Club Satan
This is a response about an article posted on my Facebook feed on an ‘after school Satan Club’ at a Memphis elementary school, and now at a local elementary school in my town for elementary school students. The article’s headline: “Satanic Temple plans ‘After School Satan Club’ at another elementary school…”
1st and foremost I do not support or favor any religion in general. If you ask me what I think happens when we die? That talk will be about 2.5 hours and using so many references, from science, to science fiction, fiction in general, philosophy, logic, critical thinking, sacred geometry, astrophysics, politics, numerology, etc. One or many wouldn’t even grasp most of these concepts at the beginner/novice level, let alone, understand the lack of general awareness that religion, in all its glory, is the number one killer of human beings in all the history of mankind. Not by predators, not by an asteroid strike in our distant past, not AIDS, not heart disease, drug addiction, cancer, the black plague, global wars or diabetes, hunger, lack of drinking water. Nope… Religion has killed more people than all these combined. So you will have to excuse my lack faith in religion as an ideology that benefits all of mankind. You will never see me say the opposite, ever…
It’s been suggested human beings have roughly been on Earth in our current form for around 300,000 years. While Christianity’s history is around 2,000 years old, give or take a few decades. That is a huge gap, over two orders of magnitude (2.18) older than the Christian faith. One can insert just about any history they would want with that gap of time. Plenty of time for interpretation, telling of stories that miss details or include details that never happened. The Bible very well could be the first science fiction novel ever written for all we know. Movies like; "Prince of Darkness," directed by John Carpenter in 1987, centers around a group of scientists investigating a mysterious cylinder filled with a pulsating green liquid discovered in an abandoned church. The film explores the notion that early humans misinterpreted profound forces as benevolent when, in reality, they embody darkness and destruction. As they study the liquid, they uncover disturbing revelations about its extraterrestrial origin and its connection to an ancient evil force that transcends time, space and reality as we know it. As the liquid is studied by the group, it is suggested that our ancestors, grappling with incomprehensible phenomena, crafted a narrative (Christianity) that skewed the reality of these entities. Portraying God as a symbol of life, love, and light rather than the “Anti-God,” a malevolent, primordial entity with the potential to bring about apocalyptic consequences. That we never know what this energy actually is, but it can only be described in Christian terms of “Satan’s Father” or the “Anti-God.” The “Anti-God” is not a being of life, light, and love but a force of death, darkness, and destruction, shedding light on the possibility that humanity's early interpretations were shaped by fear and misunderstanding rather than divine revelation. "Prince of Darkness" and other films that attempt to challenge viewers to reconsider established beliefs and contemplate the origins of religious narratives. That is just one example of how creativity and attempting to look at religion with an analytical mind over blindly accepting what is written as literal gospel/truth/facts.
In the article, the Satanic Temple clarifies its mission, “presenting itself as a non-theistic entity that interprets Satan as a metaphorical symbol, separate from the supernatural associations often assumed. The club's curriculum, contrary to misconceptions, focuses on science-based and inclusive activities, aiming to foster benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving, creative expression, personal sovereignty, and compassion among participating children.” https://www.live5news.com/clubsatan
Just because the group says we do not teach about Satan in terms of religion doesn’t mean it isn’t about Satan. This one quote from the article destroys any credibility that the Temple may have had about what its mission and goals are with this club. I support the first amendment, but if we cannot have Jesus in public schools then there isn’t any room for Satan either. If a public school is gonna allow Christian-theme clubs in their school then based on the first amendment Satan should also have its say. The Jesus-Karens’ wanna cherry-pick when it is ok or not ok to break the law, as they always tend to look at the law as silly when compared to the laws in the Bible, which to me, is just as silly. These same people will openly break the law when it suits them and always point to the Bible as the one true law.
Now that is fine and dandy, but if we all have to follow the law, so do Jesus-Karens’.
The question of whether it is fundamentally wrong to teach religion of any kind, including topics like Jesus or Satan, in public schools:
• Separation of Church and State: Teaching religion in public schools “may be” seen as a violation of our 1st amendment rights as outlined in the constitution of the United States.
• Religious Diversity: Every individual in that school and every public school has their own personalized belief structure. It would be fundamentally wrong to choose one and make that the standard for everyone. Hence, why ALL separation of Church and State exists to begin with.
• Parental Rights: The responsibility for religious education lies with parents and religious institutions, not public schools. Public Schools across all of the United States has taken a bigger interest with our children the last decade or so. They have been fighting with lawmakers during this time attempting to gain rights’ to kids without their parents being notified. This subject can be a blog all by itself. Giving them free spaces to teach and practice “progressive” values, that are hardly progressive, in terms of progressing forward in a direction of enlightenment. However, what I see “progressives” doing isn’t going forward, which is what the word actually means. Instead, “progressivism” steers human thinking backward, under the pretense of moving forwards. Even if it is after school and 100% voluntary there is still pressure to promote these concepts and for kids to accept the invitation or be told “they are on the wrong side of history.” It is why Separation of Church and State and Religious Diversity above exist in the first place. This is the part I think the schools lack the most. There is pressure by people for them to help promote it and pressure for kids exposed to it to join. Where they are supposed to be spiritually safe…
• Focusing on Academics: Public schools are primarily institutions for academic education, and introducing religion diverts resources and time away from core subjects. How we can expect our kids to know Math, English, History if we have them confused about what comes after this life or not. Can kids be kids and worry about this garbage when they have real stress in their lives? My only real acceptation to the rule about religion in public schools is if religion is mention in Historical Context. I can give a pass on that, but that would be more for High School level kids learning about world history in a classroom for historical context. Not religion as the subject, but merely part of the story that is world history.
