The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Saucon Valley School District had agreed to pay $200,000 in attorney’s fees and to provide The Satanic Temple and the After School Satan Club it sponsors the same access to school facilities as is provided to other organizations.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in March after the district rescinded its earlier approval to allow the club to meet following criticism. The After School Satan Club, with the motto “Educatin’ with Satan,” had drawn protests and even a threat in February that prompted closure of district schools for a day and the later arrest of a person in another state.
Saucon Valley school district attorney Mark Fitzgerald told reporters in a statement that the district denies having discriminated against The Satanic Temple, its club or “the approximately four students” who attended its meetings. He said the district’s priorities were education and the safety of students and staff.
Four students and Satan, facing down the ISD. You GO guys!
This is what patriotism looks like. These are the heros fighting for freedom.
I assume the Satanic Temple is the non-theist one, which doesn’t actually believe in Satan, and just uses it to troll religious nutjobs.
It’s a pity the Christian right are invariably functionally illiterate, or they would have known to not kick themselves in the dick.
Why would you assume anything? The answer is provided in the article itself. Why can so few people be arsed to read the information provided before leaping to an attempt at pithy commentary?
The group … views Satan not as a supernatural being but as “a literary figure that represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny over the human mind and spirit.” The club’s programs, they say, focus on “science, critical thinking, creative arts, and good works for the community.”
(Boldface mine. “science” comes to us from Latin’s “scientia”: knowledge)
The irony of assuming something instead of learning/confirming it from the information provided, as regards an article about an organization whose stated focus is on knowledge and critical thinking, is disappointing.
Tbf they’re using one of the internet’s laws to their favour. I forgot the name, so I’ll do the same thing and call it Godwin’s law: when you want to know something you post an incorrect answer (or in this case not knowing the answer, they basically wrote the right answer) and someone will correct you soon enough.
It’s lazy tbh, but it helps in case you don’t know how deep the rabbit hole is gonna be and don’t have the mental capacity or time to invest in it. This is specially relevant to people who have ADHD or other similar attention disorders.
P.S. I did end up looking up the actual name of the law and it’s Cunningham’s law, so I corrected myself in this case.
Let’s get meta! lol
Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.
Cunningham’s Law: The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer.
you are hitler
greatest reply of the season
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Correct on The Satanic Temple (TST) being non-theistic. While it did start off as trolling, it has coalesced into a religion of its own (much to the chagrin of the nutty christians here), just without the superstition used to coerce people in abrahamic religions.
The idea that people take a troll religion made up to challenge laws seriously is as absurd to me as the laws they challenge, if not more so.
Man, I love threads about the TST, because there’s always people like you who absolutely shit themselves over any mention of them, and write small novels about how stupid they are.
It’s really all very entertaining.
No no, he’s right. This is absolutely absurd.
Absurd doesn’t always mean bad.
Absurd, sure.
Stupid (and racist, lol) like he says, no.
Likewise I think it’s ironic that people who are against religion and it’s political influence will flip when there’s a religion exerting a good influence. Within the right moral and political context, a religion is deemed good and shouldn’t be understood critically.
I don’t think it’s ironic, I think it’s fighting fire with fire. People see that religion is afforded a lot of leeway that isn’t afforded to other similar organizations, and they want to use that for a good cause of a change.
Exactly that’s why it can work, the system by design requires this appeal to religion, so religious causes are manufactured ad-hoc like this to fulfill political goals. The idea of religion being a political influence is accepted by people who are against religion if it’s a good cause, as long as it’s in the context of being against a bad religious cause. The irony is they hold secularism as a tenant of the religion yet function the same as a traditional religion does in the political sense, and they’re required to do this because of how the system works.
Yeah well, since the government and society is unfortunately infested by religion, you have two choices: you either do some actual good by pretending to be a religion, or you whine about it online.
One of those actually help people.
I would say far less absurd than most other religions. Looking at their tenets, its basically how descent society should function anyway.
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.
Yeah thats intentional because they made it up to be this then appropriated Satanic imagery to brand and commodify it, that’s the troll aspect of it. The original Church of Satan and them denounce each other, the Church of Satan claims to be the true representative of Satan and includes a lot of the “bad” things Satan represents as well.
