What is a pagan??

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In South Korea, they were experimenting on creating a half human half animal creature…they did indeed stop the project…heard that stoppage from an aggressive atheist who was on here last year…

It is pagan to take the life of innocent babies for free sex, and it is also pagan, in my mind, to take human life at its earliest stages for stem cell research, when it has been rent by failure…but there is a future in adult stem cells…

An 18 year old in Canada had stem cells removed from a part of his body that were used to regenerate another…

Pagan…offering their children as sacrifice…modern Molochs…
 
In South Korea, they were experimenting on creating a half human half animal creature…they did indeed stop the project…heard that stoppage from an aggressive atheist who was on here last year…

It is pagan to take the life of innocent babies for free sex, and it is also pagan, in my mind, to take human life at its earliest stages for stem cell research, when it has been rent by failure…but there is a future in adult stem cells…

An 18 year old in Canada had stem cells removed from a part of his body that were used to regenerate another…

Pagan…offering their children as sacrifice…modern Molochs…
If it gives you any comfort (and I doubt it will), I will state for the record that creating human-animal chimeras is not part of the standard ritual and theology of paganism. I would venture to say that none of us comes to these spiritual paths with the ambition of winding up like Marlon Brando’s mad geneticist character in Island of Dr. Moreau. (I can’t vouch for the chaos magick guy. They’re a bit odd, and spend too much time at sci-fi conventions). I am doing some work on gene expression related to buckthorn trees, but I’m not contemplating creating any new monsters. And anyway, even the darkest shadows in my soul and imagination could not conceive of anything worse than a natural buckthorn tree.

The work you reference is interesting, but it’s short-term ethical implications are not as alarming as the seem. As far as I know, the work has mostly gone on in Shanghai and at Newcastle University and Kings College in London. They weren’t creating a ā€œnew creatureā€ in the fullest sense. They were implanting some human DNA into cows eggs. The idea is to let the embryo divide 6 or 7 days, terminate it, and harvest the stem cell which will then have and express the same bad genes that give people inherited forms of parkinson’s disease etc. for future research. The reality is they only survived 3 days or so. No one is proposing to implant such an embryo and let it be born, and they don’t even remotely have that capability now. It’s an ethically dodgy area to be sure, but it should also be noted that they developed this in part so they wouldn’t have to keep harvesting and sacrificing human eggs and embryos. So my point is this is not inherently ā€œpagan.ā€ None of the scientists involved are well-known pagans. They may well be atheists or Christian insofar as they identify themselves.

I must confess you lost me on the child sacrifice/free sex equation. As a pagan, I get ā€œfreeā€ sex because my lovers and I adore and respect each other and form very deep bonds. I have no children and don’t need to sacrifice anyone else’s in the process. We’re not Aztec priests and since Copernicus sorted out the whole Earth/Sun relationship, there’s no good reason to make blood offerings to make the sun come back each day.

"May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, and may all the atheists you meet be non-aggressive…"
 
Kenofken,

Sorry about my edginess on an earlier post…Welcome to CAF and your civil discourse. I wasn’t very much the same to you.

Note, I spoke of one – one experiment in S. Korea.

Human life is sacred. I believe animal life is sacred and not to manipulate creatures…I think it cruel…you can’t put a timeline from one minutae of a second of when an embryo is an unrecognizable, miniscule tissue to then it becoming human…it is human and spirit from its conception. It is a crime against nature to warp God’s creation…and the best I can point out is creating life forms.

The original sin was man wanting to become god.

I am considering all the different aspects of paganism. I read the history of Mexico and know about Aztecan human sacrifice to ensure that the Sun will return the next day…do you know about the Tilma of Guadalupe…How Mary had her image placed on Juan Diego’s cactus tilma that is still on display today in Mexico…she spoke in pictographs to the Mexican people, their language, how she stood in front of the Sun with hands folded in prayer as a creature, not a goddess.

(By the way, did you know that Bishop Zumarraga made the ruling in Mexico at that time that women and girls were given a right to an education hundreds of years before North American females were? Read up on the documents of the Inquisition as well. You come across as a very intelligent person…just make sure you don’t fall into the spin about the Catholic Church like alot of other Americans do.)

