United States Christian Former Military Officer Beheads Satanic Shrine in Iowa State Capitol

[King Arts]

Yeah you do. And you'll never win that argument because Scientology is a thing. That's the entire point of Pastafarians.

So what if Scientology is a thing? Why can’t we ban cults?

 

[Ixian]

So what if Scientology is a thing? Why can’t we ban cults?

I mean, historically all religions started as cults. Some more exploitive then others.

The reason we can't ban shit like Scientology is mostly money and expensive lawyers I'd imagine.

 

[S'task]

Interesting, thats certainly different from what I've read, but it is entirely possible I've been misinformed. To my understanding the courts in the 50s and 60s often denied atheists claims against Christian symbols being placed in government funded institutions, on the basis that as atheists they had no interest in religion anyway. Which eventually led to the formation of the Satanic Temple as a "religion" the atheists could use to legitimize their claims.

I'll look into it more to try and better inform myself.

OK, a brief history of Establishment clause cases. The first of which that must be covered is Everson v Board of Education (1947). This case is what formally made the Establishment clause of the US Constitution apply to the States. This is also the case where the phrase "the wall of separation of Church and State" comes into legal parlance. Before this it was just an obscure phrase from in a letter of Thomas Jefferson (who, it should be noted was not involved in the drafting and debates around the US Constitution as he was Ambassador to France at the time and thus his opinions on things should be taken with a grain of salt... but even FURTHER if you go and read Jefferson's letter the "Wall" he was speaking of was one way and meant to protect the Church from the State, not prevent their involvement... but anyway...). In it a atheist who didn't like that his local school district, which lacked a public high school, gave a stipend to parents to pay for transport for their children to attend the high school of their choice, including religious private schools. The Court held that while the Establishment clause applied to the state, that this arrangement did not violate it (as the program was, in modern court term, both pursuing a legitimate state interest (education of children) and otherwise neutral (since the stipend was provided to all parents who had high school aged children for all transport costs to ANY school be they religious or not).

The next big case that is important to know about is Lemon V. Kurtzman (1971). This case established the infamous Lemon Test, a three pronged test that held that governments could only "entangle" with religion if:

1. There was a valid secular purpose.
2. That the effect neither advanced nor inhibited religion.
3. Resulted in "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

The second two parts of these tests were especially problematic and led to moving targets concerning things. For instance, if a city decided to provide block grants to homeless shelters in the city and 49% of the shelters were run by religious charities, then it would likely pass the Lemon test; however, if 51% of the shelters were run by religious charities then it would fail due to over favoring religious institutions and thus "advancing" religion under the second prong. Further the third prong was HEAVILY open to interpretation by the courts and what amounted to "excessive entanglement" was heavily debated. However, most of the time the Lemon test was applied it resulted in finding that the Establishment clause was violated and pushing religion out of the public square.

But let's go back a bit before Lemon and hit up some of the public display cases. The most famous of these would be Engel v. Vitale (1962) which prohibited public school leaders from having prayers recited, and it further prohibited authority led prayer in school in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) which is the case that introduced the first two parts of the Lemon test (with Lemon formalizing it into a test and adding the entanglement part). As late as 1985 the Court struck down an Alabama law granting a moment of silence for prayer in Wallace v. Jaffree simply because they felt the legislature had done so in order to advance religion. This continued into the 90s with prohibiting prayers by school official at voluntary gatherings (Lee v. Weisman (1992)), and even prohibiting students from voting to hold prayers via student government (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000)).

In fact, the drive to push public prayer out of schools has been so successful atheists and anti-Americans have tried to use all these precedents to try and silence the Pledge of Allegiance as a prayer, only avoiding an actual decision on the matter due to standing grounds in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2002).

Looking over this, I'm not seeing the courts laughing atheists out of court, rather, I'm seeing a systematic driving of religious expression out of public spaces... but let's actually get to public spaces.

