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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26658 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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Baphomet Has Fallen

How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?

The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:

Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”

The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.

Take that to its logical conclusion.

A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:

  • A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
  • A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
  • The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
  • Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.

Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.

But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.

Interesting thought experiment, let me see how would actual atheists react at these "provocations."

A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls

Why is bashing Darwin who never claimed to be atheist supposed to trigger atheists?

This would be seen as creationist talking point from bygone Bush era, equating communism and evolution. Reaction of atheist, even Marxist atheist, would be bewilderment and perhaps despair at their opponents ignorance, rather than murderous rage.

A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby

Margaret Sanger never identified herself as atheist either, no idea why is you see her as some atheist idol, and today she is revered by few people, least of all modern progressives.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was fiery atheist activist well known all over America - in her time. Now she is completely forgotten.

Atheist reaction at this scene would be: WTF? What is it supposed to mean (except celebrating racism)?

The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass

Atheist reaction would be something between "this is weird" and "this is cool".

Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.

Atheist contemplating this scene would perhaps feel impermanence of all things, in mono no aware sense.

You see that none of these provocations are very provoking, none would be seen by atheists as blasphemous and insulting like Christians see satanic statue.

Thinking about it, I cannot imagine something that would provoke atheists like blaspheming Jesus and celebrating Satan provokes Christians. This is something that disproves your claim that atheism is "just another religion".

If true, what is holy book of atheism, what are temples of atheism, who is the "prophet of atheism" whose dissing would turn atheists into murderous mob screaming for vengeance?

edit: links fixed

I mean if the word atheism means something it's because it means you are modeling reality in a particular way, and anything that overturns your existing perception of objective reality enough will cause you to take offense naturally as it is really only a kind of surprise. There is a sense of the word religion which just means what is held most dear.

A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. [...]

As an agnostic, I say... go for it. It would not bother me in the least bit.

I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes

In general, it is not, unless you define "atheist" specifically to mean someone who believes religiously in the non-existence of the divine (if that even makes sense). Sure, there is a subset of atheists who treat atheism as if it was a religion, but that is only a subset. For example, there are many people who are atheist or agnostic simply because they grew up in secular households and never had any reason to become religious. They generally do not treat atheism as a religion, indeed many of them do not even think about religious issues at all.

and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment

The relevant text is: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

To me this seems to mean "Congress is not allowed to make any laws that either establish religion or that prevent people from practicing religion." However, I am aware that it could be interpreted in other ways.

If you go with my reading, then atheism as the absence of religion would be protected by the first part and atheism as a religion would be protected by the second part.

However, you could also of course interpret the text to mean "Congress is not allowed to make any laws that either establish an official religion or that prevent people from practicing religion", which would make things a bit murkier.

Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.

I think the point of the Baphomet statue is to troll Christians and make a point against Christian influence in government. By definition, atheists cannot logically claim a sacred right to offend Christians.

The idea behind the statue is "keep your religion out of government and you won't have to see any more Baphomet statues, either".

First off this particular group of satanist are obvious edgy trolls feeding off tribal dynamics in a gratuitously offensive way. It would be like the internet white nationalist tradcaths(not the same as the IRL ones, who would choose a less edgy display) who don’t go to mass or believe catholic doctrine putting up a statue of St. John Capistrano with a plaque about hammering Jews and Muslims. Except without the excuse that some people believe it, because they don’t.

Now is there an entirely consistent way to say ‘no, you guys are bad faith trolls who don’t believe your own BS, you don’t get to claim freedom of religion?’ No, not in a way we trust the state with. That being said, it seems like a reasonable schelling point to say ‘come on man, these guys are trolls, when the consequences are minor the state doesn’t have to care if they bite them’. And to be clear they are trolls; frankly the esoteric Hitlerists have a better case for getting first amendment protection on their odious views.

That being said, it seems like a reasonable schelling point to say ‘come on man, these guys are trolls, when the consequences are minor the state doesn’t have to care if they bite them’.

I don't think The Wildcard Rule scales to anything bigger than an Internet forum. The whole point of having the rule of law is that you can't just say, "Yes, I know the law says X, but it was never intended to protect Y, which is X only in name, but not in spirit". Until you amend the law in a way that redefines X to exclude Y-like entities, the state has to enforce the law as written.

Probably not, but the state doesn’t have to and usually doesn’t prosecute every minor crime that happens in its jurisdiction:

St. John Capistrano

Had to look him up and while I'm no white nationalist, I think going off to fight the Turks at the age of seventy is pretty dang cool.

I also thought that surely you mean St James Matamoros for maximum "oops you can't put that up here" effect?

Another good one, although I went with St. John Capistrano for the ability to be maximally offensive to Jews as well.

Your list of things to trigger and own the atheists betrays a complete lack of understanding of non-theist world views.

You are holding up a list of things that exist as though they are the same thing as a given religions idols (the cross, the prophet, the tablets, etc) when the whole point of atheism is that there is no such thing as an idol.

If you are a committed christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance. You have to believe in things for their own, not believe in other things because that would endanger the things you do believe in, hold things sacred for no reason other than because they are, abore things that are aborent for no reason other than that they are.

Atheists don't have to do that: they just have to not respect and privilege your personal reality over the shared reality that is the material world. Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism, atheism is a rejection of faith, and anti-theism considers faith the be a type of negative utility delusion.

There is no special claim atheists have to uphold or special symbol they have to respect. All they need to do is shrug.

If you are a committed Christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance.

What sort of reality maintenance do you have in mind, here?

Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism, atheism is a rejection of faith, and anti-theism considers faith the be a type of negative utility delusion.

Do you believe in free will?

I can, empirically, observe and interact with my will on a minute-to-minute basis. I can gather it, direct it, strengthen or weaken it. My interactions with it are nearly as inescapable as my interactions with gravity.

It is routine for me to observe Atheists arguing that Free Will does not exist. They admit that this belief makes no testable predictions, that one should act in every way as though it existed, and yet assume that it does not. They explain that this is because, under Materialist assumptions, it can't exist. They do this despite a considerable history of their forebears making confident predictions for something like two centuries that the will's nonexistence could be demonstrated and used for basic engineering of people, only to have all those claims falsified; the current position is the "determinism of the gaps" that they have retreated to.

It seems logical that they wouldn't pick a fight on such poor terms if they had a choice. If Materialism demands that free will not exist, then evidence of free will is evidence that Materialism is wrong. We each have a lot of evidence that free will exists.

The above, to me, looks like a pretty good example of "reality maintenance". What do you have in mind?

