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Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

Christian science and philosophy is rooted in Plato and Aristotle, two men who believed in many gods

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Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
when your view of the world is identical to victorian era anthropologists it's about time to step back and reexamine yourself

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Senju Kannon posted:

when your view of the world is identical to victorian era anthropologists it's about time to step back and reexamine yourself

How is it identical to Victorian anthropologists and why are those specific aspects of their worldview bad? Are we supposed to disavow any belief system that ever was used to support imperialism? Because if so, I've got bad news about communism.

Re: Aristotle, I'm aware that rational polytheists exist​, but in ancient Greece they generally didn't apply this rational thought to religious matters, and those who did got accused of atheism.
Maybe argue with what I'm actually saying rather than what you suspect my secret motivations are.

Pellisworth
Jun 20, 2005

pidan posted:

Nah I just feel like "how does God work inside time when he exists outside it" allows for a fundamentally more rational answer than "why did Odin eat a whole ox at his wedding".

I think you're kind of strawmanning here, we actually have vanishingly little knowledge of what day-to-day practice of Norse paganism looked like. It was all oral tradition, the Vikings didn't write down anything about it, all we really have are a few accounts from Christian and one Muslim writer plus the Eddas which are epic poetry. The Eddas sketch out some of the mythology and beliefs but, again, we have little idea of how Tias' ancestors in the year 800 practiced and thought about their religion.

They could well have had deep philosophical and metaphysical conversations, we just don't know. For example, in Norse mythology, Odin (head god) sacrifices himself to himself by crucifixion upside down on a tree while being stabbed with a spear. This is the traditional Odinic sacrifice that Vikings probably performed before major battles or what have you. Interestingly, despite the parallels with Christian crucifixion, it predates contact with Christianity and is authentically pagan. Anyway, Odin sacrifices himself to more or less learn the mystical secrets of the universe, the magic of runes (seidr).

Myths usually serve a pedagogical or allegorical purpose, it's not just a bunch of beardy dudes drinking mead and wondering why Odin's horse has eight legs.

I think you're approaching this with a Christian bias but that's understandable and not a bad thing, but something to be aware of.

I wonder what you might think about preserving Native American or other aboriginal religions as opposed to reconstructing European paganism(s)?

Anyway, Tias is a cool and chill heathen who is curious about Christian stuff and contributes positively to the thread so :shrug:

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

pidan posted:

Re: Aristotle, I'm aware that rational polytheists exist​, but in ancient Greece they generally didn't apply this rational thought to religious matters, and those who did got accused of atheism.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/euthyfro.html

Numerical Anxiety
Sep 2, 2011

Hello.
Write down a list of every one of your beliefs. No matter what they may be, know that it is true of each one that someone, somewhere has previously used it as an excuse to kill. Full blown nihilism is the only ethical position.

The Phlegmatist
Nov 24, 2003

Pellisworth posted:

Myths usually serve a pedagogical or allegorical purpose, it's not just a bunch of beardy dudes drinking mead and wondering why Odin's horse has eight legs.

Thankfully the pagans never developed Scholasticism otherwise we'd have large theological treatises about Sleipnir's huge magical horse penis.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

pidan posted:

How is it identical to Victorian anthropologists and why are those specific aspects of their worldview bad? Are we supposed to disavow any belief system that ever was used to support imperialism? Because if so, I've got bad news about communism.

Re: Aristotle, I'm aware that rational polytheists exist​, but in ancient Greece they generally didn't apply this rational thought to religious matters, and those who did got accused of atheism.
Maybe argue with what I'm actually saying rather than what you suspect my secret motivations are.

victorian anthropologists believed in an evolutionary theory of religions that said animism evolved into polytheism which evolved into monotheism and finally into atheism, and pointed to animists as irrational savages and themselves as rational atheists as their evidence

it's a circular theory that both ignores the complexities of the religious cosmologies they claimed to understand that also exists solely because of and in support of imperialism

the second you describe someone as "less rational" because of their religion, which happens to be a religion practiced by racial and ethnic minorities, you are perpetuating imperialist judgements about some cultures being "inferior" based on self justified "observations" that seem to always ignore material realities in the name of the observer's obvious superiority

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
also i'm not a communist but nice try i guess?

