In the newsletter e-mail dated September 4, 2024, there are at least two references to “Satanists.” One an opportunity to view a movie, the other a news story about the efforts of the Satanic Temple to read John Milton’s Paradise Lost in the Iowa State Capitol. I cannot miss this opportunity to discuss what atheists are and are not.
We did not “become atheists” in order to reject god, or because we became mad at, or disappointed in, god. We are not atheists because we prefer one god over another.
Simply put, atheists are people who do not accept that there is anything other than the natural world. Everything in the universe is the result of natural processes and events, all of which can be understood. While there are mysteries yet to be solved, we know that there is a natural, scientific, explanation for everything — for that which we know, for that which we know we don’t know, and even for that which we have yet to discover we don’t know. This has been phrased, knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
Religion, on the other hand, holds that the universe was created by a supernatural being — there are disagreements about its exact nature —through an act of will. Religion holds that this supernatural being has it in it’s power to suspend the laws of science and perform miracles. It is thought that the being demands worship and obedience. Rewards are bestowed upon the faithful, and punishments are imposed for infractions, or to test the strength of faith. In addition to THE supreme being, there are other supernatural beings including, but not limited to angels, devils, ghosts &c. Many, inhabit a realm known by several names, one of which is heaven. Devils, led by satan, inhabit a netherworld known as by various names such as hell. Strange as it may seem, there are still people who believe such things.
There was a time in the history of the human race, particularly in the deserts of the Middle East, when the theistic view was the only imaginable explanation for the “creation” of the world and the condition of people.
Little by little, however, that which was unexplainable was explained. In 1543, Copernicus demonstrated with objective evidence that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the cosmos. About a hundred years later, Kepler worked out how the planets are kept in motion around the sun. Galileo looked through a telescope and saw mountains on the moon and wonder of wonders, moons going around the planet Jupiter. From then on it was “Katie bar the door” discovery after discovery explained how the universe functions. Charles Darwin explained how species develop through a process known as evolution by natural selection. Just about a hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble discovered that the cosmos is composed of numerous galaxies and George Lemaître solved Einstein’s equations in a way that demonstrated that the universe in which we live came into existence about 14 billion years ago.
All these discoveries demonstrated that the universe can be understood without any need for divine intervention —as Pierre-Simon Laplace told Napoleon: we no longer have need of the magical hypothesis relied on by iron age people. Today, just as we would find it odd for a teenager who believes in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, so too it’s odd, is it not, to know that there are adults who believe in gods or demons.
I suspect that the aim of the Satanic Temple is to demonstrate, in a tongue-in-cheek way, why the practice of religion has no place during civil functions such as meetings of the legislature or public schools. Whether or not those efforts are effective is not something I will argue about here. I think, however, there are better ways to address the issue than by giving the impression that the alternative to deity worship is demon worship.
As Christer Sturmark Wrote in To Light the Flame of Reason, Clear Thinking for the 21st Century:
“In a naturalistic world, not only divine beings are implausible, but so are supernatural forces, occult phenomena, and New Age claims. In compensation, though, in place of such imaginary “magical” stuff, when one ponders the natural world’s enormous subtlety and beauty, one feels a powerful sense of awe and fascination, without any need to resort to supernatural interpretations or explanations.”