Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," fanning interest in downsized deities since 2005! And wow, we've had 6,000 profile views! Enough people to fill a minor league baseball park in the Blue Ridge Mountains!
Such vast popularity brings great responsibilities. And so, I, Anne Johnson, will now continue to bring you helpful advice on keeping your Pagan household free from Christian influences.
Why would I do such a thing? Well dear ones, just remember: Wherever Christianity lurks, so also lurks its dark alter ego, Satanism. If you're following the path of some other praise and worship team, then the Christian devil can't make your kids do bad things. Because Satan's not part of your Pagan package.
Many of the most hidebound Christians mistake all Paganism for "occult" or "Satan worship." Like, so not true!
Which religion is it, exactly, that's drinking human blood and eating human flesh? Mmmmmm hmmmmmm. And that's on the bright side of Christianity! Dearly beloved, don't get me started on the dark side of that faith, the moonlight desecration of gravestones, the slaughter of innocent kittens, the twisting of the peaceful Pentagram to evil ends.
You gotta keep your kids away from that stinkin' bad karma, yo. Word.
So, how do you do it? How do you maintain the faith of the Old Ones through the onslaught?
Here's Annie's first thought on this most crucial topic:
Certain sects of Christianity are giving the whole faith a black eye. You know which ones I'm talking about. The ones that go to the anti-abortion rally on Friday night and the gun convention on Saturday. The ones who support bombing foreign children to bits while demanding cutbacks in social welfare programs for needy Americans. The ones who find it more important to safeguard their 2,000 year old tract than to see to it that American children get modern science educations.
The ones who complain about free breakfasts for poor students because sometimes the students don't eat everything they're given. (Yeah, I got that in an email just yesterday.)
Let's ride this out together, my friends of the Old Religions. Let us seek sanity in this time of trial. So much is at stake.
Oh, doggone it, there I go again. Bad words, very bad: trial and stake. No gentle Druids will be put on trial here and burnt at the stake, right? This is America ... yep ... no one wishes us ill ... emmmm ... not really. I guess.
14 comments:
The Catholics only teach that we eat the "literal" blood and body of Christ.
Christians do not support abortion because it is not "morally right" and want gun rights to secure our rights for "protection."
Any other questions about Christianity, since I can see your understanding of it seems to come from non-christian references, just email me at quiet4no1@gmail.com or comment on my blog: http://innovationapologetics.blogspot.com/
My site has many answers to questions you may have wondered as well. Hope to hear back from you.
Grace,
Jeremy
The Catholics only teach that we eat the "literal" blood and body of Christ.
Um, no. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism teach that Christ is substantially present in the Eucharist, not physically present.
...since I can see your understanding of it seems to come from non-christian references
Check the label on this post? Cindy Jacobs: Nutjob; Hatemonger; Considers herself a devout Christian.
And she's published. Which (an unfortunate side effect of our lovely society) gives her credibility. Kinda sucks, that.
My understanding of Christianity does not come from non-Christian sources.....it comes from the big bad boy himself, the Pope, and his instruction manual, the Bible, as taught to me by large penquins with rulers during my abuse sessions (what the church called "catachism"). I did not come across any alternatives to Christianity until long into my adulthood, at which time no one was there to punish me if I dared think of masturbation or women's breasts or questioning Priests when they asked me if I like gladiator movies.
You sound so gentle and non-threatening in your invite to "answer questions" about Christianity, but I can assure you, if you had a fricking clue, you wouldn't BE a Christian. There's your ANSWERS, my quietly arrogant and clueless friend!
I have to go think idenpendently, without guilt or fear of damnation, if you don't mind.......
Thanks, Anne, for your suggestions, rather than dogma.
My theory is..why be a Christian?...they can't keep up with their diety..they keep asking me if I've found him...every time I'm around a
christian they wanna know if I've found Jesus...like I'm supposed to know where he's at...
Yeah, so I went over to Jeremy's blog (what kind of Christian puts "morally right" in scare quotes?), and he doesn't have a terribly sophisticated understanding of his own faith. A lot of Christians would disagree with his reading of Paul, not to mention his interpretation of one of the creation stories in Genesis.
The odds that Pagans have an outsider understanding of Christianity, when Christianity is the hegemonic discourse in this country, and when I dare say most of us were raised as Christians, is naive at best.
Personally I think it's commendable that "apologist" is apologizing for his faith (that's what that means right?). It's that faith that's put so many of ours to death. He and the rest of them should apologize dammit!
My husband just informed me last night that a group of Christian biker's (a gang) beat the crap out of a group of Hell's Angels in KC, MO. I'm sure there will be those jumping up and down praising their sad lonely deity for this "victory". Frankly I see it as blatant hypocracy - especially when those right wing(nuts) have likely voted to ensure that their victims are likely uninsured!
BTW - I think the ultimate way to turn a child off to monotheism is to raise them in a compassionate, open, free-thinking home. Then the Fundies do the rest by being so repugnant that our own children can't stand being around them! It's worked for me anyway! :o)
Blessings,
Pom
*hypocrisy too.. oops. I loathe my own typos and misspellings but they happen to the best of us..
