The Christians and the Pagans
Feb. 1st, 2009 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatSo, I'm not sure anyone in Ireland reads this journal, but I'll wish you people a happy St. Brigid's Day anyway. Brigid of Kildare is one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was said to have lived in the sixth and seventh centuries. Even before her, however, there was an Irish goddess named Brigid, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who was associated with fire, cows, wisdom, warfare, and craftsmanship. And her festival, Imbolc, was celebrated...at the beginning of February. So there's been some speculation that the saint was simply a Christianized version of the goddess, fitting the common policy of adapting old religions into the new. If the people of a certain land worshipped, say, a tree, missionaries would dedicate the tree to Jesus. And that would make everything all right, because Jesus is apparently fine with people going through the motions without actually believing. I'm not totally sure why revering trees is so bad for Christians anyway. Aren't they part of God's creation?
I guess I find some appeal in the idea of minor nature or household gods, even though I don't believe in them any more than I do the monotheistic God. I mean, I basically agree with Douglas Adams, who said, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" But in a way, I think I'd like the fairies to be there. After all, as far as I know, they don't threaten to send me to Hell if I disagree with them. Granted, there can be problems if they're not invited to a christening, but scrounging up an extra place setting seems a lot easier than having to go to church every week. The thing is, a fair number of the people who identify themselves as pagans nowadays seem to regard it as more of a hobby than a true religion. Then again, some people do that with the Abrahamic religions as well. I mean, you don't have to look very far to find someone who goes to church regularly but doesn't follow much of anything Jesus actually said. Is that really belief, of the kind you live by and are willing to die for? I don't think I would join a religion unless I honestly, deeply believed in it. I don't see much point in half-assing it, unless you just think whatever deity is in charge isn't really too bright. ("Well, he doesn't sincerely believe, and hasn't been living by any of the rules I established, but he said the right words in that ritual, so I think I'll favor him!" Hey, Pascal thought it would work.)
Respect for nature is a common thread among many religions, but it's important to realize that, well, nature is a lot bigger than the authors of most religious texts knew. It seems a little odd to me that, in a universe of quasars and black holes, people still think God's primary concern is who controls various pieces of land. Besides, if God is really the all-loving All-Father that people say He is, isn't there a good chance that He'd want you to share? There are even people who essentially want to deny the majority of the universe, like the Young-Earth Creationists. If the entire universe is only 6000 years old, then all the stuff we've discovered about the life cycles of stars is just illusion set up by God (or possibly Satan) to trick astronomers. Granted, if there really IS an omnipotent and omniscient being, He/She/It presumably COULD handle colliding galaxies while also helping the Hebrews take control of Canaan, and make every single species of beetle individually (no evolution required!), but would it really be prudent?
I guess I find some appeal in the idea of minor nature or household gods, even though I don't believe in them any more than I do the monotheistic God. I mean, I basically agree with Douglas Adams, who said, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" But in a way, I think I'd like the fairies to be there. After all, as far as I know, they don't threaten to send me to Hell if I disagree with them. Granted, there can be problems if they're not invited to a christening, but scrounging up an extra place setting seems a lot easier than having to go to church every week. The thing is, a fair number of the people who identify themselves as pagans nowadays seem to regard it as more of a hobby than a true religion. Then again, some people do that with the Abrahamic religions as well. I mean, you don't have to look very far to find someone who goes to church regularly but doesn't follow much of anything Jesus actually said. Is that really belief, of the kind you live by and are willing to die for? I don't think I would join a religion unless I honestly, deeply believed in it. I don't see much point in half-assing it, unless you just think whatever deity is in charge isn't really too bright. ("Well, he doesn't sincerely believe, and hasn't been living by any of the rules I established, but he said the right words in that ritual, so I think I'll favor him!" Hey, Pascal thought it would work.)
Respect for nature is a common thread among many religions, but it's important to realize that, well, nature is a lot bigger than the authors of most religious texts knew. It seems a little odd to me that, in a universe of quasars and black holes, people still think God's primary concern is who controls various pieces of land. Besides, if God is really the all-loving All-Father that people say He is, isn't there a good chance that He'd want you to share? There are even people who essentially want to deny the majority of the universe, like the Young-Earth Creationists. If the entire universe is only 6000 years old, then all the stuff we've discovered about the life cycles of stars is just illusion set up by God (or possibly Satan) to trick astronomers. Granted, if there really IS an omnipotent and omniscient being, He/She/It presumably COULD handle colliding galaxies while also helping the Hebrews take control of Canaan, and make every single species of beetle individually (no evolution required!), but would it really be prudent?
