@abraxas 20 May 2021 more from that month

Met up with my local forming TST chapter over Zoom last night for our monthly hangout. The topic was a compare/contrast between The 10 commandments, the Church of Satan's 11 Rules of the Earth, and The Satanic Temple's 7 tenets. Obviously the discussion was biased in favour of TST's tenets - if we didn't firmly believe in them, we probably wouldn't be members of the religion. With each group's set of rules, a big thing to remember is that they're all a product of their time, and the context of how the world was at those times is important to keep in mind. The 10 commandments were created sometime around 8BCE, Anton LaVey created the 11 rules in 1967, and TST's tenets weren't created until 2013. It was my opinion that the 10 commandments were effective in a time when Christianity was trying to take a stranglehold over already existing religions. The rules are very cut and dry, and really enforce the whole "god" thing making it quick and easy to punish anybody who doesn't believe in it. Also, in a time before the internet and wide-reaching communications like we have today, the list is very quick and to the point, and would have been easy to share and spread. One interesting point is how they seemed to actually need a commandment to get people to stop murdering each other - were people just popping each other nonstop back then? One other interesting point about that particular commandment is the fact that the witch hunts happened, and the fact that many military forces have Christian members and follow Christian holidays etc. That's an awful lot of murdering 🤔 Moving to LaVey's 11 Rules, we decided that they were very authoritarian, and very self-centered. It was noted that in some ways they were also very progressive for their time. For example, if you consider the "mating signal" in the 5th rule to be consent, it covers a problem that's only recently become more of a mainstream thing. I think of Anton LaVey were still alive today he likely would have reworded the tenets to keep them relevant with the time. Unfortunately the people running the Church of Satan haven't really done much to keep it updated, and many people claiming to be members of CoS probably aren't actually legit members - it costs something like $300 to join. Finally looking at The Satanic Temple's 7 tenets, you'll notice that they're very broadly stated in a way that allows you to adapt them within reason to your life and give some personal meaning to each one. Importantly, the 7th tenet reminds you that the wording of the tenets themselves isn't all that important, but rather the meaning behind them is what matters. This tenet was created to help prevent somebody from rewriting the tenets in a way that would change their meaning to drive a personal agenda over the entire religion. It also means that there's more room to translate the tenets to other languages and situations so long as the core value of the tenet remains. Also, each tenet gives some scope or further explanation on their core point to better explain how to use them. What are your thoughts?