Parents shouldn’t have to be in this spot of being angry about this particular thing to begin with. When we send our kids to school. We trust they are safe: Mentally, Physically, Emotionally, Sexually and Spiritually. Let’s not forget the incident by the original Jesus-Karens in the 1980s when Al Gore and his wife tried to cancel Heavy Metal due to it promoting Satan and they lost, BIG, and were humiliated on live TV. When we buy a CD and it has the “Parental Advisory” sticker on it, that is their contribution to pop culture, gate keeping, and heavy metal.
If a school was a religious boarding school or something specific, a non-public school, then I’d get it why religion is in school, but public schools, na… I have no issue with some things about religion in schools like the pledge of allegiance and God being mentioned in it. I always interpreted the word “God” to mean “whatever creation myth one believes in,” and creation itself is a myth, not a fact but a myth. I believed this at 8-years-old.
I have three different categories for defining God and it is based on how we spell God. God (any and ALL Gods of religion) • GOD (The Universe itself is GOD, not a conscious being, just everything encompassed into one big thing called the Universe/GOD) • god (Sacred Geometry Spirit Energy, Nature, not necessarily a conscious entity).
The word “God” to me never meant solely the Christian God, just “god.” The pledge is fine how it is. As far as promoting Satan goes, I feel the same way. I joke about hailing Satan, but that is all it is, a joke. It is utterly ridiculous, just like thinking more than God just being an imaginary friend for grownups. I am actually making fun of Satan here not hating on Christian faith, specifically. I am a metalhead. Always have been. I never associated Satan worship with metal music, but there are subgenres of metal music that focuses on the worship of Satan and the destruction of all Catholicism. I think all faiths are part of the clown show. It doesn’t have a place in public schools, whatsoever, for just the few reasons I specified here. However, they probably are different for you and absolutely different for most other people.
I am an agnostic, which is just a fancy term for saying; "I do not possess the information to make an informed decision on whether or not the One-God-Creation-Myth is more than just a myth and if any of this is actually tangibly real in our reality." Agnostic is just saying we do not know enough to say God does or doesn’t exist so we just do not have a stance on it in the terms that believers and non-believers have their stance. By default both sides tends to label us as either believer or non-believer, which is why we are agnostic to begin with. Agnostics tend to not believe in binary information systems about reality.
That not everything is as simple as positive and negative…
“In the status quo of trial by social media; the facts have nothing to do with anything. No matter what you do, no matter what you prove, no matter what you dismiss, logical approach or common sense thought or thoughts about a topic, there is always going to be people on a keyboard that will project the reality that they would like, that most fits with what they want to believe and have that all based on hurt feelings and sentimental opinion on every issue. Every issue is split in half or binary nowadays. There are no winners in this and the lives that are directly affected by it will never be the same.” ~me, September. 2023.
Every topic is so polarizingly binary: yes/no, us/them, good/evil, right/wrong, left/right, zero/one, gay/straight, black/white, man/woman, Jew/Muslim, Life/Death. You get the idea. Sources are biased, especially ones from the great religions of the world, the legacy news media from both left/right sides. Both spin their takes as pandering of right/wrong vs what right/wrong actually are. Both sides always paint the other side as: wrong, bad, evil, while always labeling themselves as correct, good and just. In binary information systems both sides cannot be these things. They must be one or the latter, ALWAYS…
The great flaw I see here with Jesus/Satan in public schools is we cannot have one without the other. If you have pro-Jesus after school programs in public schools then one or many must allow the latter that same respect. I have written at length this year about binary information systems and how they formulate, shape, our opinions and positions in reality. They are not what they are supposed to be, but the point I am making here is in public schools both should not be allowed. I agree with most that Satanism is just as much a religious faction as Christianity is even though they are saying in the argument that they are “presenting itself as a non-theistic entity that interprets Satan as a metaphorical symbol, separate from the supernatural associations often assumed. The club's curriculum, contrary to misconceptions, focuses on science-based and inclusive activities, aiming to foster benevolence, empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving, creative expression, personal sovereignty, and compassion among participating children.”
If you are a Christian parent and you want to protect your children from teachings that go against your faith, the public school system would probably not be trustworthy places to safeguard those concepts for your children. The public school systems are working to strip rights from parents so they can teach your kids what “they” value, not what “you” value…
Should be noted that just because I personally loathe religion of any kind, I do not hate people for choosing a religion/faith. It is your entitled right to choose what you want to believe. My only, real, issue with any of it is the forcing the beliefs on everyone and shunning those that choose not to listen.
Religion, to me, are the original Karen's of civilization, but I am not going to trash my brothers/sisters, family and friends for believing. I encourage freedom of choice, freedom thinking and being free to believe in what you want to believe. That is the beauty of this country and the beauty of the greatest document ever created, the constitution of the United States of America. It is the projecting of religious concepts over the Bill of Rights onto other people that tends to rile me up on the subject.
I have said this before about religion and religious folks:
"If one or many make religion/faith about them, internally, and not about empathy, love and support for others then the message they believe in and support is the wrong one. You have missed the point if you ever think this is all about you… The second you do that, the battles and wars you wage in the name of that faith are perverted, fundamentally and logically wrong. If you believe in hell, you are more than likely already on that ‘one-way ticket to midnight, call it, Heavy Metal…’”