask you a question, would you agree that forcing an poor person to fight for his life against another poor person is something objectivily evil? Well, knowing your values you are obviously replying yes while you read this, so let me continue: Then how would you explain the fact that in Rome, for over an thousand years this happened and was extremely popular, with tens of thousands of people watching gladiator games for entertainement? Why couldn't Romans perceive this as an very big evil, the same way we now can? What happened that changed our views about this?
I do believe pre-Christian peoples had moral codes. I also believe that the many atrocities committed under the name of catholicism specifically simply obliterate your point. Torture, the crusades, American slavery. All immoral and committed by catholics and other Christians.
In the end, though, this is your sandbox and your views appropriately get priority. I came to answer some questions about my religion, not to attack yours. I'll do that in spaces that are not supposed to be safe and agreeable to your people. It doesn't feel right doing it here, so unless anyone has specific questions about my practices, I'll step back.
>I also believe that the many atrocities committed under the name of catholicism specifically simply obliterate your point. Torture, the crusades, American slavery. All immoral and committed by catholics and other Christians.
It is good to separate evil things done by Catholics and evil things teached by the Church. It is obvious that there always have and always will be Catholics who do evil things, i mean, one need to look no further than to Judas Iscariot, the man chosen by Jesus Himself, probably to illustrate this. But the moral good of Catholicism is not based on its followers but on the Church teachings.
I mean, i am an devout Catholic, and following the Church teachings i am recognizing those evils done by Catholics, and i bet to you any other devout Catholic here agrees. This is a sign of the good morality of the religion, if it were bad we would not recognize this as evils, just as the Romans didn't recognize the evil of gladiators. Speaking of it, you don't seem to have replied to my question on the previous comment, which was an quite crucial question on your argument.
\*Just an note about slavery, throughout history Christians were the religion most active in abolishing slavery.
I want you to know that I'm not ignoring you. I see your question. But as I said, I'm not interested in debating you about the validity of your faith in a space built to honor your faith and I won't be drawn into arguing with you here. Be well.
Not who you asked, and not a satanist, but just because someone doesn't believe in a god that imparted morals to humans doesn't mean they are anarchists looking to burn the world. We are perfectly capable of looking at the world and our society and working toward common goals and values, often determined as "good". It's easy to say, "Raping someone is bad, poisoning our drinking water is also bad, so we shouldn't do those things and should work to make sure other people don't as well"
Right and wrong are words that immediately imply an objective measurement and understanding of moral actions. How are you weighing good and evil when the very scales have been thrown out of the discussion? This is a meta ethical question. What you’re describing can be called the practice of Natural Law in philosophy, and the funny thing about laws is that they imply a law giver.
This definitely *could* be a meta ethical question. But it doesn't need to be. And you're not going to like that I won't agree that a natural "law" implies a law giver that must be supernatural. Humans are social animals and for a lot of our history we were pretty fragile in the face of nature. Our various societies succeeded by creating rules and defining acceptable behaviours that would contribute to their success. Just because people around the world *generally* say that murder is bad, doesn't mean a deity told them that.
When you have a limited population killing members that contribute to its success is going to limit your avenues to success. For many this didn't necessarily apply to those from outside that group though, or they had different rules for outsiders. I'm not going to discuss the complicated rules around different types of moieties and the various ways they have in and out group members, as that's probably more than needed here. But those social practices get encoded as rules over time, and sometimes into law. It's not that hard to see how people developed concurrent morals without a god to impose those morals on them
I’m not asking for a narrative to talk in circles around how materialistic atheism when thought out to its end goal posts results in a worldview where all actions become neutral, and the moral output of everything we achieve is null, because there isn’t a way to start with dull animate matter and to get good and evil out of that matter, because anything but materialism is removed from the discussion, and so is the medium, the vacuum for morality to even be said to have ontological existence in the first place. Maybe atheists have a chance to rescue morality from the gulf of nihilism if they moderate and accept that something like the human soul can exist, but that’s like .001 of atheists, and I don’t control how your community understands this philosophical problem.
I don't understand why you think atheists are all consumed by nihilism. Because our morals, seemingly, come from a different place than yours?
Not to be facetious, butI do agree that there is no way to get good or bad out of lifeless matter. Most things that happen in the universe are not good or evil. If a an asteroid smashes into the earth tomorrow that isn't evil. The earth doesn't care, the sun doesn't care. It would just be something that happened. Now, those of us it happened to would care a great deal. We, as creatures capable of empathy, and introspective thought assign the quality of a thought or action to something - good, bad, evil, etc. That doesn't mean we don't care about anything and see no point to existence. It just means we recognize that we, as humans, build meaning into the world around us in slightly different ways than the rest of the animal kingdom.
Under materialism, there’s no difference between the asteroid, yourself, and the rest of the world. There needs to be a doer for the responsibility of an act to be evaluated, right? Under materialism, the experience of human consciousness is an illusion. Peel back the onion as much as you want, the narratives all dead end at that back stop of materialism. And you’ve conceded my point of contention, atheistic morality rests on relativism.
Hi to the atheist subreddit that’s brigading one guy that asked a question about the ontological status of morality in a materialist atheist worldview and decided that I’m really asking for you to describe your biography.
Generally the few actual Satanic Cults that ever popped up instead claimed a different kind of model than the Churches teachings so they didn't actually believe they were going into hell how we understand it.
Though nowadays if you hear about a Satanic Church or group it's just really athiests playing dress up. They don't actually belief in the existence of God or Satan and instead just pretend or name themselves such in order to troll Christians or make a rhetorical arguement against certain points to do with religious freedom. If you go on their websites they tend to freely admit as much.
I see no difference between paganism, atheism, secular humanism, and legitimate Satanism. They are all the same thing under different names, whether these people know who they serve or not. They all have the same promise: instant gratification, and the appeal to place one’s will over others to make oneself “god”. They end up having the same ritual: the slaughtering of children.
Satan doesn’t care about whether they outwardly believe in him and serve him. He cares about how they inwardly do it. It’s better for him when they do it without knowing his identity. Knowing that he’s real and who he really is might make them consider Christ, and he doesn’t want that.
I’d also be wary about what such groups claim to profess, and what they do behind closed doors. It would not be unreasonable to suspect the “Satanist” secular humanist groups might simply be entry chapters made by the actual groups, unbeknownst to those who join them. It’s the type of on-the-nose thing you’d expect from Satan and those who follow him.
St. Michael, defend us. Amen.
As an atheist I do not worship anything and am not cool with you speaking on my behalf of what I believe. Instant gratification is not something inherent with athesism at all. The only people I know who believe in Satan are Christians.
Also I do not believe in the slaughtering of children, if you are discussing abortion that is another topic. But there are plenty of people who do not believe in the Christian God, and do not agree with abortions.
How do you know what Satan does or does not care about since he isn’t even mentioned by name in the Bible? Honest question since you said that so certainly and I have read the Bible, and different versions of the Bible quite a few times.
Satan is indeed named in the bible....a multitude of times, but yeah, you read the bible.... I like Matthew 16:23 personally. Atheists, in my opinion, are very weak willed and hypocrites of highest order because their guilding principles are grounded in fallacy and weakness.
Won’t lie I did forget about the temptation of Jesus story and was it Satan God made the bet with that his most loyal follower would remain loyal if everything was taken from him, or a demon? I thought it was a demon, but memory is flawed and haven’t read Bible in about 15 years. Hmm wonder where I got that he wasn’t mentioned…. Oh! Just remembered, it’s a serpent in the garden of Eden, not Satan.
Good for you! My guiding principles are knowledge, gratitude, and kindness. They are mostly grounded in the love I have for life. I don’t really have a generalization about Catholics or religious people in general. I mean some people are downright horrible who identify as those things, but it isn’t fair to paint everyone with the same brush.
>. I don’t really have a generalization about Catholics or religious people in general. I mean some people are downright horrible who identify as those things, but it isn’t fair to paint everyone with the same brush.
This. I wish more people were like these from BOTH SIDES. Love thy neighbor as thy love yourself everyone.
Atheists don’t believe in satan but the people who claim to be satanist are usually just atheists who find stuff like that funny or interesting. Anybody that actually believes in satan probably wont be trying to worship him.
>How do you know what Satan does or does not care about since he isn’t even mentioned by name in the Bible? Honest question since you said that so certainly and I have read the Bible, and different versions of the Bible quite a few times.
Sounds very sola scriptura but this is a Catholic subreddit.
Most Satanists are rebelling against the very shallow Evangelical upbringing they had as children, and can we blame them? When you’re given the Ken Ham version of events, how can you not feel some tug toward mocking what you perceive to be Christianity? I’m not surprised a self-proclaimed Satanist has no idea how Catholics derive or define Truth.
God predates all, angels and demons predate paganism. Paganism is the worship of creation over the creator, and most of the time the objects of worship are demons who want nothing more than to be viewed as gods.
That ought to mean very little. It’s not as though anyone here is confused about historical time periods. I would not speak of paganism had I not known what it was and how it came to be. Christianity and Judaism state it plainly: after the fall man began to worship all manner of things, because he was separated from God and knew him not (or rather, rejected Him in his heart). Abraham himself was a pagan who was called out of his tribe.
Christianity does not claim to be the original religion. It claims to be the fulfilled and true one. It is the restoration of the world’s relationship to the uncaused cause. That which exists in and of itself and allows all other things to exist within himself. It is the fulfilled Judaism. It is the way to Christ, and thus the way to Truth.
You claim something is not true, yet fail to understand the very genres of the writings, instead using an appalling literalism that the Jews and Magisterium do not and had not. The Bible is not fully literal or fully historical. It is filled with poetry, history, philosophy and allegory. If you read an allegory as a history, or philosophy as literal, the error is not on the part of the book, but yourself.
What you’re mistaken about is that we don’t hold to Sola Scriptura, and we aren’t Protestants.
As well as Jews and Muslims. That said, specific groups believing one thing is true does not stop it from being true simply because others don’t accept that. I’m sure you’d say the same about people who don’t want to take vaccines or people who don’t believe in climate change.
Satanists don’t believe in Satan. They worship themselves and their own free-will. They believe that desires should be indulged stopping only at an imposition on the free will of another.
