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Is It Possible To Be A Pagan?
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
That's a good question.
As an individual? Probably. As a society? Probably not.
What values are you thinking of specifically?
As an individual? Probably. As a society? Probably not.
What values are you thinking of specifically?
Christianity introduced values of equality, women's education, the nuclear family, anti-incest laws, standing up for minorities, anti-slavery etc. Basically all Western values, liberal values, are Christian or from the Torah. Ancient Romans dumped unwanted babies on trash heaps, allowed husbands to kill their whole families and so on. The Germanics were big slave traders, bloodthirsty warriors who had no time for valuing minorities and the disabled. There was widespread human sacrifice, too, among Celts and Germanics (but not Graeco-Romans).
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Are these values/ideals really derived exclusively from Christianity and/or the Abrahamic paradigm? I'm not so sure. Ancient societies are not something on which I'm well-educated.
Sure there were societies that were as barbaric as those noted above, but I'm not convinced all societies kept such values. Did the Aryans or people of Indus Valley? I'm not sure. As I alluded to above, I'm no historian.
Yes, Ancient European societies were transformed up and down by Christianity. Values we think are just intrinsic to the human being are actually products of Christianity. Even down to what we consider murder, rape, theft. Ideas like just wars, human rights, &c. are all Christian in origin. We like to think Ancient Greece had some of these things sorted out but what Christianity did is apply more and better rights to basically everyone, not just wealthy men. Greek women were not really allowed to leave their houses, and unless Roman women left for a regular holiday every year they would become their husband's property. Christianity did away with distinctions between classes, with Paul's revolutionary statement that 'all are one in Christ Jesus'. No-one, as far as I'm aware, had ever conceived of a slave having equal value to a non-slave, or a woman to a man, or a child to an adult. This is why Christianity swept through the Empire so rapidly, because these were values that appealed to the denigrated classes that were basically considered sub-human.
Source: I'm a known Mediaevalist
The Rig Veda, the oldest of the vedas, written sometime around 1500 BC speaks of ahimsa values, the principle of non-violence as does the Yajur Veda, which also predates Christianity.Yes, Ancient European societies were transformed up and down by Christianity. Values we think are just intrinsic to the human being are actually products of Christianity. Even down to what we consider murder, rape, theft. Ideas like just wars, human rights, &c. are all Christian in origin. We like to think Ancient Greece had some of these things sorted out but what Christianity did is apply more and better rights to basically everyone, not just wealthy men. Greek women were not really allowed to leave their houses, and unless Roman women left for a regular holiday every year they would become their husband's property. Christianity did away with distinctions between classes, with Paul's revolutionary statement that 'all are one in Christ Jesus'. No-one, as far as I'm aware, had ever conceived of a slave having equal value to a non-slave, or a woman to a man, or a child to an adult. This is why Christianity swept through the Empire so rapidly, because these were values that appealed to the denigrated classes that were basically considered sub-human.
Source: I'm a known Mediaevalist
Ahimsa is certainly not a value that introduced by Christianity.
I'm speaking of Europe, and the places in general conquered by the cross, as the word Pagan is usually identified with European pre-Christian religions
I thought you meant pagan.I'm speaking of Europe, and the places in general conquered by the cross, as the word Pagan is usually identified with European pre-Christian religions
I'll shut up now.
People believe all manner of things. They even manage to believe that they believe all manner of things.
The landscape of the possible is expansive.
The landscape of the possible is expansive.
Augustus
…
Not really.
No one today can 'unlearn' the ideas of modernity, they can only self-consciously try to remake a pre-modern worldview (like the Romantics did).
Even if they could, these weren’t individualistic religions but ones of community practice. The communities and their practices no longer exist.
The context for such a system has gone, so you can only recreate a simulacrum of the past.
Orbit
I'm a planet
This kind of ignores how much pagan philosophy permeated Christianity itself. For one example, see Three I know not what: The influence of Greek philosophy on the doctrine of Trinity
I think it is probably not possible to be a Christian in the ancient (pre-modern humanistic) sense either, but is it against being a pagan to be modern? I thought resistance to change was more a part of a certain Abrahamic paradigm which sees God as unchanging.
