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

[Cecelia]

Esq, as others have said here, that statue was meant to be provocative/satirical. If they had chosen some other random creature to be their symbol, it wouldn't be offensive, which is why they chose what they did.

Consider what the Ten Commandments mean to others of other religions when one of the Ten Commandments (the first one in fact) is "thou shalt have no other gods before me".  Consider for a moment what that simple commandment means to people of other faiths, or no faith at all.

With that one commandment, the Abrahamic faiths assert their truthfulness and dominance over other faiths and lackthereof. 

You compare the statue to the Nazi symbol -- but the Nazis were a hate group who actually oppressed the Jews in horrific ways.  The same can be said of the KKK.  The Satanic Temple has not oppressed Christians.  Some Christians actually threatened and called to destroy the statues (it's unveiling was made secret to prevent that).  Of course some Christians were tolerant.

The Satanic Temple's version of Satan is not the same as the Christian version of Satan as far as I understand it.  It should also be remembered that one man's villain is another man's hero.  If TST were a group that hated Christians, rather than spend all the money they did on their symbol, they would have simply destroyed the ten commandment monuments instead.  They aren't burning down churches, they aren't destroying monuments (which again, some Christian Pastors threatened to do), they aren't even looking to put their statue somewhere as the sole symbol.  They merely want to put it up as a contrast to Christianity.  I don't believe you can really compare their symbol to the symbol of the Nazis, the KKK or other groups that have perpetrated horrible crimes against groups.

[loganonekenobi]

So have you aske the satanists what their symbol means? Maybe there are a few that don't mean to scare you.

My OP already says what it means to them lol. The problem I have is with them putting it right next to a Christian/Jewish symbol, because whether they like it or not, their symbol still originally comes from the Christian/Jewish religion as a symbol of evil. So by wanting to put it next to the Ten Commandments, they are knowingly and purposely defiling something that is sacred to a lot of people. Just pick a different spot in the same property.

Actually I believe the history and image of the goat was stolen from the indigenous pagans of Europe. Then to slander the existing pagans so that people would turn against them they made Satan look the same as their fertility god (Herne the hunter for example). I don't believe Lucifier looked like a goat until then.

This was done to the Hindus as well so as to turn folks against the the original faith in that region. I think I can cite Christipher Hitchens on this one.

So really if you look at it in that light then to put the goat by the commandments to me it just seems like the karma that comes from what happened in the past. Very funny to me.

On the other hand I could feel totally offended that the Christians would be upset after what they did to a perfectly good set of pagan people.

[IATIA]

Surgeon, did you see my last post to you? I noticed you never addressed it so I don't know if you may have missed it.

A lot is going on.  This turned into a busy thread as you apparently missed my query also.  No worries, it has yet to be answered by any theist.

You suggested that Satan was an evil bad guy.  Where is this information found?  Where in the bible does Satan display any immoral character?  What has Satan done besides pissing off god?

[Esquilax]

Esq, as others have said here, that statue was meant to be provocative/satirical. If they had chosen some other random creature to be their symbol, it wouldn't be offensive, which is why they chose what they did.

Sure, others can say that all they want. They may even be right. But unless they're the actual Satanists involved here then their words cannot be taken as proper representation of the motives of the group. They actually explained what their motives were, and yes, they were attempting to make a point, but that doesn't make your argument here any less absurd.

What's happening here is that your religion stole iconography, names, and concepts from other religions and used them as the basis for the devil figures in christianity, in an attempt to quite literally demonize the figures they cribbed from. Centuries later, Eliphas Levi creates an image supposed to represent a Crusade-era pagan idol, calls it the Sabbatic Goat, and it becomes Baphomet. The name, imagery, and mythology surrounding the creature is drawn from numerous sources, none of which are specifically christian, but somewhere along the line you and christians like you get this idea in your head that goat-headed male figures belong to your religion and so, in defiance of all history, decide that Baphomet can't be his own thing, hes gotta be your specific devil and anybody who uses the iconography is thinking specifically about your religion. Because Satanism isn't a real thing with its own history and culture, right? It's just a fake thing, something to get at your religion, and has no content of its own. How reductive.

This is exactly the problem, and it's exactly the reason why they want this statue up. So many christians have this overly simplistic conception of other religions and cultures, like christianity is the only legitimate one and all the others are just faking to defy you. You just assumed that the figure up there had to be your devil, there was no room in your head for the idea that another mythos might have a goat-horned figure in it; in the space of a few sentences you dismissed centuries of culture and stories and people because it seemed impossible to you that people might just have their own traditions that don't ultimately connect back to yours. You're so used to christianity being the ground state of being that the idea that a figure that kind of looks like one from your religion might belong to someone else's is outlandish to you.