The Belgian
Oct 28, 2008

pidan posted:

- no more human sacrifice
- no killing of disabled babies

You're right, these things are bad and that's why I think we should crucify all you disgusting christian cannibals. Follow your leader!

quote:

Again, to say that a man who had suffered capital punishment for a crime and the death-dealing wood of the cross are objects of their veneration, is to assign fitting altars to abandoned wretches, and to assert that they worship what they deserve to worship. The details of the initiation of novices are as horrible as they are well known. 1 An infant, covered with dough to deceive the unwary, is brought to the would-be novice, who, misled by the coating of dough and encouraged to deal what are apparently harmless blows, secretly stabs it to death. Then shame on them ! they thirstily lick up the child's blood and eagerly divide his limbs ; this victim is their bond of union, complicity in the crime is their pledge of mutual silence. Such rites are more abominable than any acts of sacrilege. What takes place at their banquets 2 is also well known ; it is every- where talked about, as is attested by a speech of our countryman of Cirta. 3 On a fixed day they assemble together, children, sisters, mothers, people of both sexes and of all ages. After much feasting, a dog, fastened to the lamp, is encouraged by some pieces of meat thrown to it to spring violently beyond the length of its chain. The lamp, which would have been an incon- venient witness, is overturned and extinguished ; after this riot and indecency reign supreme.

The Belgian fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Aug 22, 2017

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Ok guys, you got me. All worldviews are equally good (except for those of those darn imperialists). No culture has ever had any widespread practices that we would consider objectionable and any claims to the contrary are, once again, imperialist lies.

Glad you guys were here to educate me.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

pidan posted:

Ok guys, you got me. All worldviews are equally good (except for those of those darn imperialists). No culture has ever had any widespread practices that we would consider objectionable and any claims to the contrary are, once again, imperialist lies.

Glad you guys were here to educate me.

you can criticize but you weren't criticizing you were justifying cultural and ethnic genocide by citing bad cultural practices

guess what imperialism AND female genital mutilation are bad, but if you say the former is justified because the latter is bad then guess what apparently you think genocide is justified

good thing those polytheistic africans became monotheists right? slavery is therefore good- what you people are loving doing you morons

Numerical Anxiety
Sep 2, 2011

Hello.
SK, I ask honestly, how is this supposed to be helpful? It feels like you find an objectionable statement, adopt the least charitable reading possible and then free associate your way to blaming the one who uttered it for standing on the side all of the sins of history. It strikes me as a kind of manichean paranoia passing for politics - you don't find interlocutors, only enemies.

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Senju Kannon posted:

you can criticize but you weren't criticizing you were justifying cultural and ethnic genocide by citing bad cultural practices

guess what imperialism AND female genital mutilation are bad, but if you say the former is justified because the latter is bad then guess what apparently you think genocide is justified

good thing those polytheistic africans became monotheists right? slavery is therefore good- what you people are loving doing you morons

I'm one loving moron at most

I'm a European Christian and when I say I think it's good that the history of Europe developed one way and not the other I'm not colonizing anyone. I wasn't talking about African or indigenous American religions and I don't know enough about them to comment.

I admit I am curious if you would say the same thing if I was an African Christian saying this about African traditions, where your comment would arguably be more apropos.

Smoking Crow
Feb 14, 2012

*laughs at u*

pidan posted:

Ok guys, you got me. All worldviews are equally good (except for those of those darn imperialists). No culture has ever had any widespread practices that we would consider objectionable and any claims to the contrary are, once again, imperialist lies.

Glad you guys were here to educate me.

