Why hate Paganism?

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mjolnir said:
A history of systematic demonization and extermination for starts…

Read Malleus Maleficarum (eek!!!)
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What about the Christians whom were martyred by the Romans like Nero? What do you think about that?
 
rr1213 said:
Agreed. And while we’re on the subject of historical injustices, I demand reparations for the damage done by US troops to the property and persons of my Southern ancestors in the American Civil War, reparations for damages done to my Loyalist ancestors during the American Revolution, reparations for the murder of kinsmen by French-goaded Indians during the French & Indian wars, reparations for some of my Anglo-Saxon kinsmen killed by those Norman beasts who took over England in 1066, and, finally, reparations for my Christian ancestors who were fed to Lions by those Pagan Romans! Pay up! Now! 😃
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Alright Alright point taken. It can get absurd but my point is that Christians assume a lot when they walk around acting like they are the only peaceful religion and everyone else are a bunch a demonic servants bent on their destruction.

Seriously for a lot of people this position is absurd.

But thanks for the reality check.
 
Dancelittleewok said:
Do you think pagans hate Christians then? If truth is relative, then how come that isn’t a relative statement?
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Actually please don’t pigeon-hole me with the defense of Pagan Rome. Paganism is far broader than Rome ever was. I look to the Norse Cultures welcome of Christians as an example of how paganism can co-exist with Christians.

Of course for the Christians that wasn’t good enough they had to convert via force. That was wrong.

Regardless there was a lot of value in Rome which was not and should not have been set aside as Christianity came into vogue with the Emperors. Some liked it, some disliked it. Some Pagans feared it and for good reason hindsight would reveal.

Read the Malleus maleficarum for some insights as to how your Church and religion deals with what is different when they have power…

PS: I don’t think ‘truth’ is relative I just believe that our expressions of it are cultural and not objective.
 
Why dont you change the title of this thread.

Pagans who want to wake up Catholics to the fact that they are not perfect, but can’t prove they are either and are therefore wasting their time here when they could be worshiping a tree or getting ready for Halloween.
 
mjolnir said:
Alright Alright point taken. It can get absurd but my point is that Christians assume a lot when they walk around acting like they are the only peaceful religion and everyone else are a bunch a demonic servants bent on their destruction.

Seriously for a lot of people this position is absurd.

But thanks for the reality check.
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No problem. So what kind of Pagan are you? Wiccan? or of another belief?
 
mjolnir said:
Trust me when I tell you that the Norse nor any european pagan culture mets our modern day test of ‘peaceful’. Your ‘mapping’ current trends to ancient cultures and that’s just flat wrong to do.
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where? I understand the timing of the “norse” but I also understand the “scandinavian” history behind that. I also look at the pre-christian picti and scoti. (I am of norse and celtic descent so it’s of interest to me)
mjolnir said:
Cultures ‘evolve’ but I would posit that when you look at life in pagan Norway and Northern European Cultures pre-christian ‘women’ were ‘not’ property but equals.
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I myself wish it were so. I think chattelizing women a great evil. (two red-headed daughters have an effect on a dad) I would like to see examples of your theory as I disagree based on the kalevala and what little written and oral traditions we have from the skalds to tell us what pre-axial scandinavian culture was really like. I believe that the evidence (sketchy at best) does support a societal role for women that appears superior to that in early christendom (roman era at least) but I find that more societal /cultural than religious. I would also respond that many early Christians did a poor job of living the true faith. I think also that you may find parallels to Islam in your examples as those cultures that appeared to create certain “rights” for women may be soemwhat misleading in actual practice. Look at Islam and you will find many adherents claiming it’s great benefits for women when compared to Christianity. Many of them will even be women. I think in practice most Islamic cultures treat women poorly.
mjolnir said:
That is not the teachings of ‘your’ faith nor the evidence of ‘your’ practice.
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I’m confused as to what your meaning is here.
mjolnir said:
Once agrarian cultures moved from survival to surplus this freed tribes to roam. Tribes with surplus has things of value and thus the rise of thievery, war and rape.
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well this certainly happened well before your definition of axial. sumeria, babylonia, egypt, China all had devloped into city states and even empires by this time. that put them even beyond the “roaming” phase and into planned conquest.

