I guess I’ve been reading up on critiques of obscure theologians too much, where arguments for Islam being paganism were a popular topic. You of course have a valid point.
The IRS and the US gov’t, in addition to hundreds of thousands of active pagans of various flavor, disagree with you. And while they may not have described themselves as pagans, times and verbage change. Your unwillingness to accept that is your problem, not theirs.
And there you are quite clearly showing your own prejudice and dislike of the idea. Reconstructed, in this context, means they are trying to reconstruct a belief system that was supressed or supplanted by Christianity. It’s probably not 100%, but they are doing their best with what they can.
It’s a good thing the meaning of words can’t change over decades, or hundreds or even thousands of years.
While I’m not a big fan of a lot of that particular idea, most folks that I have met and talked with who follow a “Druidic Tradition” were quite knowledgeable about Celtic history and culture (as far as we know it, at least). Granted, a lot of it is conjecture and wishful thinking, most are willing to admit that.
But Queer has a specific connotation. No matter who says it I know what they are saying.
It refers to something specific, homosexuality.
LOL, if coming up with ad hominems that are just straight up wrong makes you feel better, have at it.
Am I to take you seriously with these sorts of responses?
Paganism isn’t a religion like Christianity is. Paganism means, “Everything else.”
Paganism isn’t a religion so how can I have contempt for it?
Yeah, I haven’t found this sort of superficial analysis to be very compelling.
Paganism doesn’t have a stable meaning. It means, ‘everything else’, and people who are using it are all using it differently. There is no cohesive and stable meaning of paganism. Get three people who call themselves pagans together and ask them what they believe and you’ll get three different answers.
Show me someone who considers themselves a pagan and I’ll show you someone who has given what they believe only the most superficial and cursory thought. Also 9 times out of 10 I’ll show you someone whose beliefs are based off of an irrational contempt for Christianity.
Pagan is to religion as ‘Other’ is to ethnicity.
No, they are not, they are making a bunch of crap up. Paganism includes everything from dolphin worship, to crystal gazing, communing with trees and worshipping comic book characters.
They haven’t really changed. Pagan still means, “Everything else”. When a tribal culture dies out and it’s traditions die with it, those traditions cannot be reconstructed as the religion itself is the life of the tribe. The two are inseparable. The entire notion that it’s about ‘belief systems’, is a modern construction. It wasn’t about belief systems it was about the blood of the tribe and their patron deities. You can’t reconstruct that. Tradition implies that something is passed from one person to another, you can’t reconstruct that.
If I told you that I worshipped Wolverine as a God would you respect that?
Yes, but it’s not part of the tradition, and is generally informed far more by the culture in which they already reside, often having more in common with Protestant or Enlightenment thinking than anything that the ancient Celts actually practiced. As I said, the tradition was the life of the tribe and not a sterile redacted historical version of the same. One of the greatest historical sources for the Druids is Julius Caesar the man who contributed the most to their destruction. That should tell you something about the modern, ‘tradition’.
I don’t get why you’re so upset about this subject. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. I can’t think of a more inoffensive group of religious-minded people than neo-pagans, aside from Quakers. How are they affecting you, that you feel so much anger at them?
Who says I’m upset about it?
I don’t know what tone you think you’re conveying, but reading your last few posts, I was envisioning a full-on, foaming-at-the-mouth denunciation from the pulpit.
I agree with mswas that “Pagan” as a term used to describe the faith-based/religious beliefs of a person or group of people is rather useless.
You might as well respond “The Americas” to the question: “Where are you from?”. It tells you a little: you’re not from Europe, for instance, but you could be from any one of a huge number of countries, all very different in a cultural way.
Saying you are Christian, in contrast, would be like responding to the above question with: “NJ, USA”. Still not completely accurate (address??) but much more useful information has been given.
Well I am passionately opposed to lazy thinking. Or more specifically, I am opposed to lazy thinking where people insist that others treat it as equally valid.
A lot of my beliefs I actually formed by playing Dungeons and Dragons, but I gave them a lot of thought and have deconstructed what I believe, constantly revising and discarding old ideas. I don’t argue that ‘Dungeon and Dragonology’ deserves equal respect.
Right Pagan means, “Not Christian”, and that’s about the only common and stable meaning that everyone who hears the word can understand.
Now I want to change my username to illiterate moron! 
I will just point out that “Christian” includes a “Christmas and Easter Only” Catholic and a snake-handling Pentecostal, so it is still a pretty big bag.
For that matter, it also includes our own kanicbird, just to contradict the people who claim Christianity cannot be a DIY religion.
No, from a Muslim perspective Christians are not lumped together with Hindus as “pagans.” Christians and Jews are known as “People of the Book” and may be accorded some tolerance according to Sharia law.
Odesio
You’re right of course. That was a hasty statement.
But there are still common elements, unlike with paganism. What does Dolphin worship have to do with Rainbow worshp?
Well you can DIY it, but there are still common themes.
Just to add 2 cents, not to contradict anyone…
I haven’t seen it mentioned that Paganism was the constitutional religion of the senate of ancient Rome. The Senate hall displayed the altar of Victory for like, 1100 years. Gibbon’s ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ has a chapter devoted to the destruction of Paganism (Quote: The ruin of Paganism in the age of Theodosius is perhaps the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular even in the history of the human mind…) You can get details from that source and an exposition of the interesting idea that it was partly absorbed into Catholicism through the veneration of saints and relics and so on. In other words, Roman Catholicism is (supposedly) a hybrid of Paganism and Christianity, if you know how to look.