People who look down on ancient people because they didn't know the things we do now raise my hackles

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Numerical Anxiety posted:

SK, I ask honestly, how is this supposed to be helpful? It feels like you find an objectionable statement, adopt the least charitable reading possible and then free associate your way to blaming the one who uttered it for standing on the side all of the sins of history. It strikes me as a kind of manichean paranoia passing for politics - you don't find interlocutors, only enemies.

one, i don't think anyone on this planet would ever refer to me as helpful, two explain what manichean paranoia is because i know a little about manicheanism but am unsure what your meaning is here other than namedropping

pidan posted:

I'm one loving moron at most

I'm a European Christian and when I say I think it's good that the history of Europe developed one way and not the other I'm not colonizing anyone. I wasn't talking about African or indigenous American religions and I don't know enough about them to comment.

I admit I am curious if you would say the same thing if I was an African Christian saying this about African traditions, where your comment would arguably be more apropos.

one, a lot of what we know about gaul's religion comes from caesar and what we know about norse religion from a single monk so the question of "how much can we believe what they said" has to be part of that evaluation

and yes i would because terrible cultural practices don't necessitate genocide and slavery. look at european gentry who stopped eating people as medicine without having their culture stripped from them along with their sovereignty

fuck. marry. t-rex
Jan 23, 2014

Lipstick Apathy

Smoking Crow posted:

People who look down on ancient people because they didn't know the things we do now raise my hackles

ancient people were superior to us in many cultural capacities, even if they were way behind in many as well

fuck. marry. t-rex
Jan 23, 2014

Lipstick Apathy
amero-centric/anglo-centric cultures place very little value on inner power, or anything that doesn't have a capital analogue. Spirituality does not do well monetized, and there is huge pressure to ignore putting work into it

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

Going back to the question of Protestants and ritual, at least the Protestants I've been exposed to (so mostly of the Anabaptist flavor, though I suspect this wouldn't be an alien experience to, say, an American Baptist or a Methodist), eschewing the specific rituals and liturgies of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths isn't turning your back on ritual entirely so much as it is substituting one set of rituals and traditions for another. I think the last time this was brought up, hymns were mentioned, and I absolutely do think that (in the case of the faith I grew up in) the Mennonite Hymnal (as we used to call it in the Before Times, I still think of the version that was introduced twenty-some years ago as the 'new' Hymnal) is functionally our second holy book. Not in the sense that it's divinely inspired scripture, but in the sense that it's an essential part of our worship experience and even our identity as Mennonites.

The superficial trappings change, but I think we all have those things we consider an essential part of worship, and the fact that we have those things is significant, even if the specific things vary widely.

Numerical Anxiety
Sep 2, 2011

Hello.

Senju Kannon posted:

one, i don't think anyone on this planet would ever refer to me as helpful, two explain what manichean paranoia is because i know a little about manicheanism but am unsure what your meaning is here other than namedropping

I mean manichean in the vulgar, lower case sense, as indicating a dualistic mode of thinking where there is only good and evil, and nothing in between. And paranoia in the sense that "x bears similarities to y" leads to the assumption that there is necessarily a real identity between x and y, even though it might be secret.

My point is if you want to invite reflection on the part of your opponent, there might be tactically better ways to do it - that style elicits confusion more than anything else. But if you just want to call him or her a horrible wretch, full stop, it'd be more efficacious to do just that.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
in my defense i was phone posting which necessarily means i don't think about what i write as much as making sure i manage to type it all out. it leads to bad rhetoric for sure

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.
I'd rather live in a randomly selected nation in Europe during the middle ages than in a randomly selected pagan tribe. And that's where I'll leave it.

It's easy to dismiss all our historical sources as "propaganda" and of dubious variety, but listening to the British history podcast and the enormous headache the pagan Danes gave king Aelfred, really helped me understand how differences in religious belief manifested itself in terms of political and diplomatic realities.

Pellisworth
Jun 20, 2005

CountFosco posted:

I'd rather live in a randomly selected nation in Europe during the middle ages than in a randomly selected pagan tribe. And that's where I'll leave it.

It's easy to dismiss all our historical sources as "propaganda" and of dubious variety, but listening to the British history podcast and the enormous headache the pagan Danes gave king Aelfred, really helped me understand how differences in religious belief manifested itself in terms of political and diplomatic realities.

