Worst thing about your religion?
- Thread starter Michael
- Start date
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Theres nothing specific about Wicca or any kind of Paganism.
To maintain a specifically defined tradition you would have to have a unified central authority with inquisitional powers...torture, imprisonment, excommunication, and the like.
All in the name of a singular imperative...that there can only be ONE truth.
Not really. All you need to have a specific set of practices ascribed to a religion is a consensus of the community of said religion's followers as to what the practices are.
Such as: generally, Wicca worships two deities, includes the practice of folk magic and ritual magic as part of religious practice, implies the usage of specific tools in ritual, and has a particular ethical code. This is entirely different from the beliefs and practices of, say, Norse neopaganism or of Neodruidism.
To say that they're all the same thing is remarkably ignorant of the religions themselves; and to say that only a centralized body is capable of conceptualizing specifics that define a religion is remarkably biased towards the history of Christianity.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
I'm not saying they are the same...they are all as different as the individual subscribers. There is no consensus within any Wicca or Pagan genre.
We observed the same thing in Europe when the Vatican started losing its grip on secular power...the avalanche of schisms has been thundering down the mountain ever since.
Not from what I have observed. Generally, if someone claims to be a Wiccan and they do not follow at least a modicum of the usual Wiccan practices, the rest of the Wiccan community ignores their claims. Wicca, unlike most other Western religions, is an orthopraxy rather than an orthodoxy, and places much more importance on a set of practices.
Now, the allowances for eclecticism has become broader in the past few decades. But, Wicca's particular history has given it a strong base for a consensus on orthopraxy. Prior to the 1970's, Wicca was purely initiatory, and had a very specific set of practices and certain beliefs implied by them. However, after that decade, a slew of literature came out which made much of the inner workings and practices of Wicca public and open-source, which led to an increase in the number of solitary practitioners. That eventually led to wide variation by eclectics, both in covens and by themselves, who became more and more accepted throughout the 1980's and 1990's. However, mostly, they still retained the basic structure and frameworks of their traditional predecessors.
There is a consensus, you just have to research very deeply into Wicca's history in order to understand it.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Wicca's so called 'history' is as shallow as a cookie tray.
Consider how many interpretations have multiplied in a few decades since being conjured out of nothing by a few charlatans in England...compared to how little Christianity changed from 700AD to 1000AD.
You need a secret Wiccan police going around burning books...as there can only be ONE truth!
Here is your mistake. No religion has a monopoly on truth.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
I agree...but all religions including yours must claim a monopoly on truth nonetheless.
Good point, swivel. Very well put.
There is no greater arrogance, surely.
It is why religious people need to have humility.
Even St Paul said "We see in a glass, darkly"
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Not really, no. Wicca, and most other neopagan faiths, has made a point of stating that all religions are valid, because different people have different beliefs.
Very few religions in the world claim exclusivity and a monopoly on truth.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Without architectures of certainty...there can be no religions.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Because there are lots of beliefs doesnt mean they are ALL valid...or even that one of them is valid.
What you are describing is exactly the 'fluff bunny' truth-is-whatever-I-want-it-to-be mentality you claim to despise.
Not really. There is a difference between accepting all beliefs as valid while remaining in a specific path, and eclectically accepting all beliefs as one's own.
And I never said I despised over-eclecticism. Just that it irked me when New-Agers and fluffy bunnies claimed to be Wiccans when their religious path quite clearly has nothing to do with Wicca.
And I never said I despised over-eclecticism. Just that it irked me when New-Agers and fluffy bunnies claimed to be Wiccans when their religious path quite clearly has nothing to do with Wicca.
One of the things that really makes my heart sick is how the Bible unashamedly taught parents to kill their own children, without mercy, when they sinned.
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I don't like that Christians can be stubborn about things they admit they are ignorant of. It's like me arguing points on quantum physics when all I know about quantum physics is that it has something to do with atoms.
If Christians truly looked at their religion critically, for years and years, studied it in college and at universities, read hundreds of books on Christianity, sought after answers for all those questions that just nagged at them in the back of their minds, then they would be agnostic-theists, like me
because that's exactly the journey I've had.
If Christians truly looked at their religion critically, for years and years, studied it in college and at universities, read hundreds of books on Christianity, sought after answers for all those questions that just nagged at them in the back of their minds, then they would be agnostic-theists, like me
because that's exactly the journey I've had.I don't like that Christians can be stubborn about things they admit they are ignorant of. It's like me arguing points on quantum physics when all I know about quantum physics is that it has something to do with atoms.
If Christians truly looked at their religion critically, for years and years, studied it in college and at universities, read hundreds of books on Christianity, sought after answers for all those questions that just nagged at them in the back of their minds, then they would be agnostic-theists, like me
Check out the book, New kind of Christian. I forced myself to read it, it was recommended by a young friend of mine, because I was looking for answers from a new perspective at the time. The book didn't really give direct answers, but it gave me a glimpse of what is supposed to be Christianity, based off of old fundamental beliefs. The attitude to take is post-modernism. It was a good book that I'm glad I read because it addresses what you are talking about and will even give you some ammunition to help other Christians you know to want to get their questions answered, which IMHO is appolgetic humility....the true spirit of what a Christian should be like. If ever I am Christian again, it will be because it makes sense to have faith in a silent supreme being. It will be because I believe that it exists because of how my life turns out day to day, because of other people's experiences, and maybe an experience of my own.
The worst thing about most religions is that it inserts dogmatic assumptions like there is a god to turn to/away from and that [insert religion] is right and [insert any other religion] is wrong.