I don't believe in free will in a mystical sense as a motive force that comes from nothing and goes nowhere; so I don't believe in free will the way you mean it.

People can make decisions, but those decisions aren't free. They are constrained by physics and history. This can be observed by the fact I can't simply will myself into the air, and instead have to jump.

A question for you: do you believe in cause and effect? That every effect is preceded by a cause?

If so, isn't free will an incoherent concept?

A question for you: do you believe in cause and effect? That every effect is preceded by a cause?

The chain of observable cause and effect seems reliable within the observable universe, back to the origination point of the universe. Past that point, we cannot observe further. Our understanding of physics precludes a looping universe under observable conditions, so we can be highly confident that cause and effect, as an observable chain of evidence, break in at least one point.

It is possible that significant portions of physics do in fact loop seamlessly, and the remaining portion of the loop is simply unobservable to us. Alternatively, it is possible we are in a simulation, or we are boltzmann brains, or a god of some description created the universe. All these possibilities, and any others that might be contained beyond the back wall of the observable universe, are neither observable nor falsifiable. Given that they are neither observable nor falsifiable, it seems obvious to me that one cannot form beliefs about them based on evidence, since that evidence does not exist. Based on what we do know, that something cannot come from nothing, it seems reasonable to do so as one pleases, but it likewise seems obvious to me that none of these explanations are "Materialistic", in the sense that is commonly meant. None are observable, none are falsifiable, none can even be adequately defined for a valid comparison.

We can be quite confident that there is something to know, and we can be equally confident that we don't know it.

If so, isn't free will an incoherent concept?

Incoherent how? What process of Free Will specifically gives rise to this incoherence? It appears to me to operate seamlessly and ubiquitously throughout each of our lives; certainly it has done so within my own decades of life. It appears to be simply what it claims to be: the individual, fine-grained capacity to choose actions, intentions, attention, focus, even various forms of mental state such as mood. The process of choice can be directly observed, manipulated, even engineered within oneself.

To the extent that Materialist priors argue that this apparent reality cannot be the case, the observable and ubiquitous fact of free will is strong evidence against Materialism. Of course, Materialism is free to present evidence to the contrary, to demonstrate that free will is, in fact, an illusion. Materialists attempted to do so for roughly two centuries, and now they've given up and admitted that their best strategy is to claim it only appears to exist in every observable and testable way, but is nonetheless fake despite all evidence to the contrary. That does not seem to me to be what "simply following the evidence" looks like, but then, it is obvious to me that beliefs are chosen, not forced, which seems to explain the behavior quite well.

You say materialists have given up, but isn't it the opposite?

Materialism has become the base state that all other claims need to beat to be considered; and the strongest free will claim is especially weird.

Re. incoherent: you are describing compatibilism, which is what I hold: there is no free will in a mystical, 'my decision are unconstrained in some essential way' but there is free will in practice.

EG, I think that you are absolutely constrained by your history and the nature of experiencing time as a three dimensional creature. When you can choose, you only choose one thing and looking at it from a 4th dimensional perspective, you could imagine your life as a written narrative. That said, you still experience free will and I believe that free will as a concept still exists. Just because every decision you will ever make and have ever made could only have been made as you made them, doesn't mean those decision still didn't happen.

Basically, if you refer solely to the experience of free will, then yes it exists. If you claim that you can make a decision that isn't wholly the result of your nature and your history, what the fuck does that even mean?

You say materialists have given up, but isn't it the opposite?

On this specific issue, no. Two centuries' worth of previous Materialists made bold, highly falsifiable claims about the non-existence of free will. Such claims served as the theoretical basis for multiple revolutionary ideologies, as well as dominating the field of Psychology for decades. These claims were thoroughly falsified, but their intellectual polution continues to inflict harm to this day.

More generally, also no. Hard Materialism is not observably verifiable, and is not required to conduct scientific or engineering pursuits. It seems to me that even many people who self-identify as "Hard Materialists" are not actually hard materialists, any more than people who attend church on Christmas are "Christians".

EG, I think that you are absolutely constrained by your history and the nature of experiencing time as a three dimensional creature.

Okay. What novel, falsifiable predictions does this idea allow you to make? Can you actually predict or manipulate what people will do, the way you can predict and manipulate a screwdriver or some other piece of dumb matter?

If you claim that you can make a decision that isn't wholly the result of your nature and your history, what the fuck does that even mean?

What part of it is confusing? What falsifiable predictions does claiming otherwise allow you to make, that can't be made equally well without claiming otherwise? Skinner claimed that if you gave him control of a child's environment, he could make that child into anything he wanted. He and his disciples tried and failed. Marx claimed that the revolutionary reorganization of society would create New Soviet Men, thus solving crime and war and poverty forever. He and his disciples created half a world of horror and despair. Do you think you can do better? Does observing a pattern of failed predictions shift your priors, or is that just for claims one does not personally favor?

Aren't all those objections kinda pointless? Also, why are you talking about Skinner and Marx? Shouldn't you be talking about Nietzsche and Schopenhauer?

I can't make those predictions, because it is impossible for me to have that information. But the information exists, and the events happen.

I am making the non special claim that all matter behaves as matter, and all energy behaves as energy. Basically, that there are no special cases. If you are making the strong claim for free will, you are claiming that all matter behaves as matter, and all energy behaves as energy; except for the bit that is inside the skulls of humans.

Why should I believe this strong claim, and how do you back it up?

I don't see how materialists being a little too ahead of themselves 200 years ago should discredit materialism forever and ever. Do you also consider parachutes discredited because 500 years ago people tried them and crashed?

What is your model of a free will? Is it supposed to be outside of brain function? From where I'm looking, the thought, the choice and the effect of them on the body are all very much vulnerable to external influence, and your only recourse is that they are not yet influenceable with 100% precision.

I don't see how materialists being a little too ahead of themselves 200 years ago should discredit materialism forever and ever.

In the first place, it's not "ahead of themselves 200 years ago", it's "ahead of themselves non-stop starting 200 years ago to 50 years ago, when they stopped making falsifiable predictions at all." If "the God of the gaps" is a reasonable criticism, "determinism of the gaps" should likewise be a reasonable criticism.

In the second place, this doesn't discredit Materialism, because Materialism, like non-Materialism, is an axiom. It is not adopted due to evidence, and so it cannot be refuted by evidence. Materialists are comfortable discounting evidence against materialism, because that is how axiomatic reasoning works: the axiom focuses your reason on a specific, collated portion of the data set, and you discount things that appear to lie outside it.

What is your model of a free will?

