𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘮

4. - misunderstandings

The Satanic Temple (TST) website and the Church of Satan (CoS) website have great FAQ section for these kinds of questions. I will put some of them in here and add some of my own points.

Does the TST worship Satan?
No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The Satanic Temple believes that religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition. As such, we do not promote a belief in a personal Satan. To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions. Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world - never the reverse.

Does the CoS Satanists worship Satan?
No, we don't. Satanists are atheists. We see the universe as being indifferent to us, and so all morals and values are subjective human constructions.
Our position is to be self-centered, with ourselves being the most important person (the "God") of our subjective universe, so we are sometimes said to worship ourselves. Our current High Priest Gilmore calls this the step moving from being an atheist to being an "I-Theist."
Satan to us is a symbol of pride, liberty and individualism, and it serves as an external metaphorical projection of our highest personal potential. We do not believe in Satan as a being or person.

Is Satanism allied with Wicca, VooDoo, or other non-Christian or neo-pagan religions?
No. Satanism is an atheist philosophy, hence it is not congruent with any other philosophy or religion which endorses the belief in supernatural entities, whether they be considered gods or devils

Do CoS Satanists perform sacrifices?
No. We are atheists. The only people who perform sacrifices are those who believe in supernatural beings who would consider a sacrifice to be some form of payment for a request or form of worship. Since we do not believe in supernatural beings, there is no reason for a Satanist to make a sacrifice of any sort. (Same goes for TST Satanists, obviously.)

Does the TST promote evil?
No. The Satanic Temple holds to the basic premise that undue suffering is bad, and that which reduces suffering is good. We do not believe in symbolic "evil". We acknowledge blasphemy is a legitimate expression of personal independence from counter-productive traditional norms.

Do CoS Satanists ritually abuse people?
No. Our ritual is basically a form of self-therapy and is most often done in private. The three basic rituals are presented in by Anton Szandor LaVey and these do not demonstrate any type of abusive behavior.

What about the Satanic Panic?
The "Satanic panic" has been an ongoing mania in society, especially since the 1980s in the USA. It stirs up fear and anxiety by suggesting that worshipers of Satan are attacking churches and individuals. They believe that theistic Satanists are the cause of child abuse and murder throughout the country. They tend to think of non-Satanic groups, such as Wiccans, Muslims, Sikhs, and others, as devil-worshipers. The truth is that none of these groups worship Satan, just as non-theistic Satanists also do not.

Please read this article about the Satanic Panic, if you want to learn how it all started. I could copy the whole article and paste it into here because all of it is very interesting and relevant. (I'm not going to do that though because it's really, really long.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
Here are the first few Paragraphs:

The Satanic panic is a moral panic* consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and powerful world elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.
("Do not harm young children." -The ninth satanic rule of the Church of Satan.)
Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with DID (then called multiple personality disorder) and anti-government conspiracy theories.
Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences, as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping pedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."