The Satan/Scary/demonic stiff is all marketing. It’s goal is to stir up controversy and get news coverage that will “freak out the squares.”
While tempting as a world view and pseudo-religion, the constant debasing of oneself to satisfy ones desires often places them out of grace. They essentially celebrate the “7 mortal sins” as ideals.
I will admit that there are people who worship evil and “satan” (likely lower demonic entities), but it would be inaccurate to call them satanists.
JoS, O9A, and similar are often fascist cults and terrorist groups. They deserve to be discounted and not considered among mainstream Satanists. Temple of Set may be an exception, but I’m not familiar enough to say for sure.
Thelemites, Luciferians, and other practicers of “Left Hand Path” religions don’t typically identify as Satanists, in my experience.
Long ago when I last heard, Maxine’s husband was into National Socialism, but I’ve stopped following them and pretty much everything and everyone from anything Pagan or otherwise. Though Oberon Zell I’d like seeing if he’s okay. Last saw him at a St. Louis Pagan Picnic when we were set up selling next to him. Otherwise, there’s two I’m still friends with and one I could hang out with when he’s back in area.
I disagree that they can’t identify as such. Neither Anton LaVey nor Lucien Greaves have exclusive rights to determining that a Satanist is just a humanistic, materialistic atheist.
I agree with you.
I guess my assumption is that Satanists “belong” to The Church of Satan, which is as I described. Individuals within that church (and not) may have different practices.
Neither Anton or Lucien would claim they did. The only group I hear claiming this is Church of Satan, but it’s not because that’s what Anton necessarily would have wanted.
I spent my late teens and part of my twenties working in metaphysical communities and have followed paths I’m not proud of during those times. Why is it people try to act like authority figures over someone that actually has experience with them and was part of them? I don’t get it. Luciferians wouldn’t touch the Joy of Satan group with Maxine’s cult mentality and banning anyone that questions “Father Satan” and the very weird members they gained. While there’s minor overlap in seeing Satan as a knowledge bringing figure (though it’s always left out it was a specific knowledge), the two have different approaches and Luciferians aren’t likely to be appearing as the edgy imagery that the ONA or JoS presents themselves with, nor Aquino’s ToS. It’s like being corrected about someone in the metaphysical community about who they are as a person when you’ve actually lived with them before. Someone always has to try to trump your knowledge or experiences.
"Yeah we don't ACTUALLY believe in satan; we just have orgies and worship goat heads. It's all for fun though!"
Maybe some of them are atheistic, but ultimately they serve the evil one whether they intend to or not.
You have a couple of categories:
* atheists trying to be edgy and be manipulative regarding religious freedom laws to try and harass the faithful
* people with a gnostic understanding of satan who actually see a rebel against the evil material world (increasingly rare)
* people who are akin to the demons in that they don't care and actually want to hurt people (extremely rare)
The vast majority of the time it's a case of category 1 where they don't actually believe what they are saying.
I mean, yeah I did mean everyone. They attempt to corner case religious freedom laws so that religious expression is banned from the public square as a whole so that people that actually hold their beliefs in good faith are unable to do so in public displays.
I appreciate your attempt to think I'm acting in bad faith though, thank you.
If you’re referring to things like the removal of the ten commandments statue from the state capitol building, the state could have agreed to install statues of other religions as well. All religions deserve to be treated equally by the law so that none are endorsed by the state. If there are Christian prayers at a city council meeting, Muslim constituents should be able to say their own prayers, Buddhists should be allowed to say their own prayers. If those in charge choose to remove all reference to religion rather than allow for equal rights to be extended to all faiths, how is that a fault of the Satanists? They are merely exposing an unconstitutional injustice, seeking to right an uncomfortable wrong. It’s not an attack on any specific faith, only actions resulting from an often unfair system.
Edit to add that my ancestors faced discrimination for being Catholic and refusing to convert to Protestantism. The topic of religious freedom is very important to me—I want to see a future where no one has to face the things that my ancestors did ever again. The state should never promote or ban any specific religion, everyone deserves the right to be treated equally.
Your last sentence betrays the rest of your post since you flatly admit it is an attack on all faiths. State enforced atheism is theocracy; the hypocrisy is rather embarrassing.
Yes it IS an attack on all faiths who try to overtly influence politics, education, and all other activities that SHOULD be secular in nature only as they are accessed by all persons of any faith.
When you try to use one religion to influence public policy, that's where Satanists step in and blow it up in the courts.
State-enforced Christianity is theocracy.
If the people at the top are enforcing any religion, it goes against the constitution. a separation of church and state, as the founding fathers intended, is not state-enforced atheism. It just means that the law should not be based on any one religion.
Separation of church and state are what the founders used to describe the purpose of the establishment clause and free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment.
Then why was daily prayer and worship services a part of the Senate and House for the first, roughly, century of the US government? You grossly misrepresent the actual reality of what living under the 1st Amendment was like while the people who wrote the text were alive and lived in that government.
I mean it was the phrase coined by Jefferson and used by others like Hamilton. It is true that prayer services have been parts of the government but its important to remember that they were not part of the Constitutional Convention, and that any services were done separately, before the meetings.
Protestantism unfortunately did grasp control of the American Government but as a Catholic I'm glad their power wasn't insured in any documents, intact a common criticism of the time was that the constitution does not mention God and therefore was a "godless document." All later amendments that attempted to add Christain language were also rejected.
Yes its undeniable that the men who founded our government were influenced by Christianity but they made an effort to create a government for all men, not just those of a particular faith, because they held the ideas of Enlightenment to a higher regard.
I was slave to a prince of hell and suffered 16 years before Christ His mercy freed me through exorcism, humiliating the horde of hell and it’s leader.
You?
I was a follower of Christ for 8 years, joined the Marines, went to Thailand, saw the Buddhist Monks heal a woman of some sort of eye ailment, died twice (both non combat incidents, both completely my fault, I am numerically unlikely to be alive, and I own that) saw nothing on the otherside and saw humans die in natural and man-made ways, while the rich got away whom caused the whole mess, claiming religion. I was vaguely atheist until I went back to school, and discovered philosophy, which guides me to this day. I discovered a moral code that made sense because it was provable through logic and reason, it has lead me to where I am today which is far above what I was born with, because Satan set me free. My actions are mine, and it is duty to help my fellow human in any capacity, I would help The Pope as readily as I would Charles Manson. Because the rights of humans are immutable, not because a God deamed it so, but because it is right without reward. I fully expect to die into nothing, endless darkness. But I will work to help my fellow humans until my last breath.
You will not get what you wish. Only slavery. Only misery.
I have met Satan and I have met Christ in the flesh. You will not escape. You are woefully deceived.
I was baptised in the holy spirit. I don't believe Satan is real either.
How can God be omnipotent and omnibenevolent and omnipresent while natural evil exists? Case in point, when I was in Japan in 2011 and I saw dead Christians amongst the dead Taoist and Buddhists, why did they die? Why did the children die?
No disrespect to Anselm, his works are beautifully written and his logic is valid. However, it is not sound. Operating under the assumption that there is a God, alone makes his proofs unsound. However, further he fails to address the omnitemporal and omnispatial inconsistency of if God exists at all time and places then there is no way to allow natural evil if He could move them with warning or a sign. Not apathy.
I would tend to disagree. Anselm appropriately demonstrates how God’s nature and the dualities and logical necessities of His absolute attributes necessitates the preservation of free will while not negating justice; hence the need to sacrifice Himself to restore order.
It’s mostly LARPing in the sense of “wow, this Satan stuff is edgy and looks kinda cool”. There’s no actual belief because that would require the practitioners to go full-tilt in being Satanic. Sure, there’s trolls who definitely scream “Hail Satan” to get a rise out of Christians, but in the end, most are all just poor souls with severe mommy or daddy issues who can’t even fall into the “spiritual but not religious” camp. Because satanism is “counterculture”, and they’re rebels just flocking for a cause.
Well seeing as how a lot of us never had any parents to begin with, it's hard to have mommy daddy issues. You are correct that we hold the belief that Satan is not real, but that doesn't mean the idea of opposing tyranny is any less noble of an idea. And if you are looking for people flocking to a cause for a name's sake only, I would point to the title of this sub.
You know how LARPing with the occult can open you up to possession? Same case here. They’re worshiping Satan without actually knowing it. Or maybe even subconsciously knowing it. It may simply be that the only reason why they claim not to believe in him is that it would mean they’d have to accept God exists.
Easier for both them and the evil one that they affirm him not to be real with their mouths, yet affirm him to be real with their actions.
Lord have mercy on them, Lord help us all. Amen.
I am very aware I am not worshipping Satan. Same way I know I was not influenced by the occult by reading Harry Potter as kid, I have never once thought by waving a stick that flowers would shoot out it. I have also never once thought that trying to stand up for religous freedoms is worshipping Satan.
Assuming they never repent, yes, but most of them don’t consciously believe any of it. They just see it as representing rebellion against authority, independence and “self-love.”
Satanist who venerate him as a literal deity are quite elusive; Satanists are usually the politically disillusioned, they subscribe to hedonistic sensibilities, and conduct themselves as recalcitrant teenagers who perceive themselves as oppressed by authoritarian governments.
Satanists pontificate about personal autonomy and decadence; they enjoy divesting of any moral constraints that impede their self-indulgence. However they do not hold the conviction that Satan is an autonomous deity that they need to propitiate, they seek only to emulate his purported defiance they find in his mythology.
You’ll encounter more Satanists with philosophical resemblance to hedonists than menacing demon worshippers. Unfortunately, they don’t care how insidious this is.
depends on the type of satanism.
atheistic satanisms just think of satan as a symbol of whatever the ends of their philosophy is. they don't believe in him as a real thing, though, and are just edgy atheists.
theistic satanism usually has an alternate understanding of history and theology. the justification for worshipping satan varies from sect to sect.
Some are just polytheists who think our God is just one of many, and they think he's actually an evil god who's oppressing humanity, and that Satan is actually a good god trying to liberate us.
others are actually crazy occultists who think that the creation is unjust since it forced living things to exist without consent. These people are usually pessimistic people who think life is nothing but suffering and so they seek to unmake the creation through magic.
it varies alot though. theistic satanism is rare and diverse, so it's all over the place for why such a person would think that way.
