Religions you have rejected

awitch said:

No, I'm still a hard polytheist (believing in multiple, unique deities). But we think about gods differently today. For example, we have a good grasp on how weather works these days, so we know sacrificing animals isn't going to make it rain (and it would be inhumane anyway). We link nature with our religion, though one certainly doesn't have to.

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So the gods aren't real entities but just nature?

cloudyday2 said:

You seem to view religion much like the Romans who rejected Christianity because it was not ancient. Any legitimate religion in their eyes needed to originate centuries earlier. New religions were viewed with suspicion as potentially seditious conspiracies (like some view Freemasonry today).

Why should a person believe something simply because generations of dead people have believed? Does that truly lend credibility to a belief? Why not roll-up our own sleeves and test these beliefs? That is what I find appealing about the more loosely defined religions like witchcraft, occult, paganism, new age, and Hinduism. You are absolutely correct by the way that Hinduism is many religions and tends to be tightly-coupled to Indian cultural traditions, but it is also very rich in variety and tolerance, and this makes it an appealing option for people who want to explore IMO.

Also, there is a lot of variety in beliefs among people who label as witches, pagans, occult, etc. I have been wondering about joining a witchcraft forum to run my ideas past some people who believe and practice magic. I don't want to use magic (partly because I know it takes effort and I am lazy and skeptical), but I have seen some weird things that I wish I understood. As an example, I seem to often see a walking stick bug as a signal that something is about to happen spiritually. I'm not a spiritually-inclined person, but I wonder if I have some natural sensitivity to spiritual things that I should be exploring and trying to understand. Maybe it is all hallucinations and delusions though.

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Well no. My criticism of any particular religion does not rely on it being more ancient than new. If that were true Christianity must be false. I am critical of the so called new paganism because it's something else entirely unto itself, rather than anything genuinely pagan that we saw in the past.

cloudyday2 said:

I think about what Pontius Pilate said on the original Good Friday - "what is truth?". I take the question to be asking not only what IS truth but also what IS THE VALUE of truth.
- An atheist might argue that truth is objective facts and that truth should be accepted regardless of its effect on people.
- Another person might think that an idea that benefits the individual or the group should be accepted regardless of its factuality. About halfway through college I became extremely depressed and could barely function, but I heard that Oracle would hire ANYBODY that graduated from certain universities including mine. Believing that LIE gave me the hope I needed to graduate. So "what is truth?"

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The ultimate truth is Jesus Christ, which is spiritual truth. I have never been an atheist, I've always been a believer in God, but it took time to find out the truth of which God. It's a long story of how I came to my conclusions after disqualifying every other religion out there. Christianity is actually the most condemned religion by western culture (which is now the global culture).

The following are some verses based on what the bible says about the non-believer's mind set. The bible describes them as lost, and self-righteous. It's not that they don't know the truth, it's that in the condition they're in, they can't know.


Proverbs 4:19
The way of the wicked is like darkness; They do not know over what they stumble.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

Isaiah 44:18

They do not know, nor do they understand, for He has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend.

Ezekiel 12:2

"Son of man, you live in the midst of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear; for they are a rebellious house.

Isaiah 6:9-10

He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.' "Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed."

John 1:5
The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, "We are not blind too, are we?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.

Matthew 13:13
"Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

Luke 8:10
And He said, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that SEEING THEY MAY NOT SEE, AND HEARING THEY MAY NOT UNDERSTAND.

cloudyday2 said:

It's worth remembering that when the Romans conquered people they would absorb their gods into the Roman pantheon. If the conquered people had a sky god and Rome had a sky god then those gods were the same and interchangeable. So if an ancient Roman priest of Zeus met a modern pagan worshiper of Zeus there would be instant acceptance regardless of the cultural disconnect. There is only one sky, so the ancient pagans thought all sky gods were the same god with different names and stories, and that would include modern reinventions of the sky god. Paganism was very tolerant and modern paganism is also very tolerant.

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I would contest the notion that paganism is tolerant. I would also ask why that matters in discerning the truth.

cloudyday2 said:

In what way was or is paganism intolerant? (By paganism I really mean polytheism. Paganism apparently was just a derogatory term for non-Christians in non-urban areas invented during the Christian days of the Roman Empire.

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The Romans were never particularly tolerant of any cult or worship they didn't approve of. There were waves of persecution by various Emperors at various times of Christians. In particular those who would not agree to take part in the Imperial cult were considered a threat and challenge to the State. The same is true of much paganism in different contexts. Vikings raided Christian towns and villages Britain. They had an almost Jihadi mindset when it came to fighting and dying in battle (expecting to go to Valhalla and join Thor and Odin). When Christians came to Japan they were forced out and the religion was made illegal, with those founds being subject to death and torture.


I’m sure there are other examples I’m failing to mention as well, but no group in history has been completely tolerant. Romans were accommodating to other polytheistic beliefs they thought could synchronise with their own, but that only extended so far. The Jews were a constant problem for the Romans and the tension between the two groups resulted in the Jewish wars and the Diaspora after the expulsion of the Jews from Israel. How could Rome in particular be tolerant of every ideology or mystery cult? They simply couldn’t and we would be importing a level of tolerance not seen until the 20th century back on to the Romans.

cloudyday2 said:

That is true, but Christians considered the Roman gods to be demons, and they obstinately refused to participate in state ceremonies that would demonstrate their goodwill to the state. You can imagine how insulting and rebellious these beliefs and behaviors must have seemed to the Romans. Time and time again the Roman judges begged the Christians to simply toss a pinch of incense on an altar to Jupiter as a token gesture, but the Christians eagerly volunteered themselves to be tried and executed due to the high regard they had for martyrs. This is similar to the behavior of modern Islamic martyrs except that the Christians were not trying to kill others in the process.