First, let's talk about displays of the Ten Commandments. This is a very hot topic because, well, many religious folks argue that there's valid historical (and thus secular) purpose to these as they have a large part in forming the understand of the written law, especially culturally in the West. In 1980 the Supreme Court held that public schools couldn't display posters of the ten commandments (even though they were not purchased with public funds) in Stone v. Graham. This led to a confusing series of decisions down the line, with the Ten Commandments being prohibited from public properties in Glassroth v. Moore (2003) and
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005) while being allowed as part of a larger historical display in Van Orden v. Perry (2005).

Then there's displays of explicitly religious holiday decorations in public property. This has seen much less action, but basically amounts to: if it's exclusively one religion, unconstitutional, if part of a larger display of multiple holidays, constitutional (County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989).

Then there was the Mount Soledad Cross and the multiple legal challenges to it. First erected in 1913 by locals, the short version of a long story is that just because it's a Christian cross, despite it having long stood and been a part of the tradition and community, and the land eventually being converted into a war memorial that was no longer being used for religious purposes, anti-religious activists and the courts sought it's removal until a loophole workaround was done that sold the small plot the cross sits on to a private group.

Now... this has gotten long enough and the one thing I do want you to note through all these cases is who is suspiciously absent. That's right, the Satanists. They've never been party to any of these cases, in fact, their tactic isn't about going to court, rather, their tactic is purely mock, intimidate, and attempting to get local jurisdictions to blink and blanket ban all religious expression in public areas just to keep them out due to their purposefully inflammatory style and actions.

 

[Zachowon]

What the fuck is a religion?

And no seperate church and state is not needed to prevent a theocracy. All it does is allow cucks to suck off our system of government as the “best” when there are other ways to make sure it doesn’t happen.

You can give religious tolerance without the 1st amendment or separation of church and state or other buzzwords. Because all that stuff you say what it actually means is the way the courts interpret it. And guess what we can give Jews Muslims Buddhists and Christians religious freedom and still define religion so only real religions get protection and not memes.

What counts as a serious religion?

OK, a brief history of Establishment clause cases. The first of which that must be covered is Everson v Board of Education (1947). This case is what formally made the Establishment clause of the US Constitution apply to the States. This is also the case where the phrase "the wall of separation of Church and State" comes into legal parlance. Before this it was just an obscure phrase from in a letter of Thomas Jefferson (who, it should be noted was not involved in the drafting and debates around the US Constitution as he was Ambassador to France at the time and thus his opinions on things should be taken with a grain of salt... but even FURTHER if you go and read Jefferson's letter the "Wall" he was speaking of was one way and meant to protect the Church from the State, not prevent their involvement... but anyway...). In it a atheist who didn't like that his local school district, which lacked a public high school, gave a stipend to parents to pay for transport for their children to attend the high school of their choice, including religious private schools. The Court held that while the Establishment clause applied to the state, that this arrangement did not violate it (as the program was, in modern court term, both pursuing a legitimate state interest (education of children) and otherwise neutral (since the stipend was provided to all parents who had high school aged children for all transport costs to ANY school be they religious or not).

The next big case that is important to know about is Lemon V. Kurtzman (1971). This case established the infamous Lemon Test, a three pronged test that held that governments could only "entangle" with religion if:

1. There was a valid secular purpose.
2. That the effect neither advanced nor inhibited religion.
3. Resulted in "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

The second two parts of these tests were especially problematic and led to moving targets concerning things. For instance, if a city decided to provide block grants to homeless shelters in the city and 49% of the shelters were run by religious charities, then it would likely pass the Lemon test; however, if 51% of the shelters were run by religious charities then it would fail due to over favoring religious institutions and thus "advancing" religion under the second prong. Further the third prong was HEAVILY open to interpretation by the courts and what amounted to "excessive entanglement" was heavily debated. However, most of the time the Lemon test was applied it resulted in finding that the Establishment clause was violated and pushing religion out of the public square.

But let's go back a bit before Lemon and hit up some of the public display cases. The most famous of these would be Engel v. Vitale (1962) which prohibited public school leaders from having prayers recited, and it further prohibited authority led prayer in school in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) which is the case that introduced the first two parts of the Lemon test (with Lemon formalizing it into a test and adding the entanglement part). As late as 1985 the Court struck down an Alabama law granting a moment of silence for prayer in Wallace v. Jaffree simply because they felt the legislature had done so in order to advance religion. This continued into the 90s with prohibiting prayers by school official at voluntary gatherings (Lee v. Weisman (1992)), and even prohibiting students from voting to hold prayers via student government (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000)).

