I know this is meant to be a casual conversation and this topic can get deep fast, but I’d love to hear everyone’s elevator pitch for their religion or lack thereof. peace and love<3

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    And contrariwise to my nickname I’m not even Satanist. I played around its aesthetic in my teen years, but by then my beliefs were already “not quite a Monotheist, not quite an Atheist.”

    Tbh i don’t get why anyone would ever profess to be a satanist if they don’t believe in christianity. Satan is part of christianity… make it make sense

    • CosmicGoat@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      Many forms of satanism, perhaps most?, aren’t religious and do not believe in a literal Satan or in Christianity. Satan is used as a symbol of individualism, skepticism, and resistance to religious authority. For many satanists, it’s less about worship and more about expressing values like personal autonomy and separation of church and state.

      I have a lot of Satanist friends. I’m all for individualism, skepticism, and resistance to religious authorities, but I personally prefer to do it without all the satanic imagery. Just to tease, I occasionally remind them that their beliefs are too Christian for me. Haha. 😈

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      10 days ago

      It’s probably better if some Satanist answers this instead of me, but AFAIK there are as many answers for this as there are Satanists out there.

      For a lot of them Satanism boils down to a set of moral principles; e.g. embracing individualism, non-conformism and carnal desires as virtues instead of sins. It’s an opposition to Christianity on moral grounds, but it says nothing about agreement/disagreement on epistemic ones. (AFAIK most of those are Atheists.)

      For some Satanism is more like an instinct of opposition, internal to the individual, that pops up across multiple religions; e.g. the Set from the Ancient Egyptian religion, the Asurāḥ from Hinduism, and the Satan from Judaism/Christianity/Islamism. And it’s that instinct that they worship/appreciate/support. (I’d argue those are either Pantheists or Panentheists.)

      Then for a few it’s like “inverted Christianity” — the epistemic beliefs are the same (there’s some guy called Yahweh creating the world, he create a guy called Satan, Satan backstabs Yahweh), but the morality is flipped (i.e. worshipping Satan instead of Yahweh).

      So TL;DR: it depends, but for most of them there’s no belief in the epistemic claims of Christianity.