ARDELL WELLNESS REPORT
# 785
REAL Wellness - Too Important to be Lived or Promoted Grimly
REASON * EXUBERANCE * ATHLETICISM * LIBERTY
E pluribus unum - In science we trust
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A REAL WELLNESS PERSPECTIVE ON THE SATANIC TEMPLE
The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Civilization
A MOVIE THAT'S DEVILISHLY ENTERTAINING AND INSIGHTFUL
I saw a movie in the S.F. Bay area recently entitled,
Hail Satan?
Really.
As a youth in Catholic schools, at a time when parochial schools were virtual penal colonies for juveniles just waiting for opportunities to go astray, uttering the words
Hail Satan
would have brought tribulation and woe.
I was so indoctrinated into an Old Testament vision of a punitive god that being turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife, would have been too good for me. After all, that poor woman's offense was but to look back to view the commotion, to catch a glance of her home being wrecked or perhaps to assess whether there was time to go back to save the family pet. But no, God was throwing a temper tantrum, raining destruction and death on an entire city because, well, every man, woman and child, even babies, I suppose, were behaving like Sodom and
Gomorrahites, which evidently wasn't pretty
. Lot and his wife were fleeing because two characters, dressed as angels, had scared the bejabbers out them, urging the one virtuous couple to flee for their lives and, for some unknown reason, not to look back. Unfortunately, Lot's wife could not resist a backward glance. Who among us would not have sneaked a peek? Lady Lot got the
pillar of salt
treatment for disobeying angels.
At the time, I would have expected a gruesome penance for saying the words
Hail Satan
, let alone attending a movie by that name. Come to think of it, it seems likely I would have expected spontaneous combustion, on the spot, not a second chance to repent and shape up. Fathers LaRue, Doyle and McGovern would no doubt have ceremoniously sprinkled holy water on my smoking ashes; Sisters DeChantell, Lucy and George would have marched their classes to the charred spot where I had been cooked in fiery flames. This daily field trip would surely impress my classmates to eschew blasphemous smart aleck salutes. There was no place for Little Satanists at St. Barnabas.
Despite my experience of a dramatically intense educational environment during twelve years of Roman Catholic schooling, I recently viewed
Hail Satan?
, 63 years since my last day of attendance at an institution run by the one true church, the one founded by St. Peter on a rock where I was immersed in the only religion that would render me eligible to appear one day in the dock at the high court of Heavenly Gates. Eligibility was one thing, admittance something else altogether. There were no guarantees that I or anyone else, even the pope, would be found not guilty of one or more transgressions (e.g., missing Sunday Mass, eating meat on Friday, touching oneself impurely, etc.) that would trigger a guilty verdict, after which I'd be unceremoniously dropped into a huge pit of fire to commence an eternity of suffering.
The merciful god of the Catholic Church had a mean streak.
Despite these educational
advantages
, I attended a production about an organization that did not believe in any gods or devils, including Satan, but which hailed him anyway for its own purposes.
And I loved it.
You can view a
two-minute trailer
about it and/or
r
ead a review of the show
(which got a 97 percent rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
) in order to discover how the Satanic Temple goes about hailing Satan for the purpose of promoting church/state separation.
The above links provide all you'll need to know to decide if
Hail Satan
? is right for you. The bottom line about the Temple is that it artfully, satirically and often hilariously employs the boogeyman or, if you prefer, the apparition/evil spirit/phantasm/specter/spook or bugaboo of a devil figurehead, to promote an irreligious form of humanism. Or, in the areas of reason, exuberance and liberty, REAL wellness.
Despite years of religious dogma, supernatural rituals and threats of eternal punishment, I believe the brief Tenets of the Satanic Temple are superior to the voluminous teachings of the Catholic Church, Christianity and other religions with which I'm somewhat familiar. The Satanic Temple has no angry or other gods, no hellfires, no superstitions - just a set of beliefs that encourage an embrace of critical thinking and science, personal responsibility, individual and societal freedoms and a passion for justice, kindness, love, good works and other secular values needed today more than ever.
Consider the seven tenets of the Satanic Temple:
1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One¹s body is inviolable, subject to one¹s own will alone.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
5. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world.
6. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
7. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
The authors of these Tenets believe that each is
a guiding principle that might inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
The Tenets do not square much with the kind of Satan the priests and nuns of my childhood described. Since watching the movie, I've not had a single nightmare. I can't say the same about dreams endured as a child,
concerned as I was about what Satan had in store for transgressors young and old in the scary afterlife.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From Steve Jonas, Port Jefferson, NY
Great column. I plan to see the film. I fully agree with the organization's Seven Tenets, particularly # 3 that affirms women's reproductive rights and freedoms. I might wish that they had chosen a different name, given the value of the Tenets and the standard interpretation of
Satan,
even for an atheist like me. But, I realize the imagery serves to attract attention, and to enable the Satanic Temple to stand out among the many civil liberties/pro-separation organizations, including the ACLU, Americans United, American Humanists, American Atheists and FFRF, among others.
The Temple is an interesting, creative and fun group with serious purposes.
From Bill Dunn, Middleton, WI
I want to see the movie.
From Grant Donovan, Perth, Australia
As always the latest AWR is the best ever, from a mind that only gets better, while the peer group enters the demented phase of involuntary dribbling and defecating...There is no divine plan, no gods, no devils - alas, not even the good Satan, as invented by the Satanic Temple. Rather, as we know, it's all just a chaotic shambles of random chance and meaninglessness that leaves the world's majority in the position of lives not worth living. If only birth were a choice.
