Put simply, The Satanic Temple is a relatively new atheistic religion (without belief in an actual Satan) with core beliefs in the seven tenets as listed below:
I. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV. 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.
V. 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.
VI. 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.
VII. 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.
Check out https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us for more info.
Hope all is well! Hail Satan!
That “Freedom to offend” was weird. Is that not a contradiction, a paradox of sorts? Certaintly, I have the freedom to be respected and not being bullied. If someone offends/bullies me, he is violating that freedom, no?
Also, “Struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit”. It would be nice to have a definition of “justice”. Is killing/torturing someone for a crime they committed seen as justice in the TST?
To be clear, you’re not going to get definitive answers from anyone on canonical meanings for the tenets because they’re open to interpretation. They were written fairly broadly by design to accommodate various worldviews (and likely to be interesting to discuss).
For me, Tenet IV which talks about the freedom of others to offend is not a paradox. You have every right to remove yourself from the company of those who are offending you, but they in turn have the right to be offensive. Now, that is not to say that people who choose to offend are absolved of the consequences of their actions. In our Satanic social circles for example, if people are offensive, they are removed and are free to go be offensive elsewhere. Therefore, the personal choice to offend as a Satanist is one that must be taken deliberately. I see this tenet as a caution against pushing for restrictive free speech in the public square lest we lose our own free speech which may, through no direct intent of our own, offend people like fundamentalist Christians, for example.
Tenet II which is about the struggle for justice has been kicked around a lot in discussions. The other part of the wording that people ponder is the meaning of “prevail”. There are obviously various meanings for both of those words. Justice could be moral justice, social justice, legal justice… I’ve seen some people question if it even means retributive/vigilante justice and I think that’s obviously a bridge too far and incompatible with the rest of the tenets, which are meant to be understood holistically. As far as “prevail” goes, I interpret it to be more of a synonym for “guide” or “inspire” than “supercede”.
Thank you for the insightful reply. I think the “freedom to offend” comes down to personal opinion. I am honestly against it. I understand your viewpoint, and I am all for general freedom of speech, as it is an important metric for an improving society. However, imagine a scenario in which removing oneself from the situation is hard. Say a school. Should student A be free to offend student B? It is my view that student B should feel safe in school. He/She should not have to wake up and dread going to school.
We’re getting into an area where religious beliefs are less defined for me than my political beliefs lol. I’ll gladly share my political beliefs on this topic, but I can offer even less assurance of consensus with fellow Satanists on this.
I personally believe in clearly defined free speech zones and I do not believe school should qualify as one. There have to be rules against harassment, hate speech, and proselytizing in places that people have no choice but to be (and the possibility of home schooling or private schooling does not preclude this right because those are not available to all).
Free speech zones should be limited to the public square (public property, parks, sidewalks, etc). There’ve been many debates about whether social media sites should become mandated free speech zones and I personally think that is a really bad idea. We need to be able to choose not to be harassed in our personal areas both in real life and online.
Unfortunately, we have to let bigots be able to speak freely both in their personal spaces and in the public square (within reasonable constraints, no credible threats of violence obviously). They have the right to free speech and all we can do is walk away or drown them out in public.
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Revisiting the whole idea of offense, I think there are really 2 broad categories. There are willfull acts of offense and unintended offense. The first category could be shouting slurs at people, attacking someone’s character, engaging in general emotional bullying, etc. The second could include, for example, offending someone by simply existing and living out one’s life in public (LGBTQIA+ individuals, BIPOC individuals, atheists, and Satanists are a few examples). The first kind of offensiveness is rarely warranted. The second kind is unavoidable for people who want to live normal lives amongst pearl clutching haters. To the haters, I say suck it up.
Previously, I mentioned the tenets should be understood holistically and Tenet VI is a great example to look at:
I think this ties into the topic of offense at least as far as a Satanist is concerned because it encourages us to try to make amends if we offend someone without justification.
So TL/DR on the topic of offense, I believe the tenets encourage us not to do it without a good reason, but also not to encroach on others’ right to offend within reasonable limits.
If you have no freedom to offend; then you have no freedom of speech.
For example, if some one espouses and expresses a truly idiotic political philosophy; and you have no freedom to offend… then you cannot truly express your view on that philosophy.
As an example of how the fourth tenant might work, say that I tell you that your comment offends me. What would you think?
Do you have the right to say what you said?
Should you be forbidden from saying it?
Should I have the expectation that you take down your comment?
You probably answered “yes”, “no”, “no” because you don’t see your comment as offensive. You may even find my assertion that your comment is offensive to, itself, be offensive. What do we do the?
Without the right to offend we get into a lot of unending arguments where each person asserts offense and both may actually be right!
What happens when there are no consequences to someone who is offending you, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation?
So I’m by no means an expert in the nuances of modern liberal Satanism, but I’ll do my best to give my own viewpoint.
First and foremost, TST promotes respect between individuals, as it’s the first tenet. But sometimes you are going to do something that inadvertently offends someone else. Like if you are a woman out and about in a heavily fundamentalist Muslim country. Showing too much leg skin would be offensive to many (and quite frankly unwise due to safety concerns, but that’s besides the point). But she is simply exercising her own freedom of expression which is not actually harming anyone.
I will say I do agree that it is a bit of an odd tenet, but I see why it’s on there. Satanism may offend many religious individuals, but we are just out here trying to live our lives the best we can.
Forgive me, as I’m not the best with words.
The nice thing about the tenets is that there is room for nuance. TST was never designed to be a rigid set of unwavering core beliefs without any room for discussion. I would say your question would be more of a personal one in nature, and not a question for TST themselves. However, I would say that most of TST members do not seem to support capital punishment.
The reason that tenet exists in the first place is that TST was borne out of an attempt to fight against religious oppression, which is a very real issue. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we advocate for mowing down people with AK-47s, just that we believe in fighting for human rights.