Heathens, Pagans and Witches discussion

Most if not all wars are based on religious beliefs. Religious people feel the need for power and control over other humans

In addition. Religious myths stall scientific discovery and propogate misinformation about the world around us

Anything can be turned into a religion in the hands a fanatics. I remember an atheist friend of Spouse's parents griping at being asked to keep silence at noon in Westminster Abbey. She wasn't asked to pray, just to keep a respectful silence while other prayed. Her excuse was that the Abbey is subsidized by the British Government, so no one should pray there, not even the Anglicans who have been praying there for centuries. Too bad for her. I was in the Abbey at noon once and the moment of silence was lovely.

My husband is a militant ("recovering Catholic") atheist. He is very likely the same type of person Little is referring to. I blame the recovering-Catholic part for his pushiness. There is a lot of anger mixed into his feelings about all religion. I, however, am a pagan atheist, and find great beauty and value in many aspects of Wicca and other similar paths. I do not ever try to push my view; if anything, many people assume I am religious in the same way they are simply because I do go out of my way to be aware and respectful.

The people who scream loudest are the most noticed. I think the latest atheist push, which I agree is happening, is because it is a safer world (at least in the USA, haha), to be open and outspoken without danger to mind or self, than it used to be. It will calm, I expect, after a few years.

The present day atheists remind me of the Puritans who came to North America to practice religious freedom, but in less than 100 years were hanging people as witches. Those who complain loudest about persecution are usually the first to jump on the bandwagon in persecuting others.

The funny thing is, they still have a need to feel faith in something, so they substitute something else for religion; usually partisan political dogma which is just as fanatical and hypocritical as the religions they revile.

Atheism still defines itself by theism. It's perverse devotion.

Yes Gina, I've encountered the pushiness quite a lot. They seem to find me incomprehensible when I feel I'm being perfectly logical.

As others have suggested, I do think for the pushy ones it's a form of conversion mania—they're newly "out" in their atheist faith and want to thump the pulpit at every opportunity. I respect atheists who show respect for others, but there is a certain strain of them who make the all the others look bad, as Mawgojzeta said.

I had a friend, raised staunchly Catholic, who never fit in with that faith and had severe doubts, but he was always up for a reasoned discussion. Then he read Dawkins and Hitchens and went through a kind of conversion experience. Every opportunity (and I mean every) he started in with his newly acquired faith in non-faith so much that many of us didn't like talking to him anymore. He's a good person and to his great credit, once we pointed out that he was not behaving any differently than a religious fanatic, he moderated his behavior. He held on to his beliefs in non-belief, remained true to himself—and more power to him for that—but he stopped thumping the pulpit. I'm grateful to have him back as a friend.

Hmmm, I think you all may be confusing atheists with folk just being dicks...the atheism or born again bit seems pretty incidental.

Well it's easy to confuse people with dicks when there are so many of them, and they assume so many manifestations.

Gina I'm surprised about your ex. I had the impression you had been reading some of the same books together.

Does Catholicism bread more atheists?

There was a time I felt so burned by religion I could not believe in anything. I eventually read a book on paganism. It opened my mind again to there being a spiritual side to life.

That's very inspiring Joseph. Thank you for telling us.

Been AFK for a while and only near a real keyboard recently.
Noticed the thread and have a handful thoughts.
As usual my misanthropic Discordianism colours my judgement.

Little wrote: "…why they feel so compelled to push disbelief and nihilism, and what's making them so scared that they feel the need to scream their anti-faith and anti-meaning message at every turn......"

I don’t know about the screaming, fear, and nihilism, you can be a fairly calm and peaceful atheist, quite content with things. I get the disbelief though.
The fact that they are vocal about it seems to be more of the issue. The fact that some are loudly and possibly aggressively vocal.
Many will be this way as they are “kicking against the pricks” (Acts 26:14) of the more organised religions in their areas, the fallout into the pagan community a secondary effect.

Holly wrote: "...a need to feel faith in something..."

I think that’s misunderstanding atheism, it’s not about faith in atheism or the “movement”. Atheism is one bit of an atheist’s reality tunnel. There isn’t really the all-encompassing thing that goes with religions. Atheists will disagree on many things other than the god issue.

I’ve quoted this before and here I go again, but I think it’s pertinent to this thread:

“In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice

When the only God you know your whole life is the Christian God and then you realize what the church is all about, is easy to become an angry atheist.

But hopefully spirituality will flow like water and find its way around obstacles to reach at least some of this people.