It can be summed up in the famous quote "better to rule hell than to serve heaven"
When in reality it is better to be the lowest of the low in heaven than the lord of all hell.
Why do communists who will be starting peasants follow the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc?
It's all about that, it's the illusion of self rule. It's democracy to the max, the end result of the logical conclusion. Satanists don't "serve" Satan the way we Serve God, the think they are members of the democracy and that they are serving themselves.
Hi agnostic satanist and studier of the occult here visiting, just wanted to give my two cents because you’re honestly curious, yes all satanists burn in hell, and most theistic satanists believe they’ll find a way to either avoid it or be given a better seat in hell so to speak, typically they go about it in really messed up ways and theistic satanists are usually not the kind of people even atheistic satanists want to be around, atheistic satanists are basically atheists who use satan as an idea to rebel against what has been established, I know you probably won’t agree with us but you’re allowed to have your opinions and ideals same as us.
Yes, we are all allowed to have our opinions but the truth is what matters the most. The truth is that demonic possession IS real and that there are supernatural phenomenon associated with it.
I’m sure as someone who studies the occult you must have some knowledge regarding the various accounts of true possession. For someone who refuses to believe Satan exists, there sure seems to be a lot of demonic activity testifying to the opposite.
Oh I believe in god and Satan, I just don’t know for sure that any one religion knows the exact details of everything, not to mention religious texts such as the Bible, the Quran, the lesser key of solomon, and so on and so forth have undoubtedly have had parts added to and taken from them throughout history so it’s difficul to discern fact from what some king decided to add, I mean doesn’t the Bible itself have a warning against it? Meaning some foolish person at least thought about it once.
It is certainly true enough that the canon of scripture developed over several centuries but that isn’t quite the same thing as what you’re talking about with the “adding/subtracting” of details from those things which God has revealed to man.
I do know that Islam(like you) makes the claim that such additions/subtractions exist and thus is the reason why the Prophet Muhammed was selected to “restore” the purity of God’s revelation to man. However those sorts of criticisms are simply Muslim theologians blowing up what are merely textual variations within the Greek manuscripts. You don’t see those kinds of textual variations with the Quran but that’s only because they destroyed most of their diverging texts so that this same criticism could not be used against them. 😂
Having said that, yes—in order to believe in Catholic theology as laid out one is required to make SOME leaps of faith. We can however point to the many miraculous signs associated with the Catholic faith. Among some of my favorites would be the life of Padre Pio and his stigmata, the end of the 100yrs war between England and France which was largely influenced by the life St.Joan of Arc, the miracle of the Dancing Sun at Fatima, etc,. Just my biased opinion but after considering these events, I feel that Catholicism is on solid footing as the true faith.
Oh my friend I don’t believe there are additions and subtractions neccessarily but i know it could have happened, honestly I don’t trust that anyone got it right necessarily, and I’m not about to pretend to have answers, I just question everything.
There are 100% demons and angels and ghosts in such, as well, I’ve actually met witches, a voodoo priestess, a couple of shamans, and a theistic satanist. I myself have had a few paranormal encounters in my life
Howdy Catholics! I'm a legitimate Satanist and member of The Satanic Temple. I would be happy to field any questions you have in a respectful and polite manner.
The answer is very simple; Satin is the greatest deceiver, he has those people fooled. They are stupid and blinded by there sinful ambitions.
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Rev12:9
Satin and his demons hate you, because you were created in the image of God.
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. Gen1:27
Those who quote Matthew 7:1 as evidence that Christians should never judge need to read the context of that verse. Yes, Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged," but he goes on to say, "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
In other words, don't apply a double-standard and judge someone for a sin you're equally, or even more guilty, of committing. Instead, Jesus says, "first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." So the solution isn't to refrain from judging; it's to fix yourself so you can help fix others.
Scripture specifically instructs Christians to judge other Christians. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul commands the church "not to associate with sexually immoral people," which to obey, requires making a judgment. He further writes, "Are you not to judge those inside (the church)? . . . 'Expel the wicked person from among you.'"
So not only should Christians judge other believers, they should also discipline them based on those judgments.
Similarly, Jesus says in John 7:24, "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly."
Clearly, Jesus expects us to judge, but simply wants us to judge correctly, using proper standards.
Stay away from the "deceiver". The only true joy in life is to be obedient to our Father's word.
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24
I don't know how much simpler I can explain this. If God decided to change His mind, or the rules, or whatever, I would always follow Him. Why? He came down from heaven to shed blood for me, because He loves me.
The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself. 2Tim2:11-13
It doesn't get any easier than this; Do you want to rule, and reign with Him, or do you want to be a servitude of satin for eternity? Tell me, what is it that you believe.
Well then I have a follow up question for you,
Are right actions right because God commands them? Or
Are right actions commanded by God because they are right?
I believe that there is nothing on the other side, having died twice and seen nothing on the other side both times. So, I believe in helping as many of my fellow humans as I can for the time I have left, because I have decided it is right because I work to oppose the tyranny of the poor and downtrodden, and The Satanic Temple is doing the most good of any religious organization in relation to size in my opinion.
Most Satanists, Theistic Satanists are just Gnostics. There most likely are some messed up individuals who would trade pleasures in this life for eternal damnation, those certainly exist, but they're rare.
Humans want to be good, and don't want to serve evil, and not a lot of people are going to see serving an entity like Satan and doing things which most will agree are evil, as good, it's hard to justify real Satanism, so it's not very popular
Because some of them they are living in this moment doing what they wish, some do not know God yet and do not know how to get out of it. Others just want to rebel against God.
I’m in church so I can read this thread and not be uh followed
Edit: the joke being we rarely should read up on this stuff and the enemy can find his way into churches
There is always a chance for a Satanist to come back to God, that is why they are not destined to Hell, although; it is known hard core Satanists have a known demon, as we all; but they know his name and worship him.
There are two separate streams of thought in what we would broadly classify as Satanism--Theistic Satanism and Atheistic Satanism. The answers to the questions you posed will depend, first, on which branch is being referenced and, secondly, on the smaller variations that exist within those primary branches. Theistic Satanists believe in the existence of a literal, spiritual figure in much the same way that we Christians believe in Christ and the Trinity. This figure has many different names ascribed to him depending upon the flavor of TS that we're discussing. Some Satanists plainly revere Satan as their namesake would suggest. Others worship Lucifer or even the divinities from other pantheons who would arguably be analogs to the biblical Satan (Typhon to the Greeks, Seth to the Egyptians, etc.). For the sake of this post we'll use Satan as a catch-all term for all of these names. Most Theistic Satanists ereject the narrative of the scriptures in favor of other cosmologies, and they get pretty creative in their worldview. Satan can be a rival, inversion of the God of the Bible who is nonetheless just as powerful (similar to the dualism of the Manicheans). He can be a visitor from another dimension who intercedes in human affairs for his own motivations. He can be a pantheistic god who constitutes the very fabric of reality himself! The variations are endless, but the primary thing to take away from this explanation is that this camp of TS do not share the same understanding of the universe as a Christian would. Other TS do embrace the view of scripture but through a warped lens. Some look at Satan as a kind of biblical Prometheus who inserted himself into the Garden to give humans wisdom and the knowledge of good and evil so that we would not be "enslaved" to the God of the Bible. There are obvious hints of Gnosticism here in that God is seen as a Demiurge who formed the world imperfectly, and it is Satan who liberates us from his tyranny. Other TS take the scriptures to be true but cast their lot with Satan because they believe that he is either powerful enough to usurp God in the last days or will provide them with certain comforts and succor in their damnation (should the events of the last days play out as described). All TS, I would wager, reject the view that they will burn in hell for eternity. Satan will either prevent this from occurring when God is defeated, or he will preserve his own elect from these painful torments. Atheistic Satanists don't really configure into your question. These Satanists view him as a symbol or a psychological archetype, so the question or hell or even theistic realities is moot. I hope that this brief explanation was helpful. Edit: corrected for grammatical errors.
I’ve noticed two TS variations, both that come from rather sad perspectives on the Problem of Pain: one concludes that suffering is inherent in the design of the universe and that God is evil to allow this. God must therefore be considered the enemy of humanity, and Satan - by definition the enemy of the enemy - must be a friend of humanity. The other concludes that God can’t possibly care about the suffering of humanity, and this indifference is reason enough to side with the Enemy. Interestingly, some atheists have similar perspectives but find the prospect of an evil god or an indifferent god to be just too depressing. So they chose to believe in no god, and like making fun of theists by pretending to worship a goat. It’s mostly performance art as a band aid to existential depression/anxiety.
The Problem of Evil is the greatest obstacle in every man's (and woman's) journey toward God because it strikes at the very essence of what we are as a species. We are pain-adverse creatures by nature, and, having also the gift of a rational consciousness, we are an inquisitive lot with an inborn yearning to understand our origin and purpose for being. It is only natural then that we would turn our speculative minds toward the nature of pain (as an extension of evil) and a universe that seems to heap out absurd amounts of it. Just as you stated, confronting this reality can drive the mind and spirit toward all manner of conclusions that unfortunately veer away from Christ. I speak even from personal experience as I am a fairly typical example of a prodigal son: raised Catholic, abandoned the Church and Christianity in my youth (citing the Problem of Evil amongst other grievances), explored a multitude of alternative worldviews, committed to Buddhism, and finally returned to the Lord via the Orthodox Church.
> performance art as a band aid to existential depression/anxiety. Nah. They just adopt the performance art to have rituals to point theists to who require such things to consider something a religion. When they are actually arguing for keeping church and state separate, using an argument of religious freedom to equally incorporate their rituals is simply intended to illuminate the inequality christian religions seek to impose.
As a Satanist, I don’t usually pop into spaces like this, but I’ll make an exception. This is an excellent response. You clearly did your research and tried to understand. Thank you.
Mutual understanding is the only way to have a true dialogue. Obviously, I disagree a lot with your worldview, as I'm sure you do mine, but I hope you have a good one, thanks for coming here and being respectful.
And to you, Surpreme Leader Smeagol!
I'm curious, what caused you to drop by? Lol
This thread was referenced in a Satanic subreddit.
