Quote from: Owlswing on Today at 17:08:05
Quite a lot of the veneration of Mary was included because the Pagans the Church was trying to convert were not at all happy with being told that only the male God existed - the oldest religious artifact ever discivered (so far) - 25 to 23,000 BCE, is a statue of a WOMAN - Pagans were aware that both sexes were required to create life and mistrusted the Christain patriachy.
Where did you get that from, Dan Brown?
No! I study the history of my beliefs. Paganism, just as you, supposedly study yours.
The difference of course, is that I am prepared to acknowledge that my beliefs are just that, beliefs, a matter of faith, and not of fact as Christians insist that their beliefs are but are incapable of providing any grain of proof of the existence of their God.
I equally cannot prove the existence of mine, but I do NOT as you do, ad nauseam, insist that yours is the one true path without such proof.
The entire Christian religion in all its innumerable versions is, like mine, nothing more than a matter of faith, of belief, for which there is no proof!
Just that my beliefs, in one form or another, pre-date yours by 25,000 years proved by a Goddess figure dated from that age.