Speaking as a once ‘pushy atheist’ I will say that it was shockingly easy to become fanatical about my points of view.
I live in a very Christian town where, because of my non-belief, people criticized, judged, and made misguided assumptions about my character. Little by little I became more and more defensive.
One day a coworker, who I considered a friend, actually stood up and moved to sit at a different table when I let it slip that I didn’t believe in any God. I was blown away that someone I’d spoken to everyday for years instantly disliked me. Amidst that hurt, my response was to go on the offensive and point out flaws in her religion. It wasn’t right; I know that now, but at the time I truly believed I was defending logic and enlightenment. (shaking head)
In time, I found myself arguing every time someone brought up religion or faith. In my mind, I was saying what desperately needed to be said.
It took a long time, years even, to seriously reflect and realize I was becoming someone I didn’t like. I debated as frequently and fervently as a zealot. No one could have told me this. I wouldn’t have listened. It something I needed to understand on my own. And it wasn’t until I let all that hurt, anger, and self-righteousness go before I could.
I became a much happier person when I shut-up and started to listen. No, I wouldn’t join anyone in their beliefs, but I realized how interesting and beautiful faith and spirituality could be.
This is just my experience, but I bet others felt like they were defending themselves, and once stepping across that line it is hard going back.

Jennifer wrote: "Speaking as a once ‘pushy atheist’ I will say that it was shockingly easy to become fanatical about my points of view.
I live in a very Christian town where, because of my non-belief, people criti..."

Very well said, Jennifer. I think this happens a lot of the time—someone is put down for their ideas and feels they have to defend their point of view.

Being quiet and trying to respect others beliefs run the risk of not being true to one's self.

Around here we get a lot of door knockers, mostly Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons on mission and bible thumping evangelicals. I usually just politely smile and tell them I am pagan and say "no thank you"

Once one of them asked me how I could live so long without Jesus in my life. I replied: "I've lived my whole life as a decent person, I am happy, well adjusted and reasonably successful, that is how I have lived all these years without Jesus. I happen to worship the earth and the sun......now you tell me how you would get through one day with either." They just looked at each other, gape-jawed, trying to come up with a reply to that. They couldn't, so they bid me good day and left.

That's a great answer, Holly, I might just try it next time...:)

Little wrote: "I have respect for all faiths now but have no tolerance for door knockers. I have also had similar experiences Jennifer in small country towns on the mainland. I had one woman snub me publicly in a..."

Haha Little, that sounds like it was an interesting car ride.

"Until we both realised she was talking about me" too priceless. The look on her face must have been to die for.

I live in a big city. There exists an anonymity here so it is not likely to have someone get in your face. Plus, I would say many people are on the liberal side.

I find more intimidating is being forced to draw a "blob" because there is not sufficient free space in the apartment to draw a circle.

I love this story!

lol

Oh I'm laughing my head off at the car ride story. The door-knockers are a bane of my existence. Once my husband got rid of them for months by answering the door once naked.

I want to point out my own little peeve: I hate it when people refer to Wicca as a faith. I'm Wiccan. In both the short form and the long form of the Charge of the Goddess there is the line "certainty not faith." And for that line alone I might be Wiccan. I think faith is a terrible idea. I don't think anyone should ever set aside logic and one's own experience just because somebody else tells you to have "faith." When you accept faith over your own experience and logical assessment then you are pretty much throwing over your self sovereignty. In meditative trances I have seen ghosts, elementals, and gods. I then found that what I had seen in trance was exactly correct. For instance with one ghost, I did not know my neighbor had committed suicide and he had, right before I saw his ghost. With the gods, I once dreamed of this goddess and had no idea about this goddess. I described the dream to my High Priestess and she gave me the name of the goddess--Durga. When I looked up Durga, she looked exactly like in my dream. The only Hindu goddess I knew of at that time was Kali. So, no my religion is not a faith. I do not take things on faith. I feel that if an element of a religon's beliefs is flatly contradictory to scientific fact, than that particular belief is wrong and should be changed to meet the facts. I think that using the word "faith" to mean religion is simply more of the Christian way of worming their lingo and ideas into others' ways of comprehending the world.

Now I'm going to go check out that Wiki article on atheism to see how Wicca could possible be conceived as atheism. Wicca involves worship of a goddess and a god; lots of goddesses and gods. Atheists do not believe in gods. This does not make atheists wrong. I assume through logical analysis of their life's experience they have come to the conclusion there is no deity, period. That's fine by me. I could be the wrong one, but you'd have to have a really good explanation for the weirdy weird things that I have experienced.