Jeremy, darling, I know my profile portrait makes me look youthful and delightfully fresh, but I was memorizing Bible verses twenty years before you were born. However, I hope you will join us here at "The Gods Are Bored," if for no other reason than to object to everything I write.
'Cause next week I'm gonna talk about abortion, gun rights, the proper Christian response to physical attack, youth pastors, and the Book of Genesis. Just for starters.
"Apology" originally meant the systematic justification or defense of an idea (or set of ideas).
As a pagan atheist Jew, I kinda feel the same way about Judaism. There is a great liberal, ethical tradition in Judaism, but those fundies and neocons totally turn me off to the whole religion.
I would never "apologize" for my faith.
To the michael,
I do not follow the Pope or the Catholic Church. The Catholic church derives many beliefs from thin air and not "scripture." I follow scripture.
Another thing is this: there is evidence for the bible's reliability, its historical accuracy, archaeological accuracy, Jesus' existence, and that there is a God.
The same evidence exists for Jesus as it does for people such as Plato or Columbus, actually there may be more for Jesus that Columbus, because there is an overwhelming amount more evidence for Christ's resurrection than there is for Plato's existence.
Other than that, michael you can check out my blog to look at this evidence for yourself.
To inanna,
You assume my understanding of Christianity is not correct since others disagree. I would love to debate others who disagree, because ever since I have believed I have made it a goal to not "interpret" information from the bible, but to study the bible as a "whole," much like any form of literature, to gain the best understanding of the message the writers were trying to get across.
You can disagree with me on the creation story, but without it, Christianity could be proven false. We would have no idea why we are "sinners" or why we must correct our sin or rebellion.
Dear anne johnson,
I will gladly debate you on Christianity. If your views are not backed up by scripture, I will address that to you.
So feel free to subscribe to my blog, because if I find anything interesting to disagree with, I will post my disagreement with scriptural backup on my next blog entries.
Grace everyone,
Jeremy
Jeremy's plucky. I like him.
Ah, so Jeremy, you're one of those people who like to call themselves "Bible-believing," or "Fundamentalists."
I was one of those once. Then I did the unthinkable. I read
the Bible, from beginning to end, like a book. In so doing, I discovered a few things I thought were interesting:
1) The so-called "literalists" who claim to believe in the literal word of the Bible are nothing of the sort. They interpret as much as anyone else, just differently from most others.
2) There is some internal consistency in the Bible, but even more text that is literally inconsistent.
3) There are a few remarkable passages that imply strongly that worshipping or praying to Jesus is wrong, wrong, wrong. Try getting a concordance, and find the references to the serpent that Moses made in the desert. You know, the one made of bronze. Guess how many references to it there are? (most people can't tell me the answer to this)
4) My biggest discovery, though, is that Christianity has almost no basis in Judaism.
Christianity is pagan, pagan, pagan, with a thin veneer of Judaic reference.
Now, as to some of your claims:
There's not really a whole lot of evidence for the Bible as a historically accurate document. There are a couple of places in the Old Testament that can be traced to actual known events, but most of it is a rehash of older legends.
There is no historic record for the actual existence of Jesus. Sorry. No such thing.
Now, you said:
The same evidence exists for Jesus as it does for people such as Plato or Columbus, actually there may be more for Jesus that Columbus, because there is an overwhelming amount more evidence for Christ's resurrection than there is for Plato's existence.
Firstly, what does evidence of Plato's existence have to do with evidence of Columbus's existence? Do you have any idea that your statement is what is known as a non sequitur? Do you even know what that means?
Columbus, by the way, has left behind written documents in his own hand. Jesus (whose name, by the way, is literally "Joshua"), has done no such thing.
There is no description of "Jesus" from any non-Christian source. None. There is no description of "Jesus" from any contemporary source. None. The very name "Jesus" is the result of a Latinization of a Greek mis-transliteration of a Hebrew or Aramaic name.
I'm guessing that you have little or no understanding of the cultures of the Near East during the time that "Jesus" is said to have lived. If you had any such knowledge or understanding, you'd have some clue about all the influenced that converged in that place and that time, and how they could have produced Christianity.
I'm guessing that you have even less understanding of the meaning of the words that are attributed to "Jesus." If you had such understanding, you certainly would not be going on about how you "follow scripture, and how the Catholic Church does not.
You do not "follow scripture." I know this, because you are spouting the same beliefs I was taught by those who claimed to "follow scripture," but were horrified to learn that I had actually read said scripture. No, Jeremy, what you follow, like all those who hold the beliefs you do, is the teachings of those who tell you what's in scripture. It's easier, isn't it? You don't have to bother yourself with analysis. You don't need to think about what any of it means; you can just rely on your preachers to tell you. The faith you follow is one of direction from above - not from Deity, but from your self-appointed all-to-human chiefs.
Jews have spent a long, long time, reading, dissecting, and arguing about the meanings of their holy books. Christians tend to be fine with some authority telling them what to think about theirs. Then, those same Christians get all high and mighty about how they "follow the literal Word of God." Nonsense.
You're a nut, Jeremy, a poor, deluded nut. You've been taught to accept without question the veracity of stiries that were myths long before they were incorporated into Christianity.
Heh...
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