For those unfamiliar, The Satanic Temple is an atheistic organization. Here are its tenets. I often ask people what they disagree with and get very little in the way of meaningful response.
THERE ARE SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL TENETS
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.
https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets
DO YOU WORSHIP SATAN?
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.
https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/faq
She’s 13. Does anyone know if she’s allowed to become a member? The website isn’t clear on that.
I feel like you didn’t really read what I said. I eat meat because I like it. I have no desire to go out of my way to not eat meat. If I don’t feel like eating meat with a meal then I won’t. I have no internal struggle or “convincing myself that it’s ok”. I despise the way food animals are treated, like they’re not even living creatures, but I feel no guilt in eating the end result.
Frankly you have no right to make such assumptions about my character. You have no idea of my situation any more than I have of yours. If you can be a vegan and be happy, good! I’m happy for you. But I am not a vegan, and I am also happy. Saying “Everybody should be a vegan” is no different than saying “Everybody should run a mile every day”. Sure it’s a generally beneficial lifestyle, but it’s just that: a lifestyle, and it’s not for everybody.
To get this right, your entire argument for continuing to fund the horrors that are inflicted on animals is: I like meat?
No, my argument for continuing to eat meat is “I like meat”. I haven’t made any statements about my eating meat funding the animal-murder machine because we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about how “everybody should be a vegan”.
Once again you haven’t really read what I said. But this time I’m not going to explain myself except to again say: you don’t know me, you don’t know my situation, you don’t know my station in life. You have no right to place these single-minded assumptions upon me.
Edit: you’re not the person I responded to initially, but my point still stands.
Edit2: Ah, I see you’re the one who started this thread.
Hey man, I am not the same person and I have just asked you a question trying to understand your position.
Ok, so are you saying that the meat you eat does not include funding the murder of animals?
My statement wasn’t “everybody should go vegan” my statement was that if you hold these tenets that you should go vegan.
You are attempting to get me to admit that the meat I eat is from the same factories that torture animals as an admission of guilt. I am not guilty, and I do not feel guilty, because unfortunately that isn’t how our society/economy works. I eat what is available and easily accessible to me just like millions of others. And like many of those millions of others, I just so happen to like meat. So yes, I fund the torture of animals, but I am as guilty of funding the torture of animals as someone purchasing an item on Amazon is of funding the torture of warehouse workers.
Just like everyone else, I live my life as best as I am able within my own capacity. I’m glad that you have the capacity to not fund the companies that treat animals so horribly. Someone needs to, and I hope that we can do away with them entirely at some point. But I do not have the capacity for that fight in my life right now, and I am not ashamed of that because I’m doing the best I can with what I have.
Well, I am not trying to make you feel guilty. I think that is your own conscience that you are projecting onto me. I am still just trying to understand your position. But I think I got it now…
So what it comes down to is: you like meat, just like billions of other people and, yes that means you fund the torture and murder of animals, but so do all the other billions of people. Besides you say, there are so many other injustices in the world that we are perhaps funding, for example amazon workers who are mistreated, so you don’t feel really responsible, because the system is just kind of fucked. Is this a fair assessment?
Dude, I’ve had enough, get your jollies elsewhere.
Haha, what the fuck man. I wanted to hear you out, but it seems you’re suffering from such a strong case of cognitive dissonance that even just trying to understand your position by repeating back to you what you said makes you all upset.
Gaslight all you want, it won’t help your cause.
I know who I am, I know what I’m about. It’s you that seems to have a problem.
Yep, it sure is compassionate to do what we are doing to animals because we like it.