That's well and fine, I think several of us were taking umbrage with pidan's more broad statement that Christianity is more moral and rational than pagan religions. If that's your belief, be aware that's the same line of logic used to justify colonialism and imperialism. "My religion and culture is the most moral and rational, therefore it is good (and even my duty) to spread my culture and religion to the rest of the world."

That's why I brought up if pidan would feel differently toward non-European pagans. Sure, there are plenty of facets of Viking culture and religion that were lovely and awful. Go read ibn Fadlan's account (the only reliable first-hand account of pagan Viking life) and the ship burial in particular is really gross, a slave girl is ritually gang-raped, sacrificed, and buried alongside her master. No one's gonna defend that.

But, it's different when you're talking about dead religions (sorry Tias, I hope you'll agree with me that reconstructionist Norse heathenry is not the same as pre-Christian religion) vs. living ones. I'm pretty familiar with Lakota Sioux religion, customs, and beliefs, and I can't really think of any big morally objectionable aspects. Pre-Christian European heathenry is dead and gone. If [your flavor of] Christianity is the most moral and rational religion, should we be aggressively converting Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, or hell, Buddhists and Hindus?

I'm not accusing anyone of advocating for genocide or being an imperialist or whatever, and I hope I'm not putting words in pidan's mouth. I think we can all (including Tias) agree that Norse paganism/heathenry had some nasty aspects that Europe is better off without. But I think applying that same attitude broadly gets very problematic (again, I think pidan is making a specific rather than universal statement).

edit: Tias, would it be fair to say your heathenry is ancient beliefs in modern times, or something similar? Obviously you're not planning any Odinic human sacrifices, taking slaves, or raiding Christian monasteries!

YET

Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Aug 22, 2017

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.
That was a justification for immoral conversion practices, to be sure. I would've preferred it if there had only been concerted missionary efforts rather than what historically happened.


A truth misused remains a truth.

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.
For example, there was a "crusade" in Germany which ended up mainly killing and robbing several Jewish communities. I was reading about it the other day, and was introduced to "the goose incident."

'There was also another abominable wickedness in this gathering of people on foot, who were stupid and insanely irresponsible, which, it cannot be doubted, is hateful to God and unbelievable to all the faithful. They claimed that a certain goose was inspired by the holy ghost, and a she-goat filled with no less than the same, and they had made these their leaders for this holy journey to Jerusalem; they even worshipped them excessively, and as the beasts directed their courses for them in their animal way many of the troops believed they were confirming it to be true according to the entire purpose of the spirit.'

http://themedievalworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/goose-who-led-crusade-well-sort-of.html

Our pious ancestors.

The Phlegmatist
Nov 24, 2003

Senju Kannon posted:

in my defense i was phone posting which necessarily means i don't think about what i write as much as making sure i manage to type it all out. it leads to bad rhetoric for sure

Yeah I have the same problem; this one time, someone said that the caste system in India was oppressive and she wished it were abolished but I was phone posting so I wound up calling her Nazi imperialist scum who lusted for genocide of the lesser races. Whoops!

CountFosco posted:

It's easy to dismiss all our historical sources as "propaganda" and of dubious variety

Well, that's actually mostly true though. We have some primary sources but most of our info on pagan religions is polemic in its nature. It's a big problem for pagan reconstructionism.

Aztecs definitely performed mass human sacrifice though 'cause they wrote their accounts of it themselves. The Bible and the Vedas both contain condemnations of human sacrifice so it's a good bet that ancient near east religions and south Indian religions were performing human sacrifices at some point, since generally you don't condemn something that wasn't actually happening.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Pellisworth posted:

That's well and fine, I think several of us were taking umbrage with pidan's more broad statement that Christianity is more moral and rational than pagan religions. If that's your belief, be aware that's the same line of logic used to justify colonialism and imperialism. "My religion and culture is the most moral and rational, therefore it is good (and even my duty) to spread my culture and religion to the rest of the world."

