Originally published at: Satanic Temple display at Iowa Capitol destroyed by upset Christian man | Boing Boing
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Maybe I’m being totally naive, but the whole Satan thing seems to ultimately play into the evangelical worldview.
Maybe people can explain to me the advantages of using a biblical figure, as opposed to, say, a flying Spaghetti monster.
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There’s two main Satanic groups in this context.
LaVey Satanism, represented by the Church of Satan explicitly uses the archetype of Satan as the core of their ideology and basically say that Satan was right and selfishness and individualism is the way to go. As such you come first and any altruistic acts you do should be ultimately for your own advantage.
The group who put up this display are The Satanic Temple, who have no specific ideology and instead talk about Satanism as an opposition to Christianity and their group tenets are more based around compassion and bodily autonomy and integrity. These stunts are more about displaying the way that church and state are not really separated in the US. All that said the Satanic Temple as an organisation has severe issues - they’re very lawsuit happy, are fine with hiring some incredibly dodgy people (including one of the lawyers who defended Alex Jones and literal neo-nazis), and are currently suing former members who spoke out about problems in the group.
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AVE SOL INVICTUS!!
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Cassidy, who has run for political office in the past without success, was quoted by media saying “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged. My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”
With that attitude, I hope he never gets a political office.
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Sounds far less dodgy than most churches, to be honest. They are “lawsuit happy” because people prevent them from the same performative religious expression they allow Christian groups, which is explicitly anti-first amendment and is one of the main things they are trying to call out. Not sure why “hiring X law firm” is a real problem at all, everyone deserves council even if we despise them, and the only lawyers I think should be avoided are the ones who helped promote activities like Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government, or who otherwise engage in illegalities. And I don’t really know about the last one. Maybe there’s actual cause there.
I fully support the efforts of the Satanic Temple to oust Christian bigotry wherever possible. If Christians, like this guy, want to make that easy, that’s entirely on them. EDIT: And oh yes, I should add that clearly this guy is trying to get noticed and will be running a campaign for office again soon. I guarantee it. There’s always a grift behind these folks’ actions.
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Lack of appeal, I guess…
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Cassidy, who has run for political office in the past without success, was quoted by media saying “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged. My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”
What’s the betting that Cassidy is a firm believer in the ‘bureaucratic decree’ of the Second Amendment?
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But I LOVE spaghetti!
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So… Libertarians?
/s
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Axis tilt
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“held captive”, ah, thats convenient. as an atheist you dont have a god to justify your actions, its all on you, regardless what you did. no exuses there. I prefer that.
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No /s needed, LaVey was very much the right-wing Libertarian stereotype
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ohman, we can right repeat here everything what was said in this thread yesterday…
oh, and…hail eris…and stuff…something
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I bet he’ll be successful when he runs now, unfortunately.
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With that attitude, he just moved from GOP farm team to the majors league, with PAC funding to match.
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The chief advantage is that it is demonstrably based on the same bible and overall mythology that the Christians base their religion, and their religious privilege on.
This makes immune to a lot claims that it’s not a real religion, or that it was fabricated, or that it’s somehow unamerican or whatever- Because pushing that line of thought opens the door to begin attacking Christian privilege using their own arguments. There’s no real way to differentiate it without being obviously and blatantly discriminatory.
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