I prefer to use the word spirituality rather than either faith or religion to describe my own feelings.

Cynthia wrote: I feel that if an element of a religon's beliefs is flatly contradictory to scientific fact, than that particular belief is wrong and should be changed to meet the facts.

Good points and an interesting post, Cynthia, but scientific 'facts' have been known to change :)

My personal take is that spirituality is faith based on inspiration, or even imagination. It's a creative burgeoning with intuition.

Religion is faith motivated by fear. It starts from a negative premise.

Personally faith has been an important part of my practice. I think faith is even a part of learning. A certain amount of trust is required when learning anything from any teacher, and even though there is no physical evidence that they know what they're talking about, we proceed on faith, and eventually the proof becomes apparent, but I think a certain amount of faith is required in almost any endevour.

My experience with Atheists has been that most are disappointed Christians of one stripe or another. Their God did not "give them the pony they prayed so hard for" so to speak and they are punishing Him by withholding belief. This bit of irrationality is apparent even to them so they also attack their former belief, using the same tactics they were taught to push Christianity.

When they remember that there are other beliefs besides their former one, they use their rude tactics against those who follow other faiths as well, though they treat Pagan faiths much the same as they did before they turned from Christianity.

Nell wrote: "Good points and an interesting post, Cynthia, but scientific 'facts' have been known to change :)"

This is a great point, Nell. I heartily agree. :-D

I think we can honor both science and faith/spirituality. It doesn't have to be an either/or decision, once we realize that both spiritual beliefs and science are filtered through fallible human beings. Our experiences with these institutions don't necessarily contradict each other; we just don't necessarily have the full picture.

That's my one big article of faith: I know that I do not know. I know that it's impossible for anyone person or institution to know everything. I *believe* that the Universe is at once both more subtle than we are and much, much simpler. I believe in holding irreconcilable differences together inside me and cherishing both. Because some day, or in some dimension, they both may be completely reconcilable.

Yeah, that's my faith.

Thorrsman wrote: "though they treat Pagan faiths much the same as they did before they turned from Christianity."

Isn't that always the way? Pagan faith gets treated like second-class or somehow diabolical, no matter what.

Folks, you seem to have encountered a narrow sampling of atheists.
Here's Mr Minchin being rational and an atheist...and seeing the glory and beauty in things while arguing his point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXC...

Old-Barbarossa wrote: "
Here's Mr Minchin being rational and an atheist...and seeing the glory and beauty in things while arguing his point.
http://www.yo..."

Rational perhaps, but science has moved past rationality and materialism to quantum theory, which apparently explains the Universe in an way that improves on classical physics. Tim Minchin uses overconfidence in his beliefs and a stereotypical caricature to bludgeon and ridicule a certain type of pagan, and the individual statements in his rant are not necessarily sustainable.

For example, to take simply the first of his arguments re. herbal medicine over conventional medicine, it is now being realized that many herbal remedies contain ingredients that mitigate the side-effects of their active ingredients. All that material is discarded if natural plant material is used (or never exists in the first place if the medicine is created chemically in the lab) and only the so-called active ingredient finds its way into medically approved medicine.

I could go on and write an essay on the double-slit experiment and probability waves/particles but life's too short.

“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine.

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

J.B.S. Haldane

Nell wrote: "Rational perhaps, but science has mov..."

I agree. He has the same smugness and selectivity of focus (on who to pick on) as many another atheist I've heard/seen/met. His final bit on the wonder of the universe was quite nice, but what came before fit the pattern too well.

Sherman Alexie is perhaps more "my kind of atheist." :-D He calls out people like Dawkins, et al., for simplifying arguments, their smugness and selectivity, but he doesn't back down from his own non-beliefs. (At least as reflected in his Twitterfeed.:-/) He thinks the attitudes of some of these proselytizing atheists do rationality more harm than good because they reduce anyone with belief systems to either hopelessly naive, manipulatively evil, or stupid.

I celebrate atheists who realize the complexity of the Universe and the impossibility of any one point of view getting everything right. Who know that they do not know.

Knowledge isn't a point of view. It's what makes us grow as human beings, it's our shared culture and humanity, it's the font of all progress. (And progress is mostly good!) But Knowing, with a capital K, reduces us to fundamentalists and fanatics (whether we believe in an afterlife or not). Therefore, I'm happy to repeat: I know that I do not know.