That's why I brought up if pidan would feel differently toward non-European pagans. Sure, there are plenty of facets of Viking culture and religion that were lovely and awful. Go read ibn Fadlan's account (the only reliable first-hand account of pagan Viking life) and the ship burial in particular is really gross, a slave girl is ritually gang-raped, sacrificed, and buried alongside her master. No one's gonna defend that.

But, it's different when you're talking about dead religions (sorry Tias, I hope you'll agree with me that reconstructionist Norse heathenry is not the same as pre-Christian religion) vs. living ones. I'm pretty familiar with Lakota Sioux religion, customs, and beliefs, and I can't really think of any big morally objectionable aspects. Pre-Christian European heathenry is dead and gone. If [your flavor of] Christianity is the most moral and rational religion, should we be aggressively converting Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, or hell, Buddhists and Hindus?

I'm not accusing anyone of advocating for genocide or being an imperialist or whatever, and I hope I'm not putting words in pidan's mouth. I think we can all (including Tias) agree that Norse paganism/heathenry had some nasty aspects that Europe is better off without. But I think applying that same attitude broadly gets very problematic (again, I think pidan is making a specific rather than universal statement).

edit: Tias, would it be fair to say your heathenry is ancient beliefs in modern times, or something similar? Obviously you're not planning any Odinic human sacrifices, taking slaves, or raiding Christian monasteries!

YET

see this is what i was trying to get at when i was eating dinner and on my phone. a broad statement like "polytheism is less rational than monotheism" is Bad because there are plenty of hindu scientists, both today and in the past! the concept of zero came from india! the numerals we use today came from the gupta, etc. i would even argue "european paganism is less rational than monotheism" is too contaminated with hundreds of years of missionary coercion that was part of roman and post-roman empire political poo poo.

i'm also of the opinion that "just because it happened in ancient times does not mean we can't ignore its implications for the future" with respect to ignoring the propaganda and horrors of roman occupation of most of europe, north africa, and the "near" east. i personally think ignoring the implications of empire in ancient times causes both the first and second testament to be read in a colonially neutral environment that aids 19th, 20th, and 21st century imperialism, and so seeing someone take for granted that, say, the gauls did human sacrifice (when the only source we have for gaul's religion is caesar, who conquered gaul and thus had a vested interest in presenting the most moral case for roman conquest) made me a bit annoyed.

the fact is, ancient religions are fairly complex, the socio-political environment cannot be summarized in a simple one sentence denounciation whether you're from britain, germany, mexico, or the congo, and when it comes to people doing bad things it's usually better for the realization that "oh this was a bad thing" come from inside instead of from armies.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

The Phlegmatist posted:

Yeah I have the same problem; this one time, someone said that the caste system in India was oppressive and she wished it were abolished but I was phone posting so I wound up calling her Nazi imperialist scum who lusted for genocide of the lesser races. Whoops!

yeah because i totally called pidan a nazi who lusted for genocide

also pretty sure the caste system is abolished but what do i know about the difficulty of post-british indian governance and the difficulty of post-colonial governance

Pellisworth
Jun 20, 2005

CountFosco posted:

That was a justification for immoral conversion practices, to be sure. I would've preferred it if there had only been concerted missionary efforts rather than what historically happened.


A truth misused remains a truth.

Yeah, I support spreading our faith but never using oppression in any form. This thread, amusingly, is a good example of what I mean. Freely share your beliefs when asked, but mostly just listen, learn, and show your naughty Fruits of the Spirit.*

I guess a lot of that depends on if your theology requires conversion before death for salvation.

If you have to convert to the One True Faith (TM) before death then that seems to lead you down the logical path where oppressive and violent conversion is moral. Sure you kill half the population but they were non-believers, and you saved the other half that converted at gunpoint! Net win! *cue HEY GAL or someone telling me this was a plotline in the Munster Rebellion or something*

On the other hand, if you believe that souls can can achieve salvation after death, something along the lines of The Great Divorce, there is no motive for aggressive proselytization.





