Death Hell Problems stalk the unbeliever

[Owlswing]

Do you have any evidence that the gods of your religion date that far back?

But not necessarily your pagan deities.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/new_discoveries_at_the_ash_altar_of_zeus_mount_lykaion

[Nearly Sane]

I have explained my beliefs before - if Jeremy can't be bothered to read what I posted - his problem not mine! I am fed up with answering the same questions again and again as people hope that I am going to contradict myself.

And W T F is "tu quiques" - I speak English - I suggest that you do the same rather than using a dead language in order to boost your ego at the cost of mine; me who did Latin in First Year at Grammar School in 1957 and thge only bit I can remeber is quite aposite to many posters on this forum - Non illigitamus carborundum

Didn't ask about your beliefs, but about jeremyp's as you challenged them and made assumptions about them
 

Apologies, it should be tu quoque as in

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Typos are a killer.

[Owlswing]

Didn't ask about your beliefs, but about jeremyp's as you challenged them and made assumptions about them
 

Apologies, it should be tu quoque as in

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Typos are a killer.

You were referring back to a post by JeremyP, or so I thought, which I have answered above!

JeremyP is, apparently Christian and they will not allow that paganism pre-dated it.

Zeius was at least a couple of thousand years pre-Christ - hence Christ's followers are the Johnny-come-lately's.

[Nearly Sane]

Jeremyp isn't a Christian, which is why I asked. Just as with Susan Doris, and with the misrepresenting of my views on the incest thread, you react to things that are not with no justification. Stop reading what you think people are saying and just deal with what they ate.

[Sebastian Toe]

Stop reading what you think people are saying and just deal with what they ate.

I can't quite digest what you mean?

[Nearly Sane]

I can't quite digest what you mean?

Perhaps I bit off more than I could eschew there.

[Sebastian Toe]

Perhaps I bit off more than I could eschew there.

At least you have got the guts to admit it.

[jeremyp]

When you can come up with arguments against the antiquity of Pagan belief

I do not dispute that there were pagan beliefs back as far as you say they were, but "pagan" in this sense is a rather catch-all term for all religions other than the Abrahamic ones. If you think the pagan deities that you follow are anything like the ones that Roman pagans or Greek pagans followed, or even the druids, you are sorely mistaken.

 

[Owlswing]

Jeremyp isn't a Christian, which is why I asked. Just as with Susan Doris, and with the misrepresenting of my views on the incest thread, you react to things that are not with no justification. Stop reading what you think people are saying and just deal with what they ate.

OK - back to Square one - just what DOES JP want from me and, more importantly, why does he want it?

I read the tone of his questions and comments as mocking me and my beliefs. Again why?

[Owlswing]

If you think the pagan deities that you follow are anything like the ones that Roman pagans or Greek pagans followed, or even the druids, you are sorely mistaken.

Why do you say this?

[Nearly Sane]

OK - back to Square one - just what DOES JP want from me and, more importantly, why does he want it?

I read the tone of his questions and comments as mocking me and my beliefs. Again why?

What does your reading of Jeremyp's tone relate to your misreading of his beliefs?

[jeremyp]

Why do you say this?

Because it's true.

[Owlswing]

Because it's true.

Details, please.

I'm pagan and I'm wrong - You are not and you are right?

I said you just wanted to take the piss!

[SusanDoris]

Details, please.

I'm pagan and I'm wrong - You are not and you are right?

I said you just wanted to take the piss!

Since all gods, deities, spirits, ideas of gods, deities, etc are human ideas only, those who believe some 'modern' ones are the same as 'ancient' ones need to provide the evidence of any of them ever actually existing, don't they?

[Rhiannon]

Since all gods, deities, spirits, ideas of gods, deities, etc are human ideas only, those who believe some 'modern' ones are the same as 'ancient' ones need to provide the evidence of any of them ever actually existing, don't they?

I think when it comes to paganism it's more a question of proving an unbroken line of belief between what our forebears believed and what modern pagans believe. Not easy as these were largely oral traditions.

What we do know is that there was a reverence for the Goddess in ancient times. Many modern pagans take their goddesses to be aspects of this single goddess (Great Goddess) along with the gods being aspects of the Great God.

For me terms like 'believe in' don't really work with paganism. It's an experiential path. I've experienced the Goddess and the God; I've concluded that these experiences arise from my subconscious and my imagination. But I understand that they seem real, because experiences are real.And I feel no need to take Owlswing to task for him experiencing his deities as real any more than I do Gonnagle for his. It's only when I get judged for not having the same beliefs or others seek to use their beliefs to interfere in my life that I have a problem.

[Leonard James]

Since all gods, deities, spirits, ideas of gods, deities, etc are human ideas only, those who believe some 'modern' ones are the same as 'ancient' ones need to provide the evidence of any of them ever actually existing, don't they?

Actually they don't, Susan, as far as they are concerned. They are simply happy to believe in them without any testable evidence of the truth of their existence.

That is what is so difficult for us atheists to understand.

[Bubbles]

Because it's true.

Its the Athiest one true wayism again !

The " my way, is the only way " 

 

[Bubbles]

I do not dispute that there were pagan beliefs back as far as you say they were, but "pagan" in this sense is a rather catch-all term for all religions other than the Abrahamic ones. If you think the pagan deities that you follow are anything like the ones that Roman pagans or Greek pagans followed, or even the druids, you are sorely mistaken.