I have control over the actions I perform. I can think about what I want to do, choose between alternatives, arbitrarily rank preferences based on abstract reasons. I cannot be manipulated by others in the way that inanimate, mechanistic, or deterministic objects are readily manipulated. I submit that you and every other person in this forum, and indeed anywhere, understands this meaning on such a basic level that all communication we engage in employs it as common knowledge.

Is it supposed to be outside of brain function? From where I'm looking, the thought, the choice and the effect of them on the body are all very much vulnerable to external influence, and your only recourse is that they are not yet influenceable with 100% precision.

What percentage precision would you say I, or indeed the average person, would be influenceable at? What mechanisms of influence are you aware of that do not leverage the individual's own will, and what level of control do these mechanisms deliver?

For reference, the standard Materialist claims started at the infinite perfectibility of man, the creation of New Soviet Man, the predicted eradication of all poverty, crime, war and mental illness, universal peace and plenty, and the arbitrary, precision engineering of humans to fit their environment perfectly and seamlessly, through rudimentary manipulation of said environment. These results were supposed to be eminently achievable through the understanding their proponents had available to them at that moment.

Put more simply, if your claim is true, wouldn't it follow that the world we see around us is deliberately engineered to deliver roughly these results? Certainly our elites expend considerable effort and value attempting social engineering; to the exact degree that non-voluntary influence works, would it not stand to reason that the results we get match the intention of the influencers?

I find myself scratching my head at your own model/phrasings of my beliefs/nonbeliefs/“faith” worldview.

You are holding up a list of things that exist as though they are the same thing as a given religions idols (the cross, the prophet, the tablets, etc) when the whole point of atheism is that there is no such thing as an idol.

Idols exist; one was just beheaded. I assume I’ve misunderstood you. I interpret you here as saying atheism is about believing the events, artifacts, and entities of religions either have none of the powers imputed to them or are references to things which never existed, depending on the thing. Is that a sound reading of your statement?

I don’t believe an idol of Margaret Sanger would have real metaphysical power, nor would I ever think atheists would believe such. It would be an attack on the reverence which progressive atheists have for her, calling them idol-worshipers, a label which, by their own actions and words, they would abhor and wish to destroy.

If you are a committed christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance. You have to […]. Atheists don't have to do that: […]

The way I read this, I believe you assume I am trying to hold an imaginary world in my head overlaid atop the real one, contradicting it at many points of conflict and forcing me to choose obvious lies over simple truths.

Let me tell you right up front that would be far too much work for me. I try to discover reconciliations between every apparent point of conflict between the real world and my faith, and I’ve found only one which really requires me to set it to the side instead of explaining. I have every confidence that my God and Teacher will eventually reveal His answer to me.

As for faith, I hope you’re not referring to the mystical Douglas-Adamsian definition of faith that if the object of my faith is ever proven, I will have lost faith and thus I will be disqualified from gaining faith’s rewards. On the contrary, seeing the object of my faith is my goal and will be a wondrous blessing, and in that moment faith “in things not seen” will become a confirmed belief, a much better thing.

Idols in the sense of the sacred and the profane.

An atheist can erects a statue to baphomet or baal or whatever evil spirit but they can't make it into an idol because atheism is a wholesale rejection of such things.

Basically, when a christian rasis a chross, it is an idol to their god; when a roman raises a cross it is a tool to torture enemies of the state. Atheists having figures of particular note is not the same as Christians worshiping christ, or whatever the fuck the catholics have going on.

Re. Reality maintenance: you are describing maintenance in your post. Having to reconcile things at all is what I am getting at. An atheist doesn't have to reconcile shit; no atheist has ever needed to set something aside.

Re. faith: no, not really. Just that faith is definitionaly belief without proof. You won't know if you were right to have faith until you die; and unfortunately nobody gets to do a quick check in after the fact to let the rest of us know which religion had it right.

Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism

TIL that departments of higher mathematics are, in fact, religious organisations 😁

Just imagine the collective atheistic horror when they eventually prove that 3=1.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism

Then it really is the case that "everyone worships". Theists don't have a monopoly in believing on things that you can't prove empirically. You can't even prove the existence of other minds empirically.

I can't prove it but assuming that other minds exist sure does seem to produce better advance predictions of my experiences. Which is the core of empiricism.

This sounds like a nice demarcation until you realize that it also applies to most long lived religions, and that the things they are making predictions about are a lot more practically useful than what the reason based approaches are concerned with. At least on the individual level.

What exactly is the problem with using with the world model imparted by some religion, in contexts where the world model of that religion has a track record of making accurate predictions and reason does not?

I don’t think there are a huge number of such contexts, but there are definitely some (e.g. "if you strive to be honest and fair in your actions by the standard religious definitions, that genuinely will turn out better for you in the long run" makes good predictions in a tight-knit community even if the "reasonable" position is that you could probably get away with cheating in situations where you don’t see any way that you would get caught). You can of course try to galaxy-brain some reason that what the religion says is actually the same conclusion you would come to using pure logic, but I think "look around and see which approaches work well and which ones don't, and try out the ones that work well for others, and keep doing them if they work even if you don't fully understand why" is a perfectly legitimate approach.

In my experience it's very nice to have a strong-theoretical-model-backed lens you can use to interpret your empirical observations. But you can operate without such a lens, or with a lens based on a model that is known to be flawed (all models are wrong, some are useful).

What exactly is the problem with using with the world model imparted by some religion, in contexts where the world model of that religion has a track record of making accurate predictions and reason does not?

Well I personally think that's very sound, but there is indeed a problem still, which is that you have to be something first.

There's a specific color to your ultimate epistemology. There is one final arbiter to your internal thinking, one final authority, one personal catechism. And that is one's true faith even as you may recognize other frameworks to be instrumentally useful. When there's a conflict and your belief systems disagree, who wins? Much of the philosophical and theological debate isn't really about the modalities of applying belief systems in the nice conditions where they can be conciliated, but when they can't.

I do not mean to imply that it is not useful to have multiple lenses to view a situation from, it is in fact very helpful. But as you ask what the problem is, there it is: you may see they both have a point, but you can't serve two masters.

When there's a conflict and your belief systems disagree, who wins?

I think it's one of those "the hardest decisions are the ones that ultimately matter the least" sorts of things -- if there was some strong reason to choose one side over the other, the decision would be an easy one (unless it's hard because you're missing obtainable information, in which case you should maybe go obtain that information). In my case I'd say that generally, all else being equal, I'm going to go with whatever would sound intuitively right to someone unsophisticated (though all else is not equal very often). I'm not that attached to that approach though -- I have mostly settled on it as a matter of pragmatism, and it seems to be working pretty well so far.

