this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 153 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (30 children)

The uproar is the point.

The Satanic Temple makes it clear its members do not actually worship the devil or believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural.

But somehow conservative Christians believe that there are huge swaths of people who agree that their religion is 100% correct but worship the weak bad guy character.

(Which is not to mention that there are actually multiple bad guys who got combined, Satan and Lucifer and The Snake were originally different people)

[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (18 children)

God is omniscient and thus knew exactly what Lucifer would do. Angels don't have free will. Lucifer did exactly what God intended. God wanted Man to have free will. Free will requires the choice between good and evil. Man is the "bad guy" as well as the "good guy".

[–] [email protected] 47 points 8 months ago (5 children)

If god is omniscient they would know exactly what everyone is going to choose, nullifying free will entirely

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

For those downvoting the above, @[email protected] is making a reference to John Calvin, who is considered to be an OG determinist.

(Determinism: The view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

This is a great example of why I don't believe free will is a coherent concept outside of religion. It's basically a perk that negates God's omniscience as it applies to you, but if you don't believe in God, it's meaningless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

If there exists a being that experiences time the same way we experience space, do we have any less free will just because the being can continue knowing about it before it happened? The person is making the choice, not the being that knows about the choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ah, but that is the point, until Man chose it hadn't happened, it is the precognition paradox. Until the event occurs, what is known is all the possibilities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's... just like your opinion man.

Then god isnt omnipotent, cause you know, it lacks the power of whats actually to come and is only good at knowing all the hypotheticals. Or may be lacks omnicience, but one could argue that knowing all the possibilities counts.

All that matters is that its lacking something, when it shouldnt

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Spirituality is all opinion man.

But no, it not lacking anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Except all morality and empathy

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

How would an explanation of a religious concept have morality or empathy? Words don't generally have Human emotions in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Is that true. Could he know what we will do but what we do is still our choice without influencw

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Take the garden of Eden story.

Did God know that if he put the tree there then the people would eat from it?

Did God have a choice to put that tree there?

Could God have made a world where they did not eat that fruit?

If he picked this possible world out of all possible worlds based on an outcome that he had in mind, then we're just playing out the parts that he assigned for us.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

True, if somebody comes from the future and knows what you're going to eat tomorrow morning, that doesn't make it suddenly not your choice. But to add to the other comment, an important point is that he made us all as well. Because if a god creates you according to his grand plan—knowing full well every single decision you will ever make—it is no longer a choice. Every one of your decisions were predetermined from the start.

Something I like to think about is that it is impossible to go against the Christian god's plan. If such a thing were possible, then this god would not be omnipotent nor omniscient. As such, everybody that has ever gone to hell did so because god designed them to.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

God is supposedly all powerful and all knowing. God created the universe and everything in it. He did so with the full knowledge of everything that would happen in advance. He chose to do it anyway, despite knowing all the suffering it would cause. And then he chose to create a realm of eternal suffering (either by literal fire and brimstone, or by 'absence of God', it doesn't really matter) for those fleetingly finite-lived humans that he created knowing they would screw up. Less than a hundred years of life in exchange for billions of years of torment. And he created them in a way that is fully capable of realizing how horrible a way to treat someone this is. It's nothing but cruelty of an unimaginable scale. Part of the reason I don't believe the Christian God exists is because I can't accept something that evil. It's too horrifying.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

How is that a choice. If they know exactly what's going to happen I don't have the power to do anything except for what is going to happen. If you only have an apple at home, you can't get any other kind of food and your gonna die if you don't eat the apple, did you really choose to eat the apple?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My knowing what you shall do in no way invalidates your free will. That is invalidated by the futility of your choices. Totally man made and not to be confused with determinism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think its still possible that I could freely choose my actions and you knowing what they would be would not invalidate that it was an action I choose based on my own free will.

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