Florida Satanists are volunteering to fill school counselor roles after Gov. Ron DeSantis ® signed a law allowing religious chaplains into public schools amid staffing shortages.

“Nothing in the text of the bill serves to exclude us, and no credible interpretation of the First Amendment could. Should a school district now choose to have chaplains, they should expect Satanists to participate as well,” Lucien Greaves, cofounder and spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, said in a statement to The Hill on Monday.

Back when DeSantis signed the bill in April, he described Satanism as “not a religion” and said its members would not be allowed to participate in the program.

The Florida move allowing chaplains to serve as public school counselors comes as more states are aiming to inject Christianity into public school environments, including by mandating that the Bible or Ten Commandments be taught in classrooms.

The Satanic Temple has increasingly leaned into the fight over freedom of religion in public schools, including through the establishment of After School Satan clubs.

The temple, founded in 2014, says its mission is to “encourage benevolence and empathy, [and] reject tyrannical authority.”

  • Flax
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    6 months ago

    You’re saying that Satan was actually punished for questioning God, but this is the same argument as “The American civil war was about State’s rights” a State’s right to what? Questioning God on what? People nowadays for some reason have this cute or cool fluffy idea of Satan - you’re forgetting though that Satan is very much the personification and embodiment of all evil and suffering. Every atrocity and every suffering is the fault of Satan.

    • webadict@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Every atrocity and every suffering is the fault of Satan.

      If Satan is the cause of all suffering and atrocities, then God either cannot stop them and/or refuses to stop them, but if we assume the former, Satan is more powerful than an omnipotent and omniscient being, and if we assume the latter, God is also responsible in part for some of that suffering by refusing to stop them. I don’t think either of those are correct.

      • Flax
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        6 months ago

        That would result in taking free will away from us. And suffering does end in heaven, where this life is merely just a blip

        • webadict@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          That is God refusing, by choosing to let free will dictate actions. God acting as a bystander while those that didn’t take any actions towards Evil suffer punishes those who chose to be Good because of God’s actions (or lack thereof.) Pretending that this aligns with free will is inconsequential.

          Does God have the ability and power to make it so people have free will AND there is no Evil: Yes or no?

          • Flax
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            5 months ago

            Nobody chooses to be good. Apart from Jesus Christ who yes, was punished because of our sin and us executing someone who was very much innocent

            • webadict@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Does God have the ability and power to make it so people have free will AND there is no Evil: Yes or no?

              • Flax
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                5 months ago

                That’s a contradiction. Free will without evil isn’t free will, and you’ve basically just asked a question which is the omnipotence paradox. It’s like asking if God can make a square circle or a boulder so heavy that He cannot lift it. Which are both things that cannot exist, like free will without evil.

                • webadict@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  It’s only a contradiction from a flawed human logical perspective. We, as imperfect beings, cannot see a world that is capable of free will that is also free of Evil. But God is capable of all things, including creating such a world where that is possible.

                  God is capable of a world existing without Satan and having free will, for example. Satan’s existence is reliant on God’s will, and should God will it, Satan would not exist, and to ascribe all Evil purely to Satan is to blame God for Evil. It is, frankly, an incorrect assertion. Satan could be a manifestation of Evil, I could understand that, but Satan is not the CAUSE or even perpetuator of Evil. Evil would have to be a fundamental force created by God in that example, in order to allow free will.

    • HumanPenguin
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      6 months ago

      It’s not the same argument at all.

      Mainly because we are talking about old white men in 400 ad gathering fables from local tribes. IE a library of stories and fiction.

      Nothing in those fables talks about any action committed by Satan matching such crimes.

      People claiming the cause of the civil war are ignoring events. Actual slavery rape murder and abuse, (although not crimes at the time in the states involved). Not to mention the north actually allowing and working to protect the south’s right to keep slaves. Such event just did not exist in the fables.

      The only time the devil is actually accused of anything is after he is giving knowledge to mankind. At no point is he ever said to have murdered or raped anyone.

      • Flax
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        6 months ago

        I don’t know what library you’re talking about because it doesn’t match the description of the Bible.

        In the book of Job, you see Satan casting down evil on Job and cursing him. Genesis shows Satan misleading Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Revelation shows Satan as the ultimate source of evil. Isaiah talks about how far Satan has fallen. Jesus - who is God Himself - talks about Satan being a father of lies and Satan even tempts Jesus in the wilderness. Yes, humans do also carry a fault of following Satan and his demons in the rebellion against God, but your idea of rebelling against God is seen as “hip” and “cool”, but rebelling against God is the bringer of genocide, wars, greed, famine and destruction. And then when God was incarnate on this earth as a Man, He preached love, kindness, morality and condemned evil. Yet we nailed Him to a cross, killing Him in one of the most horrific and humiliating ways possible. Yet on that cross He bore the punishment for our sins and offers us forgiveness. Not through our own doing or good works, but through His doing. He lived the life we should have lived and died the death that we deserved. That’s who God truly is.

        • HumanPenguin
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          6 months ago

          I don’t know what library you’re talking about because it doesn’t match the description of the Bible.

          The word bible translates to library.

          Honestly its time you actually did a little reseach on the history of your religion.

