[INFJ] Satanists

[Asa]

I do agree Asa that some things like discrimination, especially racial, have made huge leaps, and thank God they have because it was indeed deplorable. As well as equality for women. Can you imagine a time when we couldn't even vote?

I also feel that in the 50's while the same sins were very much in existence, they may have seemed less prevalent because people hid them back then. Today these same things are openly accepted, normalized, and even praised while people of God are almost villainized for their faith. A reversal.. a slow turning upside down what is good and bad is what I refer to.

In the 50's if you said you were in an open marriage, in example, you'd get a lot more recoil from people than if you said you'd just been to church. I feel like things today are moving toward the opposite.

I wish we had the 50's manners too. It was lovely.. <3

I agree with all of this.
I think the disrespect for people of faith has to do with the few who capture media attention for being anything but Christian. Those examples overshadow the good people who are living according to their faiths.

Just like Christianity, there are different "brands" of Satanism. LaVey's (Church of Satan) was more overtly anti-Christian, which I only say because he did include anti-Christian essays when forming the church. (I'm not that invested in the religion, so I don't know that many details.) The Satanic Temple has principles that aren't even that weird.


Satanic Temple Tenets:

• 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.
  

 

[Misty]

I agree with all of this.
I think the disrespect for people of faith has to do with the few who capture media attention for being anything but Christian. Those examples overshadow the good people who are living according to their faiths.

Just like Christianity, there are different "brands" of Satanism. LaVey's (Church of Satan) was more overtly anti-Christian, which I only say because he did include anti-Christian essays when forming the church. (I'm not that invested in the religion, so I don't know that many details.) The Satanic Temple has principles that aren't even that weird.


Satanic Temple Tenets:

• 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.

Sorry reply so slow, was gardening and then cooking & cleaning up on a mending foot so not exactly agile at the moment. ^_^

I do agree that this is a large part of the distaste and false perception people get about those of us with faith. It's a shame that it happens, but if we could learn to remember that there are bad apples in every walk of life then perhaps this would start to change.

#idealist NF's... What silly thoughts we have. -.-

 

[Sidis Coruscatis]

I also feel that in the 50's while the same sins were very much in existence, they may have seemed less prevalent because people hid them back then. Today these same things are openly accepted, normalized, and even praised while people of God are almost villainized for their faith. A reversal.. a slow turning upside down what is good and bad is what I refer to.

The 50's were more of a superficial veneer of a dying philosophy I think - most of the damage has been done in the late 19th century where you can see writers comment on this visible decline quite heavily. It was the hotbed of all the "the golden rule is that there are no golden rules" statements, the subjectivist and materialist theories that both paved the way for the metaphysical apathy which is practically an existential baseline for most people who don't undergo specialized education today.

Nietzsche famously tried to avert this, but inadvertently or not, his solution probably contributed significantly towards the state of modern society. The parable of the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky depicts the separation of Christ and the Church (i.e. the new idol, government). Chesterton's Heretics from 1908 opens up:

The word "heresy" not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.

 

[Misty]

The 50's were more of a superficial veneer of a dying philosophy I think - most of the damage has been done in the late 19th century where you can see writers comment on this visible decline quite heavily. It was the hotbed of all the "the golden rule is that there are no golden rules" statements, the subjectivist and materialist theories that both paved the way for the metaphysical apathy which is practically an existential baseline for most people who don't undergo specialized education today.

Nietzsche famously tried to avert this, but inadvertently or not, his solution probably contributed significantly towards the state of modern society. The parable of the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky depicts the separation of Christ and the Church (i.e. the new idol, government). Chesterton's Heretics from 1908 opens up:

The word "heresy" not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.

I totally agree, except for one thing. I truly believe, also from hearing family tales of life during the 1950s, that although a lot of the same dark things were indeed hidden underneath that shiny veneer, the majority of society felt genuine remorse about it.

They were guided by conscience and that conscience weighed much more than it does today..

What Is Conscience? Your conscience is the part of your personality that helps you determine between right and wrong and keeps you from acting upon your most basic urges and desires. It is what makes you feel guilty when you do something bad and good when you do something kind.

https://www.verywellmind.com › co...