They didn’t “appropriate” anything. TST’s tenets are based around the Lucifer/Satan depicted in Paradise Lost, The Revolt of the Angels, and other Romantic era literary work. In those works, Satan was a rebel overthrowing the yoke of the tyrant and encouraging people to think for themselves and use compassion for others.
The Church of Satan, on the other hand, was established by a megalomaniac magician who based his philosophy on social-Darwinism. His works reek of sexism and elitism, while trying to convince people magic was real…
They’ve appropriated Satanic imagery and used that literary identity of Satan yes, because it serves the political mission the church was created for. If Christianity didn’t have political influence in the US this church would not have been formed, or would be of a completely different nature.
I just checked the wikipedia page of the church to make sure I was correct and it actually states exactly what I am here. They use Satanic imagery as a political tool and the literary Satan as a metaphor. IE they don’t actually sincerely believe in an actual Satan, unlike the Church of Satan which is sincerely Satanic.
I think that’s why Satanic Temple members dressed in very over-the-top Satanic/goth aesthetic is cringe, because it’s done in this hyperreal ironic context and not actually sincere. Like it’s not borne of their own agency and preferences but centered around stereotypes that offend Christians, or created by Christians entirely. A lot of what’s associated with Satan and being adopted here are rooted in completely racist and false depictions of Paganism for instance.
I would encourage you to broaden your research beyond Wikipedia. While it is a great jumping off point for many things, it is not a credible source in any academic or judicial sense. Lucien Greaves has some some very on-point statements in the court cases he’s been involved in detailing how TST is a genuine religion.
I think you’re getting too hung up on your idea that it is “centered around stereotypes that offend Christians,” which it is not. There is deliberately no standard for how to practice, and you will find many that identify as Satanist have had past experiences with Wicca, Paganism, and other non-theistic/mono-theistic religions. They bring those past experiences to their personal practices and rituals, which is hardly appropriating or as you said, “cringe.”
they don’t actually sincerely believe in an actual Satan, unlike the Church of Satan which is sincerely Satanic.
I don’t see why you keep trying to compare the two, they are entirely different religions. In this context then would you say Buddhists are appropriating the image of the Buddha? They do not see him as their “god,” yet they use his image and name whenever they refer to themselves.
Yeah, protecting people’s constitutional rights is just absurd right?
It’s absurd this is necessary to accomplish that yes. Like in order to challenge religion you have to make up an opposite religion and go through the motions, that’s absolutely absurd.
It’s also hilarious how the original Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple have denounced each other’s legitimacy as the true representation of Satan. The Church of Satan recognizes a bunch of the “bad” ideas associated with Satan and basically calls the Temple pussies. Then the Temple calls them outdated and irrelevant. It’s just like Christian sects but it’s more absurd because the Temple was constructed to oppose Christian political influence, the Satanic branding is supposed to be a troll to shock pearl clutching Christians. I actually agree with the Church of Satan because of this, because the Temple’s appropriation of Satanic imagery is basically done in jest.
I think it’s absurd in the technical sense, yeah.
Fear not my brother or sister or nonbinary friend, for ye too shall one day be touched by His Noodly-appendage. Ramen.
Our pasta, who art in a colander, draining be your noodles. Thy noodle come, Thy sauce be yum, on top some grated Parmesan. Give us this day, our garlic bread, …and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trample on our lawns. And lead us not into vegetarianism, but deliver us some pizza, for thine is the meatball, the noodle, and the sauce, forever and ever. R’amen.
And salsa with you.
You can form a community around all kinds of random things.
It’s great. It calls out their hypocrisy.
It’s too much brain cells because all they can think about is
Christian == good
Satan == bad
They’re both non-theist though
Tbf, to really believe the things that organized religion tells you, you have to be on the wrong side of the IQ bell curve, so it’s not really something they have the ability to avoid.
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IQ has very little to do with this. There are some very intelligent people who are also very religious.
A lot of people confuse intelligence with wisdom. If you considered a human mind like a computer, intelligence would correspond to the CPU and RAM, which determine how fast you think and how much memory you have (and how good it is) whereas wisdom is like the software that runs on the computer.