You can't very well faithfully serve two masters but you can totally faithfully serve zero masters.

I agree. However, if you replace "mind" with "consciousness" then I would say that this is no longer true. Assuming that other consciousnesses exist does not produce better advance predictions of experiences, since in principle it does not seem impossible for a human p-zombie to exist, a being that acts in every way like a human, including having human-level intelligence, but lacks consciousness.

What do you mean by consciousness? I think a model which includes the idea that other people have a subjective experience and motivations that lead to their actions absolutely yields better predictions than a model of other as people automatons responding to their environment mechanically.

Assuming that other consciousnesses exist does not produce better advance predictions of experiences

Sure it does! I talk about consciousness, and what I say about it is caused by how I myself experience consciousness. If consciousness exists in others, I expect them to talk similar experiences to consciousness to the ones I have, and if it doesn't exist in others, well then it's pretty weird that they'd talk about having conscious experiences that sound really similar to my conscious experiences for some reason that is not "they are experiencing the same thing I am". If others were p-zombies, then sure all of their prior utterances may have sounded like they were generated by them being conscious, but absent a deeper understanding of how exactly their p-zombification worked, I could not use that to generate useful predictions of what their future utterances about consciousness would be (because, as we've established, the p-zombies are not just reporting on their internal state, but instead doing something else which is not that).

Modeling others as experiencing the same consciousness as I do does in fact lead to better advance predictions of my observations. It doesn't do so in a very philosophically satisfying way if you want to talk about axioms and proofs, but pragmatically speaking "other people are also conscious like me" sure does seem like a useful mental model for generating predictions.

"other people are actually just p zombies behaving as if they are conscious like me" generates predictions that are just as good and as a bonus you get to psychopathically advance your interests without regard to anything except blowback that affects you directly. Leave the shopping cart in the parking lot. Go at the speed limit in the leftmost lane. Drive with your high beams on. Who cares if the NPCs are upset? That's a way better life than actually being pro social all the time.

"other people are actually just p zombies behaving as if they are conscious like me" generates predictions that are just as good

I genuinely don't think it does. Unless you mean "believing" that in the classic "invisible dragon in my garage" sense, which I don't count as actually belief. Rule of thumb - if you're preemptively coming up with excuses for why your future observations will not support your theory over competing theories, or why your theory actually predicts exactly the same thing that the classic theory predicts and the only differences are in something unfalsifiable, that should be a giant red flag for your theory.

For example: I think that my experience of consciousness is caused by specific physical things my nervous system does sometimes. If I slap some electrodes on my scalp to take an electroencephalogram, and then do some task that involves introspecting, making conscious decisions, and describing those experiences, I expect that I will see particular patterns of electrical activity in my brain any time I make a conscious decision. I expect that the EEG readouts from other people would have similar patterns.

For the p-zombie explanation to make sense, we would either have to say that my experience of consciousness and the things I said about it were not caused by things happening in my nervous system, or we would have to say that those patterns in my nervous system and the way I described my experience were related to my consciousness, but in other people there was something else going on which just happened to have indistinguishable results. And also we would predict in advance that any time we try to use the "p-zombie" hypothesis what we actually end up doing is going "what do we predict in the world where other people's consciousness works the same way as mine" and then saying "the p-zombie hypothesis says the same thing" -- the p-zombie hypothesis does not actually predict anything on its own.

That's a way better life than actually being pro social all the time.

As an empirical matter, I think that if you try rating your internal subjective experience after ripping off a stranger who gets angry at you but who you'll never see again vs your internal subjective experience after helping a stranger who expresses gratitude but you'll never see again, you may be surprised at which one results in higher subjective well-being. That doesn't really have any bearing on the factual questions of other peoples' internal experiences, just a prediction I have about what your own internal experience will be like.

As an empirical matter, I think that if you try rating your internal subjective experience after ripping off a stranger who gets angry at you but who you'll never see again vs your internal subjective experience after helping a stranger who expresses gratitude but you'll never see again, you may be surprised at which one results in higher subjective well-being.

Bro, that's just an illusion due to you smuggling in your non empirical (read: religious) belief that other people's feelings matter. Do you feel bad about ripping off video game characters?

More comments

Something that has always annoyed me about "satanists" is that in the Christian mythology, Satan is literally a standin for evil. It's not "here are some things, and the ones we think are bad are the ones Satan likes", which would allow the atheists to be like "no you were wrong, the things you don't like are good, actually!".

Within the Christian framework, the very concept of evil stems from Satan. It's darkness, absence of love, absence of joy, eternal torment. The way that you experience this evil might look like fun (hookers and blow), but the order that these people seem to want to have is reversed. It's not "we looked at hookers and blow and decided it's evil" it's "the very embodiment of evil is leaking into our reality and it is manifesting itself as hookers and blow."

Evil -> hookers and blow.

Not: hookers and blow -> evil.

So when these people say things like that they are "satanists" who believe people should be allowed to do hookers and blow because restricting them from hookers and blow is oppressive or whatever, they're just...wrong about the order of operations here. Maybe an argument could be "hookers and blow are not actually a manifestation of pure evil. WE are the pro hookers and blow group and think that hookers and blow is good". It is just completely nonsensical within the Christian framework they're trying to work in to try and say that Satanism could even possibly be interpreted as anything other than a pointer towards "true evil, regardless of what you might currently think true evil looks like".

I wish I could say I hated these people, and I wish I could get riled up to want to smash this statue because it embodied something I am theologically opposed to, but it doesn't. I hate this stupid statue because it is cringey. I would feel approximately the same as if people wanted to put up a video game or marvel avengers shrine in the capital. A funko pop of a video game character would probably have more validity than this absolutely cringe "baphomet" statue..

Yeah, the statue is cringey, but it could be seen as the Krampus goat associated with Saint Nicholas in some traditions and thus appropriate for the season (if the Satanic Temple guys had any sliver of a sense of humour).

What made me eyeroll about the juvenile behaviour was the arrangement of the candles in front of ol' Baphy: to be taken as the digitus impudicus (tall central candle between smaller ones). Oooh, that's showing the Bible-thumpers! 🙄

You're giving these people entirely too much credit. They're not Satanists of the Anton LaVey hedonist school (which is a pretty thin reed as it is) but a political group masquerading as a religion so they can pull publicity stunts like this. As much as people complain about the encroachment of politics into mainstream Christianity, it's really just ancillary to what the bulk of the Church's activities are. For instance, on the About Us page of their website they state:

We have publicly confronted hate groups, fought for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, applied for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provided religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict people's reproductive autonomy, exposed harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organized clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engaged in other advocacy in accordance with our tenets.

