The Religion and Philosophy discussion thread!

nastyn8 wrote:

JoelCarli wrote:You do bring up a good point, though you have to keep in mind that Greek philosophy brought us natural law, which originally was completely unrelated to religion. However, it's natural law and Greek Philosophy in general which inspired Christianity, and by extension, Islam (amongst other religions).

That technically depends on what religion you actually do choose to believe because Abrahamic religions choose to believe that religion has existed since The Creator (using this in place of God or Allah) created.

I don't think that is technically true; religion only truly exists when at least two people are capable of understanding the concept, and humans have existed only for a few thousand years (and the most primitive men did not have philosophy/religion). Then again, it's just my idea.

nastyn8 wrote:I think that natural law could be considered a Nontheistic religion because it is based of the philosophy of a small group of people (unless of course, you consider those philosophers to be gods, in which case, it would be polytheistic), which is pretty much the same for any religion. That could be disputed though because there is no prayer or meditation or anything for natural law.

Right, that's what I'm saying. However, most dharmic and many pagan religions are nontheistic, and many of the first and the latter venerate nature literally.

Good point. I'll post some more stuff tomorrow. I'm too tired to be philosophical tonight.

Sveet, my thread is so far a success

Hurray this thread is successful

I spent my childhood going from church to church because most wouldn't accept my disabled step dad and his head injury behaviour. Also I was kicked out of several sunday schools because I asked about the other gods and goddesses.

When I was in my last year of highschool I decided to look into Paganism, First discovered Wicca, but quickly moved on to Traditional Witchcraft. Decided that I still wasn't happy a few years later.

In 2005 I came across Asatru whilst doing some research on Vikings. I've always been fasinated by Vikings. I've never looked back, I discovered my path and have felt grounded since that day.

Interesting, what does Asatru entail? What do you belive in?

I had to read Viking books like the Prose Edda and it was incredibly boring and nothing happened.

Here's how the book basically reads as:

Chapter 3:
Odin woke up one morning, he crawled out of bed and looked out the window. It was a cold morning and it was raining outside. Odin scratched his ass thrice, crawled back in bed, and proceeded to fall back asleep.

Chapter 4

Paganism, you say?

I'm all ears

^ lel

There's 1% of satire in that post.

Interesting read, this thread

There is more to Vikings than the Eddas.

Most of what you can read was written by the Christians as most of the vikings didn't write things down, the Christian missionaries did hence why the Vikings are most commonly known as barbarians, raiders, rapers, etc.
Vikings wrote in runes and on rune stones.

Anyway....

Asatru.... What is Asatru.

It is the modern revival belief in the old Norse Gods and Goddesses. It translates to Faith in the gods.

Here is a good link http://www.gladsheim.org/whatis.html I am crap at explaining things so links are easier for me. It's not that I am lazy.

As I started off originally with wicca I still have the concept of chosing a main god and goddess. My chosen are Skathi - Goddess of Winter and Thor - son of Odin/God of Thunder/Protector of Mankind

To me Skathi represents the cold obviously... I strive in cold conditions, Winter makes me feel so alive and full of energy,

With Thor I feel protected and strong. Proud to honor him.

I was part of a Blot a few years ago, We were called The Hearth of Sif (Thor's wife) I had to give that up. But this year have plans to start a new group.
I also need to get an altar set up so I can Blot to the gods at the sabbats like I used to.

Interesting. I'm not too familiar with paganism, I really should get into reading about it more.

There are many different paths in Paganism.
My mum is a Hedgewitch. Very much into the traditional witchcraft and herblore.
My dad is into both Shamanism and Egyptian.

I think it's easier if your whole family is into Paganism, even if they are very different to each other. Like if I would go Pagan now, it would shatter my family and they would probably alienate me just because they don't know it. I know a lot of folks that think Paganism = Satanism.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that people are uninformed about religion in general like that. Wiccans tend to have a lot of shit thrown in their way because their symbol is the pentagram (and Satanism is an upside down pentagram), and in history, many pagans, namely from the north, were considered to be barbarians.

I think the main reason pagans tend to be frowned upon today is because before and during Christ, you only had a few different sects or religions; you had Judaism, paganism and Christianity (I'd probably even add gnosticism/mysticism, although it's not a religion per se). At the time, Judaism, as we all know, was the big deal; everyone from Saint Paul, to Christ, to Pontius Pilate was Jewish. Eventually, some decided to follow Christ as their savior and became Christians.

Jews and Christians thought pagans were weird, barbaric, and most importantly, wrong, and as such did everything they could to convert them. This is why I believe today, paganism is seen in bad light. Magic is also frowned upon in Christianity (and I'm almost certain in Judaism too). Combine this with simple ignorance and you have people jumping to incorrect conclusions. Again, this is just my theory.

I of course, keep an open mind. I personally like Wicca; they have a sort of karma system in which any good or bad action you commit or spell you cast will return to you three times stronger.

I know next to nothing about Wicca so can't really agree or disagree on that one.

Yes Wiccans believe in the 3 fold law. Which means any magick you do comes back to you 3x better or worse (if you do a hex - but then not all hexes are bad, like if you need to banish something or someone from your life. That is considered as Grey magick)

And the amount of times I have been called a Satanist is actually quite funny. I used to get quite angry with it but now I find it rather amusing that people are so ignorant.

That doesn't surprise me