In fact, the drive to push public prayer out of schools has been so successful atheists and anti-Americans have tried to use all these precedents to try and silence the Pledge of Allegiance as a prayer, only avoiding an actual decision on the matter due to standing grounds in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2002).

Looking over this, I'm not seeing the courts laughing atheists out of court, rather, I'm seeing a systematic driving of religious expression out of public spaces... but let's actually get to public spaces.

First, let's talk about displays of the Ten Commandments. This is a very hot topic because, well, many religious folks argue that there's valid historical (and thus secular) purpose to these as they have a large part in forming the understand of the written law, especially culturally in the West. In 1980 the Supreme Court held that public schools couldn't display posters of the ten commandments (even though they were not purchased with public funds) in Stone v. Graham. This led to a confusing series of decisions down the line, with the Ten Commandments being prohibited from public properties in Glassroth v. Moore (2003) and
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005) while being allowed as part of a larger historical display in Van Orden v. Perry (2005).

Then there's displays of explicitly religious holiday decorations in public property. This has seen much less action, but basically amounts to: if it's exclusively one religion, unconstitutional, if part of a larger display of multiple holidays, constitutional (County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989).

Then there was the Mount Soledad Cross and the multiple legal challenges to it. First erected in 1913 by locals, the short version of a long story is that just because it's a Christian cross, despite it having long stood and been a part of the tradition and community, and the land eventually being converted into a war memorial that was no longer being used for religious purposes, anti-religious activists and the courts sought it's removal until a loophole workaround was done that sold the small plot the cross sits on to a private group.

Now... this has gotten long enough and the one thing I do want you to note through all these cases is who is suspiciously absent. That's right, the Satanists. They've never been party to any of these cases, in fact, their tactic isn't about going to court, rather, their tactic is purely mock, intimidate, and attempting to get local jurisdictions to blink and blanket ban all religious expression in public areas just to keep them out due to their purposefully inflammatory style and actions.

The last comment of yours applies here.
That is exactly what they did here.

 

[S'task]

The last comment of yours applies here.
That is exactly what they did here.

Yes, which is exactly why they're not actually a legitimate religious group and thus can and should be banned, their end goal isn't to express their religious observance, it's to end all public religious displays. This isn't a case like the many many times actual religious minorities have been persecuted for being unpopular religious minorities and thus requiring legal protection, their entire stated end purpose is to ensure that all other religious are abolished from the public sphere, all their claims otherwise everyone knows is them lying, but no court is willing to call them out, even though I'd be you could find all the evidence needed to show they are lying about those kinds of things in their emails and other documents that could be subpoenaed in discovery.

 

[Jormungandr]

I mean, historically all religions started as cults. Some more exploitive then others.

The reason we can ban shit like Scientology is mostly money and expensive lawyers I'd imagine.

Yup: Judaism started as a cult of an existing religion (IIRC Yahweh was one of the gods in the Canaanite or Babylonian pantheons?), and Christianity and Islam were cults as an offshoot from Judaism.

There's also the hundreds of offshoots from Christianity, some of which grew into large denominations or remained as smaller cults.

Hell, there were so many cults in the Roman and Greek days that changed constantly that it was near impossible to keep track of them, unless they owned large areas of land or had cities under the their sway (like that Aphrodite cult in Sparta that had her as a war goddess, for example).

Incidentally, Aphrodite was originally Astarte, but as her cult basically spread across the Mediterranean islands, it kept changing and mutating into different deities until she became Aphrodite in Greece proper.

 

[Zachowon]

Yes, which is exactly why they're not actually a legitimate religious group and thus can and should be banned, their end goal isn't to express their religious observance, it's to end all public religious displays. This isn't a case like the many many times actual religious minorities have been persecuted for being unpopular religious minorities and thus requiring legal protection, their entire stated end purpose is to ensure that all other religious are abolished from the public sphere, all their claims otherwise everyone knows is them lying, but no court is willing to call them out, even though I'd be you could find all the evidence needed to show they are lying about those kinds of things in their emails and other documents that could be subpoenaed in discovery.