This is pretty unremarkable on its own, but when you consider that there are only three things on that part of the site, and there's an entire tab dedicated to advocacy, it's pretty clear that this so-called "religion" doesn't have that much going for it. That being said, this is really just a case of the usual religious zealots being hoisted by their own petard. The courts had already ruled that secular Christmas decorations were okay on public property and not an endorsement of religion. That wasn't enough for some of these people, who apparently needed a nativity scene in front of city hall in order to feel vindicated. Unfortunately for them we don't live in a country with an official religion, so it was difficult for courts to permit such a blatant endorsement of one religion (especially since we know what the reaction would be if a municipality decided to forgo Christian imagery in favor of Muslim). So they had to reach a compromise whereby outside groups could put their own displays on public property, provided that no religion was favored over another. And thus we get blatant political trolls like the Satanic Temple who only build these displays for the purpose of pissing off Christians they don't like. They don't care that the statue was vandalized because that's what they were expecting. Since Satanic Temple has nothing to offer members other than smug political advocacy, it would be hard to attract enough donations to pay for all of this stuff if they couldn't sell the whole business as a war against religious zealot morons who don't respect the separation of church and state. These displays would go away. But, much as we see with the continued "War on Christmas" rhetoric, both sides are incentivized to at least keep the battle at a low simmer.

Since Satanic Temple has nothing to offer members other than smug political advocacy

A good way to meet some goth baddies and industrial music fans, in my experience.

What about the tree? It’s very suspect that it would be the good one who would forbid knowledge of good and evil. If you strip god of definitional goodness, his opponent appears as a prometheus-like figure. His defiance and refusal to serve is heroic, even assuming they are both morally neutral.

One might even say that morality exists to enslave, to chain a human will that should transcend all barriers, to boldly choose for itself what it shall be, what image it shall carve on the blank face of an uncaring universe. What greater heroism could there possibly be than to face squarely the reality that there is no greater meaning, no gods, only men, and that one's own desire is all the justification one needs or can ever have.

Luciferians etc. are ancient heresies within Christianity, so our guys aren't even being original.

We got yer Sethians, the Ophites, the Luciferians and a bunch more I can't remember or be bothered to look up.

I do wonder what the non-religious society such organisations dream of would mean in practice; so far as I can tell, it's "free love and legal weed" and not much more - what do they think a scientific, rather than religious, world-view for the majority of citizens would work out like in practice? Okay so we have abortion/reproductive justice, LGBT+ rights, no more War on Drugs, experts and technocrats setting political and governmental policies - what else? How is that greatly different from today? Are we talking about "if not for the Christians we'd be colonising Alpha Centauri" style notions or simply "I want to have consequence-free sex, whatever drugs I like, and nobody to tell me what to do"?

Ironically the most secular society today is the PRC, which is... not anything like what they dream of.

Upvoted for capital-T Truth.

We can argue about the allegorical meaning of Genesis 2 and how it relates to human sexuality until we are blue in the face, but you should always start with the literal meaning.

The literal meaning of Genesis 2, if you give it its usual context in the Christian story (as, for example, represented by its use as the first lesson in a standard Christmas carol service), is that the original sin was independent moral discernment. Satan's promise is not money, or sex, or power - it is to possess the moral wisdom of God. There are plenty of other scriptural passages reinforcing this. And certainly when I was taught Christian morality, both as child in nominally-Christian schools in the UK and as a potential convert in university, the key message was that the only real sin is rebellion against divine authority, and the drinking and sabbath-breaking flows from that.

All the Abrahamic religions are fundamentally about total submission of human will to God's. Judaism, Islam, and Protestantism all have a tradition of religious scholarship where all moral wisdom that humanity will ever have is already written down in a closed canon of fundamental works (either directly from divinely-inspired authors, or preserved commentary based on lost divinely-inspired sources) and the work of religious scholars is just to interpret it. Catholicism and Orthodoxy both claim that there is a still-living tradition capable of generating new moral wisdom, but that there is no access to God outside it.

This is why "Abrahamic religion bad" comes so easily to non-religious Americans - the great American social experiment is fundamentally about allowing independent moral judgement at the lowest possible level.

‭‭In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.

Judges 21:25

The final verse of the book of Judges, the majority of Judges describing the people of Israel committing horrible atrocities.

My long-ago religion lessons were that the sin of our First Parents was disobedience and lack of trust in God; they believed the lies of the serpent because they wanted more than they were being given. And then they ended up losing everything.

Yeah, also see the meaning of Islam, 'Submission [to the will of God]'.

the great American social experiment is fundamentally about allowing independent moral judgement at the lowest possible level.

“Is life so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! “ - Satan

“Is life so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! “ - Satan

Is that from Milton?

It's the quintessential myth of america, the most famous quote from the revolutionary war.

It's a fairly famous quote from a Revolution-era American politician.

Satan's promise is not money, or sex, or power - it is to possess the moral wisdom of God.

Yes. And what God's worried about is competition.

Genesis 3:22: "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:"

You're missing the actual idol of atheism "Satanic Temple", which is floyd. Create a caricature of floyd sitting atop a pile of illegal drugs and guns, and they'd melt down instantly.

But they'd never let you do that in the first place, and if they did, the person who destroyed the statue would never be caught for some reason.

Edit: super saiyan jesus riding mlp would be badass and I want it to be real

Edit2: changed

You're missing the actual idol of atheism, which is fentalyl floyd. Create a caricature of floyd sitting atop a pile of illegal drugs and guns, and they'd melt down instantly.

This is a particularly pathetic example of weakmanning, and just a crappy post in general.

Improve your contributions, this place isn't just for unzipping and pissing fire.

I'm not weakmanning. I'm referring specifically to those people who created that other statue, which to be fair doesn't represent all "atheists" depending on your definition of atheist.

But in this context where the subject of the discussion is the "Satanic Temple" aka "atheists" it should be clear who I'm referring to. And the "Satanic Temple" explicitly endorses blm and other similar messaging.

I sincerely believe there is not a single card carrying member of the "Satanic Temple" who would publicly denounce floyd and if I'm wrong here, I would welcome any example and update my priors on this.

I'm not weakmanning. I'm referring specifically to those people who created that other statue, which to be fair doesn't represent all "atheists" depending on your definition of atheist.

"To be fair," describing an unspecified, fictional group of people engaging in behavior you have made up, and calling it "atheist" behavior, is the reason your comment is an unacceptable weakman.

