fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2444 ]

[ SECRET POST #2444 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2444 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #349.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

lol pagans

It's no more or less ridiculous than any other religion.

Not trying to start wank, but it really irritates me when people are irrationally selective about which beliefs they consider mockable.

da

Doesn't that technically make paganism "no more or less ridiculous" than godspouses, which godspouses consider a religion?

Is this whole "godspouses" business a religion, as far as the people who believe in it are concerned?

Even then, there are some actual organized religions out there with millions of adherents, that have some profoundly wacky beliefs. So I'm not sure that believing you're married to ~~Snape~~ Loki on the astral plane is that much weirder than certain organized religions that I could name (but won't, because I genuinely don't want to start wank).

I think they do consider it a religion if they believe the spouse is a god. I mean the whole god thing is a given...

Don't Catholic priests take the church as their wives? Really don't know.

And the church is religious, isn't it?

The point is, if you're going to say every single religion is no more or less ridiculous than any other, you can't disallow something from being a religion because it's too ridiculous for you.

Yeah, my first thought was the whole "Bride of Christ" thing with nuns. HOMG GODSPOUSES

I so so want to see someone call them lazy nuns now.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-09-12 07:07 (UTC) - Expand

This is against my better judgment, but I'm kind of in a bad mood today, and what better to do with a bad mood than to start a fight?

I don't know about the first poster, but I reserve a special level of mockery for anyone who invents something new, then tries to pretend it's something old. I mean no disrespect to pagans who've actually done the research and are following what's left of the old ways, but a lot of the traditions were permanently lost thanks to the Christians, and many of the attempts to "fill in the gaps" seem awfully convenient, like the gaps are being filled with exactly what the fillers want to go into them so as to justify their behavior. (In some ways, it actually reminds me of the Conservative Bible Project, just on the other end of the political spectrum.)

Nothing wrong with constructing a new religion around what you feel relevant, just ask Gerald Gardener. Or Joshua bin Joshua al-Nazareth.

AYRT

A lot of neopagans are fully aware that they're essentially constructing a new religion loosely based on ancient beliefs, and don't think they're actually practicing the same rituals and devotions that members of ancient civilizations did. Wicca and most other neopagan religions are new religions, not old ones, and the practitioners who understand and acknowledge that are not, imo, deserving of mockery. Every religion was "new" at one point. Unless you want to mock all religions, which is a different discussion.

Why does something being old make it more legitimate? Why is an old religion more believable than a new one?

Is it the fact that more people believe/have believed in it the deciding factor? Because something believed by many != truth. Every religion started somewhere. They were all new at some point in history. So why do some deserve mockery, and not others?

da--I'm an agnostic or atheist depending on my mood/level of pessimism etc, but for me it's not the people making up new religions, based on old traditions or not, who are annoying. Their beliefs might be obnoxious but not more so because they're new. The people who bug me are the ones claiming that they 'follow the old ways' or that they've discovered some ancient religion and are going to revive its practice or whatever. Short of acquiring a time machine, there's no way to know how accurate their conjectures are. I figure it's like a Renaissance fair--some people do tons of research and try and be as period accurate as possible and some people show up in polyester wench outfits. But no matter how much research anyone does, they don't know for certain what life was like then. Same goes for religion.

You Are Sheldon Cooper and I Claim My $5.

then tries to pretend it's something old.

No serious pagans think this, not in the simplistic way you're putting it anyway. Why would anyone worship something that only existed in the past anyway?

and many of the attempts to "fill in the gaps" seem awfully convenient, like the gaps are being filled with exactly what the fillers want to go into them

And this is different to people chucking out bits of the Bible they didn't like 1000 years ago how exactly?

You know, all the pagans I've met have been peaceful, hippy type New Agers. No one ever does hardcore Viking paganism any more. I think that would be an interesting twist.

"Oh, so, you are a pagan. What do you do? Chant? Burn incense? Smoke a little pot?"
"NO, WE BEHEAD OUR ENEMIES AND OFFER THEIR SKULLS TO THE GREAT AND ALL LASTING OLD FATHER!!!!"

Tell you what. They wouldn't be boring then.

Actually, there totally are hardcore Viking-style heathens out there. They're kind of assholes, though. At least the New Agey pagans don't "outlaw" you and Cast Death Curse Spells ooo wee ooo every time there's internet wank.

I am kind of tickled pink by how helplessly enraged they must be by all the new Lokeans after the Thor movie came out, though. CURSE THIS, BIOTCHES

Links? Because seriously, I have NEVER heard of that. I mean, I've heard of the New Agey pagans getting super defensive and ~zomg cursing~, but I thought it was all teenagers who were in it for funsies and taking themselves too seriously and shit.

Yeah, people do hardcore Viking paganism. A good number of them are also hardcore racists who consider immigrants their enemies and think "kicking a brown person to death" is an awesome thing to do. So I think I prefer the boring ones, TBH.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wotanism for some details.

Yeah, most of us sane ones ignore and shun the hardcore racists who think kicking a brown person to death is awesome. Just like how most Christians ignore the Westboro Baptist Church.

While I don't belong to any organized system, as far as I am aware, the three largest American Asatru organizations have officially denounced the racist groups.

No one ever does hardcore Viking paganism any more.

Ohhhh sweet summer child. To be fair no they probably don't actually kill people but I'm sure some of them would if they could.

I feel like I should defend the faith of my closest friend, but of the half dozen heathens he hangs out with two of them were wicked anti-Semitic (they tried to explain that they just hated Israel, but that didn't cut it) and another was pretty damn racist. In my friend's defense he eventually cut these folks from his life, and I think he mostly stayed with them because it's such a rare thing to find in common.

On the other hand, his faith calls him to work with his hands, be self reliant, work his hardest, and take care of his loved ones.

On the down side some people believe you have to have some "Norse" blood in you to be a true practitioner which is bullshit. That might have been the assholes though. The whole thing is pretty wishy-washy, but I'm Catholic so (A) I can't really criticism the odd in other peoples' religions and (B) everything up to Buddhism is wishy-washy because it doesn't have one person in charge.

ANYWAY, you see skin-heads and neo-nazis in Asatru making noise, but if you also follow any regular kindred on facebook or whatever you see stuff like "Fuck this guy, claiming he's one of us after killing his girlfriend" and "Take a stand against queerphobic heathenrey because even Odin was ergi sometimes" and similar for other issues. So, you know, it's a mixed bag.

But there are totally people out there who consider themselves Vikings. They just tend to work in construction more so than pillaging.

I like how everyone in this thread talk like paganism is a mostly dead thing when Hinduism is the world's third largest religion.

I'm not sure to what extent paganism and polytheism are the same words anymore? 'Pagan' I think originally referred to any non-Christian, which doesn't necessarily mean polytheist, and then I think was variously applied to 'polytheists known to the classical world' (so any polytheists the greeks/romans knew about), and later on to 'polytheists from reconstructed/reinvented religions' ie Neopagans. I think nowadays the connotation is mostly the latter, which wouldn't include Hinduism or any of the more ancient continuous polytheistic traditions.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only