The Satanic Temple or Simply an Atheistic Trick?

Ever since Oklahoma City, where a monument was dedicated to the Ten Commandments and then challenged by the Satanic Temple and its donation to erect a monument dedicated to the devil, the Satanic Temple group has continued to seek opportunities where its message would be heard.

Most recently, that opportunity has now extended to the elementary classroom, where the group, under the guidance of Lucien Greaves—which is a pseudonym for Doug Mesner—seeks to infuse American youth with more of its “philosophy,” which is not so much inspired by the devil, per sé, as it is by a text unread by most that vilifies and mocks Judeo-Christianity.

In fact, according to Greaves himself, “I have helped develop us into something we all do truly believe in and wholeheartedly embrace: an atheistic philosophical framework that views ‘Satan’ as a metaphorical construct by which we contextualize our works.”

In other words, The Satanic Temple is not about Satanism at all.  It is about the promotion of atheism, as Greaves redefines the words Satan and Satanism in ways to mock the biblical description of Satan.

Greaves and The Satanic Temple admits that they get their inspiration from a book entitled Might is Right, which interestingly cites a pseudonym as well for its author: Ragnar Redbeard.

The book was first published in 1896 and attempts to one-up Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince by not only condemning Jews, Christians, and Jesus Christ, but by arguing that in order to get anywhere in life, all claims to authority and rule are to be rejected and only those who exercise brute force to exterminate their enemies will find peace, contentment, and success.

“He who obeys any standard of right and wrong, but the one set up by his own conscience, betrays himself into the hands of his enemies, who are ever laying in wait to bind him to their millstones.  And generally a man’s most dangerous enemies are his neighbors,” wrote Redbeard.

“[I]t is proposed to prove in this book, that strife, competition, and rivalry, and the wholesale destruction of feeble types of men, is not only natural, but highly necessary.”

What is interesting is that another satanic fraud, the late Anton LaVey, used Might is Right to later write the best-seller The Satanic Bible.

The difference, though, between LaVey and Greaves is only over the issue of supernaturalism versus naturalism.

LaVey still held to a belief in the supernatural, even though he did not subscribe to the idea of a personal demon known as Satan, while Greaves totally rejects the supernatural and holds to a “metaphorical” devil.

Of course, Greaves tries to tone-down some of the Might is Right rhetoric by showing his more human side.  On his website he has posed seven tenets that read much like what one finds in previous Humanist Manifestos.

There is plenty of “should” this and “should” that going on in the tenets, but not one objective example of why anyone should embrace or participate in any of them.

He simply asserts what he believes ought to be and is superior to that which he contradictorily rejects.

“The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.”  And the reason for this is what?

If we return to Greaves’ source of inspiration, “There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes.  Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy.”

Interestingly, Greaves and company are nothing but men themselves and offer nothing of value beyond their sordid opinions about right and wrong.

So, based on their own arguments, they should be ignored, if not simply “destroyed.”

But, that is not going to happen very soon.  Rather than see this attempt at brainwashing our children into believing that abject rebellion is a virtue, many school administrators and parents will happily embrace the fraud.

They will falsely fall for the lie that The Satanic Temple is a legitimate religious movement or church, when the reality is, it is nothing more than secular/atheist humanism being propagated in the name of Satan.

That what we have in The Satanic Temple is nothing more than another attack upon religious liberty, if not simply the history of America, whereby the atheists, humanists, and secularists wish to completely drive Jews and Christians underground, if not simply out of existence.

They want our children to grow up acting hostile toward the things of Jesus Christ, because the atheists see him as the problem and not their own calloused, darkened, ignorant hearts.

Since The Satanic Temple organizers know that they cannot gain access to our children by being upfront about who and what they are, they have gone the route of fraud and misrepresentation to do so.

One set of school officials in Maryland has stated, “So as long as the activities are not illegal, we will treat these organizations as the same.”

The question needs to be asked, then: Is fraud illegal?

If so, then Greaves and his Satanic Temple bunch do not need to be allowed in the door, much less sponsor some after school activity, whereby they teach the young and impressionable how to act fraudulently, if not defiantly, themselves.

Failure to recognize the fraud, and then condemn it for what it is, will only result in public education becoming even more chaotic than it already is, while subjecting the family to more fracturing and strife through rebellion taught to youngsters by spiritual/social deviants.

About the Author

Paul Derengowski, Ph.D.
Founder of the Christian Apologetics Project PhD, Theology with Dogmatics, North-West University (2018); MA Apologetics with Honors, BIOLA University (2007); ThM, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (2003); MDiv, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (2000); BA Pastoral Ministry & Bible, Baptist Bible College (1992)