But in this context where the subject of the discussion is the "Satanic Temple" aka "atheists"

Members of the Satanic Temple are atheists, but they are certainly not typical atheists and the vast majority of atheists are not Satanists, nor would be interested in being associated with a Satanic temple. So you cannot use the two terms interchangeably.

I sincerely believe there is not a single card carrying member of the "Satanic Temple" who would publicly denounce floyd

That wasn't your initial assertion, though. Even if your actual argument was something about members of the Satanic Temple also being BLM supporters, you didn't even attempt to link that back to the original topic, just went on a rant about how their "actual idol is fentanyl Floyd."

You aren't new, you know better. Stop posting like this.

I admit I made a mistake in the original post with the wording, since it was definitely yaken in a way that wasn't intended. But you're also weakmanning my post. There's no "unspecified group" at all here. I meant to refer to the "Satanic Temple" specifically mentioned in the top level post and made a mistake equivocating atheists with them.

Anyways this all directly addresses the top level post and discussion, where OP proposes creating a

deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol

and other commenters replying with the difficulty of creating such a symbol. The symbol I proposed is of course, deliberately provocative and difficult to ignore. While it doesn't cleave exacly perfectly along atheist / christian lines is besides the point. It's a symbol that's aimed approximately at the people who created goat statue, who aren't exactly attacking theists either but have their own more complex goals.

You're missing the actual idol of atheism, which is fentalyl floyd.

This is complete nonsense. Even here on TheMotte there are probably dozens of atheists who are anti-BLM.

you're right

This is another chapter in the ongoing saga of a subset of American Christians and American secularists fighting over whether or not Christianity should have a privileged social and legal status in the United States (albeit one of the more superficial elements of that conflict, namely display of religious icons). The point of these displays is to demonstrate that (some) Christians want precisely that. It's not enough that there be equal opportunity religious displays. It needs to be exclusively Christian.

A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist

They'd find that no one cares. To the extent that their ideological adversaries would react, it would be with mockery. This is because their goals not symmetrical. One side wants Christian symbols to have an exclusive status; the other wants government spaces to be secular. If you take down the nativity scene and the statue of baphomet, that's a win for the Satanists.

It's not enough that there be equal opportunity religious displays. It needs to be exclusively Christian.

Well, for a Christian festival, yeah? I don't see any reason to object to Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim symbols for their important religious/cultural festivals and I don't think anybody is demanding that the Chinese New Year dragons be stopped from parades or displays in the public streets.

I get what you are saying if you mean only Christian symbols are permitted in public spaces, but I don't think that's on the same level as "No, you can't only have Christian symbols for a Christian holiday, you must include secular elements or nothing, but we'll put up a menorah on the White House lawn and to object to that would be anti-Semitism and persecution". Put up the menorahs! And the nativity scenes! And even the dumb Baphomet statues! Just don't make it "you can only have Santa Claus, reindeer and snowflakes because any hint that this is a Christian festival is offensive on the face of it" like the drive-through atheists:

The FFRF sent the letter after being notified of the nativity by Justin Scott, the founder of Eastern Iowa Atheists, who does not live in Toledo. He was driving through the town on his way to an archery tournament in Tama.

...Scott added he hopes the city is prepared for the possibility to welcome more religions than just Christianity, as they might have opened a “Pandora’s box.”

“If the Satanic Temple of Iowa, who had a display in the Capitol, comes knocking and wants to put something up, I hope they are ready,” he said.

Yes, it's vitally important that the racially and ethnically diverse population of this throbbing metropolis not be offended by presuppositions that nearly everyone there is most likely some variety of Christian:

As of the census of 2010, there were 2,341 people, 901 households, and 598 families living in the city. The population density was 1,017.8 inhabitants per square mile (393.0/km2). There were 993 housing units at an average density of 431.7 per square mile (166.7/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 83.5% White, 1.1% African American, 5.8% Native American, 0.6% Asian, 4.3% from other races, and 4.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11.4% of the population.

Mr. Scott seems to have no problems with being The Grinch here. How dare the local people keep up an offensive tradition that he just happened to glimpse while driving through their town at this particular time of year! Outrageous effrontery to the maximum!

I wonder what his opinion on the Butter Cow Lady is? After all, that's offensive to people who are lactose-intolerant and may indeed be dogwhistling racism!

Toledo is home to the original “Butter Cow Lady” from the Iowa State Fair, Norma (Duffy) Lyon. A bronze cow/calf sculpture was erected on the hilltop at the intersection of Highways 30 & 63 in her honor and the Toledo Library has a display case dedicated to her achievements.

I think that's what most aggrieves people; it's not a protest by people living there who have to see this every year, it's a bunch of strangers from out of town who have no roots or contact with the place. You can come to some kind of compromise with a neighbour, but some prodnose from out of state trying to tell you what you can and can't do in your own town is a different level of annoyance.

It's not enough that there be equal opportunity religious displays. It needs to be exclusively Christian.

These people don’t advocate for religiously themed Hanukkah or Diwali displays, but they don’t object to them either. It’s more that the church of satan are obvious trolls with no point beyond offending Christians, and their fig leaf for that is separation of church and state advocacy but it’s hard not to conclude that they just don’t like Christians or Christianity.

Despite being an atheist, I increasingly wish we did just have Christianity as the official state religion. My actual preference is something close to the classic view of freedom of religion without official state sanction, but with the normal symbols of Christianity given a place of cultural honor that allows its supremacy in contexts like Christmas in state capitols, but I would probably prefer State Christianity over the ugliness and dishonesty of adding Satanism to the mix and treating it like it's just as legitimate as Christianity. I disagree with object-level claims of Christianity, but it turns out I just plain like it better than its rivals.

Speaking as an atheist in a country where Christianity is the official state religion, I do not think that actually-existing American Christians would be willing to make the compromises that Anglicanism made in order to survive as a state religion in England, let alone the greater compromises needed in a country which is deeply committed to the idea that all Christian denominations are equally valid. Nor do I think that "mere Christianity" would work - the differences between Christian traditions matter. I wouldn't want to deal with the fallout when someone prays the Hail Mary over the tannoy before a Notre Dame vs BYU game.

Right. People tend to forget that the "separation of church and state" was originally more about protecting religion from political influence than the other way around. Roger Williams was no atheist. I doubt many American Christians really want to turn their clergy into deep state bureaucrats answerable to Washington.

Right. People tend to forget that the "separation of church and state" was originally more about protecting religion from political influence than the other way around.