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 12:41 am (UTC)See, that is not Jesus, but the Church, to me. To me, the Church wants us to go through the motions without question. Jesus came to disrupt and tear down the "holy" church he had been born into and had seen thoroughly corrupted. He saw it as a dividing force, a tool to make the "priests and the Pharisees" the ones with the Truth, and the rest of us were sitting way below , waiting for instructions.
Yes, I agree a lot of religions give the ceremony its due, while not practicing the true tenets of the theology. I have learned that you don't have to have religion to hear what Jesus talked about, and know it can be a true path for one's life. The problem comes when some religion tells me how I must view/walk/promote that path. I still believe in God, but the vision of God as this regimented, well-defined persona is just as false as anything I've ever seen outside the Church.
if God is really the all-loving All-Father that people say He is, isn't there a good chance that He'd want you to share?
Absolutely. But God is not Father, Mother, or Caretaker. God is Creator, which frees everyone to find the truth within or without religion. "His" prudence is not a factor, because God has left us to deal with the world. When, in frustration, we ask for guidance, we may hear it in our own conscience, shaped by experience and conversation.
Sorry I'm waxing so philosophical, heh, it's Super Bowl Sunday. What else am I gonna do?
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Date: 2009-02-02 04:29 pm (UTC)Why even make that distinction? Why not view God more roundly? Why not view God as The Whole? As Madge, the lady in the Palmolive commercial would say, "you're soaking in it". Isn't the creator/creation distinction imposing human order on That Which We Cannot Understand?
I can't hold God in my mind, in any way, shape, or form. I cannot know the nature of God. God, is beyond human comprehension. How can a part know the whole? My cells have no knowledge of me. When I reflect on different scales of observation, from the cosmic to the quantum level, perhaps I catch a whiff of God, or The Whole, but I know nothing of God.
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Date: 2009-02-02 05:04 pm (UTC)Of course you can. There must be many instances where you read or see or hear or feel or do something that, for maybe just a brief moment, makes perfect sense. That, to me is God, too. (The Matrix comes to mind when you say "you're soaking in it"!)
God is the whole, of course, but God is also the part. Your cells do recognize you, if only when separated from you (blood spilled leads to lysis, organ transplant meets with rejection). I liken that to the discomfort caused by my occasional habit of distancing myself from God, holding myself away in order to try to define it (i.e., put it into an easy-to-digest religious box, or deny it altogether).
It's true we can't really know God, but, like a mother you've never met, you sometimes will recognize God.
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Date: 2009-02-02 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 08:43 pm (UTC)But, to your point, I think of that sense of context as God - and the recognition of God I sometimes feel - doesn't mean I understand or know God, just that I recognize the shape or smell or sound as God (the Whole and the parts). Along with that recognition comes a feeling of relatedness, less of a feeling of separation from God and more of a feeling that the God part of me is growing or has dominance.
I don't believe anything can be separated from God, because it's all part of The Whole.
I don't think God separates us from himself, but we separate ourselves from God, the Whole, all the time. Quite often through the following of meaningless or misunderstood or perverted rituals such as vovat was originally talking about. I think it's human nature to want something so important to be something i can understand, I can own. I think that is the point where a lot of us find ourselves saying, "there is no God, because you can't show me!"
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Date: 2009-02-02 10:06 pm (UTC)I don't think anybody can be wrong when sharing their personal definition of God, whatever that may be. It's not a matter of debate.
I don't think God separates us from himself
My personal understanding of God isn't anthropomorphic, gendered, or separate from anything -- everything is infused with it, at all times, because everything -- all this around us -- by my definition, is part of God. I see human morality as relevant to God only insofar as it is part of The Whole, and I consider it a very small part of that Whole. I don't see human morality as taking a particularly privileged, or special, place in understanding the nature of God. For some reason (I think largely for reasons of cultural transmission and social control), questions of human morality have become equivalent with God, in some peoples' minds. This makes no sense to me. In my view, human morality -- the fact that we appear to be moral creatures -- is a curiosity like any other -- like natural language, the formation of stars, protozoans, or our brains. I think questions about our moral faculty are equal with other questions we may ask about all that we perceive, and our experience of being alive. Human morality has its place, and its role to play, along with everything else, but understanding it doesn't get us any closer to understanding God than understanding any other mystery of the universe.
