Posted on 05/04/2002 7:45:25 PM PDT by Tomalak
I disagree. Their disdain for fundamental rights arises out of their rejection of the God who gave all men those rights.
Conversely, the foundation of the American Republic is the belief in that very thing.
The beliefs of a man or a nation have consequences in how they live out their public life.
I partially agree. I will add that it is just plain stupid. Many of these so-called "pagans" don't have the slightest clue about the mythology, literature or history of these matters. See my FR profle and the thread Ethereal Explorations for some of my views on the Wicca stupidity.
A lot of these people have been watching too much television and live in a 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' fantasy world and don't have a real life of their own to live.
Here is a previous exchange I had with a "Wiccan" idiot:
They believe in the old gods like the Earth Mother and the Horned God of the hunt.
Like Baphomet or Pan?
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There is no Satan in Wicca...
There is Hecate and a whole assortment of devils. Satan is an entirely pagan entity. "Wicca" is a pagan religion...
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Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. How do they reconcile that with the fact that it is a Hebrew word?
The point is that in avoiding their true pagan roots, the Neo-Pagans are participating inadvertently in a Judaic word-fetishism. This should give some of the Judaic/Christian community cause for reflection and cooperation.
Food for thought...
From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth. Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Palestine, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness. Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness.
[21] For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretense of successsion to St. Peter, their whole hiearchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily percieve that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen empire.
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience of the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance, a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion…
"Wicca" is a religion of stupidity and psychotic superstition. Most of it is stolen from other pagan mythoi, including those of pagan Greece and pagan Egypt...
Are we talkin' "worldwide intolerance" including the U.S.A.?
That's funny.
So, in your scenario, when the 'moderates' have killed all the 'hotheads', and the only ones left are those like yourself with no basis in God-given law, on what are you going to base your new set of rules for mankind to live by?
Are you going to make it up on the spot? There were several societies who tried that unsuccessfully in the last century...in fact, they did it EXACTLY as you are proposing...the most notorious was known as the Soviet Union.
Less so, but we've had our moments.
But ours is much less pronounced, I admit.
Ah, the mythical 'separation of Church and State'. And you find that where in the Constitution?
In fact, my copy simply forbids the government from setting up a state religion. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the liberals have done.
The only thing the libs want totally outside of government is Christianity.
Good God, can't you get anything straight. First it is the mysterious Catholic founding of Virginia, which has somehow escaped the knowledge of historians. Now you complain that the greatest popular writer in English of his era on the subject of religion, from a Catholic perspective, should not write on religion, but 'should stick to topics he knows'. He was a contemporary of Cardinal Newman, the convert from Episcopalianism to Catholicism, who was a better writer, but who wrote for the intelligentsia.
One or two more of these, and I will start to doubt anything you post, without linked proof.
Being an Atheist that has nothing but scorn for "superstition and 3 day old corpses walking" I detect a disconnect in your reaction. Tell me, what is your knowledge of "Paganism" beyond "some of my best friends are". How are you more “enlightened” than the author of the article?
HUH?? Ooo-Kay...
Islam, Wicca, and even Secularism Humanism for that matter, operate and worship under the good graces and tolerance of a Christian taught and inspired "tolerance" whether you and others concede this point or not...
What is puzzling is that you do not understand that civil behavior is almost entirely dependent on a correct moral and religious upbringing. It is the lack of this upbringing which is filling our society with sociopathic criminals.
Sorry to disappoint, but if you read the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson makes the point that the country was born to satisfy any manner of Deism, or even a complete absence of Deistic belief.
Maybe you don't like it. Maybe I don't. Tough. It's (partly) why the country was created.
The question is not how you turned out, it is how the great majority turn out. It is a fact that there are hardly any militant atheists on the earth, although there are plenty of agnostics, and even more who don't bother to think about 'First Things'. So it is clear that there is a great deal of evidence that most people do not function intellectually as you do, so your individual story is not of signifigance in analyzing social policies.
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