It is true that Atheists are very pushy too. Once I talked to my friend (at a time when he still were my friend) and I mentioned that I believe in a sort of a afterlife and he started to convincing me that that's total nonsense and everything.

SOme time back I found a show with Morgan Freeman called Through a wormhole. And it was talking about the discoveries of science and also about religion. They asked question regarding this. And theories. It was quite interesting.

Saying mre and more people are atheists, which is true. And how it will increase, based on a research the did in several countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zGbr...

But what question they didn't and which immediately was, "What will be of us and Who will we be."

The weird thing is the amount of anger that can come from atheists, or more specifically nihilists.

I remember I used to follow this V-log on youtube which was a means of keeping in touch, of four college students who had moved away from each other.

These two guys jumped down their friend's throat because she confessed she believed in an afterlife.

I remember one of the guys saying, "there is no escaping the loneliness and desolation of death." If he doesn't believe in an afterlife, who is there to feel lonely?

I lost sleep arguing with him in my head.

Well that guy jumped down my throat. It really annoyed me

Who is an nihilist?

I should really let Old-Barbarossa answer, but I think there's a subtle difference. An atheist is someone who does not subscribe to any particular religion. A nihilist is someone who does not believe in anything apart from random chance, and science.

I see. Well, he might be almost a nihilist then.

I am a bit self conscious of Atheist topic being in my introduction I said something to the effect as religion being superstition. This was my way of letting on to my own faithlessness. I think it would be a bad example if I lied or led others to falsely believe how well I was in touch with the supernatural.

I am looking to find something outside the material world.

As far as I am concerned my experiences apply to me and not everyone else. I don't rely on others to agree with whatever I believe in order for my beliefs to be valid.

Joseph (Millennium Man) wrote: "I don't rely on others to agree with whatever I believe in order for my beliefs to be valid. " A good policy generally I think.

Amy, Hayden's datefriend wrote: "It is true that Atheists are very pushy too. Once I talked to my friend (at a time when he still were my friend) and I mentioned that I believe in a sort of a afterlife and he started to convincing..."

Thanks for the link!
I am looking forward to watching these...

I completely agree with focusing on the me experiences. Each of us is a unique design, ones niche, that perfectly fits into the magnificent Universal puzzle. We are able to completely understand our own position as others resonate around their niche. Ones power is held in the knowing of the self realized through experience.

I know what you mean. Some people just can't think out of box, and that in many thing.

People need to learn respect. No one is taking their believes, so they could stop ruining ours.

Like for example my datefriend is UU and I fully respect that. We both respect each other. And that's how it should be

As Brian said, it's not the scientific method ( which I respect a great deal and highly recommend), it's another form of religious mania. It's scientism, not science.

Again I have to say the atheists you all seem to be meeting...well, they may be atheists but they sound also alot like dicks. And the dick bit seems to be trumping the atheist bit.
Scientists can be dicks too...humans in general can. This doesn't change the validity of scientific method.

Also...why do some folk think different rules of evidence apply to magick and science?
Can it be replicated? Does it work? etc
If a success rate in magick is lower than or similar to random chance or placebo: it ain't magick.
Experiment with technique and change and adapt it based on results. Write stuff down, keep diaries, analyse data.
Shift your paradigm if necessary...if nothing is working you're just howling into the darkness.

Can I fall into the middle of this discussion? Not to be an accommodator but to say yes I've known atheist dickwads and I've known great human beings who happen to be atheists. I could say the same of religious people of all sorts including pagans. The difference seems to be, as OB pointed out, in the dickish part of the equation. My only beef with anyone of any belief spectrum is their lack of tolerance for those who don't think as they do. If someone is live and let live we can likely be friends even if privately they think my beliefs are shi*e.

And I must also say that a sense of wonder is not the exclusive domain of people of belief. An atheist world will not necessarily be a cold world. However, given the human need to believe and how some scientific studies have shown our brains are hardwired towards belief, I don't think such a world will ever exist.

And this is too hard to type on my phone so I'll shut up now.

Old-Barbarossa wrote: "Again I have to say the atheists you all seem to be meeting...well, they may be atheists but they sound also a lot like dicks. And the dick bit seems to be trumping the atheist bit.
Scientists can b..."

True true true. Tolerance that's the code. And it is sad so many people don't have it.

I know it doesn't really belongs here, but someone who is to me like a second mom, and I call her so, she's a Christian and fully supports any other faith. I also re-figured myself from Trans lesbian to Trans Asexual, and she's fully supportive.