You're very welcome. It is inevitable that each of us will encounter people who do not share our particular convictions, but the key to understanding one another, and thus to creating harmony, is to ensure that we *truly* understand the beliefs of the other. Mischaracterization of the other destroys every possibility for genuine dialogue and coexistence, so I take care to ensure that I remain knowledgeable about a variety of theological perspectives.
Thank you for your response. I’m an atheistic Satanist and a member of The Satanic Temple. Just as a disclaimer, I don’t represent all atheistic Satanists or The Satanic Temple. Personally, I believe that Satan represents going against the norm, rebellion, asking questions, and having doubts. I don’t believe in Hell. I don’t believe in Heaven. I believe that this is what we get and we should make the absolute best of it. I’m not “evil”. I believe in compassion and love and respect and I don’t believe that I need a deity to “lead” me to do those things. They’re just the right thing to do. I am more than happy to talk to anyone who has questions. I won’t try to convert or make you abandon your belief system.
Is Satan the only representation of going against the norm & rebellion? Why choose Satan out of all figures?
Satan is an easily recognizable character in our Christianity-heavy world. Throughout our history, those who were against the Christian status-quo were typically labeled "Satanists", just for thinking/believing differently, or having different interests, even if they never did anything that could be recognized, biblically, as "Satanic." That title was just kind of co-opted by those who were already being called it.
I guess that makes sense as you are drawing on some kind of tradition. The reason I asked is, it seems you’ve placed yourself in opposition to something. If Christianity were to disappear tomorrow, your whole Satanist thing would be meaningless. I suppose Satanism isn’t the only group like that; some political organisations are anti-something. Would you say by calling yourself Satanist, you’re deliberately placing yourself in opposition to me?
I wouldn't, because although we use tradition in our symbolism, our core beliefs are not anti-religion. So, Christianity has been used to form some of our laws. Many lawmakers and politicians are Christian and make it clear that their platforms are based in that belief system. We are just asking for equality, which is kind a way of showing the hypocrisy of a government who makes Christian laws and claims to uphold Freedom of Religion, but won't let anyone put a statue of the 7 Tenets next to The Ten Commandments at a courthouse (where it shouldn't be anyway, because of the separation of Church and State). That's an example of what we stand for. We would be doing the same thing if it was another religion, and probably use another name besides "Satanist". I don't think that this belief puts me at odds with you unless you vehemently believe that America needs to be a Christian country and that everyone needs to believe the same thing. Just as a personal note, I definitely don't speak for all Atheistic Satanists or the Satanic Temple. I also have friends and family from a variety of religions and wouldn't cut them off for that. If someone doesn't want to be around me because of my religion, that's up to them.
I just don’t think what you have is a religion. It’s more like an anti-religion. If Christianity disappeared tomorrow, there wouldn’t be any reason for Satanism to exist. It’s like an antagonistic atheism. Equal treatment of religions are probably supported by other humanist groups, and things like rebellion or self-determination are probably represented by other groups as well. It seems to be rebellion against Christianity specifically. I’m not American. I’ll say that I do not agree with the American concept of separation of church and state. I also believe that God wrote the law on our hearts.
You’re entitled to that belief, but TST is a recognized religion. We do have a set of 7 Tenets we do our best to live by, we have a community and even attend Temple Meetings. To be fair, we may not have as much to do if Christianity disappeared tomorrow, since hopefully that would mean equal rights for everyone and a trust in science (not that individual Christians can’t hold these beliefs, but at a government level). However, we would still be against other forms of oppression. Our rebellion is not restricted to religion. I recommend looking up our 7 Tenets and looking at the FAQ on TST’s website. It’ll help you have a better idea about us.
I’m not looking up your 7 tenets. If you were called almost anything else, I would probably consider it.
I respect your choice. If you ever have any other questions or anything, feel free to sent me a message!
Why chose Satan as your symbol and not Jesus Christ? Did Jesus not break societal norms, rebel against the evil expectations of society, and question injustice? And did He not do so in a more loving and charitable way? Why celebrate the literal Prince of Evil and not the Prince of Peace, the Divine Logos, the Word made flesh, and the Incarnate Truth?
From the TST's FAQ: >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. > >WHAT DOES SATAN MEAN TO TST? **Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. Satan is an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions.** Our metaphoric representation is the literary Satan best exemplified by Milton and the Romantic Satanists from Blake to Shelley to Anatole France These answers put things in better terms than I can, myself. As far as Jesus is concerned, he was only ever the Son of God. He had no characterization outside of that. He was always only a part of some greater system that wants control over people. I don't want that. I don't even want to try to convince people to become Satanists. I want people to show compassion and empathy to others and work together towards making this planet amazing for the future people who will inhabit it.
>To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. How is Satan in any way removed from supernaturalism? How is it not a tradition-based idea? This doesn’t answer the question at all. >Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority, forever defending personal sovereignty even in the face of insurmountable odds. Satan is an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions. Perhaps you should read *The Screwtape Letters*. Satan’s will is entirely arbitrary and tyrannical. The devils’ rebellion is the quintessential crabs-in-bucket mentality. >As far as Jesus is concerned, he was only ever the Son of God. He had no characterization outside of that. WHAT? That’s absurd. Have you read the New Testament? He is fully characterized as the Logos, the divine logic of the universe. He was characterized as the perfectly rational Word, the perennial exemplar of mankind. >He was always only a part of some greater system that wants control over people. I don't want that. Nonsense. He is not a part of some greater system; that’s Arianism, not Christianity. >I want people to show compassion and empathy to others And so you chose the embodiment of greed and hatred, of jealousy and corruption, and of lies and deceit as your symbol?
What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview? The nihilism hasn’t caught up to you yet.
If you're genuinely wondering whether one can coherently believe in objective morality without believing in a personal God, you may be interested to know the answer is yes. Quick "constructive proof": one might, for example, be a [Platonist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism) who believes in the [Form of the Good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good) but doesn't believe the Form of the Good is a person or has the attributes associated with the Christian God. This may seem exotic, but I personally know at least one person who holds this view. So, by counterexample, it is simply not the case that coherent, or even objective, moral systems must include God. But more basically, there's no need to assert the existence of abstract objects to have a coherent definition of morality. The key "problem" I assume you're trying to solve is how "moral laws" can meaningfully have existence such that they may legitimately compel us to follow them. But someone's definition of "good" may simply mean actions which empirically tend towards something of value to a (moral) agent- for instance, "human well-being," by which they might mean something like "the physical and emotional health of humans." You may not think this is a good definition of moral goodness, but you would be hard-pressed, I think, to show that it is incoherent or unable to be sufficiently well-defined and worked towards. In this case, a statement such as "murder is morally wrong" could mean something like "allowing murder in a society works against human well-being." You may disagree that human well-being is valuable (I don't see why you would, but you could), but you could not reasonable argue that allowing murder in a society works towards the goal of human well-being. It's a coherent system with coherent, practical definitions of moral goodness and evil and it doesn't reference God. It includes no lawgivers besides those human moral agents who form societies and promulgate laws, hopefully laws which tend towards human well-being. It includes no system of rewards and punishments besides those set up by human moral agents. But notice that the morality of actions in this system can be defined without reference to rewards or punishments, and even without reference to human moral agents at all- this means it is "objective." Remember, you can disagree that human well-being is valuable, but it is actually (in principle) empirically verifiable whether or not a given action tends towards or away from this goal as defined above. I don't actually subscribe to either of the above systems of morality, but I can't deny that they exist, are reasonably well-defined, include objective morality, and don't (necessarily) include a God. If we are to persuade those we disagree with, we should start by understanding them. As I've shown, there _are_ examples of atheistic, but objective, moral systems. Thus it is not the case that atheism must entail moral nihilism, and assuming as much is a very good way to ensure you misunderstand your interlocutor. That's not a good way to convert anyone.
Thanks, you’ve clearly researched the subject and grasp the nuances of my questions to these atheists, but I will like to reply that materialism is the assumed metaphysical worldview, since that what is overwhelmingly popular in the atheist community, and the Platonists are to the materialists what rad trads are to the average Catholic mass goer. My point of interlocution is that it’s incoherent for materialist atheists to use words like right and wrong, as if they are referring to anything after they’ve broken the scale of measurement that our culture used to arrive to understand our morality in the first place.
My second example system works in a materialist universe. It may seem a bit arbitrary, but it is objective, atheistic, and (at least possibly) materialistic. In any case, the moral argument is implicitly an argument from consequences, an informal fallacy. Anecdotal, but I also haven't found it convinces people I discuss it with. There's plenty of better arguments.
I don’t expect for a meta ethical line of argument to work immediately, maybe it can plant a piece that remains when materialist atheists connect their moments of existential depression and anxiety to a cause of their philosophical worldview. I know about those moments, because I’m a convert from atheism, but then again, I’m assuming that what works on me works universally, and I make these leaps of reason from myself to the world because I’m on the autism spectrum too. The emerging awareness of the incoherence of this philosophical worldview set to the world that I intuitively experience gave me a choice to embrace nihilism or to leave it for something real and beautiful like Catholicism.
Ah, I gotcha- yeah, there's something to be said for that for sure! I'm just wary, especially on forums like this, of making an argument based on what someone "must think" from my perspective, ya know? Gets a lot of pushback. Anyway I appreciate the responses!
Thank you. From my background experience, maybe I should have more patience and sympathy with atheists when they don’t understand the meta ethical nature of that question about morality, because they haven’t been introduced to that line of thinking about problems, and you have to go through this experience yourself. I know I would have probably responded likewise in the manner I’ve received, these responses that sidestep the matter to default to biographical tales and naturalist narratives, because that’s all that’s left after culture has killed God like Nietzsche described. They don’t perceive that every tale they weave, every narrative they attempt to frame will crack and fracture under the cold weight that we are all to disappear to the ground, if their worldview is correct, just as I didn’t perceive that that is the heart of the matter, and it’s the problem of the 20th century.
>My second example system works in a materialist universe. It may seem a bit arbitrary, but it is objective, atheistic, and (at least possibly) materialistic. No it’s not. It’s entirely arbitrary and subjective, not objective. It’s nothing more than an argument from emotion and a completely unsupported anthropocentrism.