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When you compare legitimate Christian martyrs to Islamic martyrs you are being coy. The Jihadi is a martyr because he has died for Islam, even if he started the conflict. There were rules in the Church that one could not just spit on a pagan statue and expect to become a martyr (Hippolytus' canon law). A genuine martyr confessed their faith when the opportunity pronounced itself, they might have looked forward to it, but they didn't provoke it on purpose.

Also it goes beyond just offense to the Romans that Christians denied their gods. It goes to the issue of a society not dedicated to the gods may be subject to the wrath of the gods and thus the need for Christians to comply. This was reasonable within their pagan context but cuts hard against your idea that they were tolerant.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

A genuine martyr confessed their faith when the opportunity pronounced itself, they might have looked forward to it, but they didn't provoke it on purpose.

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Some of the martyrs of Cordoba (mid-9th century) arguably did by purposely 'blaspheming' Islam (i.e., insulting Muhammad and/or proclaiming Christianity).

That's the catch with this criterion: when doing or saying anything other than what the authorities and wider society want you to do is seen as 'provoking' or 'asking for it', you're going to get some apologists (ancient and modern) who use whatever the law is as an excuse to say that the authorities were actually quite 'tolerant' -- the Christians were just obstinate law-breakers. the latter being technically true (due to the unjust nature of the law in question). Plenty of people at various levels of pop-academia have built their careers on exploiting this reality, from popular losers and hucksters for Islam like Mr. Reza "I have a Ph.D. in the History of Religions" Aslan (his book Zealot argues that Jesus was a political revolutionary, in the Che Guevara sense), to less popular names who are basically only known to the public for advancing this thesis, like Dr. Candida Moss (author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom; though to be fair, she has also done other surely stellar work like some book called Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, which author Reza Aslan calls "a must read"...hmm).

So how tolerant were pagans vis-a-vis Christians/Christianity? It seemingly depends on whose book/outlook you're being sold.

cloudyday2 said:

My understanding is that the Romans never had an actual policy to suppress Christianity until around the time of Diocletian, and by then the religion was too widespread to suppress. Prior to that time the persecution of Christians happened in particular cities for brief times. Christians might be persecuted in Alexandria while they are living normally in Rome.

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I'd have to revisit the sources I have for the time, but if someone wanted to argue that Diocletian marked the start of official persecutions, I probably wouldn't immediately argue to the contrary. His ascension to the Emperor's throne does mark the start of what my own Church's calendar calls the "Year of the Martyrs" (A.M. for Anno Martyrum), which we still use (this year is 1735 AM), so we clearly agree with the premise, even if the details may be different depending on where you look or how you want to divide up the history (i.e., generally the martyrs under Diocletian's immediate successor, Maximinus Daia, are counted as martyrs of the Diocletian persecution anyway, since Maximinus' time didn't last nearly as long as his predecessor's).

So yes, that seems fair.

Ignatius the Kiwi said:

So the gods aren't real entities but just nature?

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Yes, I believe they are.
Hard polytheist.

awitch said:

Yes, I believe they are.
Hard polytheist.

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Have you read or heard any testimonies of people that have tried ayahuasca? Or as some say "mother ayahuasca' after trying it.

Eyes wide Open said:

Have you read or heard any testimonies of people that have tried ayahuasca? Or as some say "mother ayahuasca' after trying it.

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I'm unfamiliar with it. My drink of choice is mead.

cloudyday2 said:

Do you imagine the gods having bodies? For example would the body of the sky god be the atmosphere? I can't remember the word now, but there is the idea that a collection of things becomes more than the sum of those things, and this idea is used by some to explain consciousness. There was the movie "Solaris" where a planet had consciousness. Is it possible that polytheistic gods are simply the consciousnesses associated with all collections of matter that are capable of creating consciousness?

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No, I don't imagine they have physical bodies. It's more like sense of presence in my mind's eye.

awitch said:

I'm unfamiliar with it. My drink of choice is mead.

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Ok. Ayahuasca is a tea brewed from a vine ingested to bring about a spiritual experience. Mostly folks talk about a loving experience where they are guided by mother nature, as a creative entity . Mead might be more relaxing though , lol.

cloudyday2 said:

I have read that it is unpleasant but then some people are cured of depression for a few months. Psychedelic mushrooms are supposed to have a similar effect on depression. I wish they were legal in the US.

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I'm not an advocate for it, nor have I done it. Most describe aspects of their life's baggage unpacked in a loving way but confronting nonetheless. I think repeat experiences seem to be less loving if there is guidance that hasn't been adhered to from a previous experience. I think it's most benefical for alcoholics and hardened recreational drug uses who are addicts and the positive results they get from the experience. I'd like see research in this area too, along with mushrooms but it comes down to funding which is limited unless a drug company can see a way of monopolizing the end product.
Mushrooms have anti depressive effects but it has to be understood and controlled to some degree to protect the user.