re: Does Satanism exist without Christianity?

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The Satanic Bible

That's Church of Satan. I said the Satanic Temple.

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Do what thou wilt; for that is the whole of the law.

Also that's Crowley, just FWIW. Not Levay.

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O.k., I stand corrected, and I assumed that the Satanic Temple would follow the Satanic Bible; it sounds like you're saying that they do not?

In any case, do any of the Satanic systems teach people to love God with all of their hearts, souls, and strength and their neighbor as themselves? Because if they don't...

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Humans pretty much agree on almost every moral question you can name, excluding that small subset of society that is labelled "anti-social." Even the points we disagree upon are disagreements stemming from the circumstances being sufficiently complex as to partially obscure and make difficult the extraction of the moral question embedded in it. But everyone agrees that stealing, harming with reason, cheating, murdering, etc., is wrong.

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And those determinations we're done societally and not using religion. The fact that, as stated earlier in this thread, you see the same values across cultures, ethnicities, and religions that are completely different shows that the genesis is not through religion.

We learn these things as humans when we formed society through trial and error. There are behaviors that disrupt societal order and we turn these into unfavored behaviors, which often arises via religion. You have to go back to when we first started forming societies and remember that in those societies humans interjected religion as a guiding principle in government, and that has never really left our DNA.

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, I'm not sure there are any questions of actual morality that they disagree upon at all.

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Females in the clergy. Gay marriage. Homosexual adoption. Consuming all sorts of substances. Marriage and clergy. Premarital sex. Watching R-rated movies.

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Reason cannot get us to an objective moral standard by itself.

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Can't objective things be demonstrated?

Boy, your brain suxass.
Did you give this any actual thought before posting such a stupid question?

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Does Satanism exist without Christianity?

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Yes.

It would just be known by other names, such as Marxism, Progressivism, etc.

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Seems a lot of effort and study has gone into debunking things in which he has no belief.

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Do you think Christians have good arguments against non-Christian religions?

Hrm, I wonder why they even bothered, seeing as they don't believe in them and all...

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Sure.
With empirical evidence.

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I wonder how one would demonstrate morality as an objective thing.

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Females in the clergy.

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. Not a moral question. Like I said, theology and/or ceremony.

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Gay marriage.

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. Now you are confusing politics with religion, although yes, you may have touched on a genuine disagreement (well yes and no...in a minute). Christianity traditionally regards homosexual relations as being sinful. There's nothing especially MORE sinful about two gays marrying or adopting children, those specifically are political battles.

But yes, some Christians have chosen to disregard clear Biblical instruction regarding homosexuality. This, by definition, is heresy, and heresy is something that has always existed during the course of the Church. However, and not that it matters much to the question, but I'm not aware of the homosexuality situation breaking down along denominational lines. In other words, all Catholics adhere to the Biblical instruction regarding homosexuality and all Church of Christ churches ignore it. It seems to be individual local churches making those determinations.

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Consuming all sorts of substances.

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You mean like alcohol?

Again, the disagreements regarding things like that are all about what practices different groups feel are wisest when it comes to avoiding the actual sin that they all agree upon—that overindulgence of alcohol is destructive and therefore sinful. In order to avoid that sin, some denominations teach that you shouldn't drink at all, while some don't restrict drinking and just expect members to stop when it's time to stop.

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Marriage and clergy.

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. Theology and ceremony. No one who belongs to a denomination that requires celibacy will tell you that a married clergy member who belongs to a denomination that doesn't is going to hell for being married.

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Watching R-rated movies.

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Same as alcohol above. There's no Christian sect that considers the watching of an R-rated movie to be a sin for it's own sake. Some frown upon it because of what it might lead to.

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Premarital sex.

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I'm not aware of any denomination that teaches congregations that it is God's will that people (young people in particular) have pre-martial or extra-marital sex. If you are, you'll have to link me to something to take a look at.

So basically from that list we have homosexuality.

Now here's the thing—even if I agreed that every one of those examples was legit in the context of what we're discussing, that still wouldn't be very much to disagree upon, would it? Not only would it not be very much to disagree upon in terms of volume, but those things aren't very weighty moral dilemmas, are they?

If morality were entirely subjective we wouldn't be quibbling over R-rated movies. We'd have people killing and raping and stealing and cheating whenever they thought they could get away with it.

Even if you do like most atheists and claim that morality is an evolutionary development that genetically programs us to avoid violating feelings of empathy, well, that's still providing an objective basis for the vast consensus we agree upon to act according to. When you claim morality has no objectivity, you deny even that sort of basis.

Now, that sort of basis for morality has no way to validate the reality of right and wrong...it doesn't mean rape is actually "wrong," in the context of violating an actual objective framework of justice, it's just a popular feeling that most people have due to genetic programming, but it's at least some sort of basis outside the individual's mind.

The main thing that is happening with this discussion, though—and it's the same thing that almost always happens with this sort of discussion—is that the lines between epistemology and reality are blurred. This almost always happens when discussing morality with atheists and I can't decide whether it's because they assume certain premises due to their worldview (atheists do that a lot, IME) or if they are trying to avoid the very real philosophical problem that atheism inevitably leads to when discussing morality.

What atheists always want to frame the questions in terms of epistemology, and in doing so they try to sneak in the premise that morality is basically just information instead of conclusions drawn from circumstance in the context of an actual, real, objective reality of justice.

In other words, the almost universal argument of the atheist is, "No one needs God/religion/the Bible to know what is right or wrong."

This ignores the reality of the situation that if no objective standard of justice exists, there is no "right" or "wrong" as we commonly conceptualize those things. Rape may destabilize society (or it may not...one of the biggest problems with arguing morality as a function of utility is that many things we take for granted as being virtuous, such as democracy, are very arguably not the most stable, efficient, or utility-producing systems) and it may be shown to be a bad idea to allow it in society, but it's not "wrong" in the context of having violated actual rights or justice. Or if the basis is feelings of empathy, acting selflessly may make us feel good, but we didn't really do "good" in the context of acting in accordance with a system of justice. (And, what if our feelings change? What if in 50 years, that segment of the population that feels no empathy, the anti-socials, what if that percentage climbs from 1-2% to 10%? And in 100 years, what if it becomes 40%?)

The Christian will agree that the most basic and fundamental tenets of morality are self-evident to almost all humans. That's not the problem.

The problem is that while the atheist thinks those tenets are illusory social or genetic or personal constructs (hey, like gender!), the Christian thinks they are real, and that violating them has real consequences.

I think satanist are closer to christians than atheists