So last night I was skimming through the official Church of Satan Info Pack, like you do, and I made an interesting discovery. Alongside such standard Satany things as, you know, eugenics, vengeance, naked-lady altars, it turns out that the official Church of Satan position on sex robots is: Yes, please!
In fact, they’re so into it that it’s point number four in their “five point plan to move society in directions that are considered to be beneficial to Satanists.”
Here’s their pitch:
Satanists advocate a new industry, the development and promotion of artificial human companions. These humanoids will be constructed to be as realistic as possible, and available to anyone who can afford one.
So poor people will have to make do with blow-up dolls, I guess.
Recognizing that the human animal often raises himself up through the denegration of another, this would provide a safe outlet for such behavior. Have the lover of your dreams, regardless of your own prowess; every man a king who can purchase his own subject; or contrarywise, buy the master you wish to serve.
That got a little bit dark, huh? Then again, this is the Church of, you know, SATAN.
Freedom of choice to satisfy your most secret desires with no-one to be bothered is now at hand. What could be better for blowing-off the tension that exists throughout our society, and promoting healthier interaction among true humans?
I can’t say I’m 100% with the Church of Satan on every issue, or even 1%, but I’m going to support them on this: Sex robots for Satanists — or anyone else who feels the need to “raise … himself up through the denegration of another.” Because it’s better to be horrible to inanimate objects than to human beings.
Isn’t their position rather logical ?
I mean, there is quite a lot of people who know their fetish is something they can never fulfill. It’s not particulary edgy to say that a robotic outlet for that would work. And thoses people can and do have normal husbands and wives, since it don’t correlate with being an horrible human being.
Of course, the position that a robot is not worth respect is debatable. If something is human like enough to serve as lover, he is likely to be worth at least the same rught as an animal.
OK, so I skimmed through the document (it’s at http://www.churchofsatan.com/docs/cosinfopack.pdf), and, yes, sex-bots, but it’s all packed full of Libertarian nonsense and racist dog-whistles:
Not to mention crypto-fascism and more racist dog-whistles.
What happened, Church of Satan? You were cool back when I was a teenager, but now you’ve sold out to The Man! Shame on you!
Church of Satan wasn’t cool back when you were a teenager, it’s been packed full of racist dog whistles and libertarian crypto-fascism since basically forever, “The Satanic Bible” has a bunch of that stuff floating around in more or less obvious forms, that was published in 69, and it’s always attracted that kind of crowd.
I always thought the Church of Satan was a parody???
Destructiveness toward inanimate objects is still indulging the destructive instinct. Mistreating a robot is still acting out purposeful mistreatment. In ancient Rome, the paterfamilias had the ultimate right of life or death over his family. We don’t think any of those “rights to destroy” are good or beneficial things. Still less would we want to entrust anything we cared about to people who indulge in such actions.
The Satanists are having their own libertasshole vs SJW feuds:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/10/31/when-satanism-met-the-internet/
(Yes, Breitbart, I know; but it’s the only place willing to publish SJW-hating Satanists.)
I weep for the current state of LaVeyan satanism but I’ve always been on the fence about the concept. Either it makes more sense to be purist atheist, or to go whole hog and do mock spells/rituals to Satan etc for the hell of it.
Being a jackass who finds the social contract distasteful and doesn’t see the issue with us developing lopsided relationships with highly humanoid machines, not so much.
Depends on which “Satanism” you’re looking at, basically. I’ve found that half of them are just people trolling the sort of people who get up in arms about Satanists.
I do appreciate the way Satanists troll Christian supremacist theocrats, but even though they’re like me atheists, not Satan worshipers, I never considered joining. Because there’s too much of a libertarian vibe.
Okay. My last post had a weirdly constructed sentence. Sorry. I blame the cold I’m coming down with.
I’m sort of impressed with the honesty of Satanists on this point, although it doesn’t make me want to hang out with them.