Yes, I also note you are not a moloch…but abortion is the bloody sacrifice for immorality.

We don’t hear the words immoral much in the secular world…and in that context I consider it pagan.

Paganism is worshipping creatures, not the created…to make rituals of life forms as a celebration is a human event…it is a matter of going to the source of life to recognize and worship the Creator. All people are created with the innate faculties to perceive higher realities, to ponder eschatalogical questions of our source, our way, the meaning of creation around us, and the end of our journey.
 
The idea is an excercise in double think. Join the religion convince yourself you really believe till you get what you want and then leave for another.

Most Pagans hate Chaos Magicians for that reason…
It is pagan to take the life of innocent babies for free sex, and it is also pagan, in my mind, to take human life at its earliest stages for stem cell research, when it has been rent by failure…but there is a future in adult stem cells…
Madam I am a pro-life pagan and terms like this is why many Pagans end up not being more active in the pro-life movement we are repeatedly made to feel like we are not welcomed there. Nevermind the majority of abartions are procured by Christians and it was CHRISTIANS on the supreme court that brought us this mess.
We don’t hear the words immoral much in the secular world…and in that context I consider it pagan.
In my experiance many Pagans have more morals than 99.99% of Christians I’ve meet. Of course this is when the no true scotsman fallency is used.

As for human sacrifice by the ancients yes it happened to prisoners of war and Sparta was bad on killing unfit babies. But never forget it was Christians on the supreme court and Christians in the abortion mills that have taken so many lives that it makes what happened in the past look like a thumb prick…
 
Again, when I use the term pagan, I am referring to that what is perverted between God, man, himself, he towards others, and towards creatures.
 
and I forgot to say God bless those pagans who honor human life…so you should share more with us your beliefs because in all my aged years, this is the first time I hear a Druid is for the sanctity of human life…
 
Jharek,

Thank you for explaining that…interesting…I was on a case yesterday and had some free time…there was an article in National Geographic about the Druids and Celts…and people were getting ā€˜back to their roots’…

I also came across an article that was akin to a past reference that made me use the word secular to describe pagan…again, I tend to see paganism as a distortion of person to God and the world around self that does not lead the person to development and wholesomeness…

The article in National Geographic was on the 20th century…and it was such a great century of genocide in the name of the state…vs. let’s say, the Catholic Church…I saw many countries listed, and using my calculator 71 plus million people were slaughtered in the name of the state…and so may be the ā€˜state’ as the arbitrator of life, who lives and who dies…is pagan.

I am of Irish-Welsh descent…my grandfather coming from County Cavan…I went to the church’s 100th anniversary with my second cousin this past October, and sat next to the original baptismal font used for my Brady grandmother’s initiation into the Body of Christ.
 
LOL It was a D&D reference! Thank you for getting it! I am an avid D&D player. 😃
 
She sounds like my son…he is always coming up with something…
 
Yeah, what is that? You worship ā€œchaosā€? Have you been watching Jeff Goldblum’s character in ā€œJurassic Parkā€ a little too closely? šŸ˜›
😃 That WAS my favorite movie growing up. So much so that I wanted to be a palaeontologist at age four(and know what one was, and could pronounce it) No, though, (sorry for being late getting back to all of you, School has cut down on my forum times.:o) I am a Discordian. Also, I don’t do any sort of majik. It’s not in me to mess with things which I do not have a full understanding of. Discordian is a Zen/pagan/anything you can throw in there. It’s basically the reverse of a lot of religions, how they are very concerned about order. My religion states that basically chaos is just as worthy as order, and that there is really no difference between order and chaos. Our matriarch is Eris, goddess of Chaos and Discord. So worship was probably not the best word choice. I basically just see things through a different lens.
 
She sounds like my son…he is always coming up with something…
If you were referring to me, I;m surprisingly not making it up. Not many people know about the Discoridan faith, because it’s tiny. Really tiny.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian

It’s a very strange faith, and many people have no idea about it, but it does exist. Barely anybody has heard of it, so it does sound made up
 
Well, my son has posters on the wall and they scare me. I f reaked out about one and I thought he was into something weird and then explained what it really was…

How about the Unmoved Mover? It is for real as well.
 
