{"id":9009,"date":"2014-01-16T00:15:58","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T00:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9009"},"modified":"2014-01-16T00:17:35","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T00:17:35","slug":"satanic-versus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/satanic-versus\/","title":{"rendered":"Satanic Versus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SatanicRitual\"<\/a>Joseph Laycock of Religion Dispatches<\/em> talks here<\/a> to (and about) \u201cLucien Greaves\u201d, who is, apparently, the man behind the piece of Satanic kitsch now planned for Oklahoma.<\/a><\/p>\n

Disappointingly, Greaves turns out to be a rather wishy-washy devil worshiper:<\/p>\n

In 2005, Greaves had lunch with Peter H. Gilmore, high priest of the Church of Satan founded by Anton LaVey. Greaves felt that a cultural shift had occurred with the rise of the New Atheist movement, led by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and that Satanists should participate in this new conversation about religion in the public sphere. As a cognitive scientist, he was suspicious of Dawkins\u2019 claims that humanity can live without religion since he felt that humans are \u201chard wired\u201d to interpret the world through a rich language of symbol, narrative, and ritual. So Greaves imagined Satanism as a religion that could combine Dawkins\u2019 aversion to supernaturalism with powerful and compelling symbols\u2014what might be called a \u201csacralized\u201d atheism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Greaves is dead right about the hard wiring, but somehow I cannot see old Nick as an entirely plausible object of veneration to be used in the rites of\u2014no God help us\u2014\u201csacralized\u201d atheism. There\u2019s just too much baggage there, souls in torment, fire, brimstone, apocalypse, Rosemary\u2019s Baby, you know how it goes. <\/p>\n

Read on further, and it turns out that Greaves is using his supposedly Satanic agenda to make a decidedly political point. <\/p>\n

Greaves was eventually approached by The Satanic Temple, a group that shared his political goals and saw Satanism as a \u201cpoison pill\u201d that could be used to check the erosion of the establishment clause by reminding the public that privileges afforded to Christians could also be afforded to Satanists\u2026.<\/p>\n

Future plans involve legally ordaining ministers and using the free exercise clause to claim privileges for Satanists. Satanic ministers could, for example, illegally marry a gay couple and then, when the state refuses to recognize the marriage, claim that their free exercise rights have been violated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So satire then? <\/p>\n

Laycock continues:<\/p>\n

To gain any legal traction, Greaves will have to demonstrate that he is sincere about Satanism and that these projects are more than just pranks, which may prove difficult for a newly formed group that denies any belief in the supernatural. His opponents understand this too. Greaves described how, before his work with the Satanic Temple, advocates of SRA produced conspiracy theories about him, claiming that only someone secretly connected to criminal Satanism would challenge their claims. But now that he\u2019s demanded Constitutional rights for Satanists, his detractors have reversed course. In an interview with Fox News he was repeatedly challenged as not being a real Satanist. Even the Church of Satan has joined the queue to call Greaves a phony Satanist. <\/p>\n

In an article for Time<\/em>, the Church\u2019s High Priestess Magistra Peggy Nadramia, claimed that Greaves is not an authentic Satanist and merely \u201criding the coattails\u201d of the Church of Satan, adding that \u201cThe Church of Satan is decidedly uninterested in politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greaves dismissed these attacks, asserting that preserving their status as the monolithic embodiment of Satanism appears to be the Church\u2019s only goal. For his own part, Greaves claims he has no interest in being the public face of Satanism and that struggles over leadership are at odds with Satanism\u2019s anti-authoritarian philosophy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Satanism has an \u201canti-authoritarian\u201d philosophy? That’s not how it looked in The Omen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The conclusion to this piece though is well worth pondering<\/p>\n

Greaves feels that a community centered around Satan\u2014not as a literal entity but a potent metaphor for values that he holds sacred\u2014is more than just a philosophy and should enjoy the same Constitutional protections afforded to religion. If the Satanic Temple\u2019s campaign has any traction it will force a public discussion not simply on the Constitutional issues surrounding religion, but on the perennial problem of what religion is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once-in a saner era-there would have been no problem at all about defining what a ‘proper’ religion was. Well, not too much, anyway. But now…<\/p>\n

To repeat the point that I made the other day<\/a>, those pursuing a highly expansive definition of \u201creligious freedom\u201d in today\u2019s very changed America may well not appreciate where such arguments may lead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Laycock of Religion Dispatches talks here to (and about) \u201cLucien Greaves\u201d, who is, apparently, the man behind the piece of Satanic kitsch now planned for Oklahoma. Disappointingly, Greaves turns out to be a rather wishy-washy devil worshiper: In 2005, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[746],"tags":[69,760,806],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9009"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9015,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9009\/revisions\/9015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}