*edit: whoa when did Catholics grow an extra three fruits, thanks Wikipedia

Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Aug 22, 2017

Caufman
May 7, 2007

docbeard posted:

Going back to the question of Protestants and ritual, at least the Protestants I've been exposed to (so mostly of the Anabaptist flavor, though I suspect this wouldn't be an alien experience to, say, an American Baptist or a Methodist), eschewing the specific rituals and liturgies of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths isn't turning your back on ritual entirely so much as it is substituting one set of rituals and traditions for another. I think the last time this was brought up, hymns were mentioned, and I absolutely do think that (in the case of the faith I grew up in) the Mennonite Hymnal (as we used to call it in the Before Times, I still think of the version that was introduced twenty-some years ago as the 'new' Hymnal) is functionally our second holy book. Not in the sense that it's divinely inspired scripture, but in the sense that it's an essential part of our worship experience and even our identity as Mennonites.

The superficial trappings change, but I think we all have those things we consider an essential part of worship, and the fact that we have those things is significant, even if the specific things vary widely.

I very much agree. It's been life-changing for me to approach religion from the core outwards instead of from the outwardly visible distinctions inwards. At the center of all spirituality is the human individual, who, in the last six thousand or two million years has not fundamentally changed, either genetically or spiritually. The differences we see between any "us" or "them" is a result of the accident of bequeathments instead of changes in what physically constitutes a human.

It astounds me that compassion and virtues are central, not peripheral, to people's will to meaning. Indeed the stories change, just like fashion and tax policies change, but at the core of human personal dilemma, the psyche responds from the heart.

But this is not to justify me failing to appreciate the specificity of each person's (and therefore each religion's) spirituality. Every drop of rain has to fall down the windshield as it must. It's not for me to go around condemning a foreign name or gesture just because it is not my own.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

pidan posted:

I'm sympathetic to pagan reconstructionists and pagans in general, but I'd say that overall it's a good thing those faiths were replaced by Christianity.

- no more human sacrifice
- no killing of disabled babies
- a unified structure of learning across the continent
- Christianity (monotheism in general) is more rational and allows a more rational worldview than polytheism
- I think the fact that men and women celebrate mass together had a huge impact on the freedom of women in society compared to societies where that doesn't happen

Christianity did senseless murder, at this point the death penalty( also, burning at the stake) was a huge and priests had people killed who annoyed them in nomine dei all the time.

Also, don't do the woman thing. Women could own land, vote and lead worship in pagan Denmark, the church shoved them back in a hole.

Pellisworth posted:

ter off without. But I think applying that same attitude broadly gets very problematic (again, I think pidan is making a specific rather than universal statement).

edit: Tias, would it be fair to say your heathenry is ancient beliefs in modern times, or something similar? Obviously you're not planning any Odinic human sacrifices, taking slaves, or raiding Christian monasteries!

YET

Yes. We've essentially done the same as christianity, evolving to fit a modern worldview. For instance, most moderate pagans here view the need to die in battle in order to attain 'salvation' really pointless, and we don't even sacrifice animals( b/c the point of sacrifice is you give up something that is really valuable to you, and animals don't have that place to most of us). Same with slaveholding etc. etc.

We do have our anti-progress types who thinks asatru should only be practiced as described in surviving texts on Vikings, or those who think that pious asatru must go to war in the middle east, but they are assholes and almost only found in the literal nazi camp.

Numerical Anxiety posted:

Please don't confuse a political claim (people should be free to practice whatever religion they want without interference from the state) with a theological claim (there is one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but then also Ismael). From the former standpoint, if people want to pray to Viking gods, whatever, sure, I don't really care one way or the other. According to the latter, the same practice is a bunch of nonsense.

I understand that perfectly, I just think the theological claim is wrong. I mean, it's not even really theology: God only said that you should have no other gods before him - all the poo poo about other gods -not existing- is made up by men since then.

Tias fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Aug 22, 2017

System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

Pellisworth posted:

On the other hand, if you believe that souls can can achieve salvation after death, something along the lines of The Great Divorce, there is no motive for aggressive proselytization.