I would submit to you that even in pre-historic times you had roaming tribes with all of the problems you described. from a Christian point of view this is supported by the old testament accounts of biblical peoples. Once you move beyond hunter-gatherer bands barely surviving you become vulnerable to the societal problems you described so I think you need to move your timeline a lot further back than the axial age.
mjolnir said:
It isn’t the supernatural ‘devil’ but the ‘greed’ of tribes abusing other tribes.
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I understand you believe that. Christians believe that greed and other negative motivations come form the Devil. The end result is the same for purposes of this discussion.
mjolnir said:
I believe in a setting where you don’t have an external authority declaring women as second class citizens the natural value of both sexes rise to the top. That might be naive but I do see that around the workplace.
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idealistically I agree. I don’t see Christianity doing this except when misapplied. (yes it has been misappolied a lot) I say this because I believe ARE different, both of equal value but not with identical value. Do you see the difference? I think in primitive culture you had social “darwinism” where value didn’t necessarily equal how you were treated. Women would be considered very valuable and thus “hunted, gathered and hoarded” by those that could do so. Not a good deal for the women and I think many primitive religions were used to manipulate their societies into accepting this. “I don’t want to treat you like this but it’s the will of the gods”. So you see early paganism is just as easy (if not more so) to misapply as any post-axial religion.
mjolnir said:
I believe that there are a lot of folk-tales which articulate this kind of thing just as well.
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agreed, first I think that proves my point, secondly I think it shows the Bible (at least its originaal source materials) as the original source of those traditions.
mjolnir said:
I was thinking of Norse Cultures welcoming the Christian God only to have Christian Culture ‘force’ them to accepting it through trade sanctions later. That was just plain ‘wrong’.
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okay but to what are you attributing the wrongs, the religion or the greedy people practicing them? Why were the norse welcoming the Christian God, because they really beleived or because they thought they would get free stuff?
mjolnir said:
I will. You presented a pretty good case. I’m not sure I agree with it but I appreciate the intelligent dialogue.

Thank care.
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fair enough. be well:thumbsup:
 
rr1213 said:
No problem. So what kind of Pagan are you? Wiccan? or of another belief?
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I have a great deal of respect for what Wiccanism is attempting to do but ultimately it’s fighting against a lot not to mention our own hard-wiring from culture.

Most Pagans are ultimately ‘self-taught’ due to the brutal oppression of witches and so tend to be a bit ‘anti-social’ or at best ‘counter-cultural’. I would hope that I don’t fall into those traps.

mjolnir is an apt name as paganism is going to have to be prepared to defend itself against both Christianity and it’s child Islam.

We don’t profess a sole source of objective truth so it might be that our ultimately exist as pockets of pagan expressions colored by our culture. That was the way it was meant to be anyways until the Axial Age. Ugh.

So as most pagans I’m a self-style, organic and unique expression of the divine. I’m western by culture and so that too will create differences with others who might be Taoists or Shinto or Hindu etc.

The point is we don’t need to be objective to be instructive.
 
mjolnir said:
I have a great deal of respect for what Wiccanism is attempting to do but ultimately it’s fighting against a lot not to mention our own hard-wiring from culture.

Most Pagans are ultimately ‘self-taught’ due to the brutal oppression of witches and so tend to be a bit ‘anti-social’ or at best ‘counter-cultural’. I would hope that I don’t fall into those traps.

mjolnir is an apt name as paganism is going to have to be prepared to defend itself against both Christianity and it’s child Islam.

We don’t profess a sole source of objective truth so it might be that our ultimately exist as pockets of pagan expressions colored by our culture. That was the way it was meant to be anyways until the Axial Age. Ugh.

So as most pagans I’m a self-style, organic and unique expression of the divine. I’m western by culture and so that too will create differences with others who might be Taoists or Shinto or Hindu etc.

The point is we don’t need to be objective to be instructive.
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Can you inform me how Christianity will cause you or any Pagan to have to defend yourself or Pagans will be having to?

Whats your conspiracy theory without facts on that one?
 
mjolnir said:
I have a great deal of respect for what Wiccanism is attempting to do but ultimately it’s fighting against a lot not to mention our own hard-wiring from culture.