Today it seems that more and more people have subdued their conscience to the point of telling it to shut up whenever they desire something that feels good, even if 'long ago' it was seen as sinful or wrong. Temptation is no longer temptation.. it's a "lifestyle", a choice. I think in the 50's the greatest difference was that people knew what they were doing behind closed doors, underneath their veneer - was wrong.

Today if you dare to disagree with someone's lifestyle or their life choices.. you're instantly dancing in "bigot" territory. And that's the big difference. Once we become our own God we make our own commandments and can look ourselves in the mirror because we've done no wrong.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

I don't think we ought to forget that the 50s were a time of economic prosperity for the common man unlike any time before or since. The 'Golden Age', in Hobsbawm's words, between the war and about the end of the 70s were an unprecedented time of full employment and a global social democratic consensus.

Funnily enough people have the capacity to be 'moral' when they aren't wrecked by poverty, uncertainty and devaluation.

I think we probably ought to pay attention to the correlation between fin de siecle fears of moral decline, and indices of inequality.

 

[just me]

Get thee behind me, Satan.

 

[Y1gtfmd74i5u]

I personally tend to lean more towards Christianity myself, but I try to keep an open mind to the idea that there’s other beliefs that make sense to others. There are things that I’m willing to accept that may be considered a satanic view, like the pagan idea of death which can cause me some conflicting feelings from time to time, but keep me “human” and humble.
Maybe that’s where the Jungian idea of science, spirituality, and symbolism of life come in. Where those things have to be kept separate. Like scientifically, I can’t deny that I have a body, or that there’s death; philosophically, there are truths, but they aren’t applied without wisdom, which leads to Christianity being about forgiveness and acceptance. Wisdom in my personal opinion would be more about understanding your own self amongst your surroundings. Eg how do I associate a with b and how does that affect my view of myself and my environment, therefore how does that cause me to affect my environment, how do I view my environment, or how does my view allow my environment affect me?
I’d much rather not participate in an extreme of any kind of it isn’t expressed with love.

in the case of full beliefs on satanism, I’m not fully educated enough beyond what I’ve read about LaVeyan satanism for the kicks of it, but for sake of symbolism, its impossible to disagree that I’d rather believe in something that had to exist in order for the “anti” of it to do so, which is my own personal perception of light and it’s absence in science and it’s symbolism in Christianity.

And mind you this is after years of being extremely Old Testament in my practice of Christianity, and learning the latter half of it. I still don’t fully understand and I’m okay with that and feel that others can be too regardless of their religious preferences.

anyway. That’s my irrational view on it.

 

[Y1gtfmd74i5u]

The 50's were more of a superficial veneer of a dying philosophy I think - most of the damage has been done in the late 19th century where you can see writers comment on this visible decline quite heavily. It was the hotbed of all the "the golden rule is that there are no golden rules" statements, the subjectivist and materialist theories that both paved the way for the metaphysical apathy which is practically an existential baseline for most people who don't undergo specialized education today.

Nietzsche famously tried to avert this, but inadvertently or not, his solution probably contributed significantly towards the state of modern society. The parable of the Grand Inquisitor from Dostoevsky depicts the separation of Christ and the Church (i.e. the new idol, government). Chesterton's Heretics from 1908 opens up:

The word "heresy" not only means no longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word "orthodoxy" not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong.

hmm. These dates don’t quite line up. Neitzche was in the 1800s where the 1950s brought with it the traumas of the war and what Jung called the splitting of the psyche between the conscious and unconscious. Or in layman’s of terms the self and others. When it came to what happened in those wars the trauma of your fellow man dying for freedom and killing another who looked for it in the wrong way would’ve messed up any person and in turn carried those traumas back home. This includes women for the domestic violence that occurred with them as well, being a projection on all sides.

 

[Sidis Coruscatis]

hmm. These dates don’t quite line up. Neitzche was in the 1800s where the 1950s brought with it the traumas of the war and what Jung called the splitting of the psyche between the conscious and unconscious. Or in layman’s of terms the self and others. When it came to what happened in those wars the trauma of your fellow man dying for freedom and killing another who looked for it in the wrong way would’ve messed up any person and in turn carried those traumas back home. This includes women for the domestic violence that occurred with them as well, being a projection on all sides.