Along with that recognition comes a feeling of relatedness, less of a feeling of separation from God and more of a feeling that the God part of me is growing or has dominance.
I'd argue that this feeling of separateness you describe is an illusion, because we are never actually separate. Everything, including the feeling of being separate, is God. All of it -- everything we humans would call good, everything we'd call bad, all that surrounds us, all of it, is God, in my view. The Whole Complex Mess. I don't believe in a cosmic moral accounting of human foibles. We answer to each other, as human beings, right here, right now, and the ripples of our actions are felt, I'm sure, in places we don't know exist, in ways we can't anticipate, or understand.
If I act in accordance with a moral code, it's not a performance for an anthropomorphic deity, or to score points in the afterlife, it's out of respect for my fellow creatures, right here, right now. The extent to which I respect myself, and others, has an immediate effect on how I feel about myself, but I wouldn't confuse that with an increased understanding of God.
we separate ourselves from God, the Whole, all the time. Quite often through the following of meaningless or misunderstood or perverted rituals such as vovat was originally talking about.
I'm sorry, I don't understand. What are you saying is perverted or meaningless about the rituals vovat describes?
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Date: 2009-02-02 11:38 pm (UTC)Neither is mine, that's why I hesitate to say "he" or "father", etc. And I'm also not saying that humans having the privileged place next to God, because I don't think it works that way, either. I think other animals, plants, hell, even mountains and dewdrops have communion with God, it is not the exclusive property and privilege of humans.
What I think vovat was getting at was the emptiness (silliness?) of some religious (pagan or otherwise) rituals that simply seem to be wishing on a star, or repeating an incantation with your fingers crossed, without understanding that God is not a trick pony. Not a genie in a bottle. Not good ol' Dad on prom night, making sure Junior is worthy to borrow the car.
I've had people say to me "I prayed, but God didn't answer my prayer" so many times I've lost count. It isn't hard to go from there to concluding that people who engage in religious rituals until something bad happens have been sold a bill of goods about God. And because you yourself would not be deceived into thinking that God is there for you to petition for anything/everything, I posit you do know something about the nature of God.
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Date: 2009-02-03 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 02:10 am (UTC)God can be all-knowing, and not make my life a party. God can be all-powerful, but not use any discernible power to better my life. In other words, when floods and earthquakes happen, I'm not thinking, "Boy, God's mad at someone," it's the earth and all the many forces in collision causing some bad shit. When something amazing happens, on a large or small scale, yes, I tend to say, "Thank God," but I don't mean that God directed action to make me happy. It's just that God made me, and I can appreciate this wonderful thing, and it's great.
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Date: 2009-02-03 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 12:51 am (UTC)I think it can be a matter of debate with SOME definitions. I mean, if I believe in Zeus, you could successfully show that no bearded man who hurls thunderbolts lives on top of Mount Olympus. But if I define Zeus as a sort of abstract concept, that's a whole different kettle of divine fish.
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Date: 2009-02-03 04:08 pm (UTC)Fair enough. You're right about Zeus. We can trek up Mt. Olympus and see that "he" is not there casting thunderbolts. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if, once we reach the summit, the Zeus-worshiper's definition of Zeus doesn't shift to invoke some property of Zeus' that interfered with us seeing "him". At this point I shrug and say, "whatever gets you through the day". As long as the Zeus worshiper isn't making my life miserable with his or her beliefs, I respect his or her right to hold them. If I'm expected to accept the existence of Zeus, however? That too is a whole different kettle of divine fish ;-)
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Date: 2009-02-04 12:50 am (UTC)I think this is really pretty typical with religion and mythology. A lot of ancient societies seemed to think the gods lived up in the clouds, but they were moved elsewhere once people explored the clouds and didn't see Valhalla. For that matter, there are all kinds of details people add to the Santa Claus myth to explain why flights over the North Pole never come across his workshop.
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Date: 2009-02-08 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 12:45 am (UTC)Or you could view the Creator as a certain aspect of The Whole, as the Hindu Trimurti does.
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Date: 2009-02-03 04:29 pm (UTC)I should state, too, while I'm sharing my personal thoughts on God, that I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe that my ego floats off to join a bunch of other egos. The boundaries that define "me" cease to exist. I don't believe that "I", this human consciousness, continues to exist beyond this meagre lifespan. I have no recollection of my existence before my birth, and I expect a similar state of affairs upon my death. "I", as such, will cease to exist. So, if anything happens next? It is of little consequence to "me".
no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-04 02:10 pm (UTC)Yes, if there's a way for our personalities to exist sans brain, this corporeal baggage seems useless. Why introduce it at all?
even though I don't actually believe in spiritual reincarnation, it still makes more sense to me than Heaven or Hell.
