Eh, I don’t mind the Satanic Temple, but I prefer the Pastafarians.
I’m an atheist and really dislike religion, but I also don’t like trolling. “Satanism” is almost entirely immature people trying to get a rise out of their parents. Trolling is tiresome.
Do you think the kids (and adults) who are involved are only doing it to troll, or are they doing it to build the community of those more secular in an environment where radical religion is the norm? A secular humanist club could get banned, but a Satanist club can’t. As noted 7 years ago they aren’t teaching Satanism in these clubs but science, which a lot of these fundamentalists think is equivalent to atheism anyhow.
I’m proud of these kids myself. It would be much easier for them to go to church and give lip service for the bs they no longer believe in.
I dunno, but I do know I would cheerfully join a club like “Secular Humanists” or “Atheists and Agnostics Fun Club” or whatever, but “Satan Club,” come on.
Could they? There exists in the USA legal precedent that atheism represents a “religion” in the sense of being something that is legally protected by the First Amendment.
Secular humanism per se is not a religion, though some secular humanist organizations would count. And I’d hate to reinforce their misperception that atheism is anything except lack of belief in any gods.
At our age atheism would be the reasonable way to go, but if I were still a kid a Satan club would be far more fun.
The club jackets would be way cool…
This is a reply after over seven years, haven’t seen you on the dope in a while. I still listen to your Cthulhu carols on YouTube
I thought of posting this when this thread started: Even though I’m an Assistant (To The) Minister in a traditional Christian church, I’d volunteer at an ASS Club (a Satan Club, or maybe an Atheist Science Society). I’d do anything to embarrass close-minded Evangelicals and get kids to trust Science.
Unlike some, I love a good troll. But it has to be pointed. This most definitely is.
Honestly? I think it is 90+% trolling. Yes, there are some high-minded people trying to do exactly what you suggest. Indeed I would say there is at least an element of high-mindedness to most of it. But IMHO it is also almost always done with a smirk and I find that kind of edge-lord shit pretty tiresome.
I mostly don’t begrudge those kids their fun. But it would never have generated anything from me beyond an eye-roll when I was an atheist teenager.
ETA:
Yeah, that’s almost certainly part of the lack of appeal for me - I never have, even when I was young. I thought prank-calling was the stupidest thing on earth when I was the prime age of twelve and my friends wanted to play around with it. They were in hysterics, while I just sighed and rolled my eyes. Just much too square and anti-fun in that sense 
.
And I’d hate to reinforce the misperception that secular humanism is atheism.
Yes, lots of atheists are secular humanists but you don’t have to be an atheist to be a secular humanist.
How isolated did you feel? I became an atheist my senior year of high school, and I had less trauma than nearly anyone whose story I’ve heard, partly from being Jewish (no hell to fear) and partly from being in a non-religious family. My grandfather was surely an atheist though he never said so directly.
I probably wouldn’t have joined such a club either - the science fiction club did it for me.
Environment makes a huge difference. The main character in my book is Jewish, and my writing coach, who is also Jewish, had a problem with it being no big deal to him. I turns out unlike me, who grew up in NY in a Jewish majority school, she grew up in a little town in California where she was isolated. Even when I nominally believed I would never have thought of joining a Hillel or something, but she might have for community.
No argument with this.
Not at all, which makes it entirely too easy for me to judge 
. Can’t really equivocate about that - I was the atheist son of atheist parents (and barely observant “cultural Christian” grandparents). Moreover though I had religious friends, I went to school in a very liberal, atheist-friendly or at least not overtly religious environment.
Never having felt persecuted I grew up to be one of those easy-going atheists that finds the assertive anti-religious types deeply annoying. A good friend of mine for example self-righteously refuses to celebrate any religious-connected holidays and in college more than once forced a heated argument over religion that ended up with someone crying in frustration. I have always rolled my eyes at the first (my very atheist parents had no problem celebrating Christmas and even Easter as secular holidays) and chastised him for the second because, hey - how about trying to not be an asshole.
So, yeah - easy for me to say. Still, I yam what I yam.
And BTW, Satan is really sick and tired of getting all those Xmas cards from dyslexic kids.
That was incredibly stupid, and it made me laugh several times. Merry Christmas!
I’ve mentioned the movie here before (which I have watched, BTW) and it turns out to have used a different trailer.
Thanks for giving my old, lame joke a little more mileage.
Season’s Greetings!
(Was that movie done by those The Asylum goofballs?)
Made by “Blue Ice Pictures”