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why the fuck not?
I grew up in a very conservative town, with fairly conservative parents, and was at a very fundamentalist church several days a week. It wasn't Southern Baptist by name, at least anymore, but it still aligned closer to those beliefs than the American Baptists it was part of. Gay? You're going straight to hell. Drink alcohol regularly? Get ready to sip fire in hell. Do you dance and grind all up on each other? Sounds like you'll be wriggling in the fires of hell.
But the only way out of my teenage troubles was to join the youth group, play in the church band, and go on their trips. I might be grounded for fighting at school or getting kicked out of 8th grade, but I could always go to church. And somehow, along the way, I forgot I was faking it and the Bible became a special interest.
I wanted to be a youth pastor for several years. It's part of why I picked the college I did, but it helped that my girlfriend at the time was going there. The plan was to study English as my major, Religion as a minor, and go on to Seminary afterwards.
However, it turns out studying the Bible and Christian history/heritage unpacks a lot of inconvenient truths. It's not the divine and perfect word of god like I'd been told. It was a slapped together mess of writing from unknown authors written down decades if not centuries after the fact. And during the writing and revision, people had agendas, enemies, and pagans to condemn. And 2000 years later, it's all still there (along with a bunch of new bullshit from English translations).
It broke my faith. I kept the minor but changed majors to Philosophy, hoping to find real truth. But I was missing something.
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For a solid decade, I contended that my official status was agnostic, because you can't prove a negative (ie: just because you can't prove that god exists, doesn't mean that proves god doesn't exist). It was the easiest to explain to others, and the only downside was that folks who are religious think of it as a cowardly stance. Which maybe it is.
The pursuit of philosophy helped me rewire my brain with the help of real logic leading my path forward.
I studied ethics, metaphysics, and especially enjoyed epistemology. I took classes on Sex & Gender, the Philosophy of Science, the World of Islam, and Pragmatism. In my freetime, I dove into texts about nihilism, absurdism, and existentialism. To cap it all off, were two courses on symbollic logic, which nearly broke my math-illiterate brain.
Emerging from that academic forge, I declared myself an absurdist (officially) or a gleeful nihilist (unofficially).
But without teachers and classmates to debate with, it got pretty lonely.
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What's missing from the world of athiesm and agnosticism is community. Most find it in more mainstream interests like sports, concerts, and brunch... but as an autistic introvert, I've always struggled with feeling part of a crowd. My anxiety spikes, my brain shuts down, and I exist in a state of pure survival mode; ready to fight or flight the minute something forces me to unfreeze.
But as the world fell apart in 2020, I was looking for something to be a part of that was helping the right causes. Something I could support from a distance since marching and protesting aren't something I'm able to do. And despite what my family always told me, I didn't get more conservative as I grew up; I went radically to the left and fully embraced athiesm. So, when I found The Satanic Temple, it didn't set off alarms or warning signs, it felt like a welcoming hug.
Here were a group of people, bound by principles I fully supported, and sticking it to the religious right at every turn. They know how to work the media to get attention on topics that are important. They know how to support people being harmed by bullshit legislation. They've turned the attempted theocracy against itself by taking the Romantic version of Satan, and creating a recognized religion around it.
I joined almost instantly.
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I'm not as active in my local group as I'd like, but work takes all my social energy for the day. So I donate to their causes, buy their swag, and push their social posts to my friends. I hope to do more someday soon, but right now I'm focused on my autism diagnosis and learning how to unmask before meeting more people as the "mark" that I default to in public.
So, why this post now? Because of the supreme court and Roe v Wade.
One of our 7 fundamental tenets of TST is that one's body is inviolable (subject to one's own will alone). During Texas's whole push to ban abortion, the TST created an official Abortion Ritual for it's members. The loopholes that protect right-wing wackjobs now protect us as well.
Religious freedom does not equal Christian freedom. No matter how hard they try to make that the law, the Consitution says otherwise. In fact, it was so important, that it's the first item in our Bill of Rights.
So if this is all new to you, I beg you to check it out. And, if nothing else, finish the post by reading the 7 Tenets. Thanks.
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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.
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05.16.2022 / the center of hell