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Pearls Before Swine has become one of my all-time favorite mainstream comic strips. Stephan Pastis is both a comic genius and an insightful commentator. This is one of my favorites:
Also, he’s constantly putting himself down with his own characters, which I love.
That’s why I’m a Satanist.
No big book of dogma to follow. We aren’t trying to convert you. Just fuckin’ chill and hail Satan.
okay I understand everyone’s modern definition of Satanism but why are they claiming a title that has traditionally been defined as the source of sorrow and eternal suffering and fire and eternal punishment?
It’s one part reclaiming and one part stirring up controversy. Normalizing the idea that demonic Satan doesn’t exist and it’s our own faults and sins to blame while also getting free publicity whenever the Christians get mad and talk about Satanism on the news.
The problem is, it makes it far too easy to brush it away from a point of ignorance and people who consider themselves devout will never look into it. It serves the interests of Christianity and edginess more than it serves something that would identify itself as, say, biblical scholars. Plus, if they become Satanists, which you may consider a joke label, people who would have had a degree of legitimacy in the eyes of Christians who might be convinced to begin questioning their beliefs can now be much more easily discarded because “Oh, didn’t you know, he’s a Satanist!”
Trying to argue for the term is akin to arguing identifying as a Nazi not because you really support WWII Nazis but want to reclaim the term of socialism within the national perspective as something that can be realistic without the hate, racism, eugenics, and populism. You would be doing more harm to the point you are trying to argue for. It will get views, yes, but are those the views you want?
Comparing Satanists to Nazis is really weird. Hitler was a real person who committed genocide. Satan isn’t real, and he never committed genocide, not even in the Bible.
Christians, on the other hand, have committed genocide, and so has the Christian God, according to the Bible, but that doesn’t seem to have harmed Christianity at all. Additionally, the Nazis endorsed Christianity, not Satanism; but, again, that association doesn’t seem to have harmed Christianity.
Have you seen the kill counts?
God is roughly over 2 million deaths in the Old Testament alone while Satan is around 10 deaths.
I grew up a Christian. Many apply the label Satanist liberally to biblical scholars and other legitimate criticizers. I honestly don’t think the label does them much harm. The ability to stand as a “religious” legal barrier against Christian Nationalism is served by their apparent distastefulness. If putting the ten commandments in front of the legal building also requires putting a statute of baphomet in front of the building they might think twice.
I don’t get the downvotes, you made a really good point. The Hells Angels used to use Nazi iconography not because they were sympathisers, but because they thought it looked cool and it pissed people off. Not the brightest idea if you ask me.
While I get the idea behind adopting Satan, I don’t think it’ll do any favors against Christians other than call them out. This is why I prefer to call myself an Atheist than Satanist, it gets my point clearer.
Bikers and Nazi paraphernalia have a deeper connection than “it looks cool and pisses people off.” The biker movement and aesthetic arose from WW2 veterans. They were traumatized by the war and often felt they had no place in society when they returned. Many joined biker gangs in an attempt to find common community with other vets. Many wore plundered Nazi gear as evidence of their service to society and protest against the shit they dealt with from other citizens.
For sure some were neo Nazis or shit stirrers.
At the same time, it’s worth examining the narrative Satanists apply to the fallen angels. They see the rebellion of the angels as an act of revolution and bid for freedom against a tyrannical force. They don’t believe in a literal god or Satan but that story has appeal when they see an ascendant Christianity in American politics enforcing Christian dogma on the rest of us.
I think there’s more reason and purpose in both contexts than they are usually given credit.
I think it also depends on how ppl understand the concept of the word “satanism”. I am an atheist and used to live in a asia country, we don’t use any word like satan like you said “to define as the source of sorrow…” And I don’t think we even have that word in native language. We have something else comparable to that but still what I want to say is that Satanism may sound bad to you but for others ppl It’s not.
To ppl who doesn’t have any prejudice against Satanism, the Satanic temple does indeed provide good causes, especially even more now given how bad others religions are (I don’t want to name them but I am sure we know who)
They basically uphold him as a symbol of rebellion against an unjust, totalitarian authority.
What sort of rebellion against this “unjust and totalitarian authority”… Raping children?
You mean like all Christian denominations but especially the catholic church does, have always done and always will do unless we stop them somehow?
Yeah… So do school teachers. Christianity isn’t about raping children. Neither is education.
A big part of organized Christianity is covering for and otherwise enabling child rapists, though. Not so for education.
Besides, not that it makes a single rape acceptable, of course, but education has many positive aspects that can’t be found outside of education. Christianity doesn’t have even one.
Christianity has the positive aspects of saving people’s soul. Child rape is not a “big part” of Christianity. It is not proscribed in the Bible nor in any catechism. It literally says that if you harm a child, that it would be better for you to be drowned in the sea than to face the wrath of God.
Sounds like you’re confusing Satanists with Catholics.
There’s another tradition called Romantic Satanism which was a 19th-century literary movement. It’s basically what happens when a bunch of post-Enlightenment writers go “Hey, what if Satan was actually the good guy?”
Around this time was a lot of rebellion against both monarchy and the church, and they felt some kinship with the rebel of the story, not the despotic deity he was opposing. (God’s actions in the Old Testament would be considered horrifying if they were carried out by a human.)
Modern Satanism’s myth of Satan is a kind of reinterpretation or re-imagining, like a feminist retelling of a princess fairy tale.
It’s mostly reclaiming a title that zealots use for anyone they don’t like. We take what they call us and make it a positive force for change and justice.
So should we do the same for nazism? 🤨
For starters, Nazis are real, and they killed millions of innocent people.
So is Satan, who’s ruined and killed billions
source?
That’s objectively untrue on both counts. The Abrahamic God, if you assume he is real (which is a stretch to begin with) has ruined and killed a lot more folks, as written in the Bible, than Satan.
embrace the chaos.
if i ever wnated to start believing in a higher power, i’d be a satanist.
My “higher power” is myself. I don’t believe that Satan is real. He’s a mythic figure that I draw inspiration from. He stood up to a tyrant who’s the most powerful force in the universe, got thrown into Hell, and just stood up and said, “Okay, I’ll make my kingdom here.”
“Tyrant” because Satan wanted to cause everyone suffering and encourage all sorts of atrocities, and this “Tyrant” wouldn’t allow that :(
Spotted the ignorant zealot.
Satanists don’t really believe in Satan. The Satanic Temple is basically the religious embodiment of the ACLU. They’re currently raising funds for The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic. They also run After School Satan in schools that have religious based after school programs.
The Church of Satan is an outlier and shouldn’t be counted.
