Ask a lonely Pagan who doesn't know what his beliefs are or would be called, anything

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Glad I found your post. I’ve been wondering something since meeting a woman briefly.

She was wearing two separate pendants: a star of david and a cross (not a crucifix), and I didn’t notice if they were on the same necklace or not. I thought she may have been a Messianic Jew, but those pendants superimposed both images on each other I when I googled them.

All my sister would say is that they don’t mean what I think they mean; she’s my go-to person for non-Catholic spirituality questions. I don’t know if she just didn’t know or if she didn’t want to tell me. If you can shed some light on the question, I’d appreciate it. Unfortunately, the nature of the conversation with the woman precluded me asking her.
 
I grew up in a Christian family, not a Catholic family, my family doesn’t really like Catholicism; since they latest Pope, and a few other things, so I never listened to it. I could try sometime. Thanks or the idea! 🙂

And the only thing I’ve ever seen from C. S. Lewis is the Chronicles of Narnia, but I don’t remember if it was him that made those. God, it’s been a while since I was a child, haha

Thanks again, though!
 
Yes, he was the author of the Narnia books. He also wrote lots of Christian books for adults. Screwtape Letters is very good, as is Mere Christianity.
 
Oh, duh! I didn’t actually ask 😄 Since you said ask anything, and since my sister led me to believe that the brace of religious symbols mean something other than what I think, I was hoping you could at least shed a little light on it. IDK, maybe she was a messianic Jew.
 
ah, I see. I misunderstood, sorry, haha. Well, my only guess is that she wanted to wear them because either 1) she enjoys wearing them, 2) she is secretly doing it for some religious/spiritual purposes, which is fine, and 3) she could possibly have some Messianic Jew intentions, like you stated.

Although, if she was a Messianic Jew I don’t think she’d be too inclusive about it, since most of your family (I’m assuming) is either Christian or Catholic. I don’t know all that much about Messianic Jews, though, so those are my ideas.
 
JoeVaghn said:
the ‘supreme deity’ is not an entity. Whatever exists, exists through it. A simpler way to understand it is with a jar. Now this jar can contain things, but the jar itself does nothing but contain that which exists in the jar .
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This analogy is a bit hard to follow because the jar itself is an entity. I think I understand what you’re getting at, nonetheless, but it’s hard to wrap my head around for a few reasons.

Another user referred you to Aquinas, and while I’d recommend Aquinas on ontological matters like this, I’d suggest going to third parties since Aquinas’ Summa is very dense and uses terminology that would be difficult to grasp without sufficient background. Nevertheless, one of the broad conceptual frameworks he uses is that of essence and existence where essence is what something is and existence is that something is, to put it in simple terms. Aquinas states that whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused by constituent principles of that essence (like a human’s essence entails the capacity for laughter) or by an exterior agent (as fire causes water to be hot). But it is impossible for a thing’s existence to be caused by its essential constituent principles because nothing can cause its own existence (it must exist, first, in order to act or cause). Just as a stick on fire is not fire itself (it is on fire by participation in the cause, “fire”), any entity which exists but is not existence itself, does so by participation. Therefore, any being for which existence is not a part of its essence, exists through participation, or by being caused by an external agent.

Now, you might say that existence is a part of the essence of all of the gods you believe in. The gods, however, differ in their capacities or essence. This would mean that something necessarily had to precede the existence of these gods to establish the genera from which the gods would arise (or at the very least, there would be a causal order to which the gods were generated, whereby the privations of one god were attributed to the essence of another). Co-eternality just doesn’t work, because if the play of the gods was not orchestrated by an intelligent being who could create the gods within mutually exclusive domains, then you’re left with some unexplained “magic” of the gods self-organizing in such a manner.

I also take issue with the idea of a hierarchical system. This would imply that, were there disagreement, the lesser god could always be quashed by the greater. And if a “coup” was possible, the universe would be in complete chaos. But we know that not to be the case. We have well-established scientific laws that have yielded great predictive successes. So if there’s never a “coup” and the gods always agree, what distinguishes them? If the god of air and water never quarrel (bubbles appearing out of nothing at the depths of the ocean, for example) then a merger between the gods would be feasible with no perceptible difference. This merging process could proceed on ad infinitum until you arrive at one god.
 