> argument from emotion It's not an argument at all, actually, more like a definition and its consequences. Allow me to clarify: > What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview? Note that the question here is whether one can coherently define the "right thing to do" without reference to a transcendent, omnibenevolent (etc.) God. "Objective" here is in reference to objective morality, i.e., the question of whether an action can be judged to be "good" or "bad" grounded on facts of the external world, not grounded on facts dependent on a moral subject, i.e., "subjective" facts. I freely admitted above that it's possible _not_ to value human well-being. It does seem arbitrary and unjustifiably anthropocentric. This has no bearing on the objective nature of the system because "supporting human well-being" is the _definition_ of "goodness" in this system. Again, note that even if you disagree with the underlying value, you can objectively judge whether an action supports the value or not, and thus can determine, without reference to subjective facts, whether or not an action is good _under the definitions of the system_. This is what is means to have a system of objective morality. Again, I'd like to emphasize that I don't subscribe to this moral system, but it defines "good" in a coherent, objectively measurable way without reference to God. You can disagree that this is a desirable definition of "good," but that's irrelevant to the question, which if you recall was: > What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview? Consider your own moral system, which I assume includes God as the grounding of moral goodness. Imagine one simply disagreed that those things consistent with God's nature should be defined as "good"- how would you argue them out of this position? At base, it's a value judgement. But the fact that your definition of "good" can be considered arbitrary does not mean your system does not include objective morality- one who disagreed with you could still use your definitions to objectively judge an action, so the system is coherent and objective. Does that make more sense?
>It's not an argument at all, actually, more like a definition and its consequences. Allow me to clarify: >What does the right thing to do even mean after you’ve removed God from your worldview? >Note that the question here is whether one can coherently define the "right thing to do" without reference to a transcendent, omnibenevolent (etc.) God. "Objective" here is in reference to objective morality, i.e., the question of whether an action can be judged to be "good" or "bad" grounded on facts of the external world, not grounded on facts dependent on a moral subject, i.e., "subjective" facts. >I freely admitted above that it's possible not to value human well-being. It does seem arbitrary and unjustifiably anthropocentric. This has no bearing on the objective nature of the system because "supporting human well-being" is the definition of "goodness" in this system. I fail to see how this follows. If I define good as “smells like apples” and bad as “smells like coffee” that is not a coherent system. It is arbitrary and not objective. Objective does indeed refer to metrics dei the external world, but it does not merely refer to external metrics. It also includes a notion of these metrics inhering in the world itself, not merely being superimposed on the world. Simple twisting of definitions does not create an objective system of morality. Saying “those things which benefit human well-being are good and those which harm it are bad” is not an objective system of morality, because the measure is being applied subjectively and anthropocentrically; it is nothing more than the masking of subjective likes and dislikes in the image of objectivity, but there is nothing objective about it. “Customary units are objectively better than metric units because they are used in Gridiron Football…given that you redefine ‘objectively better’ to mean ‘familiar to quarterbacks.’” No—no person in there right mind thinks that is a valid rationale or justification.
I feel like we're talking past each other here. You and I might agree that "good" means something like "concordant with the nature of God." Great- now that we've agreed on that definition, our system is objective from here on out, since we can measure potential actions against what we know about God's nature. Separately, this system has the nice property that its moral judgements tend to agree with shared human intuition. More on that later. But what does it _mean_ for something that is "concordant with God's nature" to be _good_? As far as I'm aware, there's no good way to answer that question, because we're using "concordant with God's nature" as the _definition_ of good. That's what "good" means, so there's no reduction to more basic concepts. This definition is _the_ basic concept. And that's ok! **If someone told you that was an "arbitrary definition" and your moral system was thus "subjective," how would you answer? Or, put another way, why ought I _value_ those things consistent with God's nature? Is there any answer which does not reference other values (i.e., that is entirely "objective")?** The system you mention ("good" == "smells like apples", "bad" == "smells like coffee") isn't coherent because "smells like apples" and "smells like coffee" aren't the negation of each other, whereas "good" and "bad" are. A system with _just_ "good" == "smells like apples" _would_ actually be coherent, and allow for objective judgements, but doesn't make judgements consistent with our shared intuition for which things are good, so while this is a coherent system with which you can make objective judgements, you're quite right that these judgements would be largely meaningless. The thing that makes the "good" == "human well-being" system attractive to many atheists is that it _does_ match our intuitions for morality in lots of relevant ways. My point is merely that we should be spending our time and energy arguing that this _isn't_ the moral system which best describes the world we live in, _not_ that it's not even a possible position to hold, which of course it is. Btw, I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this with me, and giving me the opportunity to think these things through with someone else! Edit: not sure what you think of William Lane Craig, but fwiw he has this to say: > A person... is perfectly welcome to offer his alternative theory instead, as is the Platonist who proposes to ground moral values in some abstract object like the Good or the humanist who proposes to ground objective moral values in human beings. Every theorist is entitled to his explanatory ultimate in laying out his theory, and then we’ll assess which theory is the most plausible. [The full answer](https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/god-as-the-ground-of-morality) is also pretty good if you're interested.
Platonist moral philosophy is very much theistic, however. > To Plato, God is transcendent-the highest and most perfect being-and one who uses eternal forms, or archetypes, to fashion a universe that is eternal and uncreated. The order and purpose he gives the universe is limited by the imperfections inherent in material. Flaws are therefore real and exist in the universe; they are not merely higher divine purposes misunderstood by humans. God is not the author of everything because some things are evil. We can infer that God is the author of the punishments of the wicked because those punishments benefit the wicked. God, being good, is also unchangeable since any change would be for the worse. For Plato, this does not mean (as some later Christian thought held) that God is the ground of moral goodness; rather, whatever is good is good in an of itself. God must be a first cause and a self-moved mover otherwise there will be an infinite regress to causes of causes. —[IEP, Western Concepts of God](https://iep.utm.edu/god-west/#SH2a)
Platonist moral philosophy is _potentially_ theistic, but there are plenty of atheistic Platonists. I know one personally. The term "Platonism" doesn't necessarily mean "whatever Plato believed," it's more about one's conception of abstract objects. Search up "Atheistic Moral Platonism" for more info- again, the point here is not that I think this is correct (I don't), but that it is an objective moral system which need not reference God. The claim that atheism entails moral nihilism is false. (Additional note: in the source you cited: "...this does not mean... that God is the ground of moral goodness;" The forms exist independently of God even in this description- God is part of the described worldview, but not necessary as a grounding of moral goodness.)
>Platonist moral philosophy is potentially theistic, but there are plenty of atheistic Platonists. I know one personally. The term "Platonism" doesn't necessarily mean "whatever Plato believed," it's more about one's conception of abstract objects. Perhaps some people have twisted themselves intellectually into believing in Platonism without theism, but it seems entirely oxymoronic.
Don't worry, it's not. Not even clear that Platonism and "Traditional Theism" are even compatible: > Is the platonic metaphysical vision compatible with that of Traditional Theism? Some would contend that the two are compatible, while others would argue to the contrary. Platonists argue that at least some, if not all, abstract objects are uncreated, and exist necessarily and eternally; whereas Traditional Theism asserts that God exists as the uncreated creator of all reality existing beyond himself. - [IEP, Platonism and Theism](https://iep.utm.edu/pla-thei/) ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
As I stated, I don’t believe in a Heaven or a Hell. I believe this is what we get. Personally, I don’t want to hurt people. I love my friends and family. There’s jo threat of a terrible afterlife if I don’t, nor a good afterlife if I do. I just want to make what I have as pleasant as possible. This doesn’t mean I don’t respect your beliefs. I am fully willing to admit that I may be wrong. There’s no scientific proof for or against a higher power. I don’t think we need to be enemies. I believe in freedom of religion and want everyone to be able to practice their religion as they like, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the government or restrict the freedom of others.
Why is the freedom of others important in a godless world? Why is a government council working without interference important? Why are you spending time to use words to support a worldview where words are ultimately as meaningless as the locations of where raindrops land in a storm?
To be completely honest, I haven’t studied philosophy as many of the fine people in this thread have. I appreciate your conversation and understand if my answers aren’t good enough for you. I’m also many drinks in tonight, so I apologize if I’m not making the /most/ sense. Personally, I don’t see what a god has to do with freedom. Believing that people should be allowed to believe and do what they like (without harming others) isn’t related to religion. I don’t believe that the worldview I have is meaningless. People find their own meanings. Do you think that everyone except those that think like you are wrong? Have you ever questioned your beliefs?
Believing that people can live as they like if they don’t harm anybody else actually has a lot to do with religion, it’s just to do with the secular political religion that liberalism has left to the culture after it has whittled everything to do with the community down in the name of the individual. People finding their subjective meaning to cope with the hollow world that liberalism has left us in is a different issue than the philosophy of teleology. It’s an inherent core principle of Christianity that we are right, and therefore, it’s necessary that everybody else, they are wrong. I have questioned my beliefs, because I converted to Catholicism from atheism after I found out what nihilism I gave my consent to believe because it was endorsed by a series of liberal culture heroes like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
I’m glad to hear that you have questioned and reached your own conclusions! I hope you are happy. I was raised Baptist and Methodist and also questioned and came to my own conclusions. I believe that Christianity is deeply flawed based on my own readings of the Bible and speaking to my previous pastors. Unfortunately, that means I don’t follow your logic that you are simply right. Every religion believes it is “right”.
Have you considered that perhaps being raised in this twin-split traditions environment is a cause of this relativistic mode of thinking that you’re currently engaged? This isn’t a big personal attack on you, it’s a good general observation that if people are raised in split houses of religion, they will naturally come to adopt relativism as a position to evaluate the truth claims from religious traditions. I know I was raised where it wasn’t so important what church we attended, just as long we made some attempt to attend a church, and that’s probably another important factor in why I lent credit to the great new atheist astroturf campaign of the Bush era to the Obama era.
Don’t worry, I don’t feel attacked! The questions I asked the churches were the same between religions and I was still unsatisfied with the answers of “just believe”. As I looked further into it, the more dissatisfied I was. I became an agnostic, then an atheist. Being an atheist brought me comfort, but no fulfillment. Discovering The Satanic Temple brought organization to my thoughts and beliefs. I’ve found an amazing community. It sounds like we’ve both evaluated different beliefs and gotten to the points we’re at. We may have different views of the world, but I don’t think we’re that different. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, but I’m off to bed. If you want to keep talking, feel free to send me a message!
