AntiTheist: can you elaborate on the above sentence? I can’t tell what is your opinion of neopagans
Yeah, sorry, I made that a little unclear.
My opinion of neopagans is that most of the them – like most other religionists – are well-intentioned boobs who believe a lot of silly things.
I was pointing out that just as some Catholics embrace this lame little narrative wherein they’re white knights battling the forces of evil, neopagans have the opposite kind of narrative: “I’m super-good white light happy servant of the fluffy bunny who draws on the power of nature to connect myself to the wind!”
Holly:
First of all, you are free to believe that demonic spirits are “make believe” if you want. Meanwhile, I’ll choose to believe in the fact of their existence.
It’s not a matter of “choice” or what we “want” to be true. If something is a “fact,” then there is some way to determine that it’s a fact. That’s what makes it a “fact” – you don’t choose to believe facts. Either there’s evidence or there’s not.
There’s no evidence that spirits are real – and if spirits were real, it would be the easiest thing in the world to demonstrate. You could, for example, choose a word out of a dictionary and write it on a piece of paper; then, an occultist sitting in a different house far away from you could summon up a spirit and have it go read the word and report it back. If spirits were real, the occultist could do this over and over again under controlled conditions.
Yet, strangely, no one seems to be able to do this…hmmm…it’s almost like there are no such things as spirits after all!
And in fact, that is precisely the correct conclusion to draw.
If I remember correctly, you’re the poster who suddenly announced she was becoming a Wiccan and then announced she was becoming a Buddhist or something like that. If I can be frank for a moment, one symptom of thinking that belief is a matter of choice – instead of evidence – is that you bounce around between all sorts of beliefs because you’re being led by your fantasies, not by anything substantial. I predict that indulging in the kind of fantasy-mongering that threads like this encourage can only be bad for your mental health.
Second, what would you have me to do? Post some links to a bunch of Occult sites???
No, I would have you come up with a specific thing you’d like to discuss so that we can.
For example, you mention witchcraft in your OP, and I’d be glad to tell you what I know about it – it is largely a bunch of feminist sewing circles and a whole lot of “solitary” teenage kids who are spiritually disaffected from patriarchal religions but not wise enough to give up belief in the supernatural altogether. A lot of these solitaries have really bad taste in clothing and music.
Interestingly, though Wiccans like to claim that their religion is as old as the hills, it’s hardly more than 60 or 70 years old. It was started in the 40’s by Gerald Gardner, who made most of it up and stole the rest from earlier sorces like Aradia: Gospel of the Witches or the rituals of Aleister Crowley (some parts of the supposedly ancient Wiccan “Book of Shadows” are lifted directly from his writings).
Gardner was your typical dirty old man, and he added a lot of elements to satisfy his own proclivities, ritual nudity (“skyclad”) and light scourging of the buttocks being obvious examples. He liked the idea of starting a cult of young, nubile “witches” who would get naked and slap each other’s butts. Ironic, that this feminist religion was created by a patriarch.
Modern day Wicca has transformed significantly from these roots, since most new “traditions” and solitary practitioners make up their own rituals and ideas as they go. Generally, they worship a god and a goddess, and traditions vary as to the rank and identity of these entities. Most seem to regard them as manifestations of a pantheistic, panentheistic kind of vague feel-good, I-am-all-one-with-the-world force.
Their behavioral code is “harm none,” a ridiculous idea that can only be selectively applied, since life always feeds on life. Most of them believe in “karma,” the dumb idea that doing “bad things” – apparently by their own standards of “bad”? – will result in “bad” things happening to you.
Their poor understanding of science – specifically, the idea that matter is energy and vice versa – leads them to conclude that their thoughts and “spells” can actually affect reality – and some will actually cite a poorly-understood version of quantum mechanics to support this nutty idea.
Those are my initial impressions of witchcraft. It’s all very silly, harmless fluff. Any specific questions?