I think The She Creatures put a much better spin on the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFXn2rTa2QQ
I tried to read the Satanic Bible, and found it as unreadable as any other supposedly religious book. They have got a point here, but I don’t think that in the long term people being free to enact any act of violence on a human looking machine will benefit them, or society.
I did what you said and pretended that picture was of Anton LaVey with a sex robot and now my mind is in a bizarre place…
I don’t remember the religious Satanists being into such stupid crap back when I was a teenager and thought they sounded pretty cool. Stuff they put out on their websites back then was way more about respect for all life and an individualist lifestyle, but in a fairly obvious way as opposed to any libertarian ravings. Maybe I just didn’t get far enough into that crowd to encounter the real extremists.
To be clear, the Church of Satan may be obnoxious jerkwads, but the Satanic Temple folks are quite cool, although I think they fall into the “trolling Christians” camp. They are very much pro-choice (and have held counter-protests in support of Planned Parenthood) and pro religious freedom (they’re the ones who threatened to demand a statue of Baphomet on the Oklahoma State Capitol, since they also had the Ten Commandments).
So yeah, some “Satanists” are quite cool, and others…not so much.
This is in Iain M Banks’ Against a Dark Background.
Some of the human-like androids ever built are “missing” and believed to have been kidnapped “for the commission of acts which would be illegal when inflicted on humans”. They are sentient, self-aware, and effectively immortal, so that really is dark.
The Church of Satan has always been “Libertarianism in Black Robes” more or less. I think LaVey was even pretty clear about that at one point?
The Satanic Temple, however, is the “let’s troll Christians”, which can vary from being pretty assholic to extremely effective trolling of anything dealing with the erosion of the separation of church and state. (Over time they seem to have focused more and more on anything that is about subtly entrenching Christianity as the de facto state religion just because it is the most dominant.)
This article seems inconsistent with this blog’s past familiarity with a central concept of BDSM: Fantasy is okay, full stop.
While the article begrudgingly allows that if Satanists want to degrade an object representing a human being, that’s better than the alternative, there is a clear moral judgment being made that the desire to degrade is itself worthy of condemnation. Yet the desire to degrade or be degraded is, to put it mildly, at the root of a hell of a lot of BDSM play.
Since consent is a non-issue with an inanimate object such as a robot, the negative moral judgment must be coming from somewhere other than the issue of consent. So what is it? Is it all kinky people who deserve this sneering dismissal of their dark fantasies, or just certain kinky people? If the latter, how do you choose which kinky people with dark fantasies deserve judgment and which do not?
I’m just speculating here, but are MRAs literally the Devil then?
On a personal note, I’ve just found out my in-laws are Trump supporters. I didn’t think they could get worse..
That’s really bad logic. If you get off on denigrating someone else, this won’t really work if its an “inanimate object” that can’t feel pain or denigration or humiliation – because by definition then you can’t denigrate it. If a robot can feel pain, humiliation and so on, it should have basic rights. There’s a reason why animal cruelty is illegal.
It’s also bad grammar, because the object here is “another” referring to another human animal. Duh.
@EJtoO
Every time I read “the alternative to left and right”, I translate “yay, fascism”. 60% of the time, it works every time.
Because spiritual growth is hard, our church wants you to keep being assholes, just dwell in your assholery with an inanimate object. For now.
I suppose growing up is like never the answer to these types, eh?
@Bernardo Soares:
Pretty much, yes.
@dhag
I feel your pain. Many of mine are as well. On the plus side, hatred of Trump and embarrassment of her relatives supporting him finally got my fiance to pay attention to politics.
@Ohlmann No sir. Numerous stifles have shown that consumption of pornography reduces sexual satisfaction and that *violent* porn leads to increased tendency toward violence directed at one’s partner and is specifically tied to interpreting views of women, women’s issues, and rape in a light manner.
TRIGGER WARNING: rape
How much more, then, would physically acting out these fantasies on a humanoid victim? Frigid Farah (a sex doll that says “no” and begs you to stop raping it is chilling enough without it kicking and fighting back like a real rape victim.