I'd change Tenent IV to something like "The freedoms of others should be respected" only. The rest of it is debatable and in my opinion against the principle I and in general against civility. Instead of "the right to offend" it could be changed to "the right to disagree"
The Satanic Temple
I noticed there wasn't a TST Lemmy community. The Satanic Temple is a modern satanic religion that aims to promote human rights and compassion. Check out their about page on their official website at https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us. Note that this community is not an official affiliation. TST is also separate and not affiliated with the Church of Satan, who have a slightly different viewpoint of what satanism truly is. Dunno what to post in here, but maybe some will search for this and take part. Hello!
That "Freedom to offend" was weird. Is that not a contradiction, a paradox of sorts? Certaintly, I have the freedom to be respected and not being bullied. If someone offends/bullies me, he is violating that freedom, no?
Also, "Struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit". It would be nice to have a definition of "justice". Is killing/torturing someone for a crime they committed seen as justice in the TST?
To be clear, you're not going to get definitive answers from anyone on canonical meanings for the tenets because they're open to interpretation. They were written fairly broadly by design to accommodate various worldviews (and likely to be interesting to discuss).
For me, Tenet IV which talks about the freedom of others to offend is not a paradox. You have every right to remove yourself from the company of those who are offending you, but they in turn have the right to be offensive. Now, that is not to say that people who choose to offend are absolved of the consequences of their actions. In our Satanic social circles for example, if people are offensive, they are removed and are free to go be offensive elsewhere. Therefore, the personal choice to offend as a Satanist is one that must be taken deliberately. I see this tenet as a caution against pushing for restrictive free speech in the public square lest we lose our own free speech which may, through no direct intent of our own, offend people like fundamentalist Christians, for example.
Tenet II which is about the struggle for justice has been kicked around a lot in discussions. The other part of the wording that people ponder is the meaning of "prevail". There are obviously various meanings for both of those words. Justice could be moral justice, social justice, legal justice... I've seen some people question if it even means retributive/vigilante justice and I think that's obviously a bridge too far and incompatible with the rest of the tenets, which are meant to be understood holistically. As far as "prevail" goes, I interpret it to be more of a synonym for "guide" or "inspire" than "supercede".
Thank you for the insightful reply. I think the "freedom to offend" comes down to personal opinion. I am honestly against it. I understand your viewpoint, and I am all for general freedom of speech, as it is an important metric for an improving society. However, imagine a scenario in which removing oneself from the situation is hard. Say a school. Should student A be free to offend student B? It is my view that student B should feel safe in school. He/She should not have to wake up and dread going to school.
If you have no freedom to offend; then you have no freedom of speech.
For example, if some one espouses and expresses a truly idiotic political philosophy; and you have no freedom to offend… then you cannot truly express your view on that philosophy.
As an example of how the fourth tenant might work, say that I tell you that your comment offends me. What would you think?
Do you have the right to say what you said?
Should you be forbidden from saying it?
Should I have the expectation that you take down your comment?
You probably answered "yes", "no", "no" because you don't see your comment as offensive. You may even find my assertion that your comment is offensive to, itself, be offensive. What do we do the?
Without the right to offend we get into a lot of unending arguments where each person asserts offense and both may actually be right!