What kind of posters? I could probably help you out as far as what they are and what they stand for. I’m still a young’un,(well not too young, almost 21) so I know a lot about pop-culture. šŸ™‚

I have never heard of the Unmoved Mover. So I am not sure what that is. 🤷
 
Jharek,

Thank you for explaining that…interesting…I was on a case yesterday and had some free time…there was an article in National Geographic about the Druids and Celts…and people were getting ā€˜back to their roots’…

I also came across an article that was akin to a past reference that made me use the word secular to describe pagan…again, I tend to see paganism as a distortion of person to God and the world around self that does not lead the person to development and wholesomeness…

The article in National Geographic was on the 20th century…and it was such a great century of genocide in the name of the state…vs. let’s say, the Catholic Church…I saw many countries listed, and using my calculator 71 plus million people were slaughtered in the name of the state…and so may be the ā€˜state’ as the arbitrator of life, who lives and who dies…is pagan.
Well careful with Nat. Geo and History channel there as accurate with us as they are with you Catholics. Also as you keep using Pagan as another term for murderer I must ask how you’d feel if Catholic was used as another term for Child molestor.

Especally as all those nations that commited genocide where Christian!
If you were referring to me, I;m surprisingly not making it up. Not many people know about the Discoridan faith, because it’s tiny. Really tiny.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian

It’s a very strange faith, and many people have no idea about it, but it does exist. Barely anybody has heard of it, so it does sound made up
I’ve heard of it a few times. I even have my Pope card around herre somewhere. Oh consider yourself a Saint now.
 
:eek: Really!!! I’ve been trying to get a copy of the Principia Discordia for ages! I just have no money… You, sir or mam, are awesome šŸ‘
 
Cyberwolf,

Child molester? Where did that come from?? Have you been watching the public school system?

The American Public schools should be your point of interest…100x’s greater than anywhere else…do you know the median for perversion of any social institution? 3%

better watch out for those 3% perverts among the Druids…

My son had a picture of this young man with a gun on the back of his bedroom door like he was waiting for someone to walk in…and then there was another one that looked like a demon guy and he said that was the symbol of this band…and then he proceeded to tell me this symbol of the band was OK because they played good music…he has spoken of nihilism, has been studying Buddhism…loves religion…very compassionate and was a vegan until I told him I didn’t have the time to learn how to do that right and he was loosing weight…he’d make a good monk…
 
Cyberwolf,

Child molester? Where did that come from?? Have you been watching the public school system?

The American Public schools should be your point of interest…100x’s greater than anywhere else…do you know the median for perversion of any social institution? 3%

better watch out for those 3% perverts among the Druids…

My son had a picture of this young man with a gun on the back of his bedroom door like he was waiting for someone to walk in…and then there was another one that looked like a demon guy and he said that was the symbol of this band…and then he proceeded to tell me this symbol of the band was OK because they played good music…he has spoken of nihilism, has been studying Buddhism…loves religion…very compassionate and was a vegan until I told him I didn’t have the time to learn how to do that right and he was loosing weight…he’d make a good monk…
Hm, I think the demon one is the band Disturbed or Iron Maiden. Both are very good metal bands. Disturbed is very active in suicide prevention, because the lead singer’s girlfriend committed suicide, so at the end of their song ā€œInto the Fireā€ they have a suicide crisis line number for those who are in danger of suicide. They just picked a demon-looking creature as their mascot. They’re pretty humanitarian. šŸ™‚ I don’t know much about Iron Maiden, but if he looked like a zombie, then it’s Iron Maiden, a very old, famous metal band. His name is Eddy. They have good music, and have a lot of interesting lyrics. I don’t really don’t listen to them much though. I don’t know what the gun one is, I’d need to see what it looks like. It might be a movie poster. 🤷

Your son sounds like a good kid. Vegan is hard. It’s good that he is learning about things. I’ve also studied Buddhism, and a lot of other religions. I am even taking religion courses in college, so I learn a lot about all kinds of religion. I know a lot of Catholicism, because I went to Catholic school for 18 years. I also know about various other religions. It’s good to have a passion for learning. And compassion is something the world can never have enough of.šŸ‘
 
Well, Eris, you have a very sweet personality…

My son was very popular. I had to put him across town in the inner city so we could continue to pay for Catholic middle school. He decided to go to their high school that has alot of inner city kids. He got away with making fun of everybody. He was prince of the junior prom and king of the senior prom and came with a bag over his head.