Most Pagans are ultimately ‘self-taught’ due to the brutal oppression of witches and so tend to be a bit ‘anti-social’ or at best ‘counter-cultural’. I would hope that I don’t fall into those traps.

mjolnir is an apt name as paganism is going to have to be prepared to defend itself against both Christianity and it’s child Islam.

We don’t profess a sole source of objective truth so it might be that our ultimately exist as pockets of pagan expressions colored by our culture. That was the way it was meant to be anyways until the Axial Age. Ugh.

So as most pagans I’m a self-style, organic and unique expression of the divine. I’m western by culture and so that too will create differences with others who might be Taoists or Shinto or Hindu etc.

The point is we don’t need to be objective to be instructive.
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Ok. So, unless I totally misunderstand you, I take it that you are not a Pagan in the same sense that the Greeks, Romans, Norse and Druids were Pagans. Is there a particular deity that you worship?
 
Damascus said:
If you are self-style are you akin to a Protestant Pagan?🙂
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Well let’s but it this way. The Roman Catholic Church did such a great job burning pagans that currently any attempt to practice the faith of our natural fore-fathers is a work in progress.

Which is also way many pagans hold a great deal of personal animosity toward Roman Catholicism and Christianity in particular.

So I’m not protesting institutional paganism because institutionalized paganism was systematically destroyed. What’s left is very sparse and like I said a ‘work in progress’ but religion is an organic thing. It’s not a static tradition but a organic expression of man’s relationship with Reality. So there is hope.
 
Isn’t anthropology fun? One can make up whatever theory one wants so long as evidence isn’t required.

CDL
 
rr1213 said:
Ok. So, unless I totally misunderstand you, I take it that you are not a Pagan in the same sense that the Greeks, Romans, Norse and Druids were Pagans. Is there a particular deity that you worship?
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most if not all of those religions are gone. effectivelly killed off by the aggression of Christianity over the years.

I think we can know something about them but to say any modernday pagan is a Greek, Roman, Norse or Druid is a bit presumptuous in my opinion. I believe that all these archetypes are valid expressions of our psyche and thus ultimately of value but none would be particularly useful since a lot of the internal wiring for them is simply not there. We could pretend but that won’t be of great value. It’s going to take generations to rewire them but we can take advantage of the wiring which is within us through our own cultural archetypes. This is the kind of work that is happening within Gnostic Christianity. Taking advantage of the Archetypes already present from Judeo-Christian wiring for generations. We can’t honestly ignore this hard-wiring but we need to recognize it for what it is Cultural Archetypes pointing to deeper subconscious elements necessary for our development.
 
Gnostic hard wiring…that is funny.

Let’s all pray for forgiveness from the Asharim, the Gnostics, the Baal, the native cultures and animists of all time for the meanness done to them by Yahweh and Allah and Jesus. I don’t know who we are to ask forgiveness from when it come to Buddhism since they have no God, but let’s do it anyway.

Anthropology. Humbug.

CDL
 
Burning pagans? Again, please cite your sources. Are you a believer in the so-called “time of burning”? Are you are that, for example, the majority of those 'burned at the stake" (and while one unjust death is still one too many, the numbers of those martyred were far, far less than your sources give) were either Protestants burning Catholics or other Protestants, or Catholics burning Prostestants? There was no full scale “witch burning”.

Also, the ‘wicca’ as taught today is according to my understanding a blend of ‘researched’ practices which were developed in the mid 20th century. 20th century! No ‘pagan’ today practices anything LIKE the paganism of the 1st millenium. There are few ‘pagans’ even in the 2nd millenium (most were nominally Christian, baptized Christian, but did what are NOW claimed to be ‘pagan’ practices on the side, so to speak. Further, things such as herbalism were not limited strictly to pagans, so to claim for example that a woman who was ‘called’ a witch in some 16th century village was actually a pagan because she gave out ‘love philtres’ or practices abortion is revisionism at its worst. (it is worth noting that so many of what is claimed as Wicca practices or teachings revolve around sex to some degree, not that sex in itself is bad–it is not–but that the function of sex as the free covenant of two married people is completely made separate, in that things such as herbals for abortion, ‘love potions’ etc. were usually used for sexual activities outside the moral confines of sex).
 
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