A wall works both ways, and the First Amendment contains two religion clauses -- the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause, one working one way and one the other. As for the wall of separation, the letter that coined the phrase was about Jefferson's refusal to proclaim religious thanksgivings and fasts... which would seem to be quite similar to official celebration of Christian holidays.

the compromises that Anglicanism made in order to survive as a state religion in England

Uh, the church of England compromised with prevailing secular morality much more slowly and less completely than its American branch. It's true that Euro state churches, with the exception of the Catholic and Orthodox churches in the places in which they are established, are absolutely pozzed wokefests where Christianity is optional, but they seem generally less so than the nearest American equivalent- the ELCA, Episcopalians, and PCUSA are all more or less progressive advocacy groups at this point which don't even pretend to adhere to their own doctrines, and IIRC the church of Sweden is the only state church in Europe which can compete on that; the others are liberal but at least pretending to be Christian and often a far more moderate liberal than the US versions.

To be fair, those American church bodies wouldn’t have accommodated themselves to modern secular morality nearly as quickly if they were shackled to their more conservative counterparts, as the European state churches are. The ACNA, Continuing Anglicans, REC, etc., all acted as lifeboats for unhappy traditional Episcopalians, which allowed them to give up their former church body with less of a fight. The only people who were left after that evaporative cooling process were old people who didn’t want to leave their home parish and increasingly-radical members of the clergy. The recent events of the UMC are a testament to that, and I fully expect the soon-to-be-“liberated” UMC to catch up very quickly to the ELCA in terms of secularism and political and theological liberalism.

I suppose I wouldn't either. The grass is always greener and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, my futile hope is just for atheists to be less intentionally annoying.

First, I think the Baphomet statue is stupid, because it's nothing to do with Satanism and they just picked it because "ooh it's the Devil" without fully understanding the background. Since it's specifically the Éliphas Lévi version they use, let me quote from Waite's English translation of the second volume of Dogme et rituel de la haute magie:

This is the Azoth of the sages on his pedestal of salt and sulphur. The symbolic head of the goat of Mendes is occasionally given to this figure, and it is then the Baphomet of the Templars and the Word of the Gnostics — bizarre images which became scarecrows for the vulgar after affording food for thought to the sages, innocent hieroglyphs of thought and faith which have been a pretext for the rage of persecutions. How pitiable are men in their ignorance, but how they would despise themselves if once they came to know!

'A bizarre image now a scarecrow for the vulgar' pretty much sums up their use of the imagery.

Second, even if it is stupid, the Satanists are entitled to put up stupid holiday crap as much as any other group. It would be nice if they could stop being edgelords about it and trying to be insulting to Christians, but oh well. If you're going to join any organisation called the Satanic Temple, of course you're a plonker.

Third, they have nothing without Christianity. If they want to be a humanist, science-oriented, group of freethinkers nothing is stopping them, but there's no reason to have any associations with 'Satanism' other than to piss off the normies. Frankly, if I were a humanist atheist scientist I'd be embarrassed by this bunch claiming to be affiliated with me (don't worry humanist etcs. on here, I don't hold them against you). I'm less embarrassed by the Christian guy because I think he should have let it alone, but that bunch did do the equivalent of "Make me!" and he did call their bluff, so go my brother in Christ.

Fourth, the suggestions about anti-atheist imagery? I don't think that works, and you could even defend the things as artworks without needing to go into "this is a religious symbol". After all if Piss Christ and Cartoon Mohammed are permissible as art, so is Gay Darwin and Marx. But I wouldn't even bother - why stoop to their level in contending to see who can be the bigger dumbass?

Aren’t there esoteric neo-nazis who have a legitimate deeply-held belief that Hitler was a moral paragon? Unless we want our Capitol buildings adorned in statues of Adolf Hitler and his sieg heil, we are going to need a more sophisticated test of authentic religious expression — which would not be met by the Satanic Temple.

(By the way, Satan is to Christians what Hitler is to American liberal boomers, except amplified 100. Satan is the one who influenced and tempts Man to evil, just like he entered Judas. A Christian is obligated to hate Satan more than Hitler, as Hitler is still a hypothetically redeemable man, whereas Satan is evil itself personified. So, no, you can’t make an authentic religion founded on the personification of evil, any more than you can in praise of genocidal leaders.)

Of course, this argument will not at all be persuasive to those who empathize with the satanists—what they want is religion gone, and "allowing religion means hitler" would be a sentiment that they'd be delighted to see make the national news.

Yep, we need to get an esoteric Hitlerist group which believes Hitler was a literal God to put up a Yule display.

The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights

Well, if the Declaration of Independence is to be believed, it is government's job to preserve the rights of their people, so how is that a problem?

Edit: Note also that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And note that the issue in the linked case, as well as in the Satanic Temple case, is really freedom of speech, not freedom of religion. See here

A better argument might be that objectionable statues are now regularly being taken down and destroyed, so take your lumps, Satanic Temple.

(I've a feeling we're never going to see new, inclusive, let's all gather round and nobody feel rejected, public art out of the ingots and that eventually they'll end up being sold off).

But that is a different issue: A government is free to speak as it wishes, so it can place or remove its own monuments as it wishes. The question here is whether, if it opens a forum for outsiders to speak, it can permit some to speak but refuse to allow others to speak. From the Boston case:

The government must be able to decide what to say and what not to say when it states an opinion, speaks for the community, formulates policies, or implements programs. The boundary between government speech and private expression can blur when, as here, the government invites the people to participate in a program. In those situations, the Court conducts a holistic inquiry to determine whether the government intends to speak for itself or, rather, to regulate private expression.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. -- Sartre

Mockery of the sacred is a one way street. The religious can't beat atheist absurdism by beclowning themselves, because once the whole argument is perceived as absurd the atheist has won. Once onlookers say "Oh God, what are all those freaks at the capital arguing about?" It's the church that loses credibility, Satan never had any to begin with.

Desecrating any of these

Atheist point of order: you cannot desecrate them, because they are not sacred.

The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass

Honestly, I believe many atheists would consider that "fucking awesome".

OK, but, Revelation says repeatedly that returned Jesus has a twoedged sword protruding from his mouth (and in the scene with the steed, he also has a rod of iron). So ... what must one do to get this super Saiyan Jesus a mouth-sword?

Be a pirate.

One of the Satanic Temple's causes is separation of church and state, and I expect part of what they're trying to do here is cause governments to decide it's too much trouble to allow holiday displays on public property at all. Vandalism of their displays, or Christians also using such displays in deliberately inflammatory ways, both make it more likely they'll get that outcome.

Meanwhile, I don't think the ideological faction represented by the Satanic Temple would actually care very much about the content of your proposed displays. If anyone did dramatically tear such a display down, it would almost certainly be some progressive activist, a distinctly different faction.

