Ummm, not as such, no. The Christ had a lot more to say than merely “love they neighbor” and “blessed are the meek.”
Not to get into a GD moment, but ol’ Josh ben Miriam talked an awful lot about his Papa (that one true god thing), and about salvation and damnation, and a refurbishment of Judaism. None of those are particularly in line with either Wicca or Buddhism, and “no one comes to the Father but through me” is pretty much in direct opposition to both faiths.
Jesus never discussed the Eightfold Path. True, there are parallels between Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhims, notably in the Five Precepts and the Practice of sila, but he didn’t deal with samadhi or prajna. And Nirvana sure ain’t much like Heaven.
And Jesus didn’t have anything to say about the Law of Return, nor the Rede. In fact, it looks like he’s be pretty down on the Rede–“an it harm none” is pretty consistent with his words, but “do as thou wilt” sure isn’t. And Jesus always struck me as being pretty monotheistic, and I can’t see any reading of his words which would support a belief in the All or in the spirits of nature.
:shrug: I ain’t saying there aren’t parallels; of course there are. But to suggest that “what Jesus preached” is in line with either Wicca or Buddhism is, IMHO, to select the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes and ignore the bulk of his other teachings.
I am SO ashamed of myself. I’ll try to do better next time. I guess I need to dig out one of my Christian Bibles and read it again. (I have several holy books from several religions.)
Oh, well, I will definitely want to stay on your good side, then. You can purchase an amazing variety of stuff at the Sea-Monkeywebsite. At the very least, you’ll want the water purifier and some food besides the Sea Monkeys. I assume that you already have a tank or aquarium suitable for raising your simian shrimp? If you don’t, I recommend the Ocean Zoo package, in the Specialty Products area. I must say, though, that despite the claims of the Sea Monkey folks, I have never been able to train my Sea Monkeys to do anything at all. They just swim around, eat, and occasionally mate. Well, sometimes they shed their exoskeletons, and sometimes they die, too. But that’s about it. I have not detected any musical talent among them at all. I’m not sure if they even have EARS.
That is just SO WRONG. It’s the BARBIE products which corrupt the youth of America.
This thread has both inspired and discouraged me. Its so great to see others out there setting the record straight but we are so few. Practically everywhere you turn there is ignorance, especially with religion. Can it ever really be overcome? Can people be made to think against their will? The world may never know…
As for the Christian-haters among us, it’s hardly unique to Wicca. Ex-conservative Christians who’ve become atheists, agnostics, or members of more liberal religions tend to be much the same. Especially if your family is still Christian – and to a lesser degree, just being in culture permeated by Christianity – you can be made to feel constantly on the defensive.
With Wicca, there’s the added factor of not being taken seriously. Frankly, our religious beliefs are not given the same weight and consideration as other people’s, as if we’re playing at some game.
I hope that this is simply because we’re a new religion, and that it will evaporate in time.
Anyway, I make the effort to be tolerant towards conservative Christians, though in my case it’s doubly hard, because when you’re gay, fighting an uphill for equal rights, against social prejudices, and when you’re talking to depressed and suicidal teenagers, it’s exhausting to keep up that level of compassion for a religion whose most vocal and visible members talk about you like a human plague.
I mean, it’s hard not to notice that it’s not exactly Buddhists, atheists, and Unitarian Universalists who are holding up signs saying “AIDS is [fill in the blank]'s punishment.”
Well, I’m not a woman, and I don’t think I’m a crunchy granola type (I haven’t eaten granola in years), and I really don’t think two cats is too many.
As for history, Wicca draws on all the European pagan traditions. The Romans and the Greeks were certainly guilty of a lot of dead animals, though to my knowledge, not human beings. There is some evidence of human sacrifice among the Germans, as well.
As for the Celts, the jury’s still out on human sacrifice, though not on animal sacrifice. There are Classical texts, of course, making fairly elaborate claims about human sacrifice among the continental Celts, but these were written by Greeks and Romans who were periodically at war with the Celts, and in a style reminscent of the grossly inaccurate descriptions of North American native people written by European explorers.
The reliability of this information is in question, and last I heard it hadn’t been backed up with material evidence. There is also the question as to how unifrom Celtic religious practices were – there may have been a great variation, from region to region.
All of this is moot, of course. Outside Catholic and Orthodox branches, most forms of Christianity are total reinterpretations – modernisations – of the original texts and legends. And yet these are considered forms of Christianity, considered even more faithful to the original idea by their partisans.
So it is with Wicca. I’m under no illusion that we share very little with older traditions besides a few of their beliefs. So it wouldn’t matter if they did perform human sacrifice, any more than it should matter to an Anglican that the Catholic Church once sponsored crusades.
I’d suggest one other reason: that there is no central “authority” in the realm of Wiccan practices – no World Wicca Council exists to definitively promulgate practices, a creed, approved herbs to place on approved altars, specifications for a standard athame, and so on.
Wicca thus lends itself much more to an a la carte cafeteria-style of beliefs and practices - gather ten randomly chosen Wicca adherents together and you’ll likely get ten very different descriptions of the practice of the religion.
Although Christianity is no longer (and was it ever?) controlled from one central authority, and there exist sharp divisions amongst Christian sects as to certain practices and their meaning, there is nonetheless much more of an appearance of unaninamity of belief and practice amongst Christians than Wiccans.
