Your thoughts on Satanism and the petition for a Satanic statue.

[Esquilax]

Just saw this. Sorry, I've been side tracked tonight. 

No worries, thanks for the reasonable response. I do have one other thing to add:

Ok. I'm not entirely convinced that the statue they want to put up isn't meant to symbolize any sort of mockery or opposition to the people of faith, especially since they call themselves "Satanists." 

This is why I objected so vociferously. American christianity has this tendency, especially among the most devout, to inculcate a lack of interest in other religions, and hence a lack of knowledge. It's actually sinful to some to even learn; I don't go a solid month without hearing of some parent's group or school district seeing objections to the teaching of world religions classes, because how dare schools teach about other religions? There's no line, in a lot of christian minds, between learning about a subject and being directly indoctrinated into it (one might suggest that this simply shows how they teach their children about religion, and so they can't imagine anyone else doing differently) and the end result of all this is that, by and large, American christians are comfortable not knowing anything about other religions before they judge them. This is a stance that's remarkably easy to take in a country where christianity is dominant and even the suggestion of other religions has been studiously downplayed by the fear-mongering right for decades.

I'm not saying any of this reflects your conscious beliefs, but you're affected by it nonetheless; you hear "Satanists," and you immediately think of it as a direct response to christianity and nothing more. Your culture determines your heuristic models, and in your case American culture makes it very hard to consider religious matters outside of the framework of christianity, and this is demonstrated here; why wouldn't satanism have other figures in it besides Satan? Christianity has angels and saints and whole pantheons of biblical characters each with their own unique traits and stories, why this impulse to boil down another religion to only the words in its name?

This is what we're up against, this willingness people have to only consider the surface levels of groups and beliefs other than their own. This is what makes the Baphomet statue necessary, because if you have a greatly detailed view of your own religion but a limited understanding of the others then it's so very easy to prioritize your god to the detriment of others, which we can't have in a pluralistic society. You can already see the downward pressure that kind of thinking brings, in this assertion that the ten commandments monument isn't religious at all, it's a symbol of where the laws come from, some bastion of the American spirit. The implication is that christianity and its symbols are so ingrained in American culture that it's possible to consider them not religious, just American itself. It's a special exemption being granted because christianity is the in-group, it's normal, and all those other religions aren't a part of America.

Imagine how alienating that must be, seeing your government tell you that your beliefs aren't a part of your home. That's why we need this stuff, not because of some need to get at christianity, but because the country needs reminding that christianity is one set of beliefs in amongst all the rest, and not some integral part of the fabric of the nation. It's to the satanists' credit, in my opinion, that they didn't opt to go with a statue of Satan himself, but rather Baphomet, a symbol of peace and construction. The name means either "the father of the temple of universal peace among men," or "baptism of wisdom." It's not some evil figure, it represents the plurality and brotherhood that America is supposed to represent. E Pluribus Unum, and all that. Out of many, one.