If they object to holiday displays, then they should be going around shopping malls demanding the Santas and Christmas trees be taken down. It's that they're sticking their tongues out, like primary school kids, at specifically Christian festival is the major pain in the backside. I'm not impressed, and honestly I think it makes them look like wet blankets rather than Kewl Edgy types, but eh. If they have nothing more meaningful in their lives to be getting on with than trying to shock their grannies, I feel sorry for them (I may be a pathetic loser, but I'm not going around trying to construct maximally offensive to atheists rip-off imagery in public spaces).

I think the problem for them is that they're on public land, as they feel this violates their right not to have the government endorse a religion.

Personally, I think they're looking for things to be annoyed about, and holiday displays that please a large majority of people are not the sort of foil people should spend their time targeting. I felt that way when I was an atheist as well -- if your biggest problem with church/state relations is that Iowa, of all places, has a nativity set at the capitol, you are doing fanatically well for yourself. When I was active in the atheist community I knew Satanic Temple people, and I found them distasteful, because I felt they alienated and aggrieved Christians for no actual benefit to atheists.

The shopping mall, your neighbor who went big on Christmas decorating, a local Church with a big banner facing the street with some explicitly Jesus-themed Christmas message, etc, etc are all private institutions.

It's when the county courthouse does it that these people ask that others be given equivalent space to mount religious symbols. A big star of David or menorah, Baphomet, etc.

Malls are run by private individuals; separation of church and state doesn't apply.

One thing I always find curious (not really because... well you know) is that only Christianity is targeted. Would Atheists ever put up depictions of Muhammad (peace be upon him)? This type of selective targeting just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

There are plenty of atheists who love to mock Islam. But America doesn't have many Muslims, and I suspect that the most hardcore militant atheists tend to be people who grew up in oppressive social conservative households, which in America are mostly Christian. Some atheists might also be more afraid of getting killed for mocking Islam than for mocking Christianity.

(not really because... well you know)

Speak plainly please.

only Christianity is targeted. Would Atheists ever put up depictions of Muhammad (peace be upon him)?

That's just not true. Maybe in America, where Muslims make up a tiny minority of the population, but in Europe Islam is often criticized and even ridiculed, mostly by atheists. What did you think caused the assassination of Theo van Gogh, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the bombing of the Danish embassy in Pakistan, the attack on the Swedish embassy in Iraq, the 2023 terrorist attacks in Belgium, Türkiye soft-blocking Sweden's ascension to NATO, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.?

It didn't happen in the Anglosphere, but the main left-wing newspapers in France and Germany reprinted the Danish Mohammed cartoons, on the basis that it was progressive to mock religious pretension. The Four Horsemen were notoriously anti-Islam - that is why the New Atheism fell out of favour in prog circles.

There was a draw Muhammed day in a town in Texas in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Culwell_Center_attack

Two muslims road tripped to the event to mass murder the attendees. They were both killed by Texans while getting out of their car.

And see, this is what a sane secular society does when people want to be gratuitously offensive for no reason- ‘sorry, we’re not going to go out of our way to stick up for you being a jackass, if you want a Mohammed drawing competition have your own security’.

Fundamentalist Islam has approximately zero salience for internal US disputes over religious freedom.

While I am not the kind of atheist that feels inclined to do public displays of atheism, I am the kind that would attack Islam rather than Christianity. I dislike Islam and like Christianity. Christianity is intricately woven into the society and culture that I care about, Islam is its enemy.

Would Atheists ever put up depictions of Muhammad (peace be upon him)?

Maybe in Texas. In many places this would just get you killed while the authorities basically remark "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".

But it's not really symmetric because Muslims do not, as far as I know, put up public art celebrating their religion in the US. Maybe in Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis?

Sunni Islam forbids almost all religious imagery, leading to violence over depictions of Mohammed.

(They do a lot of calligraphy and symbols instead.)

I'm aware that depictions of Mohammed are forbidden (hence being killed for making them), but "calligraphy and symbols" would count, if made part of public art.

Putting up a faux-pagan idol (in technical accordance with local law) is no more targeting Christians than Muslims. It's not like local Muslims have a great love of pagan idols.

This is not mockery of Christ where you could gotcha them on lack of equivalent mockery of Muhammad. This is a fake goat demon stylized like a Tarot card used exercise legal tenants from the 1st ammendment.

Militant atheists in the west grew up in a Christian-influenced culture, and a lot of them grew up in conservative Christian homes, which left them with distaste and contempt for Christianity in particular.

If you go to, for example, ex-Muslim communities online, you will find every bit as much low-brow fundies-owned vitriol directed towards Islam.

I was previously unaware of state capitol buildings even having Christmas (winter holiday?) displays, other than some lights and greenery. Had I known, I would not have guessed that the rules would be something like "whatever a congregation, lodge, or hobby group decide to put up, no questions asked." Can a church put up a display of Muhammad doing something unsavory?

I had also never heard of Baphomet before this moment, and, looking at an interpretation from the BBC:

"It contains all these binary opposites - above and below, part animal, part human. Male and female," says Greaves. "It embodies opposites and celebrates contrasts."

That sounds enough like what many people actually find important in Current Year that it probably makes sense as an honest expression of belief. The Jungian view that symbols are important whether or not any specific religion is correct about God, or even if there is no God, makes a lot of sense.

Is there a personification of Freedom of Speech that rationalists can install somewhere next year, if anyone is so naive as to have open ended invitations again?

Baphomet is the fictional demonic entity that the Knights Templar were falsely accused of worshiping. So this whole thing is a bit of a joke making sure to use a fictional demon.

Everyone has a sacred right to blasphemy in a secular legal system with free speech protections.

Atheism is not itself a religion, or even a particular ideology or philosophy. Note that your examples of Rand and Marx were both unbelievers, but held pretty opposite views on key fundamentals of morality/economics/law.

Self-identifying atheists may commonly share other beliefs that align with their atheism, so common correlations exist, but there’s not exactly a Nicene Creed, holy test, or Definitive Authority, to go off of. “I don’t believe in any deity” is all it takes. Easier than the shahada.

A particular organization of some atheists, who are also anti-theists, is playing the game of what it takes to be legally recognized as a religion to fight legal battles in favor of secularism. You might not like it, but there’s a reason they made up Satanism with its trappings of symbols/values/rites/lore/etc. and not “A-atheism” without all those things.

It’s funny you think theists need to go out of their way to be upsetting to secularists. The changes to the pledge of allegiance and our coinage come to mind.

Everyone has a sacred right to blasphemy in a secular legal system with free speech protections.

So the United States?

Yeah

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