Having a God that suddenly sees everyone as equals contradicts the claim that God is unchanging as I see it.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
No. And it's for the better.
One cannot be that which is not in the now.
Culture isn't some fixed artifice that remains unchanging through the ages. One cannot be American in the sense of a decade ago, because that was a decade ago, not now. One cannot be Jewish in the sense of two hundred years ago, because two hundred years ago is not now. One can only be in the right here and the right now no matter what sort of tradition we are talking about. Does that make the culture of now somehow inauthentic? Wrong? Fractured?
I guess, if one wants to tell the story that way. Me? I think the concept of purity is a bit bankrupt. Whenever we ask can one "really be some such thing" that's administering a purity test. And in an ever-changing and dynamic world - where we can only ever be in the right here and the right now - such tests strike me a bit silly, even as they are understandable. There's a common desire to connect with the roots of the past. There are ways to do that without getting preoccupied with purity, fixedness, and stagnation. It's kind of one of the major themes of OBOD Druidry, come to think of it... not viewing the lore of the past as some fixed thing but a current of inspiration that weaves into the present in ways appropriate for the right here and right now. Accepting that as an authentic expression of our ancestors and legacies.
Culture isn't some fixed artifice that remains unchanging through the ages. One cannot be American in the sense of a decade ago, because that was a decade ago, not now. One cannot be Jewish in the sense of two hundred years ago, because two hundred years ago is not now. One can only be in the right here and the right now no matter what sort of tradition we are talking about. Does that make the culture of now somehow inauthentic? Wrong? Fractured?
I guess, if one wants to tell the story that way. Me? I think the concept of purity is a bit bankrupt. Whenever we ask can one "really be some such thing" that's administering a purity test. And in an ever-changing and dynamic world - where we can only ever be in the right here and the right now - such tests strike me a bit silly, even as they are understandable. There's a common desire to connect with the roots of the past. There are ways to do that without getting preoccupied with purity, fixedness, and stagnation. It's kind of one of the major themes of OBOD Druidry, come to think of it... not viewing the lore of the past as some fixed thing but a current of inspiration that weaves into the present in ways appropriate for the right here and right now. Accepting that as an authentic expression of our ancestors and legacies.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
I'm curious as to what you mean by nuclear family? What we have today is very new amd what we speak of as the nuclear family is the smallest amd weakest family unit our soecies has practiced. It's usually bigger amd includes grandparents, first cousins and aunts and uncles also beijg nearby.
Even in here in California the nuclear family is not common at all among Hispanic families who instead often live in multigeneration househoulds.
Also many of our values are derrived from Rome and Greece. And Locke, John Stuart Mill, Marx, Nietzsche and Enlightenment. Things like the American and French and Revolutions were also a declaration that we are not ruled by gods and not bound to the caste systems and fuedalisms the church has enforced. And today we have Liberal Democracies that decree all people are equal. Not People of the Book or a chosen heritage or those who have accepted Christ, not the tribe on the hills or along the coasts with both claiming ti be descended Odin, but everyone as default. It may not get oracticed but tue idea alone is a radical departure from past ages Before God's Death when religion was more actively used both as an opium and tool of repression and to maintain the status quo.
As for incest, everyone has had incest taboos. It's just who's off limits has varied. We like all have a first cousin pairings in our family tree, amd it was normal then.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
A neo-pagan, sure. But an old style pagan? I don't think it meshes with the modern mindset. For example, I can't imagine any modern person actually believing a statue to be a god, complete with supernatural powers, the way pagans of old believed. And not only do I believe neo-pagans do not do human sacrifice, I would wager that they find the idea of human sacrifice to be morally repugnant.
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Who’d want values like that?
We’ve got enough issues in this modern world…nobody in their right mind would really want to add heartless ritual killing to it.
IMO