Oh j fully agree, but until that happens and they are found not to be a legit religious group.
The argument about separating church and state by having a Christian symbol put in allowed the fake religion to put thiers in.

 

[LordsFire]

Yup: Judaism started as a cult of an existing religion (IIRC Yahweh was one of the gods in the Canaanite or Babylonian pantheons?),

This sounds like one of the (many) edgey atheist attempts to redefine history.

 

[IndyFront]

I don't hold any enmity towards Christianity or Satanism, but wouldn't it help to at least acknowledge - from both sides - that these are two interrelated religions?

 

[Ixian]

I don't hold any enmity towards Christianity or Satanism, but wouldn't it help to at least acknowledge - from both sides - that these are two interrelated religions?

The Satanic Temple specifically (not the other two major satanists cults) aren't a Christian offshoot. They are very open about being atheists who cosplay as Satanists.

Although that's probably enough to qualify for some Christian denominations.

 

[Poe]

This sounds like one of the (many) edgey atheist attempts to redefine history.

It is. It isn't really known how monothiesm developed in ancient israel, the idea that one of the gods become worshipped as the head and then the only god is controversial at best and not supported by any majority. It should also be stated that YHWH is an acronym that means something like "I am that I am," and "Yahweh" isn't the name of some god.

 

[Zachowon]

The youtuber metatron breaks it down stating ay one point in Hebrew texts it does mention a word meaning gods, as in plural which is often taken to mean how they perceive something that got from ground around them

 

[King Arts]

I don't hold any enmity towards Christianity or Satanism, but wouldn't it help to at least acknowledge - from both sides - that these are two interrelated religions?

But they aren’t interrelated. Satanists aren’t worshipping anything. Jews and Muslims you can say are interrelated. But satanists don’t share the same beliefs or even mirrors Abrahamic faith.

 

[IndyFront]

The youtuber metatron breaks it down stating ay one point in Hebrew texts it does mention a word meaning gods, as in plural which is often taken to mean how they perceive something that got from ground around them

I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as a Satanist but I'm probably closer to Zoroastrianism, i.e. I believe in one god with many faces. This would also explain why pagan religions interpreted God as many Gods. God simply has multiple personalities - trillions in fact - and all life on earth and throughout the universe, should it exist, is an expression of God multiplying and expanding the universe outward. It kinda fits hand in glove with big bang cosmology. At one point in time, God was an infinitely dense singularity that contained everything that would ever exist, that grew to encompass the entire universe and all personalities and life within. Not sure where angels and demons would fit in with that belief - probably a trans-temporal form of life that transcended physical reality in the future, and simultaneously exists across and around the 4th dimension and would be able to perceive and exist in all points of time simultaneously, as it would be non-linear from their point of view. The TRUE Satan, not the biblical one, is more or less one of these personalities that attempted to rebel against the rest of its host superorganism and thus created a crack in spacetime. Could be a correlation with the emergence of black holes that seem to break everything around them, including spacetime itself, and consume endlessly and destroy everything they come into contact with - seemingly even information itself. I think getting stuck in a black hole would be akin to hell, because time and space would switch places and you would be able to perceive the infinity of the universe as angels, demons and gods/God do, and would thus break you at such a level mentally, psychologically and spiritually that it would be effectively hell itself. Just as the Great Flood somewhat echoes the tendency of cosmic forces to unleash extinction events on Earth and likely other worlds as well, such as that with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

 

[Jormungandr]

This sounds like one of the (many) edgey atheist attempts to redefine history.

Nope.

He was, strangely enough, apparently the Canaanite god of metallurgy. shrug

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309089209105686?journalCode=jota#:~:text=These%20data%20suggest%20that%2C%20before,%2C%20Kenite%2C%20origin%20of%20monotheism.