He is my last child. I was getting his graduation announcements going and he wanted to show up with this stocking hat on going way above his head and his hair sticking out on the sides, wearing this NW plaid shirt. We argued all the way up the freeway. He is very intellectual. He was pretty angry when his hat was off, but each shot got better. So I told my friends this was the downtown NW look…when I got home, my whole face got inflamed…the stress of it raising kids in these pagan days…then it was just getting him to the graduation ceremony, and after 30 years I am done…and it shows.
 
I have not read all of the posts, so if this is redundant, please ignore me and forgive me.

There are lots of ways to describe ā€œpagansā€, but I think the best way to approach it is to first consider what ā€œpaganismā€ is, since ā€œpagansā€ would be those who adhere to it.

Again, there are lots of ways of describing paganism, but one sticks in my mind as perhaps the most appropriately descriptive.

Paganism is a religion in which one acknowledges a being or beings superior to oneself and which one attempts to control by various means to (almost always) worldly ends.

So, for example, if one sacrifices bulls to Apollo, the purpose is to bend Apollo to my will, so he will favor my ventures. If one sacrifices one’s children to Moloch, one is doing the same thing, in order, supposedly, to obtain material prosperity. If one sacrifices enemies to an Aztec god (can’t remember the name) the corn will grow and the sun will continue to shine. If one flawlessly recites the formulations in the Book of the Dead, the mummified human will pass through the tests posited by ancient Egyptian religion.

In virtually every version of paganism, the superior beings are limited or flawed (and thus often many and specialized) yet they have power to affect events; almost always of a terrestrial nature. In paganism, one posits something the god or goddess desires, whether it be the blood of bulls, children or enemies, or (as with the Greeks) the very smell of beef roasting and the taste of wine poured out on the ground for them.

Paganism is not so very far from witchcraft and is frequently encountered as an acknowledged accompaniment. In witchcraft, again, one posits some kind of superior being, perhaps Gaia, perhaps ā€œthe goddessā€, perhaps a literal Satan (usually cleaned up). Through various formulations, spells, practices, gifts, etc, one attempts to bend the superior being to the will of the devotee. Magic is the ā€œfruitā€ of it at the margin. In magic, one appropriates the powers of the superior beings (controls them) through spells or charms or whatever, and utilizes those powers in favor of the devotee.

It is fundamentally evil in that it is an attempt (however, perhaps, unwitting) to control God.

Christians are often accused of being pagan, or superstitious or whatever, and there is some truth to it in many cases. But properly speaking, the Christian offers his sacrifices, his troubles, his acts, to God. The true Christian acknowledges that God cannot, in any manner be controlled. He can only be asked. And He may grant or not. He may deny in this way but grant in that way. He may deny in full, yet grant something we need but don’t know about. He may deny totally. The God of the Christians does not desire the blood of bulls or anything other than our love. We show our love in our thoughts, our conversations with Him and in our actions. We cannot control Him even through our love. But, as St. Therese of Lisieux said, we who unconditionally love Him have no fear of Him, notwithstanding that His power is utterly beyond our slightest control.

The true Christian, however, acknowledges that God has, in some measure, through becoming man, adopted man and, to some degree, and explicitly, granted to man some of the nature of Divinity, in spiritual ways; thus lifting man above the purely natural even in this world. For example, He gave to men (under limited circumstances) the power to forgive sin; to speak with granted authority regarding what the Will of God is under limited circumstances. And so on.

But the Christian is always a supplicant and a conduit. He is never the controller. He does not purport to fully comprehend the Will of God or attempt to control His Providence. Rather than telling the gods what they must do, the true Christian asks God what He wants the supplicant to do.

And so, when it comes to paganism, it is not only the Wiccan formulations that sometimes make my skin crawl. Some of the ā€œmiracleā€ sects of Christians do as well. Some of the latter come uncomfortably close to paganism.
 
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