So yeah, you thought it was Satan, and I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of other christians will do that too. But it's not the Satanist's fault that you're ill-informed, nor is it their job to kowtow to your misconceptions. Christianity is not the assumption around which all other conversations must be structured, they don't need to develop a whole new set of iconography because, through no fault of their own, something they already had kinda reminds you of something you don't like. Do you understand how completely self-centered that is? They've gotta alter their icon of choice because it raises uncomfortable parallels to you? Doesn't matter what it actually means, just that it reminds you of something and is therefore offensive?

Baphomet, variously, symbolizes wisdom, peace, and the drive to create. It's actually an extremely fitting symbol even for satirical Satanists trying to make a point, and it looks pretty cool to boot. Yes, I suspect the associations it raises are part of the appeal, but it's unnecessarily reductive to boil it down to just those, especially when it would be just as easy to actually put a statue of Satan there. It's not like that could have been forbidden, but instead of doing that they chose another figure with meanings of its own that fit better with their mission statement and embody something positive just generally.

You're missing the point: what Baphomet does there isn't to make you think of Satan, it's to demonstrate just how willing you christians are to misunderstand. All that dominance has gone to your head in ways you can't even detect.

[Catholic_Lady]

So to address this: "If the roles were reversed, and we lived in a philosophically atheistic society, and atheists put up a monument in front of a courthouse that symbolized the domination of atheism over religion, saying "And this nation has abolished belief in god!" when they did it, you would be screaming your head off as a member of the believing minority."

Now hold on a second here. If you want to compare apples to apples, you'd have to compare the above monument to one that said "And this nation has abolished disbelief in God." Which would be ridiculous since it's untrue. However, if someone wanted to put "The Atheist 10 Commandments" somewhere, I couldn't care less. So long as other religions were allowed to publicly display theirs as well, if they wanted to, I wouldn't care.

Okay, I see what you're saying here. You're saying that the only way my analogy works is if one says "abolished belief" and the other says "abolished disbelief".

Um. No. That's not valid at all. They don't have to have the same wording. They just have to represent the same idea: "ha ha, our belief runs this country, and yours is insignificant and wrong!!"

The fact that you can't grasp that is disturbing to me, so please, please hear me when I say this. Read slowly and carefully:

WE GET THAT YOU ARE NOT BOTHERED BY RELIGIOUS DISPLAYS ALONGSIDE YOURS.

WE GET IT. STOP SAYING IT.


Okay? The issue here is not whether it's okay to place multiple icons up. One issue is that it's either "all" or "none", yes, since the government is required to stay neutral with respect to religion. So of course there's no objection to many religions doing it. But there's a second point that you're skipping over to the point I'm getting really frustrated, and that is that your faith is dominant, so when Christians put up a symbol on the courthouse deliberately placed there to remind people of the domination of Christianity in this culture and meant to give the impression (not my words, the words of those putting it there!) that this is a "Christian nation" and that our laws are subject to the "Moral Lawgiver", then it is a problem.

I spent years writing articles and OpEds against my state politicians for that kind of thing, and they came after me with a vengeance in court, through their cronies (I have no proof or evidence that it was any of the politicians I attacked were involved, except for the fact that there was an extraordinary number of "observers" from the Capital in my courtrooms, just sitting there, and a lot of really shady legal shenanigans went down, and they were delayed as much as possible at every stage, when it came to getting things overturned on appeal). The point is, I have personally experienced why theocratic influence on the legal system is a problem.

The astounding irony of watching you sit here and complain because you feel your religion is "under attack", when in fact it is your faith-brethren using their effective hegemony over the culture who are actually attacking people.

You don't get to be the bully and the martyr at the same time!

I think we've reached a point where there is nothing left to say. You're just repeating yourself, and I'm just repeating myself, and you're getting really sick of me repeating myself lol. The part I bolded that you said I'm missing, I feel like I addressed in the post you're answering to. Not the part you quoted, but somewhere above it. 

Please don't put words in my mouth though. I never said my religion was under attack, neither would I ever say that. I said my only objection to religious/ideological symbols being allowed up on public property was if one was placed to deliberately offend/mock another, so there would just need to be mutual respect.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Nothing to say because Esquilax said it all.