But I think my simplest objection is that the gods just dont seem worthy of any kind of praise in and of themselves (they’re just ethereal, immortal humans with powers that seemingly do nothing in contradiction to how we currently characterize the world). Beyond that, I think this broaches the subject of the Law of Parismony (or Occam’s Razor). There are vastly more assumptions that must be made to justify that many polytheistic deities (or at least, I haven’t seen it reasoned out in as simple a manner as a monotheistic god), so why would I believe in an infinite number of gods when I can believe in one all-encompassing god with far fewer assumptions? As soon as you start down the metaphysically untidy path of polytheism, you need (or “discover”) more and more gods to keep your system afloat.
 
This is partly why I am a pantheist, it just makes the most sense and answers the most questions. I don’t understand either the need or desire for a personal deity and all the weird mental gymnastics that inevitably follow. Nothing about the Universe suggests a personal divine being to me.
 
Calliope said:
This is partly why I am a pantheist, it just makes the most sense and answers the most questions. I don’t understand either the need or desire for a personal deity and all the weird mental gymnastics that inevitably follow. Nothing about the Universe suggests a personal divine being to me.
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Personal deities are a rather recent innovation of the Protestant Reformation. Catholics don’t believe in a personal God. The attributes of God that have been derived from reason according to the Catholic faith include simplicity, goodness, perfection, infinity, ubiquity, immutability (unchanging), eternity, and unity. There’s a lot of nuance in those definitions, but none of them suggest an anthropomorphic cosmic vending machine.
 
Interesting take, while I certainly wouldn’t consider Jesus Christ to be a vending machine, I do think it’s hard to imagine a more personal version of God than Christ is believed to be, or hard to imagine a more anthropomorphic God than well, a human that is actually fully God.

Are you Catholic?
 
gregoryphealy said:
Catholics don’t believe in a personal God.
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I don’t know why you said this, since you’re profile claims to be Catholic. But this isn’t true. How can you say we don’t believe that Jesus is a personal God? God coming down and being incarnated as a baby to save us from ourselves doesn’t get any more personal. I certainly believe and trust in Him as my personal Savior.
458 The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God’s love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him."72 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."73
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459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me."74 On the mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands: "Listen to him!"75 Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: "Love one another as I have loved you."76 This love implies an effective offering of oneself, after his example.77
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460 The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”:78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79
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ShowersofRoses said:
I don’t know why you said this, since you’re profile claims to be Catholic
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I think I know exactly where he’s coming from. It comes from years upon years upon years of Evangelicals telling you point-blank to your face that Catholics are destined to hell because we deny Jesus as our personal Lord’n’Savior.

(We’re also condemned because we deny the Resurrection. It’s why we have the body on the cross. If we taught and believed in the Resurrection we would have an empty cross. Truth.)
 
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Lonely? Wanna be friends?
How’s life?

PS I was Pagan too and reading through this thread was a bit similar to you.
 
Lonely? Wanna be friends?
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I’ll think about it, but for right now I need to stay alone. I sincerely appreciate the offer. 🙂
PS I was Pagan too and reading through this thread was a bit similar to you.
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Ah, I see. What did you personally believe when you were a Pagan?
 
And a great, succinct primer on Catholic faith is the Catechism of St. Pius X.
 
I was more on the reconstructionist Helleist side but I was a big relativist. I thought close to the exact same thing you do about deities for everything. I also though the number was relative and that the way we each experience a belief system is nothing more than personal calling, but I was against Christianity because it is absolutist. That changed when I kinda realized that the world has ugly aspects and that I had done some majorly messed up things. It is a long story. Why do you need to stay lonely? I’m not trying to convert you, I just know that being lonely is hard.
 
Hi Joe,
Kudos to you for your desire to look into Catholicism, we are very glad you are here. It is a good thing to be open minded about your spiritual journey. Welcome!
 
IsaiahSpirit said:
I’d recommend starting with Bishop Robert Barron’s youtube videos.
You many want to start with The Church’s understanding of Genesis.
Peace be with you.
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Also Father Michael Schmitz, he is great!
 
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