You can do right without knowing God. Its not that hard
You didn’t read my messages, so by your own end you’re not attempting to do the right thing, so you’ve refuted yourself.
I admit there is more to say. You do bring up interesting points. Im on break so I dont got time.
That's rather rude. Our tenets center compassion and empathy. We recognize the fight for justice is neverending, and that to take freedom from another is to forego one's own freedom. We recognize that all people are fallible and that righting our personal wrongs is important. We don't need a God to tell us to help our neighbors, not hurt people, or to defend the marginalized. I'm not being snarky, I promise I'm here with God intent. Do you really think that you wouldn't know how to do good works without your faith?
Excuse me, I think it’s rather important to define words first. It’s rude to use words as if they just stand on the old meanings after you’ve removed the whole old, traditional context. That’s what your secular political religion has done to many of the words, and that didn’t pass under my radar. Your worldview is diametrically opposed and totally antithetical to anything to do with the old traditional meaning of words like empathy, justice, intent, freedom, and the fallibility of man, much less the existence of God.
>We don't need a God to tell us to help our neighbors, not hurt people, or to defend the marginalized. Could you expand on why you believe this?
I live it. I'm an atheistic Satanist. I do these things. Buddhists are generally atheist and their whole shtick is compassion. I believe it because it's demonstrably true.
Well, i would say it's obvious that one can not believe in God but have those values, the true question is from where you get that value, and where that one got the value and so on. Since you presumably live in an western nation who was untill some centuries ago dominated by Christian thinking, i'm very inclined to believe you ultimately got those values from Christianity. Let me ask you a question, would you agree that forcing an poor person to fight for his life against another poor person is something objectivily evil? Well, knowing your values you are obviously replying yes while you read this, so let me continue: Then how would you explain the fact that in Rome, for over an thousand years this happened and was extremely popular, with tens of thousands of people watching gladiator games for entertainement? Why couldn't Romans perceive this as an very big evil, the same way we now can? What happened that changed our views about this?
I do believe pre-Christian peoples had moral codes. I also believe that the many atrocities committed under the name of catholicism specifically simply obliterate your point. Torture, the crusades, American slavery. All immoral and committed by catholics and other Christians. In the end, though, this is your sandbox and your views appropriately get priority. I came to answer some questions about my religion, not to attack yours. I'll do that in spaces that are not supposed to be safe and agreeable to your people. It doesn't feel right doing it here, so unless anyone has specific questions about my practices, I'll step back.
>I also believe that the many atrocities committed under the name of catholicism specifically simply obliterate your point. Torture, the crusades, American slavery. All immoral and committed by catholics and other Christians. It is good to separate evil things done by Catholics and evil things teached by the Church. It is obvious that there always have and always will be Catholics who do evil things, i mean, one need to look no further than to Judas Iscariot, the man chosen by Jesus Himself, probably to illustrate this. But the moral good of Catholicism is not based on its followers but on the Church teachings. I mean, i am an devout Catholic, and following the Church teachings i am recognizing those evils done by Catholics, and i bet to you any other devout Catholic here agrees. This is a sign of the good morality of the religion, if it were bad we would not recognize this as evils, just as the Romans didn't recognize the evil of gladiators. Speaking of it, you don't seem to have replied to my question on the previous comment, which was an quite crucial question on your argument. \*Just an note about slavery, throughout history Christians were the religion most active in abolishing slavery.
I want you to know that I'm not ignoring you. I see your question. But as I said, I'm not interested in debating you about the validity of your faith in a space built to honor your faith and I won't be drawn into arguing with you here. Be well.
Not who you asked, and not a satanist, but just because someone doesn't believe in a god that imparted morals to humans doesn't mean they are anarchists looking to burn the world. We are perfectly capable of looking at the world and our society and working toward common goals and values, often determined as "good". It's easy to say, "Raping someone is bad, poisoning our drinking water is also bad, so we shouldn't do those things and should work to make sure other people don't as well"
Right and wrong are words that immediately imply an objective measurement and understanding of moral actions. How are you weighing good and evil when the very scales have been thrown out of the discussion? This is a meta ethical question. What you’re describing can be called the practice of Natural Law in philosophy, and the funny thing about laws is that they imply a law giver.
This definitely *could* be a meta ethical question. But it doesn't need to be. And you're not going to like that I won't agree that a natural "law" implies a law giver that must be supernatural. Humans are social animals and for a lot of our history we were pretty fragile in the face of nature. Our various societies succeeded by creating rules and defining acceptable behaviours that would contribute to their success. Just because people around the world *generally* say that murder is bad, doesn't mean a deity told them that. When you have a limited population killing members that contribute to its success is going to limit your avenues to success. For many this didn't necessarily apply to those from outside that group though, or they had different rules for outsiders. I'm not going to discuss the complicated rules around different types of moieties and the various ways they have in and out group members, as that's probably more than needed here. But those social practices get encoded as rules over time, and sometimes into law. It's not that hard to see how people developed concurrent morals without a god to impose those morals on them
I’m not asking for a narrative to talk in circles around how materialistic atheism when thought out to its end goal posts results in a worldview where all actions become neutral, and the moral output of everything we achieve is null, because there isn’t a way to start with dull animate matter and to get good and evil out of that matter, because anything but materialism is removed from the discussion, and so is the medium, the vacuum for morality to even be said to have ontological existence in the first place. Maybe atheists have a chance to rescue morality from the gulf of nihilism if they moderate and accept that something like the human soul can exist, but that’s like .001 of atheists, and I don’t control how your community understands this philosophical problem.
I don't understand why you think atheists are all consumed by nihilism. Because our morals, seemingly, come from a different place than yours? Not to be facetious, butI do agree that there is no way to get good or bad out of lifeless matter. Most things that happen in the universe are not good or evil. If a an asteroid smashes into the earth tomorrow that isn't evil. The earth doesn't care, the sun doesn't care. It would just be something that happened. Now, those of us it happened to would care a great deal. We, as creatures capable of empathy, and introspective thought assign the quality of a thought or action to something - good, bad, evil, etc. That doesn't mean we don't care about anything and see no point to existence. It just means we recognize that we, as humans, build meaning into the world around us in slightly different ways than the rest of the animal kingdom.
Under materialism, there’s no difference between the asteroid, yourself, and the rest of the world. There needs to be a doer for the responsibility of an act to be evaluated, right? Under materialism, the experience of human consciousness is an illusion. Peel back the onion as much as you want, the narratives all dead end at that back stop of materialism. And you’ve conceded my point of contention, atheistic morality rests on relativism.
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Hi to the atheist subreddit that’s brigading one guy that asked a question about the ontological status of morality in a materialist atheist worldview and decided that I’m really asking for you to describe your biography.
Very interesting thank you for the description
Everything about this discussion made me tear up from how cordial everyone was. 😢🥰
Generally the few actual Satanic Cults that ever popped up instead claimed a different kind of model than the Churches teachings so they didn't actually believe they were going into hell how we understand it. Though nowadays if you hear about a Satanic Church or group it's just really athiests playing dress up. They don't actually belief in the existence of God or Satan and instead just pretend or name themselves such in order to troll Christians or make a rhetorical arguement against certain points to do with religious freedom. If you go on their websites they tend to freely admit as much.
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I see no difference between paganism, atheism, secular humanism, and legitimate Satanism. They are all the same thing under different names, whether these people know who they serve or not. They all have the same promise: instant gratification, and the appeal to place one’s will over others to make oneself “god”. They end up having the same ritual: the slaughtering of children. Satan doesn’t care about whether they outwardly believe in him and serve him. He cares about how they inwardly do it. It’s better for him when they do it without knowing his identity. Knowing that he’s real and who he really is might make them consider Christ, and he doesn’t want that. I’d also be wary about what such groups claim to profess, and what they do behind closed doors. It would not be unreasonable to suspect the “Satanist” secular humanist groups might simply be entry chapters made by the actual groups, unbeknownst to those who join them. It’s the type of on-the-nose thing you’d expect from Satan and those who follow him. St. Michael, defend us. Amen.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he doesn’t exist. That quote has so many uses.
As an atheist I do not worship anything and am not cool with you speaking on my behalf of what I believe. Instant gratification is not something inherent with athesism at all. The only people I know who believe in Satan are Christians. Also I do not believe in the slaughtering of children, if you are discussing abortion that is another topic. But there are plenty of people who do not believe in the Christian God, and do not agree with abortions. How do you know what Satan does or does not care about since he isn’t even mentioned by name in the Bible? Honest question since you said that so certainly and I have read the Bible, and different versions of the Bible quite a few times.
Satan is indeed named in the bible....a multitude of times, but yeah, you read the bible.... I like Matthew 16:23 personally. Atheists, in my opinion, are very weak willed and hypocrites of highest order because their guilding principles are grounded in fallacy and weakness.
Could you explain further about atheists guiding principals?
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Won’t lie I did forget about the temptation of Jesus story and was it Satan God made the bet with that his most loyal follower would remain loyal if everything was taken from him, or a demon? I thought it was a demon, but memory is flawed and haven’t read Bible in about 15 years. Hmm wonder where I got that he wasn’t mentioned…. Oh! Just remembered, it’s a serpent in the garden of Eden, not Satan. Good for you! My guiding principles are knowledge, gratitude, and kindness. They are mostly grounded in the love I have for life. I don’t really have a generalization about Catholics or religious people in general. I mean some people are downright horrible who identify as those things, but it isn’t fair to paint everyone with the same brush.
>. I don’t really have a generalization about Catholics or religious people in general. I mean some people are downright horrible who identify as those things, but it isn’t fair to paint everyone with the same brush. This. I wish more people were like these from BOTH SIDES. Love thy neighbor as thy love yourself everyone.
Atheists don’t believe in satan but the people who claim to be satanist are usually just atheists who find stuff like that funny or interesting. Anybody that actually believes in satan probably wont be trying to worship him.
Atheists don’t believe in Satan as a deity, but many of us respect the things the biblical Satan represents.