One should think that, but Mormons have a perfectly valid (in their theology, that is) posthumous baptism and yet they send thousands of young people around the world each year to spread their faith (though they haven't hewn down any sacred trees/burnt down any Catholic churches that I know of, that's true). Also they definitely do try to get as many dead people baptised as possible (hence their big focus on genealogical research) which I find to be pretty problematic, because you can't exactly ask them to consent beforehand and I suspect that most of my ancestors would be utterly horrified if any faith other than the one they grew up in (in my case that would bemostly Catholics and some Jews, I guess) was forced upon them. I believe that even dead people have their rights, and as I also believe that rituals have significance even if I don't believe them to be “true“ I'm against Mormons (or anyone, really) baptising the dead.

(I'm relying way too much on parentheses in my rantings)

Caufman
May 7, 2007
We would all use David Foster Wallace's footnoting if these forums supported it.

fuck. marry. t-rex
Jan 23, 2014

Lipstick Apathy

Pellisworth posted:

Yeah, I support spreading our faith but never using oppression in any form. This thread, amusingly, is a good example of what I mean. Freely share your beliefs when asked, but mostly just listen, learn, and show your naughty Fruits of the Spirit.*

I guess a lot of that depends on if your theology requires conversion before death for salvation.

If you have to convert to the One True Faith (TM) before death then that seems to lead you down the logical path where oppressive and violent conversion is moral. Sure you kill half the population but they were non-believers, and you saved the other half that converted at gunpoint! Net win! *cue HEY GAL or someone telling me this was a plotline in the Munster Rebellion or something*

On the other hand, if you believe that souls can can achieve salvation after death, something along the lines of The Great Divorce, there is no motive for aggressive proselytization.

i think youre ascribing causal associations between doctrines and historical events ex post facto. there are plenty of examples along the whole wheel of beliefs, of the associated society, both being aggressive, and passive.

feldhase
Apr 27, 2011
It's a bit of a dumb request but could I ask you all for prayers for finding a church? I've actively looking for a church for over a year now and beginning to be pretty bummed out on it

I just want to take communion without having to listen to how I'm damned anyway / how Western society's greatest mistake was to stop trying to convert Jews

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

happyphage posted:

It's a bit of a dumb request but could I ask you all for prayers for finding a church? I've actively looking for a church for over a year now and beginning to be pretty bummed out on it

I just want to take communion without having to listen to how I'm damned anyway / how Western society's greatest mistake was to stop trying to convert Jews

Is there a denomination it has to be? I don't know how it is elsewhere in the world, but our protestants take communion but are super chill and preach about loving your neighbour.

Caufman
May 7, 2007

happyphage posted:

It's a bit of a dumb request but could I ask you all for prayers for finding a church? I've actively looking for a church for over a year now and beginning to be pretty bummed out on it

I just want to take communion without having to listen to how I'm damned anyway / how Western society's greatest mistake was to stop trying to convert Jews

That does not strike me as a dumb request. I will pray for you if you pray I get a skateboard for Christmas.

I can't skateboard and don't plan to learn to.

feldhase
Apr 27, 2011

Tias posted:

Is there a denomination it has to be? I don't know how it is elsewhere in the world, but our protestants take communion but are super chill and preach about loving your neighbour.

I don't think I live very far from you, actually

Protestant, but I've been to the local church which turns out to be more of a political organisation than a church, and there aren't many other options as the city I live in is very irreligious so communities are tiny and meet at weird times that I can never make

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

Pellisworth posted:



On the other hand, if you believe that souls can can achieve salvation after death, something along the lines of The Great Divorce, there is no motive for aggressive proselytization.


Not completely. After all, reading the Great Divorce one gets the sense that it's very very hard to get out of that grey underworld which is described, and that very few actually do so, and it'd be far better to just go to heaven in the first place rather than getting shunted down into the misty grey place of misery with Napoleon and company.

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my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

Empress Theonora posted:

cultural genocide is cool and good if it lead to christianity being stronger later on -ceciltron, apparently

Welcome back. :buddy: Haven't seen you post since forever.

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