When I was a baby, I was baptized an Episcopalian, from Kindergarten through to and including fifth grade, I went to a strict Baptist school, and for the “junior high” years, grades six, seven, and eight, I went to a Christian fundamentalist school, for high school, I reached the apex and attended a Catholic high school. Needless to say, I had religion, specifically Christianity, crammed down my throat as a child. I was a believer too, because I was taught to believe, until the day someone asked me that question, “Do you believe in God because you were taught to, or because you’ve actually thought about it and made the choice to believe?”
That question was the start of the erosion of the belief system that my whole life was predicated upon, and well hell, it says it on our money (oh the irony) “In God We Trust”. Funny that, given that money is worshipped in this country (and the world) as idolatrous as idolatry can be.
It took me years to undo the enculturation of religion in my psyche. Enculturation happens from the time we are born until we die. It’s a term I became familiar with after my first Anthropology course at 50. I had taken an anthropology course in my early twenties, but that information didn’t resonate with me in the way the updated information (20-plus years later) did.
I consider myself to be fairly well traveled, extremely intelligent, a wholistic thinker, and expertly capable of critical thinking and analysis, so it was a bit of a revelation, the definition of enculturation and the meaning and impact it has on all humanity, across the globe, wherever one is born, raised, enculturated with that particular culture, tradition, unspoken, and known rules of society and civilization. You’re never too old to learn, and if you are, then you must be dead.
Having said all that, I finally freed myself from the shackles of Judeo-Christian theology as a whole in my thirties. I went from identifying as a Christian, to a spiritualist (believing in a higher power, a power greater than myself,) to an agnostic, to an atheist.
I had initially read about The Satanic Temple here on DailyKos, and given my background, I was definitely intrigued and wanted to know more. I went to their website and read everything. Then I joined.
I live by their seven tenets (and a few more of my own) already and in their FAQs section, the answer to the question “Do you believe in Satan?”
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No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The Satanic Temple believes that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse.
that was the clincher for me. I have trouble believing in something that requires me to believe in it in order for it to exist. Science, on the other hand (and as with any language, there are multiple definitions and uses for one word), is not based in the supernatural, for example, I don’t have to believe in the existence of energy in order for energy to exist. Energy exists whether I believe in it or not. I found this definition from the encyclopaedia Britannica website that sums it up quite nicely,
science, any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws.
And today, I saw this headline, The Satanic Temple: Think you know about Satanists? Maybe you don't from the BBC website (I get my news from BBC.com or Aljazeera.com or from the PBS News Hour) and I thought it deserved more attention.
I live in Florida (I am made embarrassed and ashamed of that by idiots such as Governor Ron DeSenseless — going after Florida’s largest employer — Disney; is there another word for dumba$$) and we have a governor engaging in legislation that is throwing us back into the Dark Ages. Banning books, revoking an establishment's liquor license because of homophobic attitudes towards entertainment venues with Drag Queen shows???, rewriting America’s born-out-of-bloodshed, built-on-the-backs-of-slaves, history to teach a whitewashed version — [pun intended] so that white children don’t feel bad about being white — why should white children feel bad? Can they not learn to identify with the white abolitionists who fought against slavery?)
With our political system being seized by fascist, racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic hate-mongers and power brokers, only concerned with lining their coffers and criminalizing poverty, homelessness, race, and sex (gender is a cultural construct — while that doesn’t negate its reality, it does leave it open to change. We have been living in a patriarchal society for the last 12,000 years, dominated by men, predominately white men, who defined the gender roles for the sexes; women have been trying to break out of those gender roles for the last 12,000 years) it reinforces my resolve to move to Bordeaux. [Good wine, good weather, and I love all things French, it is happening sometime this year...it is not an if, it is a when.]
My point is, common sense is no longer common, and critical thinking is not taught ever since they stopped teaching our children cursive writing (studies have shown that the neurological pathways developed from learning and using cursive or long-hand writing facilitate the development of creative and critical thinking later on in life) and as I am a part of Gen X, I am nervous about the Millenials and especially the Gen Zs. They are going to be in control making choices that will have both direct and indirect effects on my life and on the lives of others in my generation as we age out, just as the Baby Boomers are aging out now.
So I am passing on the word, the message of TST, to embrace rational inquiry without supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions, and “Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse”.
Feel free to discuss...