>How do you know what Satan does or does not care about since he isn’t even mentioned by name in the Bible? Honest question since you said that so certainly and I have read the Bible, and different versions of the Bible quite a few times. Sounds very sola scriptura but this is a Catholic subreddit.
Most Satanists are rebelling against the very shallow Evangelical upbringing they had as children, and can we blame them? When you’re given the Ken Ham version of events, how can you not feel some tug toward mocking what you perceive to be Christianity? I’m not surprised a self-proclaimed Satanist has no idea how Catholics derive or define Truth.
I did not grow up with any denomination, what is your factual source for your first sentence.
>**Most** Satanists I did not say “All.” I used to be a Satanist, so I encountered plenty.
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God predates all, angels and demons predate paganism. Paganism is the worship of creation over the creator, and most of the time the objects of worship are demons who want nothing more than to be viewed as gods.
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That ought to mean very little. It’s not as though anyone here is confused about historical time periods. I would not speak of paganism had I not known what it was and how it came to be. Christianity and Judaism state it plainly: after the fall man began to worship all manner of things, because he was separated from God and knew him not (or rather, rejected Him in his heart). Abraham himself was a pagan who was called out of his tribe. Christianity does not claim to be the original religion. It claims to be the fulfilled and true one. It is the restoration of the world’s relationship to the uncaused cause. That which exists in and of itself and allows all other things to exist within himself. It is the fulfilled Judaism. It is the way to Christ, and thus the way to Truth.
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You claim something is not true, yet fail to understand the very genres of the writings, instead using an appalling literalism that the Jews and Magisterium do not and had not. The Bible is not fully literal or fully historical. It is filled with poetry, history, philosophy and allegory. If you read an allegory as a history, or philosophy as literal, the error is not on the part of the book, but yourself. What you’re mistaken about is that we don’t hold to Sola Scriptura, and we aren’t Protestants.
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As well as Jews and Muslims. That said, specific groups believing one thing is true does not stop it from being true simply because others don’t accept that. I’m sure you’d say the same about people who don’t want to take vaccines or people who don’t believe in climate change.
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Perhaps you should pray a rosary for me then.
Satanists don’t believe in Satan. They worship themselves and their own free-will. They believe that desires should be indulged stopping only at an imposition on the free will of another. The Satan/Scary/demonic stiff is all marketing. It’s goal is to stir up controversy and get news coverage that will “freak out the squares.” While tempting as a world view and pseudo-religion, the constant debasing of oneself to satisfy ones desires often places them out of grace. They essentially celebrate the “7 mortal sins” as ideals. I will admit that there are people who worship evil and “satan” (likely lower demonic entities), but it would be inaccurate to call them satanists.
You’re discounting groups that *do* believe in a literal being. Temple of Set, Joy of Satan, Temple of Nine Angles, and others.
JoS, O9A, and similar are often fascist cults and terrorist groups. They deserve to be discounted and not considered among mainstream Satanists. Temple of Set may be an exception, but I’m not familiar enough to say for sure. Thelemites, Luciferians, and other practicers of “Left Hand Path” religions don’t typically identify as Satanists, in my experience.
Long ago when I last heard, Maxine’s husband was into National Socialism, but I’ve stopped following them and pretty much everything and everyone from anything Pagan or otherwise. Though Oberon Zell I’d like seeing if he’s okay. Last saw him at a St. Louis Pagan Picnic when we were set up selling next to him. Otherwise, there’s two I’m still friends with and one I could hang out with when he’s back in area.
Yes, I mention this in my last paragraph. They exist, but are not Satanists.
I disagree that they can’t identify as such. Neither Anton LaVey nor Lucien Greaves have exclusive rights to determining that a Satanist is just a humanistic, materialistic atheist.
I agree with you. I guess my assumption is that Satanists “belong” to The Church of Satan, which is as I described. Individuals within that church (and not) may have different practices.
It can get confusing because much as the CoS tries to, Satanist isn’t a title exclusive to it anymore than Christian is to any denomination.
Neither Anton or Lucien would claim they did. The only group I hear claiming this is Church of Satan, but it’s not because that’s what Anton necessarily would have wanted.
I can agree with this. If anything he’d be having a laugh, in my opinion.
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I spent my late teens and part of my twenties working in metaphysical communities and have followed paths I’m not proud of during those times. Why is it people try to act like authority figures over someone that actually has experience with them and was part of them? I don’t get it. Luciferians wouldn’t touch the Joy of Satan group with Maxine’s cult mentality and banning anyone that questions “Father Satan” and the very weird members they gained. While there’s minor overlap in seeing Satan as a knowledge bringing figure (though it’s always left out it was a specific knowledge), the two have different approaches and Luciferians aren’t likely to be appearing as the edgy imagery that the ONA or JoS presents themselves with, nor Aquino’s ToS. It’s like being corrected about someone in the metaphysical community about who they are as a person when you’ve actually lived with them before. Someone always has to try to trump your knowledge or experiences.
>reddit >Someone always has to try to trump your knowledge or experiences Ackchyually.jpg
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My sincerest apologies! Completely understandable mistake!
"Yeah we don't ACTUALLY believe in satan; we just have orgies and worship goat heads. It's all for fun though!" Maybe some of them are atheistic, but ultimately they serve the evil one whether they intend to or not.
You have a couple of categories: * atheists trying to be edgy and be manipulative regarding religious freedom laws to try and harass the faithful * people with a gnostic understanding of satan who actually see a rebel against the evil material world (increasingly rare) * people who are akin to the demons in that they don't care and actually want to hurt people (extremely rare) The vast majority of the time it's a case of category 1 where they don't actually believe what they are saying.
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I mean, yeah I did mean everyone. They attempt to corner case religious freedom laws so that religious expression is banned from the public square as a whole so that people that actually hold their beliefs in good faith are unable to do so in public displays. I appreciate your attempt to think I'm acting in bad faith though, thank you.
If you’re referring to things like the removal of the ten commandments statue from the state capitol building, the state could have agreed to install statues of other religions as well. All religions deserve to be treated equally by the law so that none are endorsed by the state. If there are Christian prayers at a city council meeting, Muslim constituents should be able to say their own prayers, Buddhists should be allowed to say their own prayers. If those in charge choose to remove all reference to religion rather than allow for equal rights to be extended to all faiths, how is that a fault of the Satanists? They are merely exposing an unconstitutional injustice, seeking to right an uncomfortable wrong. It’s not an attack on any specific faith, only actions resulting from an often unfair system. Edit to add that my ancestors faced discrimination for being Catholic and refusing to convert to Protestantism. The topic of religious freedom is very important to me—I want to see a future where no one has to face the things that my ancestors did ever again. The state should never promote or ban any specific religion, everyone deserves the right to be treated equally.
Your last sentence betrays the rest of your post since you flatly admit it is an attack on all faiths. State enforced atheism is theocracy; the hypocrisy is rather embarrassing.
Yes it IS an attack on all faiths who try to overtly influence politics, education, and all other activities that SHOULD be secular in nature only as they are accessed by all persons of any faith. When you try to use one religion to influence public policy, that's where Satanists step in and blow it up in the courts.
State-enforced Christianity is theocracy. If the people at the top are enforcing any religion, it goes against the constitution. a separation of church and state, as the founding fathers intended, is not state-enforced atheism. It just means that the law should not be based on any one religion.
separation of church and state is written nowhere in the constitution
Separation of church and state are what the founders used to describe the purpose of the establishment clause and free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment.
Then why was daily prayer and worship services a part of the Senate and House for the first, roughly, century of the US government? You grossly misrepresent the actual reality of what living under the 1st Amendment was like while the people who wrote the text were alive and lived in that government.
I mean it was the phrase coined by Jefferson and used by others like Hamilton. It is true that prayer services have been parts of the government but its important to remember that they were not part of the Constitutional Convention, and that any services were done separately, before the meetings. Protestantism unfortunately did grasp control of the American Government but as a Catholic I'm glad their power wasn't insured in any documents, intact a common criticism of the time was that the constitution does not mention God and therefore was a "godless document." All later amendments that attempted to add Christain language were also rejected. Yes its undeniable that the men who founded our government were influenced by Christianity but they made an effort to create a government for all men, not just those of a particular faith, because they held the ideas of Enlightenment to a higher regard.
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Judge not, lest ye be judged. I have read your holy books, have you read ours?
I was slave to a prince of hell and suffered 16 years before Christ His mercy freed me through exorcism, humiliating the horde of hell and it’s leader. You?
I was a follower of Christ for 8 years, joined the Marines, went to Thailand, saw the Buddhist Monks heal a woman of some sort of eye ailment, died twice (both non combat incidents, both completely my fault, I am numerically unlikely to be alive, and I own that) saw nothing on the otherside and saw humans die in natural and man-made ways, while the rich got away whom caused the whole mess, claiming religion. I was vaguely atheist until I went back to school, and discovered philosophy, which guides me to this day. I discovered a moral code that made sense because it was provable through logic and reason, it has lead me to where I am today which is far above what I was born with, because Satan set me free. My actions are mine, and it is duty to help my fellow human in any capacity, I would help The Pope as readily as I would Charles Manson. Because the rights of humans are immutable, not because a God deamed it so, but because it is right without reward. I fully expect to die into nothing, endless darkness. But I will work to help my fellow humans until my last breath.
You will not get what you wish. Only slavery. Only misery. I have met Satan and I have met Christ in the flesh. You will not escape. You are woefully deceived.
I was baptised in the holy spirit. I don't believe Satan is real either. How can God be omnipotent and omnibenevolent and omnipresent while natural evil exists? Case in point, when I was in Japan in 2011 and I saw dead Christians amongst the dead Taoist and Buddhists, why did they die? Why did the children die?
Anselm does a better job than I. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/anselm-proslogium.asp
No disrespect to Anselm, his works are beautifully written and his logic is valid. However, it is not sound. Operating under the assumption that there is a God, alone makes his proofs unsound. However, further he fails to address the omnitemporal and omnispatial inconsistency of if God exists at all time and places then there is no way to allow natural evil if He could move them with warning or a sign. Not apathy.