From Rachel Hawk, Sebastopol, CA
Thanks as always Don for your essay on religion and politics. The Religious Right loves Trump. They look past his corruptness and absurdity. I'm so looking forward to the next election. Not sure yet who is best. Time will tell. I support anyone, really, if she can beat Trump.
From Bruce Midgett, Billings, MT
Don - I appreciate the opportunity to weigh in on your latest AWR. As you’re aware, I'm a willing weigher-in on practically any commentary on anything, whether I’m adequately informed or not.
We all arrived here as blank slates. What our families did to us, especially regarding religion, should have been regarded as child abuse. I guess they just didn’t know any better. I come from a dedicated Methodist background, a thoroughly modified, vanilla version of the original One-God Church which, as we know, spawned a rebellious kid who wandered around declaring all sorts of blather, had a pre-execution dinner that has been widely reported and went through some brutal treatment thereafter, ending with that nasty practice involving wooden crosses and spikes. It was either Catholicism or paganism in Rome at that time, and it takes little investigation to determine who won that scuffle.
Were I still enmeshed in the Methodism of my grandfather, I would have had to cleanse myself in a vat of boiling olive oil just for reading your description of the principles of the Satanic Temple, and the intentions of the authors of those tenets. And my grandfather would have gladly provided both the vat and the oil.
I used to feel sorry for my Catholic friends in my childhood because it seemed they were unfairly obligated to attend a whole lot of church and do a whole lot of other things just to be a part of their community. The fish on Friday requirement mystified me. Trouble was, despite all the genuflecting and dead language preaching, not to mention the fish, it seemed those kids ended up doing pretty much the same naughty things the rest of us did, including the couple of atheists I knew in grade school. Then, also came the revelations regarding the kids who belonged to an early evangelical church about the folly that went on in the back seats of cars behind their church while their parents were engaged in the adults only part of their sacraments. At the very least, it all made me a skeptic.
As for Satanism, I simply have little idea of it. I have questions and hesitancies about any sort of
ism
. I can discover wonderful-sounding tenets in practically any religious group, but, as referenced above, I can also find wholesale breach of all of those tenets throughout the group. While all seven Tenets of the Satanic Temple sound okay, maybe a little better than okay, they’re not exclusive to that belief system. Also, they read like they were written by a bunch of high school sophomores, not to intentionally demean high school sophomores. These tidbits are high-minded and lovely in their effort, but not much different from those evangelicals cavorting in the back seat of their parents’ cars. God or not, it sounds like just another flaky religious cult, particularly with that final statement:
The authors of these tenets believe that each is a guiding principle that might inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Jehovah knows that I’ve always sought nobility in action and thought. And just look at the spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice dripping from these very words. I don’t know—maybe I just have to see the movie.
The neighborhood kids once decided, in the wake of one of Oral Roberts’s looney healing sideshows, to found a religion based upon the spiritual preeminence of one of the kid’s dogs, Tyke, who had displayed a consistent defiance toward any sort of compliance with the rules of their household. Then he bit one of the kids for no apparent reason at all. So much for that.
I give most religions props for their art, music, architecture and intentions. But that final one, the best of intentions, like the best laid schemes of mice and men,
gang aft agley
(or
go oft awry
, as Robert Burns suggests in,
To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough,
1785.)
From Jan Ardell, Novato, CA
Yes, sadly there were and are many crazy/destruction messages of religion. And yes, they were present in the Catholic schools of our past. Somehow, fortunately, I never felt the ugliness and cruelty, fear, threat and punishing aspects of that environment that you experienced. Though not an environment that encouraged flourishing altogether, the messages from those early years that stay with me are positive ones...
God loves us all equally, take care of one another, protect and defend the poor and those less fortunate, do good for others
and so on.
I was unimpressed by the lack of intellectual vigor of the Temple's Tenets. However, the seventh Tenet, the clearest of the bunch, reminded me of the emphasis placed on making amends, enshrined in the AA tradition. This I consider a very good thing to do.
All best.
From Lutz Hertel, Dusseldorf, Germany
Dear Don - Many thanks for your invitation to comment on Satan. I completely agree with the Seven Tenets of the Satanic Temple. However, I'm not confident about the ability of most people to think rationally or to make decisions based upon knowledge and evidence. Most are lazy, ignorant, superstitious, credulous and irrational. Many who
get wise
to established religions drift to alternative pathways of
spirituality
. So many build their lives more or less on spiritual beliefs, instead of facing facts and dealing with realities. Our European culture is said to be built on Christian values significant to our European identity. The governing German political party is called the
Christian Democratic Union
. Politics and religion are strongly interwoven; only a small minority calls this into question. The governing party in our neighbor country Poland had turned back to the Middle Ages.
Hard to believe but this is the truth. All good wishes.
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THE AWR ADVISORY BOARD
Carol Ardell, St. Petersburg, FL
Grant Donovan - Perth, Australia
Bill Dunn, Middleton, WI
Lorraine Evans, Orlando, FL
Lutz Hertel - Dusseldorf, Germany
Bill Hettler, Minneapolis, MN
James Heuerman, Prescott, AZ
Steve Jonas, Stony Brook, NY
Rod Lees - Noosa, Australia
Bob Ludlow, Waynesville, NC
James Mayr - Pensacola, FL
Bruce Midgett - Missoula, MT
James Miller, Bad Gleichenberg, Austria
Dave Randle, St. Petersburg, FL
John Sinibaldi, Seminole, FL
Sherri Galle-Teske, Plover, WI
Toshi Tsutshumi, Tokyo, JAPAN
Christina Watson, Dehradun, India
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