Or you can google ‘The Religion of Numa’ to find more. I don’t know if this is the angle you’re looking to explore, but there you go 
Really? When someone, in a modern context, calls themselves a Pagan, do you think, “Well, there’s a possibility that they might be a Jew. Or a Hindu. Or a Mormon. Or a Scientologist.” It seems to me that there’s a whole raft of possible belief systems that are instantly ruled out when someone describes themselves as a Pagan.
Of course, the term is still far from perfectly specific. But then, if someone tells you they follow the Bible, that’s not terribly specific either, is it? Do they keep kosher? Do they believe that Jesus was the Son of God? How many heavens do they believe there are? Who was God’s greatest prophet? These are some pretty broad differences in belief that all fall under the general banner of Abrahamic religion. To nail down more specific beliefs, you need more specific labels - and there are more specific labels than the broad category of “Pagan.”
As for your amusement (or possibly outrage, as jayjay pointed out, it’s hard to get a good read on your tone in this thread) at the use of a term of term of derision for one’s faith… this does not strike me as wildly different from taking a device of torture and execution as the symbol for one’s faith. The crucifix was originally meant to be a symbol of secular punishment and death, until it was “reclaimed” and transformed into a symbol of divine rebirth. That’s a rather ballsy redefinition, isn’t it? Hard to see how one can sneer at Pagans while embracing that particular metaphorical shift.
Ok, fair point, but still does this ‘pagan’ worship trees or dolphins or what?
Someone who follows the bible is still more specific. Yes there is leeway in interpretation, but not as much leeway as there is for anything that someone simply makes up.
I think that’s a bit of a stretch. The crucifixion has a central meaning and quite possibly is the only thing that truly ties together all the various Christianities. It’s somewhat strange that people would take an all-encompassing epithet used mainly be Christians to describe their self created beliefs right? It’s not like there were any peoples who considered themselves, ‘pagans’, ever. Neo-Pagan has a bit more meaning than ‘pagan’ generically.
As of yet no one has disagreed with the basic premise that pagan is a vague catch-all. Just these sort of boilerplate leftist tolerance-cult pavlovian reactions about how I should, ‘respect’, people’s unspecified and undefined beliefs abstractly without consideration toward merit. I’ll try to remember that magnanimity next time I see a thread ridiculing a belief in Qi.
I can understand the dislike for those that are on the loony fringe of the pagan movement. Really I can. I once read an article about invoking the idea of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order to provide strength for women. Bah.
But the deal is, the vast majority of Pagans out there fit into a pretty easily defined mold (though it is a bit fuzzier than, say, Christian, or even Catholic).
Christianity covers Catholicism, Baptist, pentecostal snake handlers, 7th day adventists, Mormons, etc. etc. and so forth.
Pagan covers those that practice Wicca, Asatru, Druidism (of several flavors), Fairy, generic “witchcraft”, strega, etc. etc. and so forth.
I think the key is that Christianity and Paganism (and Judaism, and others) are more of a belief “system”. Amongst Christians there is generally some accepted standards: Jesus was the son of god, that sort of thing.
Paganism is the same way, it’s more of a system with some generally accepted standards, such as respect for nature, empowering the self, etc. etc…
Seems to me that even believers in established religions still tend to make a hell of a lot of stuff up. IIRC, a good deal of “rapture” theology practiced by many mainstream Christian churches is entirely extra-Biblical, no?
Anyway, my point is that both “Pagan” and “Christian” are catch-all terms. How wide a net they cast varies, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Not all terms for a given subject have to have precisely equal specificity. Pagan is a broad term. Christian is somewhat less broad. Seventh Day Adventist even less so. On the other hand, “theist” is about as broad a term as you can bring to the table in this discussion, but that doesn’t mean that it’s devoid of meaning.
You’re conflating my arguments. The argument that Pagan is not a meaninglessly vague term is separate from the argument that there’s nothing inherently wrong (or particularly noteworthy) about redefining a term of abuse into label of self-identification.
I’d say it’s a hell of a lot less strange than taking the very object that killed your god as the central symbol of your religion.
No, there weren’t. But so what?
Sure, just as “Baptist” has a bit more meaning than “Christian.”
Indeed, it seems that many people (myself included) are agreeing with you. The disagreement stems from the idea that the worth of the religions covered by the catch-all can be determined by how broad it is.
Well, yeah, you should. Religious belief, being inherently irrational (and I don’t mean that as a derogative), cannot be put into a hierarchy of value. Worshipping a dead Jew who got nailed to a cross two thousand years ago does not inherently carry any more merit than worshiping dolphins, or faeries, or, for that matter, Marvel comics characters. If you want people to respect your own (Christian, IIRC) beliefs, you have to start out by respecting everyone else’s beliefs, no matter how loopy they appear to you.
Of course, there’s plenty of room to criticize actions. I won’t make fun of Mormon beliefs, except when those beliefs lead them to actively work against gay rights. I won’t make fun of Catholicism, but I will criticize Catholic leadership when it stonewalls child abuse investigations. I won’t even make fun of Scientology, but I will castigate the hierarchy for being creepy, abusive, occasionally murderous fucks.
I’m not familiar with Qi. Assuming that it’s religious in nature, I don’t doubt that there’s a healthy portion of this boar that would make fun of it. Because there’s a healthy portion of this board that, when it comes to the topic of religion, can be absolute shits. But those people tend to be equal opportunity shits. While there certainly are exceptions, most of the people making fun of any given religion are equally willing to make fun of any religion, period. They’re most certainly not part of your “leftist tolerance-cult.” More’s the pity. This board could really use a hefty dose of religious tolerance, all around. I’m pretty going into what could be an interesting theological thread, and seeing that every third post is, “You’re an idiot for believing in God.”