i personally think that this is very silly, and don't imagine much of any context where i'd have much time for a ritual that upholds my freedom by reciting pre-written lines that somebody is feeding me. but, that's not what this actually is; this is a way to substitute the social role of the church into the lives of atheists, and it's success depends on the success of the community.

there has always been a reaction against religion, and one will continue to exist for as long as religion does. and, in fact, as religion is the state, a continuing reaction against religion will continue to exist so long as the state does.

in antiquity, you had the philosophers and mathematicians, who argued against superstition by appealing to naturalism and observation. they organized into cults, like the pythagoreans, and met at academies that countered the monasteries. when the christians and muslims destroyed all the knowledge of the ancient world in a fit of mass stupidity, this role was taken over by the northern barbarians, who had been slowly developing a concept of individualism and freedom to overpower the roman systems of servility and slavery that the textbooks mistakenly refer to as "civilization". france is named after the franks, which was not a barbarian tribe in the ethnic sense but rather a confederation of "free men". and, when the barbarians were finally defeated, an era of relative peace, the renaissance, brought the philosophers and mathematicians back again, culminating in the revolutionary movements associated with the masonic lodges of the enlightenment.

i made this point during occupy, and i'm not sure how many people listened, but camping in a park struck me as a lesser concept then starting up a lodge. neither the french nor american revolutions could have happened without the lodge as organizing body, which is why the church-state went to such great lengths to demonize them, in the end. and, the point is to keep it a little bit underground, so the cops can't come in and break it up.

but, there's a danger here that we saw come out of the reign of terror and the fake religions set up in the aftermath of the collapse of the ancien regime: the religion of reason was every bit as brutal as the religion of contradiction, because the root cause of the brutality is not the theology but the ritual.

so, it's tempting to see these as revolutionary bodies, but in the end i would advise treating them like any other religion, because the truth is that they'll act like any other religion should they gain any influence.

if you have friends in this movement, you should be helping them to reassert their individuality away from this group identity and encouraging them to avoid their scripted talking points and learn to think more for themselves.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5488632/satanic-temple-canada/