*One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
*The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
*One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
*The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
*Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
*People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
*Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
I posit that these tenets are far superior to the moral guidance provided in the Ten Commandments or the New Testament of the Bible. I’m not nearly as familiar with the Quran, but in my limited understanding they’re also superior to the guidance of that text.
Morality being a human construct, this is, of course, just my opinion. But if you disagree, why do you believe your preferred set of religious guidance is superior to these seven tenets? What proper moral behavior do you believe is not covered by these seven?
I am not a member of The Satanic Temple – just a guy who recently watched the documentary “Hail Satan?” and thought this would be an interesting topic of discussion.
I met Lucien Greaves and Michelle Shortt when they visited the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. They were both lovely people. I really appreciate their agitation for justice since I have had to “retire”.
I believe there are universal principals, in Buddhism it’s called Dharma; morality comes from those universal principals. All religions come from trying to codify them, and will also depend on the local beliefs and culture. So at the core all religions are based on trying to understand Dharma imperfectly, with a lot of extra stuff thrown in. This is why scientology and jedi religion and likewise, which was made to to be a false religion or fantasy religion actually merges with Dharma.
The Dharma rule that allows this is ‘seek and you shall find’ which is a biblical principal but I believe it is a universal principal. If one seeks the truth, God or whatever to such a extent where they are willing to give up everything, they will find it. While the founders of such religions may not have that intention, some of the followers will eventually and that will lead it towards the dharma.
As for Satanic temple, from what I know of it, which is not much, but they have a shocking name but really have knowledge, not Satan, as their gateway. Similar to early gnosticism their use of Satan is not the worshiping the evil one, but rejoicing the wisdom we have obtained with the knowledge gained of good and evil, which those above stated codes seem to indicate.
I don’t know, if it doesn’t involve stoning people or prohibitions against mixing fibers, can it really be called guidance? Where’s the divine jealousy, worrying about worshiping other gods? Seems like it’s missing something.
My only disagreement is about morals being a human construct – I think some big portion of morality is likely in-build moral sense evolved over time. Other that that, I think those are pretty good guidelines.
That probably deserves its own thread. But I’ll try to sum up – I know some folks think morality is determined by a supernatural power, but IMO this just makes it arbitrary – relying on the guidance from some other being, rather than deciding for ourselves. Without evidence of such a power originating morality, I conclude that the best explanation is that morality, like pretty much all non-corporeal and non-physical concepts, is human created. We decide what morality is and what it means.
But hopefully this thread won’t turn into a debate about this – I’m interested in opinions on the tenets in the OP. What do you think? Do you think any religious text provides superior guidance?
First off, sorry for nearly hijacking the thread. I didn’t mean to :o
Second, I can’t say for sure that no religious text provides superior guidance because there are so many to choose from. I feel confident enough in my knowledge of Christianity and Islam to say that neither religion provides superior guidance (and that both say a lot of things that are very immoral), but that’s about it. I don’t know enough about, say, Jainism, to say whether or not it provides better guidance than the ST.
What little I know about Zoroastrianism, I learned from a former colleague. These are their tenets:
Plenty of typical religious weirdness of Good vs. Evil and afternlife, etc. But the principles are sound and hard to argue with. The best of it seems similar in tone to TST and other religions (+/-), until you get into the weeds.
Sounds good to me! But please explain, how does Satan fit into it?
Reminds me of the7 UU principles:
Principle 1: The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Principle 2: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Principle 3: Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
Principle 4: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
Principle 5: The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
Principle 6: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Principle 7: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Also good stuff in the Humanist manifestos. Lots of good lessons to live by, when you eliminate the fairy tales.
Sounds better than any religious set I’ve seen, especially since there is no appeal to the supernatural, and tenet 5 is quite the opposite of appeals to the supernatural.
No wonder the godly hate them.
Now, I’m not sure what they think about Satan as a character. Does the supernatural slip in there, or is Satan a placeholder for rebellion against the god concept?
I think it’s largely pre-Wikipedia since I looked up Satanism but, as I understand it, they use him as an icon of rebellion and the bringer of knowledge to humanity. Satanism is or was basically just goth libertarianism.
That said, and I have no idea how much the new church continues any of this, the old LaVey version was really just a way to use cool Satanic imagery and the promise of rebellion to pick up and take advantage of goth chicks it seemed pretty clear from their old website.
I should try to see if it still exists on the wayback machine but, to me reading it, the writing all strongly implied a two-level system where the top level lived to accomplish the goal of being strong, independent, brilliant, etc. and not bowing down to no silly “rules” but…at the same time there was the second tier of people that you sell Satanic Bibles, candles, and other tchotchke to, teach how to perform rituals, and take advantage of because they’re too gullible to realize that that’s all nonsense.
If you take the immoral, predatory aspect out, it’s a fairly good philosophy. But it’s also just 50% humanism and 50% libertarianism. Before or after the split, the Satan angle is really just marketing. Before, it was marketing for groupies. Now it’s marketing for goth libertarians.
So, basically, they chose a name intended to offend as many folk as possible. Okay. Not sure if that works out as an overall plus or minus in terms of marketing and outreach. Maybe they shoulda just called themselves, “Fuck you!”
It’s a little bit baked into their ethos. From the couple of guys I knew in college they’re a little less goth libertarians than they are goth anarchists that want to stick it to the squares. It’s just a little bit like naming your band Butthole Surfers ;). They( or at least some of them )revel in pissing off the stodgy voices of authority.
I’ve read a couple of interviews with Lucien Greaves, and I really like what he has to say. Personally, I find TST’s 7 tenets to be both ethically and rationally sound, and could find far worse codes to live by.
As I understand it, part of TST’s mission is to defend church-state separation. And they use Satanic imagery to do that; when legislators in Arkansas wanted to put a memorial to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, the TST applied to erect a statue of Baphomet nearby, arguing that the Arkansas state legislature could not erect a Judeo-Christian monument but forbid a Satanic one. They got a site permit too, but the Arkansas legislature withdrew permission for the Ten Commandments monument, instead.
The TST also held a “Pink Mass” over the grave of Fred Phelps, to posthumously turn him gay.
All that said, Greaves has said that he and most of the organizers are, in fact, Satanists; but from the Enlightenment, Luciferian strand of Satanism, that sees Satan as a symbol of reason and rebellion against arbitrary authority. They don’t actually believe in a supernatural being.
I think they do very important work, and generally hold them in some regard.
Note: I do want to point out that The Satanic Temple is separate from and different than the Church of Satan. But, by similar standards, one might note that the Church of Mormon is no longer what it was even 30 years ago, and every form of Christianity would probably be completely unrecognizable to Jesus. But, a look at the history can inform some of the view of how things ended up where they are today.
So I’m posting this from the sense of filling in some of the history, not because I’m confused about the subject.
As a brief highlight, here are the Nine Satanic Statements by LaVey:
