On religion (in particular Christianity), rationality, and this forum - are we allowed to discuss it?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I worship them as real beings who can support or hinder human endeavors.

[McAvoy]

I worship them as real beings who can support or hinder human endeavors.

Ahh interesting.

What made you lead you to this though? Like do you still believe in their mythological creation too? Or do you have your own version? Where did they come from?

[Beastro]

Beastro, I take issue with your broad characterization of Paganism. Most Pagan religions are morally complex, not amoral.

I'm not saying they are amoral, I'm saying the wider scope of their world is. That is the metadivine realm both mankind and gods find themselves locked in with nothing above them.

There is no absolute God that made the world good as according to Abrahamic religions. All arose from chaos and order with different levels of beings trying to struggle and make their way in the world. The gods are simply higher up in the chain and do things for mankind in the same way we toss breadcrumbs to pigeons.

You mention a total lack of restraint and giving into desires, but the notions of restraint, moderation, and balance are essential to the ancient Greek religion.

Yes, because pagans of times past knew of how to navigate the world and how to rein those things in (and when it release them). Modern man doesn't and is now blind to the reasons why, and so is left wide open to being played like marionettes by forces greater than them. Think of Pentheus in The Bacchae.

It's why I ardently disagree with Richard Dawkin's sentiment that Christians and atheists have more in common and only have one major issue; that Christian and atheists have only the dispute over one god between them, as opposed to a dispute over many with other religions as it completely misses the point of the matter.

My outlook is more of the old pagan Anglo-Saxon king Penda: "Nor did King Penda obstruct the preaching of the word among his people, the Mercians, if any were willing to hear it; but, on the contrary, he hated and despised those whom he perceived not to perform the works of faith, when they had once received the faith, saying, "They were contemptible and wretched who did not obey their God, in whom they believed.".

[Beastro]

So Pagan religion is a representation of for a lack of a better word, idols to the various human elements? Greed, love, etc?

Take a look at these articles to get a fundamental grasp of it: https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collectio ... knowledge/

Most people's conception of paganism today is simply Christian polytheism as the moral framework is Christian in construction as belief and devotion to a higher ideal is more important than negotiation and ritual.

Modern irreligion is more a variation of Christianity in that it effectively holds the divine to be so sacred that nothing could possibly be a god. It is Protestantism in its extreme.

Here's an excerpt:

D&D Religion

I want to start with a pop-cultural baseline, because illustrating the ways in which this is the wrong way to think about polytheistic religions is actually a quick way to cut to some of the core principles of real historical polytheistic practice. If you have played functionally any high fantasy pen-and-paper or computer role-playing game in the last few decades, chance are you have, at some point, run into a screen like this:

Deity select in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, a grossly underappreciated gem of an RPG you should all play.
There is a particular silliness to this situation though. This screen appears while your character is sitting down with Berath, the goddess of the dead, who has just made clear has total control of your soul…and you are choosing pointedly to venerate some other god at this particular juncture?
Good Luck. With. That.

The deity selection screen, where you choose what god your character ‘believes in.’

Alternately, you have probably run into conversations like this one:
Good ol’ Harrim telling us all about his preferred deity, Groetus. Oddly, despite the inevitability of death, there isn’t anything better about following Groetus. He doesn’t make you immortal, or even promise a better afterlife. Why devote your time to a god who doesn’t do anything for you, when you have so many other options!

Where the nice NPC (non-player-character) cleric in your party extols the virtue of ‘his’ or ‘her’ god, often by arguing for the importance of a clear value of ethical system related to that specific deity. Harrim in Pathfinder: Kingmaker extols the moral virtue of is quiet (somewhat whiny) resignation before the inevitability of death as an argument for the superiority of ‘his’ deity. In Pillars of Eternity, Eder and Xoti present dueling justifications (Eder in PoE1, Xoti in PoE2) for their belief and loyalty to Eothas/Gaun, a fertility god.

For players that do select a diety, that selection is usually tied to an ‘alignment’ (as with D&D 3.5 Paladins, or most diety selection in the Pathfinder system) which in turn often corresponds to a system of ethics or a way of life. Paladins in Pillars of Eternity receive bonuses to the degree to which their statements and actions match the ethics of their orders, for instance. But while there is a big emphasis on following the ethics or worldview of the god, there is functionally no emphasis on ritual, and even less on the kinds of ritualized exchanges that dominate actual ancient polytheistic practice.
Deity selection for a cleric from Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Now how this (and in fact, all) of the gods restrict a player to a specific starting alignment in order to follow them. Do evil people not have dreams? If they do have dreams, why wouldn’t they want to be in good with “The Great Dreamer?” It doesn’t matter if Desna is nice or mean or chaotic or lawful – presumably, Desna is, so anyone who has dreams, which is everyone, needs to keep in right relationship to her if they expect to sleep the night.

This, to put it kindly, is not how these sorts of religion work.

So how do they work?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It's why I ardently disagree with Richard Dawkin's sentiment that Christians and atheists have more in common and only have one major issue; that Christian and atheists have only the dispute over one god between them, as opposed to a dispute over many with other religions as it completely misses the point of the matter.

What other disputes are there?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Also, don't you think Christianity isn't as perfectly nuanced as it purports itself to be with the "one true God" rhetoric?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I worship them as real beings who can support or hinder human endeavors.

Ahh interesting.

What made you lead you to this though? Like do you still believe in their mythological creation too? Or do you have your own version? Where did they come from?

Given there's several mutually exclusive origin stories for the gods I worship, I look at those more for their allegorical than literal meaning. As to where they come from, that's not something I really concern myself with.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Beastro, I take issue with your broad characterization of Paganism. Most Pagan religions are morally complex, not amoral.

I'm not saying they are amoral, I'm saying the wider scope of their world is. That is the metadivine realm both mankind and gods find themselves locked in with nothing above them.

There is no absolute God that made the world good as according to Abrahamic religions. All arose from chaos and order with different levels of beings trying to struggle and make their way in the world. The gods are simply higher up in the chain and do things for mankind in the same way we toss breadcrumbs to pigeons.

Well, I can kind of agree with that. The world is not made good. But part of the thing about breaking out of the monotheist mindset is recognizing that the supreme deity and the demiurge are separate roles.

I am a polytheist because I don't see the cosmos we exist in as part of one unifying purpose. I can't. It's all different goals, different ways, striving together and against each other.


I do think that Richard Dawkins is a culturally Christian atheist, and a lot of atheists fail to recognize how Christianity informs their understanding of basic morality, sociology, and attitudes towards religion.

As for Dawkins, I have so many intense disagreements with him it's hard to know where to start. Maybe a good beginning part is that he is guilty of war crimes against the concept of fun and missed his calling as the cruel master of a Dickensian orphanage.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Beastro, I take issue with your broad characterization of Paganism. Most Pagan religions are morally complex, not amoral.

I'm not saying they are amoral, I'm saying the wider scope of their world is. That is the metadivine realm both mankind and gods find themselves locked in with nothing above them.

There is no absolute God that made the world good as according to Abrahamic religions. All arose from chaos and order with different levels of beings trying to struggle and make their way in the world. The gods are simply higher up in the chain and do things for mankind in the same way we toss breadcrumbs to pigeons.

Well, I can kind of agree with that. The world is not made good. But part of the thing about breaking out of the monotheist mindset is recognizing that the supreme deity and the demiurge are separate roles.

It's like the difference between the executive republic and the parliamentary government systems when it all comes down to it.

I am a polytheist because I don't see the cosmos we exist in as part of one unifying purpose. I can't. It's all different goals, different ways, striving together and against each other.

It's not so much about the goals, but of the challenges.

I do think that Richard Dawkins is a culturally Christian atheist, and a lot of atheists fail to recognize how Christianity informs their understanding of basic morality, sociology, and attitudes towards religion.

I'm fairly certain that the general understanding is that atheists really are just arguing about the scientific efficacy of the cosmos theory of a supreme being. That and the ritual practice, though I don't think many people understand how intuitive the principle of faith is.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

There's a lot of difference between what people say they are and who they really are. "Culturally Christian" is a real thing and affects facets of life from when you get time off to your historical understanding of Martin Luther King Jr.