Install shitty software, and the most powerful, fastest computer will just give you shit. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
You take a guy like Elon Musk, for example. Clearly intelligent. Definitely not slow. But he’s spectacularly wrong about many things. Because he was not taught right when he was a kid, and he then learned the wrong lessons in life afterwards. Bad software, bad data. Still very intelligent.
Yeah there’s no good data to back up the idea that IQ is correlated with religiosity. Also any time IQ is used as a broad determining factor like “low IQ people shouldn’t be allowed to x” the next step is basically applying the same logic the Nazis would to determine which humans are suitable.
That’s the Church of Satan, the Satanic Temple and them deny the legitimacy of each other. The Church of Satan accepts all of Satan’s supposed ideology even the “bad” things, and the Satanic Temple was basically constructed as a “good” alternative/challenge to Christian political influence from a logical positivist perspective with individualism and neoliberal ideology commodified and branded with Satanic iconography. It’s all pretty stupid IMO, aside from the way they can mount legal challenges. The fact they need to exist to do this is absurd but it is what it is I guess.
Whatever happened to the satanic popular front?
Iirc TST doesn’t deny anything about, or really ever mention CoS. CoS doesn’t like TST because of the same reasons you listed (basically they don’t like being conflated or associated with TST, cus their super cereal).
I personally love the absurdity of TST, and heavily believe in their mission/philosophies. Lucian Graves has some issues, but overall they track overwhelmingly on the side of good. Am also a lifelong gothy metal kid so the aesthetic also pleases me.
TST doesn’t deny anything about, or really ever mention CoS.
It’s right at the top section of their About Us page which provides a link to this long article about the difference, complete with infographics.
And yeah they’ve branded it with those aesthetics as opposed to cottagecore or something soft, so it can have the affect that serves the idea of what the church is the best.
After going back on its word, insulting a minority of students, and paying at least $200,000, they’ll now allow the program! Fucking geniuses there in Saucon Valley administration.
The Saucon Valley administration thanks the taxpayers for their generous donation to the After School Satan Club.
As it always goes.
I guess they can Saucon it, amiright?
I bet we’ll see a small town like this one eventually introduce an ordinance to ban “Satanism” within city limits. And they will see nothing wrong reconciling that with the Constitution.
Saucon? Saucon deez nuts.
After School Satan club? ASS club. Nice.
If you want to teach about God in schools.
Then you have to include all the gods. The old, the new, the spaghetti, the fallen, etc.
ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
On a completely trivial note: who the hell estimates a number that small? Approximately 4? Just count them, it’s not hard.
Jerry doesn’t show up on Wednesdays or Fridays and Susan only goes on Wednesday.
So that’s 2. Who else goes inconsistently?
This isn’t a count of how many were there each day, it is how many participated.
Maybe it’s variable?
It’s a count of how many attended. So I would assume the number is set.
Timmy stopped showing up after January and Blake only comes every third Tuesday. 👀 Who cares?
Counting is hard like real hard.
It’s satan. Doesn’t really count as a student, but likes to hang out the school with the 3 in his club. So… approximately four…
Add another to the “win” column for TST.
Hail Satan!
Thanks bro.
Is it true that hell is full of hot gay demons? 🥺👉👈
No. Hell isn’t real.
Disappointing.
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You can donate to TST, it’s an insane sane choice in a sane insane world.
I’m guessing the after school Jesus club didn’t draw any objections.
I’ve been following this story for a while, and no, the school and the surrounding community didn’t have a problem with the Christian club. Early on (iirc) the school claimed they denied the Satan club because they handed out fliers in school, against the rules for religious clubs, even though the Christian club did the same thing.
Of course not. In the US, you have the freedom to choose how you worship the One True Religion™.
There was a “Fellowship of Christian Athletes” when I was in high school. I wasn’t an athlete, but as a Jew, I doubt I would have been welcome anyway.
Technically, this was the objection.
Teachable moment for the school district 🤣
Burning well over $200k will do that. But I’m sure some “mom” that doesn’t even have kids in that school district will try something to disrupt the new club
Lmao
Beautiful.
Common TST W
$200,001. IIRC, $1 in damages.
Back in the 60s my best friend started the “organization for atheists” OFA for short. This was in response to the young christians group. They even had a cheer OFA, OFA, OFA goodness sakes!!!