What exactly are you saying? That the war was the primary cause of moral dissolution?

 

[Y1gtfmd74i5u]

What exactly are you saying? That the war was the primary cause of moral dissolution?

Definitely not. It’s been an ongoing occurrence. I wouldn’t say that it’s the cause rather than the evidence of flawed human nature and our ability to be a piece of that puzzle.

a piece being a separate issue from the whole. I was correcting the detail rather than your view.

 

[o2b]

Hi ExhumedMorrison,

I personally tend to lean more towards Christianity myself,

I am Christian with a passion for Christian gospel theory. My sense of its truth is extremely unorthodox.

That being said, orthodox Christianity, to my understanding, is even monstrous. A concept like eternal conscious torment is hideous.

There are other ideas that invite discussion. Does God really require a legal demand and satisfaction (this being the basis of the orthodox view of justification)? I don't think so. I think a healing and not a legal view is biblical. A healing view caters much more to a view of a loving God.

Much needs to be fleshed out, to my understanding. One is the reason for our persistent state of moral futility (Romans 8:20), what explains an astonishing level of character transformation at the end, and why it is unavailable until that time.

Thankfully, there are answers. Beautiful answers.

God ultimately finds everyone.

 

[o2b]

Biblically, Satan exalted self above all others while love exalts all others above self.

I'll go with the latter.

 

[Jonah Caan]

I'm getting Rosemary's baby vibes.

 

[HJpAjcdO0X]

As a Satanist I find a lot of my beliefs are perfectly met within the Satanist framework. Is there anyone else here Church or Satan? Are you interested in it as a subject?
p.s. quick disclaimer, Temple of Satan is a pyramid scheme and not part of this.

Looking at the timeless tale through a whole new perspective...
Take the story of Adam's creation, sure it may have been portrayed like pride on behalf of Lucifer who refused to bow before dirt. However, maybe it was misinterpreted just a touch. Maybe that's was Lucifers last straw in this way "He creates ANYTHING and we're all supposed to bow at the snap of his fingers, like we're owned...slaves if you will." God's response to this opposition seems to come across similar to that of a dictator. To me it sounds like " Lucifer I ask that you keep in mind, I am the creator of EVERYTHING including you, now I command you to bow before my creation."
I've read a few articles about this and in my opinion it seems that long before his supposed narcissistic fall, Lucifer held one of the most important jobs. Even if he was throwing temptation in the face of humans like confetti, humans did have free will to choose right or wrong. It's not as if it's entirely Lucifers fault for the sins committed by man, they had a choice. No one is perfect, Lucifer seemed to make this clear. Over time it would make sense that he applied this to God as well.
At times I've thought it's kind of funny that God created everything, including evil. Now if he didn't want people to sin why make that a possibility in the first place? Lol
I think he's just been vilified, and used as a scapegoat for bad decisions ever since.

 

[dZpADTLrPmX4c]

It feels a little reactionary to me, though I appreciate that most Satanists I've met leave me to my own devices.

 

[o2b]

At times I've thought it's kind of funny that God created everything, including evil. Now if he didn't want people to sin why make that a possibility in the first place? Lol

The malignancy of evil and the incredible goodness of good were to a large degree unknown to creation. I believe evil was inevitable because of innocence. It is one thing to be persuaded by a loving parent to not touch the hot stove, it is another level of persuasion to be a burn victim and not want to touch the hot stove.

Susceptibility to sin was bound up in innocence.

 

[o2b]

At times I've thought it's kind of funny that God created everything, including evil. Now if he didn't want people to sin why make that a possibility in the first place? Lol

The malignancy of evil and the incredible goodness of good were to a large degree unknown to creation. I believe evil was inevitable because of innocence. It is one thing to be persuaded by a loving parent to not touch the hot stove (here used as a metaphor for touching sin), it is another level of persuasion to be a burn victim and not want to touch the hot stove. Moreover, creation could not be privy to the extent to which love would act in order to recover those who got "lost."

Susceptibility to sin was bound up in innocence.

 

[John K]

It's fascinating that in the Bible creation myth eating the apple gives the power of discrimination between good and evil. If the mythical apple had not been eaten we could not be human. I can well believe that the first of us to be fully human was a woman, and that through her men became human too, and thank goodness. Before that we were in the paradise that all animals live in even to this day - but we are more than animals as well as being animals.