Well done, Esq.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I was wondering when someone was going to point this out.  I like CL, so I don't want to offend, but....this. ^^

Don't be afraid to say as you feel Aroura. If CL can't respect your honest views on how stupid religion is, then she shouldn't be on an atheist forum trying to make friends. That's her problem. She's not mad about the 10 commandments being up, but mad about something that she says mocks it. Tough shit, it shouldn't be on public land. She should be mad that the 10 commandments are up there, and she should want them down, so they're not forced on everyone else, if she was a good christian.

Some folks are just idol worshipers:  "Man on a stick; words on stone.  Destroy all others but leave ours alone."

[Catholic_Lady]

Esq, as others have said here, that statue was meant to be provocative/satirical. If they had chosen some other random creature to be their symbol, it wouldn't be offensive, which is why they chose what they did.

Sure, others can say that all they want. They may even be right. But unless they're the actual Satanists involved here then their words cannot be taken as proper representation of the motives of the group. They actually explained what their motives were, and yes, they were attempting to make a point, but that doesn't make your argument here any less absurd.

What's happening here is that your religion stole iconography, names, and concepts from other religions and used them as the basis for the devil figures in christianity, in an attempt to quite literally demonize the figures they cribbed from. Centuries later, Eliphas Levi creates an image supposed to represent a Crusade-era pagan idol, calls it the Sabbatic Goat, and it becomes Baphomet. The name, imagery, and mythology surrounding the creature is drawn from numerous sources, none of which are specifically christian, but somewhere along the line you and christians like you get this idea in your head that goat-headed male figures belong to your religion and so, in defiance of all history, decide that Baphomet can't be his own thing, hes gotta be your specific devil and anybody who uses the iconography is thinking specifically about your religion. Because Satanism isn't a real thing with its own history and culture, right? It's just a fake thing, something to get at your religion, and has no content of its own. How reductive.

This is exactly the problem, and it's exactly the reason why they want this statue up. So many christians have this overly simplistic conception of other religions and cultures, like christianity is the only legitimate one and all the others are just faking to defy you. You just assumed that the figure up there had to be your devil, there was no room in your head for the idea that another mythos might have a goat-horned figure in it; in the space of a few sentences you dismissed centuries of culture and stories and people because it seemed impossible to you that people might just have their own traditions that don't ultimately connect back to yours. You're so used to christianity being the ground state of being that the idea that a figure that kind of looks like one from your religion might belong to someone else's is outlandish to you.

So yeah, you thought it was Satan, and I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of other christians will do that too. But it's not the Satanist's fault that you're ill-informed, nor is it their job to kowtow to your misconceptions. Christianity is not the assumption around which all other conversations must be structured, they don't need to develop a whole new set of iconography because, through no fault of their own, something they already had kinda reminds you of something you don't like. Do you understand how completely self-centered that is? They've gotta alter their icon of choice because it raises uncomfortable parallels to you? Doesn't matter what it actually means, just that it reminds you of something and is therefore offensive?

Baphomet, variously, symbolizes wisdom, peace, and the drive to create. It's actually an extremely fitting symbol even for satirical Satanists trying to make a point, and it looks pretty cool to boot. Yes, I suspect the associations it raises are part of the appeal, but it's unnecessarily reductive to boil it down to just those, especially when it would be just as easy to actually put a statue of Satan there. It's not like that could have been forbidden, but instead of doing that they chose another figure with meanings of its own that fit better with their mission statement and embody something positive just generally.

You're missing the point: what Baphomet does there isn't to make you think of Satan, it's to demonstrate just how willing you christians are to misunderstand. All that dominance has gone to your head in ways you can't even detect.

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

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." Buuuuut you listed some good reasons to think it might not be, and I can see where you're coming from. You raised some very good points. This being the case I think it's only fair to give them the benefit of the doubt and not be bothered if they want to put their symbol next to the commandments. If their symbol truly means something different to them and is not supposed to be a biblical demon of sorts, and if it has nothing to do with mockery or opposition to any group of people, then you're right... there's no reason why it should be handled differently than any other group wanting to put their symbols on display.

Short answer, but I'm typing between commercial breaks lol.

[Homeless Nutter]

[...]You don't get to be the bully and the martyr at the same time!

lol
But that's Christianity in a nut-shell.

[MTL]

I said my only objection to religious/ideological symbols being allowed up on public property was if one was placed to deliberately offend/mock another, so there would just need to be mutual respect.

But when Christianity abuses its social might to put something like a Crucifix or the Ten Commandments
where they shouldn't be put,
thus oppressing people,
they forfeit their right to respect
because they are not respecting others.