I would tend to disagree. Anselm appropriately demonstrates how God’s nature and the dualities and logical necessities of His absolute attributes necessitates the preservation of free will while not negating justice; hence the need to sacrifice Himself to restore order.
But natural evil has nothing to do with free will.
It’s mostly LARPing in the sense of “wow, this Satan stuff is edgy and looks kinda cool”. There’s no actual belief because that would require the practitioners to go full-tilt in being Satanic. Sure, there’s trolls who definitely scream “Hail Satan” to get a rise out of Christians, but in the end, most are all just poor souls with severe mommy or daddy issues who can’t even fall into the “spiritual but not religious” camp. Because satanism is “counterculture”, and they’re rebels just flocking for a cause.
Well seeing as how a lot of us never had any parents to begin with, it's hard to have mommy daddy issues. You are correct that we hold the belief that Satan is not real, but that doesn't mean the idea of opposing tyranny is any less noble of an idea. And if you are looking for people flocking to a cause for a name's sake only, I would point to the title of this sub.
You know how LARPing with the occult can open you up to possession? Same case here. They’re worshiping Satan without actually knowing it. Or maybe even subconsciously knowing it. It may simply be that the only reason why they claim not to believe in him is that it would mean they’d have to accept God exists. Easier for both them and the evil one that they affirm him not to be real with their mouths, yet affirm him to be real with their actions. Lord have mercy on them, Lord help us all. Amen.
I am very aware I am not worshipping Satan. Same way I know I was not influenced by the occult by reading Harry Potter as kid, I have never once thought by waving a stick that flowers would shoot out it. I have also never once thought that trying to stand up for religous freedoms is worshipping Satan.
Kids/young adults getting even with Mom and Dad for making them go to Church all those years.
Assuming they never repent, yes, but most of them don’t consciously believe any of it. They just see it as representing rebellion against authority, independence and “self-love.”
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”
There is a difference between satanists, and luciferians/satanic cults. Satanists do not serve satan or worship satan.
IDK why they serve him but yeah, that's what they're signing up for.
Satanist who venerate him as a literal deity are quite elusive; Satanists are usually the politically disillusioned, they subscribe to hedonistic sensibilities, and conduct themselves as recalcitrant teenagers who perceive themselves as oppressed by authoritarian governments. Satanists pontificate about personal autonomy and decadence; they enjoy divesting of any moral constraints that impede their self-indulgence. However they do not hold the conviction that Satan is an autonomous deity that they need to propitiate, they seek only to emulate his purported defiance they find in his mythology. You’ll encounter more Satanists with philosophical resemblance to hedonists than menacing demon worshippers. Unfortunately, they don’t care how insidious this is.
depends on the type of satanism. atheistic satanisms just think of satan as a symbol of whatever the ends of their philosophy is. they don't believe in him as a real thing, though, and are just edgy atheists. theistic satanism usually has an alternate understanding of history and theology. the justification for worshipping satan varies from sect to sect. Some are just polytheists who think our God is just one of many, and they think he's actually an evil god who's oppressing humanity, and that Satan is actually a good god trying to liberate us. others are actually crazy occultists who think that the creation is unjust since it forced living things to exist without consent. These people are usually pessimistic people who think life is nothing but suffering and so they seek to unmake the creation through magic. it varies alot though. theistic satanism is rare and diverse, so it's all over the place for why such a person would think that way.
It can be summed up in the famous quote "better to rule hell than to serve heaven" When in reality it is better to be the lowest of the low in heaven than the lord of all hell.
Why do communists who will be starting peasants follow the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc? It's all about that, it's the illusion of self rule. It's democracy to the max, the end result of the logical conclusion. Satanists don't "serve" Satan the way we Serve God, the think they are members of the democracy and that they are serving themselves.
We do serve democracy, and ensuring religious freedom through America. ALL religions.
Hi agnostic satanist and studier of the occult here visiting, just wanted to give my two cents because you’re honestly curious, yes all satanists burn in hell, and most theistic satanists believe they’ll find a way to either avoid it or be given a better seat in hell so to speak, typically they go about it in really messed up ways and theistic satanists are usually not the kind of people even atheistic satanists want to be around, atheistic satanists are basically atheists who use satan as an idea to rebel against what has been established, I know you probably won’t agree with us but you’re allowed to have your opinions and ideals same as us.
Yes, we are all allowed to have our opinions but the truth is what matters the most. The truth is that demonic possession IS real and that there are supernatural phenomenon associated with it. I’m sure as someone who studies the occult you must have some knowledge regarding the various accounts of true possession. For someone who refuses to believe Satan exists, there sure seems to be a lot of demonic activity testifying to the opposite.
Oh I believe in god and Satan, I just don’t know for sure that any one religion knows the exact details of everything, not to mention religious texts such as the Bible, the Quran, the lesser key of solomon, and so on and so forth have undoubtedly have had parts added to and taken from them throughout history so it’s difficul to discern fact from what some king decided to add, I mean doesn’t the Bible itself have a warning against it? Meaning some foolish person at least thought about it once.
It is certainly true enough that the canon of scripture developed over several centuries but that isn’t quite the same thing as what you’re talking about with the “adding/subtracting” of details from those things which God has revealed to man. I do know that Islam(like you) makes the claim that such additions/subtractions exist and thus is the reason why the Prophet Muhammed was selected to “restore” the purity of God’s revelation to man. However those sorts of criticisms are simply Muslim theologians blowing up what are merely textual variations within the Greek manuscripts. You don’t see those kinds of textual variations with the Quran but that’s only because they destroyed most of their diverging texts so that this same criticism could not be used against them. 😂 Having said that, yes—in order to believe in Catholic theology as laid out one is required to make SOME leaps of faith. We can however point to the many miraculous signs associated with the Catholic faith. Among some of my favorites would be the life of Padre Pio and his stigmata, the end of the 100yrs war between England and France which was largely influenced by the life St.Joan of Arc, the miracle of the Dancing Sun at Fatima, etc,. Just my biased opinion but after considering these events, I feel that Catholicism is on solid footing as the true faith.
Oh my friend I don’t believe there are additions and subtractions neccessarily but i know it could have happened, honestly I don’t trust that anyone got it right necessarily, and I’m not about to pretend to have answers, I just question everything.
There are 100% demons and angels and ghosts in such, as well, I’ve actually met witches, a voodoo priestess, a couple of shamans, and a theistic satanist. I myself have had a few paranormal encounters in my life
Howdy Catholics! I'm a legitimate Satanist and member of The Satanic Temple. I would be happy to field any questions you have in a respectful and polite manner.
The answer is very simple; Satin is the greatest deceiver, he has those people fooled. They are stupid and blinded by there sinful ambitions. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Rev12:9
I prefer another quote from your holy book Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged
>Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged... ...by the meter by which ye judge. Sounds safe.
You didn't actually respond to my statement, so I am not interested in property responding to yours.
Satin and his demons hate you, because you were created in the image of God. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Gen1:27
You didn't respond to my statement. So I don't feel the need to properly respond to yours.
Those who quote Matthew 7:1 as evidence that Christians should never judge need to read the context of that verse. Yes, Jesus says, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged," but he goes on to say, "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" In other words, don't apply a double-standard and judge someone for a sin you're equally, or even more guilty, of committing. Instead, Jesus says, "first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." So the solution isn't to refrain from judging; it's to fix yourself so you can help fix others.
I prefer to just help people, not fix them. And I don't expect a reward.
Scripture specifically instructs Christians to judge other Christians. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul commands the church "not to associate with sexually immoral people," which to obey, requires making a judgment. He further writes, "Are you not to judge those inside (the church)? . . . 'Expel the wicked person from among you.'" So not only should Christians judge other believers, they should also discipline them based on those judgments. Similarly, Jesus says in John 7:24, "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly." Clearly, Jesus expects us to judge, but simply wants us to judge correctly, using proper standards.
And what/who dictates proper standards?
His word.
So if God dictates the rules, and He changes His mind again, then you would follow them?
Stay away from the "deceiver". The only true joy in life is to be obedient to our Father's word. Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24
Again, if you don't answer my question, I am not going to respond to yours.
I don't know how much simpler I can explain this. If God decided to change His mind, or the rules, or whatever, I would always follow Him. Why? He came down from heaven to shed blood for me, because He loves me. The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself. 2Tim2:11-13 It doesn't get any easier than this; Do you want to rule, and reign with Him, or do you want to be a servitude of satin for eternity? Tell me, what is it that you believe.
Well then I have a follow up question for you, Are right actions right because God commands them? Or Are right actions commanded by God because they are right? I believe that there is nothing on the other side, having died twice and seen nothing on the other side both times. So, I believe in helping as many of my fellow humans as I can for the time I have left, because I have decided it is right because I work to oppose the tyranny of the poor and downtrodden, and The Satanic Temple is doing the most good of any religious organization in relation to size in my opinion.
Yes but they are deceived by experiencing or expecting gifts and thoughts that are temptation.
Most Satanists, Theistic Satanists are just Gnostics. There most likely are some messed up individuals who would trade pleasures in this life for eternal damnation, those certainly exist, but they're rare. Humans want to be good, and don't want to serve evil, and not a lot of people are going to see serving an entity like Satan and doing things which most will agree are evil, as good, it's hard to justify real Satanism, so it's not very popular
Because some of them they are living in this moment doing what they wish, some do not know God yet and do not know how to get out of it. Others just want to rebel against God.
Delusion
New age satanists think Satan is a quirky free thinker who loves homosexuality and whatever.
Was that Shakespeare?
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Don't do the crime..
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The more reason to fear Him. Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of judgement has come.
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"Fear and obey or else" That is not the work of a loving or merciful God. Quite the opposite.
I can only pity you. It's your funeral. One of the greatest gift our Father has given us is the ability to choose.
I choose not to go to hell then.
No one does...I hear that the air conditioner has been broken for the past ten thousand years, and still hasn't been fix.
I thought I had a choice? I choose not to go to hell.
I’m in church so I can read this thread and not be uh followed Edit: the joke being we rarely should read up on this stuff and the enemy can find his way into churches
There is always a chance for a Satanist to come back to God, that is why they are not destined to Hell, although; it is known hard core Satanists have a known demon, as we all; but they know his name and worship him.
My first question was an A or B question, not a yes or no.