Satanic clubs, whose members do not worship the devil, usually formed in response to presence of religious groups in schools

Community members in a Tennessee school district want to banish Satan from their children’s halls after the formation of a new club was announced.

The After School Satan Club (ASSC) wants to establish a branch in Chimneyrock elementary school in the Memphis-Shelby county schools (MSCS) district.

The ASSC is a federally recognized nonprofit organization and national after-school program with local chapters across the US. The club is associated with the Satanic Temple, though it claims it is secular and “promotes self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students”.

The Satanic Temple makes it clear its members do not actually worship the devil or believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. Instead Satan is used as a symbol of free will, humanism and anti-authoritarianism.

  • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1013·
    1 year ago

    The number of adults in the US that think Satan is a literal being is way too fucking high.

    It started as an editor using ‘adversary’ in the place of what was probably the goddess Anat appealing the head of the pantheon to kill the son of the protagonist like in the earlier Canaanite A Tale of Aqhat as an intro into what was an adaptation of the also earlier Babylonian Theodicy in Job.

    But we couldn’t have a polytheistic holdover, so suddenly there was a supernatural ‘adversary’ (‘Satan’) in a story.

    Which in turn spawned fanfiction during the prophet ages where they referred to the supernatural adversary of Job.

    Then Hellenistic ideas around Hades (both the place and figure) get added into the mix, and we get the Enochian literature about fallen angels, where the guided katabasis influenced Virgil which later informs Dante’s Inferno.

    Then King James messes up translating Isaiah and the Latin for the morning star (Lucifer) gets mistaken for a proper name, further tying the supernatural adversary to being one of the Enochian fallen angels. And we get Milton’s Paradise Lost.

    It’s all just mistranslations and fanfiction.

    And yet millions of people believe it’s actually a thing so much so that they freak out at the idea of any references to it as literally being dangerous.

    In 2022.

    An age filled with things beyond the wildest imagination of those in antiquity dreaming up miracles and wonders.

    We’re so beyond fucked as a species.

    • phx@lemmy.world
      37·
      1 year ago

      To those people, if there’s no Devil then it means all the bad stuff in their heads and hearts is just them. All the temptations are them. All the hatred, including self-hatred is them. There’s no Devil that made them do it or think it, no external tempter or defiler to resist. They can’t take that.

      • bufalo1973English
        1·
        1 year ago

        Or the other answer to that problem: if there is no Devil then everything is because of God. Including their sins.

    • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
      101·
      1 year ago

      Well you can’t believe Satan is real without believing God is real, and that number is too high too.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
        52·
        1 year ago

        Observe:

        I just did it.

        All I did was was choose to believe a different version of the fairy tale.

        For what’s it worth, it was a take on the “The Throne Is Empty” mythos, fucking Metatron, always lyin’

    • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
      41·
      1 year ago

      Could say similar things about the monotheistic Christian God who seems to have originated in Cannanite polytheism. At some level everything is “made up” though and that doesn’t prevent it from having power. Just look at race for instance.

      • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        1 year ago

        I expect the average person to know that there isn’t a supernatural evil being controlling the bad things that happen in the world.