This is my question for discution Pagan's who nows about them i'm a Pagan (it's a religion) and no one I know has heard of it before what about you
First thought Someone needs to learn how to form decent sentences. Seriously. Possible translation: Second thought Yes, I'm more or less familiar with paganism and I know some people who are into it. Hence I know better than to believe the various prejudices around Paganism. I don't believe in it myself and think of it as a sort of underground religion. I hope it stays that way.
My best friend back home was a pagan for a while (or at least, he thought he was - he's been going through some pretty weird stuff lately), and one of my classmates here at college is a practicing Wiccan (part of the whole paganism ideology). I am also slightly knowledgeable about it myself, as I am going into a field in Archaeology, and have taken several courses in ancient cultures practicing some form of paganism.
I'm quite aware of what paganism is. Tolerable it is, indeed, although I truly would doubt that a revival of paganism as a primarily known religion would occur throughout the world with all the other sort of beliefs we seem to hold on this planet.
Thanks for sharing your veiws, (some different to mine) For thoughs who don't now the slang word (which some of us see as insulting) is whitches, and before you say we can't turn people into frogs, stupid Hollywood. We mainly use our magic to heal sick but never for personal gain.......
Blame the Medieval Catholic church for that. They re-wrote sections of the Bible and arbitrarily set dates to coincide with pagan holidays so that A) they could say "oh, look how many people are celebrating Christmas/Easter/etc" and B) so the "pagans and heathens" would feel more comfortable about converting.
Right, that's nothing new. As childofturin said, that was done on purpose by the Catholic Church so that that Pagans(among other religions) would convert. Catholicism was actually created by the Roman Empire as a mixture of Christianity and Paganism as a precaution; Constantine knew that as the Roman Empire grew conflicts in religion were bound to happen, so he kind of "merged" them. This is why modern Catholicism has elements of Paganism (Praying to statues/praying to dead people/symbolism/idols/holidays on the same dates/holidays with elements of Pagan holidays/etc.)
Surprisingly, the whole foundation of the christianity and cathlosim(sp?) was founded in Isarel, but Romans are considered the main founders of Christianity, as they are the ones with the Pope.
I'm sorry dude, but wtf? Catholicism was created as a result of a merger with Paganism? Catholicism was created before Constantine, all he did was popularize it. And it was Catholics in the minority in that time, they were persecuted like ****. Paganism wasn't in the minority then. And Modern Catholics don't pray to statues or idols, get your facts right.One of our Ten Commandments is not to worship false gods, etc, we can only worship THE God (of course, this is only our beliefs)
Yes, but the Pope and his merry band of editors changed the Bible in many ways during the Middle Ages to attract more people - and many of those changes changed the holy days to coincide with many pagan festivals (like the Solstices, for instance). This is a widely known fact, even among Christians. He was referring to the saints and Mary, I believe. I don't claim to know everything about Catholicism, especially because I wasn't raised Catholic, but I do know a bit, so maybe I can clear things up.
Yeah I didn't argue against that, I already knew about the Middle Ages (I'm not saying what they did was good though). I was more arguing with the fact that he said that Catholicism was created by the Roman Empire. And about the saints and Mary bit, he said that we basically pray to the statues (lol), not the actual dead people. I always thought that only reason we had statues of the saints and all (apart from works of art) was to have a sort of "visualisation" of them. We don't actually pray to the statue.
Yes, Catholicism was a small branch of Christianity at that time, but when Constantine "popularized" it, he also merged it with Paganism, for reasons I already explained. These are facts. The Catholic Church afterward expanded upon this, editing parts of the Bible even more. I know that it's part of the Ten Commandments, but I do it's in Catholic practices to do it anyway(maybe not you personally, but I've seen it.) It's in Catholic practices to pray to the Virgin Mary, dead Saints, and idols like "The Madonna" or the cross. Praying to dead people and statues were Pagan practices, as are a lot of elements of Catholicism. I'm aware that this is the truth now, but it originally started as a Pagan practice, hence why modern Protestants don't really do anything like that.
Just from what I seen on previous posts, I can now tell everybody a universal Truth: All roads lead to Christianity. Seriously, whatever religion we discuss, it always ends to something Christian. Just a truth of living in the Western world I guess. Anyways, yep, heard of the Pagan religions a few times before, don't know much, but i know a few facts like the fact it predates Christianity and Christian dates are based on Pagan festivals and stories. Still I see it as a very Eastern type religion, since it really is one of the earliest and most well known religions that generally promoted peace with nature. I like the religion personally, not considered violent aren't that organised and go with the flow of nature.