          • Flax
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            6 months ago

            I have. And the Bible canon was decided upon long before 400ad. And it wasn’t old “fables” either. They were rather contemporary accounts of Jesus as well as letters between His followers.

            I was baptised less than a year ago. My decision to be a Christian is to do with research that I have already done. Atheist arguments are generally based on alternative theories and argument from silence. Reminds me of the classic argument “The Bible is wrong as there is no evidence of Pontius Pilate existing” until they found a first century tablet with his name on it. Or the “Christianity is wrong as Science says the universe always existed” until they discovered that there actually was a beginning.

            • HumanPenguin
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              6 months ago

              Wow, so logical. Accept, this is a discussion of the Old Testament.

              You are showing a fucking desperate effort to ignore the facts.

              • Flax
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                6 months ago

                I didn’t know this was about the Old Testament as it’s common knowledge that the Old Testament was already compiled by the time Jesus came, so I assumed you were referring to the New Testament 🤦

                • HumanPenguin
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                  5 months ago

                  The Old Testament was a collection of stories, not an actual book. Hence, the word bible. And not compiled as we know it until 400ad by St. Jerome. This was when the 66 books were agreed on and formed into a single accepted source. Also, when a huge number of stories were excluded as they were opposed to the political ideas of the church leaders at the time.

                  And given we are talking about the fall of Satan. It is pretty obvious that I am refusing to mythical events and stories passed down long before the bibble was a concept.

                  Assuming fundamental xtian belief, just over 6k years. (ignoring clear evidence that Homo sapiens existed nearly 300k years ago and Homo erectus ancestors about 2m years ago. Sorta throws the whole biblical story of Eden as nothing more then fairy tales.

                  But those tails def only paint the story of Satan as encouraging mankind to learn

                  And god as an authoritarian that did not want his children/humanity t) to learn to question him. Yeah, at no point is Satan actually accused of creating or being evil. Just giving humans the ability to actually question and learn independent of god.

                  IE, to question someone who at the very least is very narcissistic. And in the most logical interpretation. Trying to force sentient beings into a slavery of ignorance. .

                  • Flax
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                    5 months ago

                    Source on the St Jerome thing? St Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. And I don’t know how to help you since you clearly don’t know the difference between translating and writing an entirely new book.

                    No idea what you are on about the 6k year thing and homosapiens. The Bible doesn’t talk about when homosapiens came about, just that God created them.

                    Again, questioning God on what issue exactly? What good has ever come out of questioning God? You’re trying to both have your cake and eat it here. God allows us to question Him, but obviously we will get the deserved consequence for when we do. Of course God didn’t want us to question Him, because nothing good has ever come out of questioning God. And we do have the ability to learn as well. God gave us it. That’s why so many scientists throughout history were Christians and theologians as well. We wanted to see how God’s creation works.

                    Again, once again, you want to have free will but also don’t want evil to exist. Free will without the ability to rebel against God isn’t free will.

            • lorgo_numputz@beehaw.org
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              5 months ago

              Someone might want to inform King James, who published his version in 1611.

              Your lack of knowledge is showing in public. You might want to correct that.

              • Flax
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                5 months ago

                I think you just showed your lack of knowledge? The King James translation of the Bible is literally just a translation of the original Greek and Hebrew. That’s like claiming that Egyptian hieroglyphics were written in the past 100 years because that was when we were able to translate some of them into English 🤦

                • lorgo_numputz@beehaw.org
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                  5 months ago

                  It was literally altered to enhance the claim of the divine right of kings, among other changes.

                  “A popular Puritan bible had downplayed the divine right of kings — greatly offending James — and James manipulated different Christian sects until they agreed to produce a different translation.”

                  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/origins-of-the-king-james-bible-180956949/

                  This is your religion, I shouldn’t have to be telling you this. It’s even been altered numerous times since KJV. It is not a literal translation and numerous books were left out because… they didn’t like what was said.

                  Don’t get me wrong; Christianity has many laidable tenets - “Don’t murder”, “Don’t steal”, etc. - basic rules for having a maintainable civilization, same as other major religions.

                  But don’t pretend it is some static thing. It has been and is manipulated for polical purposes and is used to justify horrific treatment of others (same as other religions).

                  You might want to look more closely, but beware - studying religion too carefully is often the birth event of athiests.

                  • Flax
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                    5 months ago

                    So is David Cross proposing that the original texts were translated into the Vulgate, then Geneva Bible to KJV, then KJV was translated into the NASB which was then translated into the NIV and then ESV… Or something?

                    The Bible we have today, let’s say the ESV, is translated from the original texts. Meaning any changes made by popes or King James or whatever are gone (you actually can see this as some parts are in the KJV, like the note in 1 John 5:7-8 which was not part of the original text, or the Lord’s Prayer doxology in Matthew 6:13) and they are translated from the earliest texts. They don’t lie to you either about the parts we cannot be completely sure of such as John 8:1-11 or the ending to Mark’s Gospel. So what David Cross is actually saying here is irrelevant - if I were to take a text and badly translated it, then someone comes along and fixes my translation by correctly retranslating from the original text, their translation wouldn’t be bad simply because mine exists - which is what you would be arguing for with your logic.

                    Also if we left out books because we didn’t like what they said, we would have left out the Sermon on the Mount and the parts telling you not to have multiple wives.