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To: dragonhammer; orionblamblam
The top down aspect you refer to had many executions attached to it.

Shall we descend into litanies of who killed who? I *know* you don't want us to be posting from the Roman martyrology. Or maybe snippets from the North American martyrs?

You will find

a) that it was the state and not the Church who was behind most of these persecutions of pagans (note that you mentioned King Olaf and the Emperor Charlemagne--not Pope, not bishop.) Blaming the Church for them makes about as much sense as blaming the Church for abortion today.

b) things like sorcery, atheism, and not participating in the state cult were capital crimes in many pagan cultures. Plato was killed as an atheist by pagans. The Christians were killed as atheists by pagans. The Jesuits were killed as sorcerors by pagans. Handsome Lake, the pagan Seneca prophet, killed witches.

The essential problem with paganism always has been and always will be that anyone can make it anything they want. There is no creed, there is only picking and choosing deities and aspects of deities that one likes.

It encompasses everything from lofty Platonism and Brahmanism to the wickedest, basest cults of sexual degeneracy and bloodlust. So you may very well not *like* the freakish sort of Asatruar, but what position are you to judge it? I find it somewhat odd that you are judging paganism by Christianity's moral standards.

42 posted on 08/04/2006 9:49:50 AM PDT by Claud
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To: Antoninus

de civitate Dei contra paganos

PINGUS!!!


43 posted on 08/04/2006 9:54:57 AM PDT by Claud
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To: Claud
The essential problem with paganism always has been and always will be that anyone can make it anything they want. There is no creed, there is only picking and choosing deities and aspects of deities that one likes.

Debates with pagans generally end when you ask them to define their belief system for you.

The same goes for atheists.

Many Christians may have feet of clay when it comes to being able to lay out their beliefs in a logical and coherent way, but for pagans and atheists, the clay goes all the way up to their armpits. They are all attack, no substance.
45 posted on 08/04/2006 10:46:52 AM PDT by Antoninus (Public schools are the madrassas of the American Left. --Ann Coulter, Godless)
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