I alluded earlier to Wiccan newbies. One of their big mistakes, one of the things that really marks them, is a tendency to believe that there is a “right” and “wrong” way to do things, and a delight in informing other people that they’re doing things wrong. For most of us, if there’s a respect for other people and a respect for the earth, we can accept another Wiccan’s divergeant beliefs.
Wicca will probably one day become institutional, and I fear that day but it happens to every religion (there’s already a Church of Wicca in Toronto, but it’s fairly well laughed at by the Wiccans I know). As long as a creative fringe is allowed to exist, though, I doubt our religion will ever become calcified.
Hell, it’s probably the fringe of dissenting, free-thinking Christians that keeps Christianity alive, while the big, heavy churches do everything in their power to suck the life out of it and leave only ritual. I think our society coming to see that diversity is a good thing, so maybe then Wicca will earn a little more respect.
if you ever see an attractive middle-aged blond named Caryl Matrisciana on one of these anti-HP shows…
well, remember in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE where Alex & the droogs are in the Korova after raping the writer’s wife, remember the blond who sings Ode to Joy which provokes Dim to blow a raspberry at which Alex then tolchoks him in the yablockos… that blond is her!
Well, it’s bad “just because” (…the Bible tells them so). Or to explain it further, their reading of the Big Book, the only non-evil way of having something supernatural happen is for God to perform a miracle, and any description of things happening otherwise with no smiting involved is Just Wrong, even if it’s only imagination (There being such a thing as Sins of Thought).
And as for the problem with fiction, well, it has to do with this: in their worldview, it goes beyond “Books certainly can carry a moral message.” From their POV, due to their archetype of a book – the Bible – the PRIMARY function of any piece of art or literature and even of history and scientific research, is to be morally didactic, and creating and publishing it is an act of advocacy. And the ONLY valid message is the Christian one.
> I read some book about why HP was eeeeevil, just out of curiosity, and aside
> from the ridiculous phobia of fictional witchcraft, one reason HP was considered
> a bad influence was that he is always breaking the school rules and either
> getting away with minimal punishment or actually being rewarded. I like HP as
> much as the next person, but I had to admit they had a point there. (Just a
> little food for thought, I am in no way condemning HP!)
This brings up an interesting subject. The media reaction to the Harry Potter books makes it sound like there’s only three possible attitudes toward these books:
They are the greatest children’s fantasy ever. No fantasy or science fiction fan could ever possibly not like them, since as we all know s.f. and fantasy fans are geeks who don’t make literary distinctions. They read and watch everything without discrimination and revel in memorizing trivia and dressing as the characters.
They are trivial crap, suitable only for the sorts of geeks who read fantasy and s.f. (and maybe children who haven’t yet learned that reading fantasy and s.f. makes you a geek).
They mention magic, so therefore they advocate magic, so therefore they are evil.
I’ve never seen any stories in the media which said that they are pretty good but not great examples of children’s fantasy. The media has a problem with accepting that it’s possible to think some fantasy is better and some is worse. The closest I’ve ever seen to an acknowledgement of this was when a newspaper would ask a few children’s librarians or some such for some suggestions about other similar books for Harry Potter fans. Even those news stories weren’t written in the spirit of “If you like Harry Potter you might find these books just as good, or even better.” They were is the spirit of “While you’re waiting for the next book to come out, here’s a way to kill the time with some second-rate imitations.”
Yes… that would make sense, but by that argument Startrek and Narnia would be equally evil, because things happen that in our world could only happen by divine or demonic intervention, which in HP leads them to say “They must be dealing with the devil” but in ST and N, uh, doesn’t.
This is the problem with the bible saying X is bad. Well, maybe it is. But it’s never quite clear if X is bad inherently (as murder is, IMHO) or bad because it tends to lead to bad things if you’re not careful (eg. lying IMHO is sometimes justified, but a bad habit) or bad because it’s bad for some reason too complicated to explain here (the shellfish is probably rotten, people, steer clear). For instance, in any real or fictional world, I would consider murder bad, but eating shellfish bad only if we haven’t figured out under what circumstances it’s unhealthy. However, if you don’t know which reason, you’re kind of stuck. You can take your best guess or decide based on how much you like oyster; let everyone go their own way, or have a religious war. I assume HP didn’t sell his soul for his powers, but I don’t have proof as such.
Well, the more extreme among those who freak out over Harry may indeed have a problem with Roddenberry and Lewis.
In the case of Narnia, Lewis IS advocating Christianity. It’s a brand of christianity that the extreme hardocre fundamentalists probably consider to be the wrong one; but at least it is Christianity.
And in the case of Trek, it’s not about “supernatural” powers, it’s about (really, really, really bad) Science – the Pure-Energy Being of the Week or rogue computer program (outsmarted by someone who’d be unfit to command the Staten Island ferry) or a time anomaly solved by depolarizing the subspace potrzebie field by transposing the spin of the hoohah-neutrinos through the tachyon thingamabob. And Kirk told Apollo humans were fine with having just the one God. BUT Trek presumes evolution and alien life so many of the “Fundders” would also reject it.
However, neither Narnia nor Trek is (post- 2000) a mega-phenomenon that makes millions of pre- and early- teen boys and girls store away their GameBoys, turn off the TV, and park the skateboard. Visibility is everything.
Yep. And the Teenaged True Believers fight evil, Satan-influenced teachers and principals who won’t allow prayer or christian clubs on school property.
:rolleyes:
Not that I’ve read them. I worked in a library last year and shelved these books a lot. They were quite popular. Almost as much as the Full House series. I was shelving those fucking books all the time.