But come on! - if that story is a metaphor of the truth then God expected it even if it wasn't intended. Even in the Catholic Church we talk about the happy sin of Adam and Eve without which there would have been no Mary and no Jesus.

But to follow Satan means many different possibilities. On the one hand, to assert freedom is only to go with the grain. To embrace evil in the sense of glorying in harm to others and satisfying our own needs at the expense of others is foul and despicable.

 

[Jonah Caan]

I think the 'apple episode' was partly a litmus test for when humans were ready to make their own decisions. Once they did, they were sent to Earth; God already knew what would happen. It's not the fault of the woman as I've heard so many people say, lol, it was a right of passage.

Satan and his followers are a necessary evil to weed out the good from the bad, if I was to sum it up in the most simplest way. When we sin, we're following Satan. When we ask for forgiveness from God and for his guidance, we're following God. Sorry to be so black and white, it's so much more deeper than this of course but I just caught this at a time when I just wanna jump into bed, lol.

Oh, this reminds me of some verses from the Quran in regards to the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden:

2.38. We decreed, ‘Go forth, all of you, but remember that if there comes to you guidance from Me, then whoso follows My guidance, on them shall come no fear, nor shall they grieve.’

2:39. ‘But, those who will disbelieve and reject Our Signs as false, they shall be inmates of the Fire, therein shall they abide.’

I believe this world is a game and a test, as well as a beautiful experience and pastime.

 

[Misty]

I think the 'apple episode' was partly a litmus test for when humans were ready to make their own decisions. Once they did, they were sent to Earth; God already knew what would happen. It's not the fault of the woman as I've heard so many people say, lol, it was a right of passage.

Satan and his followers are a necessary evil to weed out the good from the bad, if I was to sum it up in the most simplest way. When we sin, we're following Satan. When we ask for forgiveness from God and for his guidance, we're following God. Sorry to be so black and white, it's so much more deeper than this of course but I just caught this at a time when I just wanna jump into bed, lol.

Oh, this reminds me of some verses from the Quran in regards to the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden:

2.38. We decreed, ‘Go forth, all of you, but remember that if there comes to you guidance from Me, then whoso follows My guidance, on them shall come no fear, nor shall they grieve.’

2:39. ‘But, those who will disbelieve and reject Our Signs as false, they shall be inmates of the Fire, therein shall they abide.’

I believe this world is a game and a test, as well as a beautiful experience and pastime.

This^. Beautifully worded, as well.

It's fascinating that in the Bible creation myth eating the apple gives the power of discrimination between good and evil. If the mythical apple had not been eaten we could not be human. I can well believe that the first of us to be fully human was a woman, and that through her men became human too, and thank goodness. Before that we were in the paradise that all animals live in even to this day - but we are more than animals as well as being animals.

But come on! - if that story is a metaphor of the truth then God expected it even if it wasn't intended. Even in the Catholic Church we talk about the happy sin of Adam and Eve without which there would have been no Mary and no Jesus.

But to follow Satan means many different possibilities. On the one hand, to assert freedom is only to go with the grain. To embrace evil in the sense of glorying in harm to others and satisfying our own needs at the expense of others is foul and despicable.

Also this, John. This is simple & well explained.

I would also like to add something I was thinking about yesterday in regards to this and another currently active thread here about Satan & Satanism. There is a verse that lingers inside when I hear that Satanism today isn't about hurting others and is a peaceful faith, and so forth. The verse comes, ironically, from the book of John.

John 8:44

44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

It wouldn't be a big stretch to believe that the people who find themselves a part of Satanism, as a faith, who feel it's creed is not violent or evil are indeed deceived.

It also reminds me of a quote I found when researching for a larger work in progress of fiction I've been writing for some time. While it's not a verse, it's very poignant to the topic of Satanism today.

"Very few people believe in the devil these days, which suits the devil very well. He is always helping to circulate the news of his own death. The essence of God is existence, and He defines Himself as: 'I am Who am.' The essence of the devil is the lie, and he defines himself as: 'I am who am not.' Satan has very little trouble with those who do not believe in him; they are already on his side."
Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