Yahweh

Yahweh is the name of the state god of the ancient Kingdom of Israel and, later, the Kingdom of Judah. His name is composed of four Hebrew consonants (YHWH, known as the Tetragrammaton) which the prophet...

www.worldhistory.org

Basically, a theory which makes a lot of sense is that he was originally the god of copper/bronze and metallurgy for the Canaanites and a few other related groups, and that the cult that eventually formed Judaism either focused their entire worship on him as the One True Creator or appropriated him for their own uses.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Hating evil is a felony.

 

[King Arts]

I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as a Satanist but I'm probably closer to Zoroastrianism, i.e. I believe in one god with many faces. This would also explain why pagan religions interpreted God as many Gods. God simply has multiple personalities - trillions in fact - and all life on earth and throughout the universe, should it exist, is an expression of God multiplying and expanding the universe outward. It kinda fits hand in glove with big bang cosmology. At one point in time, God was an infinitely dense singularity that contained everything that would ever exist, that grew to encompass the entire universe and all personalities and life within. Not sure where angels and demons would fit in with that belief - probably a trans-temporal form of life that transcended physical reality in the future, and simultaneously exists across and around the 4th dimension and would be able to perceive and exist in all points of time simultaneously, as it would be non-linear from their point of view. The TRUE Satan, not the biblical one, is more or less one of these personalities that attempted to rebel against the rest of its host superorganism and thus created a crack in spacetime. Could be a correlation with the emergence of black holes that seem to break everything around them, including spacetime itself, and consume endlessly and destroy everything they come into contact with - seemingly even information itself. I think getting stuck in a black hole would be akin to hell, because time and space would switch places and you would be able to perceive the infinity of the universe as angels, demons and gods/God do, and would thus break you at such a level mentally, psychologically and spiritually that it would be effectively hell itself. Just as the Great Flood somewhat echoes the tendency of cosmic forces to unleash extinction events on Earth and likely other worlds as well, such as that with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Thats not Zoroastrianism. Basic Zoroastrian is relatively simple. The ancient t Persians worshipped one god. This god created the world and everything good in it. There is another being however who is gods equal and is responsible for creating all the evil things and is basically Satan. Zoroastrian is still monotheistic to me because they only worship one god the good one. It’s a very dualistic worldview.

 

[IndyFront]

Thats not Zoroastrianism. Basic Zoroastrian is relatively simple. The ancient t Persians worshipped one god. This god created the world and everything good in it. There is another being however who is gods equal and is responsible for creating all the evil things and is basically Satan. Zoroastrian is still monotheistic to me because they only worship one god the good one. It’s a very dualistic worldview.

Not entirely accurate. Ahura Mazda had various personified aspects, and darkness and evil was personified as Angra Mainyu. Ergo: Angry Mainyu, the likely inspiration for Satan, was one of Ahura Mazda's personalities. It would make sense for such a powerful, expansive and complex being as a god to have multiple personalities, no? It would explain the mentioning of other gods as being ASPECTS of God, consisting as multiple beings part of a grander superorganism, while maintaining monotheism.

 

[King Arts]

Not entirely accurate. Ahura Mazda had various personified aspects, and darkness and evil was personified as Angra Mainyu. Ergo: Angry Mainyu, the likely inspiration for Satan, was one of Ahura Mazda's personalities. It would make sense for such a powerful, expansive and complex being as a god to have multiple personalities, no? It would explain the mentioning of other gods as being ASPECTS of God, consisting as multiple beings part of a grander superorganism, while maintaining monotheism.

No Abriman and Anhura Mazda were different beings. Abura Mazda created lesser divinities one could compare them to archangels it Mazda himself was one being he did not “split” himself.

Now there was a Zoroastrian heresy that appeared later on called zurvaniem that had one being above abura mazda and Ahriman called Durban who was time and created them. But that’s not orthodox Zoroastrianism.

 

[IndyFront]

No Abriman and Anhura Mazda were different beings. Abura Mazda created lesser divinities one could compare them to archangels it Mazda himself was one being he did not “split” himself.

What do you mean by "it Mazda himself was one being"? Clarify that before I can properly respond because as your response stands I can't conclusively agree or disagree because I don't fully understand what you're saying...