I don't subscribe to the notion of a "soul" recycling program, either. I'm thinking it's pretty much Game Over at the end. There's matter, and the energy ripples our existence has created while we've been here, but beyond that? Given what we know? It's hard to accept that much beyond that persists.
first to the comment, then to the main post, though I suppose I could do two
Date: 2009-02-02 06:39 pm (UTC)Hear hear! I agree. I also agree with the person who responded to this comment about the all-encompassingness of God. Of course, I have noticed that when it comes to actual belief I have very open ones-- I tend to believe in everything in some way. But still!
Which brings me to the main post, so I won't bother making a separate comment. This is timely because I just finished reading a book full of interesting concepts about religion, particularly the relationships between early paganism and early Christianity, and what was really interesting and I must say to me refreshing was that it didn't take the tired old neo-pagan argument that Christianity-just-stole-everything-from-the-pagans-so-therefore-it's-invalid viewpoint, but the more mysterious Maybe-there-are-Deep-Spiritual-REASONS-for-these-connections viewpoint. And I love that kind of thing, and when I try to think about what it is I actually BELIEVE about the universe and the spiritual side of it, I realize that it's closer to this, a belief that all these old myths and legends are windows to the unknowable truth, which is why I keep fanatically writing about the importance of Myth and Story myself I guess; but then I still identify and identify strongly as a Christian, and I realized this is not so much that I believe "what a Christian believes" (whatever THAT is, as any denomination or even people within the denomination will tell you differently) as much as it is a Life-Calling Choice-- choosing to follow Jesus and his teachings particularly over all the other religions just because I feel a sure connection with Him somehow. And yet I'm NOT a particularly ritualistic Christian, although I feel most comfortable in the particularly ritualistic denomination I grew up in, and I love going to Mass and participating in the prayers and receiving the Eucharist. So I don't know where I fall in your hobby vs. believer analysis of religious types-- somewhere else entirely I guess.
Re: first to the comment, then to the main post, though I suppose I could do two
Date: 2009-02-02 07:35 pm (UTC)a Life-Calling Choice-- choosing to follow Jesus and his teachings particularly over all the other religions just because I feel a sure connection with Him
I like both of these points. I, too still find a great deal of comfort in the ritual of the Eucharist, but, of course, when one chooses to perform a ritual, it can be as rich with meaning as any human relationship, or as dull as badly-danced waltz. And casual observers might never know how meaningful it is in one's life; they may assume that a ritual is just a ritual.
BTW, what was the name of the book?
Re: first to the comment, then to the main post, though I suppose I could do two
Date: 2009-02-02 07:58 pm (UTC)Re: first to the comment, then to the main post, though I suppose I could do two
Date: 2009-02-03 12:56 am (UTC)Especially when you consider that those pagans probably took a lot of their ideas from earlier pagan religions. I don't think any known religion isn't syncretic to some degree (well, except maybe if you find a totally isolated tribe).
Re: first to the comment, then to the main post, though I suppose I could do two
Date: 2009-02-03 02:27 pm (UTC)And I would bet even THEY have some overlap, my beliefs about religion being what they are.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 12:43 am (UTC)See, that is not Jesus, but the Church, to me. To me, the Church wants us to go through the motions without question.
Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. The Protestant Reformation seems to have been partially a reaction to the significance of ritual over actual belief, although the doctrine of salvation through faith alone has its own flaws. Then again, it isn't exactly Martin Luther's fault that some people take this concept to mean "do anything you want, say a prayer, and it's all good."
God is Creator, which frees everyone to find the truth within or without religion. "His" prudence is not a factor, because God has left us to deal with the world.
See, the thing I figure is that, whether you believe in God or not, you probably think the world is largely self-regulating. For instance, gravity works without some invisible being having to pull you down to the ground. That's why I don't totally get why some people see the origin of species as an exception to the rule. "Yeah, God made the world so it could take care of itself, but it still takes a miracle to create a new species."
Sorry I'm waxing so philosophical, heh, it's Super Bowl Sunday. What else am I gonna do?
You could have watched the Puppy Bowl, I guess.
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Date: 2009-02-03 02:25 am (UTC)Oh, I did!
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Date: 2009-02-02 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 11:51 pm (UTC)