No I don't think they are.

What is uncertain is if they follow them in the same way.

Thor of the myths is still Thor.

[Rhiannon]

Details, please.

I'm pagan and I'm wrong - You are not and you are right?

I said you just wanted to take the piss!

I'm taking him to mean that modern paganism is based on a mix of attempted reconstruction and reimagining. We can't claim to know for certain that the way we think of our deities is the same as how our forebears did. But then I'm not sure what is meant by 'same' here anyway. By name? By nature? By worship? Do Christians today believe in the same God as that of a thousand years' ago? Same book, same name, but same God?

[Nearly Sane]

I'm taking him to mean that modern paganism is based on a mix of attempted reconstruction and reimagining. We can't claim to know for certain that the way we think of our deities is the same as how our forebears did. But then I'm not sure what is meant by 'same' here anyway. By name? By nature? By worship? Do Christians today believe in the same God as that of a thousand years' ago? Same book, same name, but same God?

It's surely not even clear that all Christians worship the same god now? If we take the claim of gods in the 'true for me' approach, it is incorrect of Owlswing to argue consistency or thread through the ages for whatever he believes. Further once you go down that route then it becomes impossible to separate the Abrahamic religions since they are just on the whole continuum of gods.

[Rhiannon]

It's surely not even clear that all Christians worship the same god now? If we take the claim of gods in the 'true for me' approach, it is incorrect of Owlswing to argue consistency or thread through the ages for whatever he believes. Further once you go down that route then it becomes impossible to separate the Abrahamic religions since they are just on the whole continuum of gods.

Agree completely. What is this 'same God' except the imaginings of individual believers?

[Nearly Sane]

Agree completely. What is this 'same God' except the imaginings of individual believers?

To me, this is where I find Gonnagle's approach worthwhile. If take the approach that gods are reflective of some widespread instinct, and that the individual's expression of that instinct is a specific reflection of that individual, then we could widen the 'church' to include some non theists. The problem is that we tend to claim external truths and think that we can overleap the problem of hard solipsim.


But perhaps I am just being pedantic

[Rhiannon]

In which case I shall join you in your pedantry.

Please don't widen any 'church' to include me though. I would not be happy.

[Owlswing]

I'm taking him to mean that modern paganism is based on a mix of attempted reconstruction and reimagining. We can't claim to know for certain that the way we think of our deities is the same as how our forebears did. But then I'm not sure what is meant by 'same' here anyway. By name? By nature? By worship? Do Christians today believe in the same God as that of a thousand years' ago? Same book, same name, but same God?

I agree with you that our beliefs are the best that we can have because, one, as you say, there is very little written evidence of how our ancestors performed their rituals and/or what was said or done during them. I do however takie issue with the bald statement that "they are wrong".

As you have pointed out a lot of modern pagan belief is from personal experiences, which is, of course, why it is such an individual path. We see our experiences in the light of the myths and legends of antiquity, not only because of the lack of written evidence, but because an awful lot of the father-to-son verbal history was wiped out by the imposition of Chritianity which is, of course, the reason why some of the written evidence from the pagan history in the period immediately prior to the coming of Christianity disappeared, destroyed as being heretical/diabolical.

It is however interesting that in some of the oldest Christian churches in the UK, you can find, if you know where to look, images of both the Green Man/the Foliate face and the Sheela-na-gig placed there by the builders of those churches, especially where those churches were built on previously pagan meeting places. 

[Owlswing]

It's surely not even clear that all Christians worship the same god now? If we take the claim of gods in the 'true for me' approach, it is incorrect of Owlswing to argue consistency or thread through the ages for whatever he believes. Further once you go down that route then it becomes impossible to separate the Abrahamic religions since they are just on the whole continuum of gods.

I have never argued

consistency or thread through the ages

for my beliefs.

As stated before, due to the depredations, by murder of believers and the wholsale destruction of pagan constructions and artifacts, it is impossible to claim such continuity - hence the long-running and unsolved problem of why Stonehenge was built - and now Christains use the results of their actions to claim that our gods are modern constructs and some atheists (and probably, if they exist, some of Vlad's antitheits) are jumping on the band-wagon.

We do the best with what we have - the reconstructionists are some of the most dilligent history delvers around and are finding more and more morsels that bring us gradually closer to the original. I wish them well, but I also think that I am not going to live long enough for them to overcome the obstructions placed in their way over the last two thousand years.

All this boils down to I do not give a single solitary damn WHAT people who are not of my belief think of my beliefs, they can have their "holier than thou", "my way is the only TRUE way", they will not make me feel that my beliefs are wrong, nor change my belief that they can believe what the fuck they like if it makes them happy.

Unfortunately I find many Christians are far from happy that their beliefs are treated with the same ridicule as that with which they treat the beliefs of others, seemingly expecting unquestioning acceptance of Christainity's supremacy as a divine right.

Question - why do I NEED to justify my beliefs to anyone? Show me the details of the last war that was fought in the name of Thor, Herne, or Loki! I can show you one going on right now in the names of Jesus Christ and his father and of Allah!

Let's face it the belt buckle of the Nazi SS bore the words "GOTT MIT UNS".