Would we've been better off as pagans?

well, would we? apart from christians thinking that our souls wouldn't be saved or something, I think that europe wouldn't fared better as pagans.

All these larger mega religions just sows division amongst people, and offers nothing special that pagan religions can't. before christianity the romans knew the egyptians had different gods, they even expected it, but yet they traded and had relation completely unaffected by religion. But in the middle ages religion had become such a big deal, there wasn't much trade going on between the muslim and christian worlds. It just served to divide people.

Paganism also seems to be more accepting of science and pluralism, while the bigger religions strive for orthodoxy and kill people over senseless stuff, a la 16th century europe.

I think christianity is neat and all, but I think that a europe with many pagan religions would've been much neater. It's just that, there aren't really many pros unique to christianity is there?

 

Plus the Pagans were far less puritanical about sex.

 

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Sounds good on the surface, but just imagine some of the gods we would create.
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What you mean "we"?

 

What we have here in America at this present time led by obama et al is nothing more than a bunch of pagans. So do you think we should should follow the lead of these liberal pagans? Seventy Three percent of Americans call themselves Christians, so what you're suggesting here is that we should somehow believe you that the remaining 27% of pagan/liberal America has the blueprint of how we should live our lives. Thanks but no thanks.

 

so is every non-Christian a pagan to you?

 

I don't think he understands that there's a pagan religion.
...I guess kids take time to learn these things.

 

It's an interesting 'what if' question. Certainly, many bad things were done 'in the name of' Christianity at various times (especially in the Middle Ages), but then it brought some positive and 'civilising' influences to Europe too, in particular a spread of the use of books, studying and learning via the monasteries in the Middle Ages that probably wouldn't have happened if the pre-existing separate 'pagan' belief systems had remained in place. The original driving force behind that was really the desire to distribute unified Christian theology and teaching, which just wouldn't have been necessary otherwise (and Islam served the same purpose elsewhere to an extent, of course). 'Pagan learning' tended to be much more limited in the sense of being the learning of the different individual traditions at a relatively 'local' through word of mouth - the broad geography of Christianity made that kind of tradition unsustainable, and that's what really brought us the development of 'seats of learning', and the practise of writing down 'knowledge' for others to learn from (and take away with them), that have been so important to developing our knowledge.

Somewhat ironic, I guess, that that contributed so much to the later development of observation, European philosophy and Natural Philosophy that ultimately led to the undermining of the dominance of Christianity through the development of science, and also somewhat ironic that science developed so directly as a result of what religion had brought. It's easy to remember the times when bad things were done because of organised 'big' religion, but perhaps not so naturally easy to remember the positive things it has also brought.

Would such things as 'science' have developed in a world of local 'Pagan' traditions? It's obviously impossible to say, but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that it if it had it would have probably taken much longer to do it.

 

Yes, for the definition of a non-Christian would be pagan or heathen---take your pick.

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Yes, for the definition of a non-Christian would be pagan or heathen---take your pick.

 

Can you explain what makes Jews pagans?

 

i love how you can turn everything into some hate liberals thing.. Even this! Seriously, what the??

 

We have created all the God, thousands of them in human history.

 

Christianity created the United States. That's enough of a pro for me.

Christianity is the only religion as far as I'm concerned.

 

seriously you reject the religion of 3/4 of the world?

 

In the beginning paganism was more of an identity rather than a religion. Pagan comes from the Latin Paganus meaning rural dweller.

Let's also include Animism into the grouping.

 

'Pagan' was a term given to 'pagans' by others, rather than a term they gave to themselves. It was (and is) a very broad generic term that covers all manner of individual (originally usually 'native', 'local' and 'polytheistic') belief systems. One of the problems with some so-called modern 'Pagans' is that they think 'Paganism' is a term for 'a religion', rather than a term to describe lots of different 'religions'. Consequently (and I've known quite a few of them over the years) they tend to be a little mixed up and confused about which particular bits of 'religion' they have personally picked up from which origins, and there's a great deal of misinformation and mistaken assumptions about particular things many of them believe.

For example:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/23/easter-pagan-roots

 

But our temples would look so much cooler if we were Pagans. Look at Greece. They had some great architecture.

 

I believe we would be better off being moral enough to bear true witness to whatever system of privately held beliefs we may have, as subjective moral values. I know of no religion that aspires to unholiness and immorality.

 

Well the old testement says man has dominian over everything (women included), so go forth and abuse the planet and the females of your own spiecies.

Paganism is an appreciation of mother nature... i.e. do the opposite of the christians.

I'm preferring paganism.

 

What happened to practice the Art of the husbandman on Earth?

 

Actually the way you explain this is a very modern right wing Christian view that was not part of how the religion that created the story see it.

 

Oh give me a break. The story of Genesis, summarising that women are basically not to be trusted and men shall be in charge is at the root of male domination of women throughout the ages.

 

Simple, jews never believed that Christ was and is our savior; they have more of a respect and or alliance with David than they do with Christ, who they consider just to be an ordinary mortal man---i.e. in other words jews are non-Christian pagans.

 

Yeah, it took me years of studying the various ideologies and political preferences to get to the point of having mastered the art of exposing liberals and liberalism as being the destructive force that they have inherently developed over time, or developed since the heyday of their roots from Marxism and Communism. But hey, glad to see that you can spot a master at his craft, and appreciate the fact that I have passed it on to this political forum for all to enjoy.

 

I think you misunderstand.