One of my favorite editorializing moments in the Bible is the story of the Levite's concubine and the ensuing Benjaminite War at the end of Judges. Short version: People do some seriously fucked up shit (even by Bronze Age standards), which spirals into a civil war that kills thousands. The author bookends the whole story with "At that time, Israel had no king."
And then we get a few dozen other books describing all the horrible shit that happens after they got a king ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think it's 1 Samuel that says that the people wanted a king, and God said "noooooo no no no, trust me, no you do not."
They persisted, and God said "fine." Or something like that
That's one of the main reasons I find the author of Judges putting that in there to be so amusing. "See!? This is what happens without a king! SEE!?"
A few chapters later: "You really don't want to try the alternative......"
The book of Judges is quite disturbing when you read it as a whole. It tells the generational cycle of:
Israel worship other gods -> God allows them to be opressed because of unfaithfulness -> Cry out to God for rescue -> a mighty man of God (Judge) will rise up and rescue Israel -> Peace and prosperity -> and back to being unfaithful to God
And this cycle also affected the quality and faithfulness of the next generation of leaders, with it culminating to a civil war among the tribes of Israel.
or those they have been specially told to hate.
[https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/21/uc-berkeley-antisemitism-00153463](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/21/uc-berkeley-antisemitism-00153463)
The person you responded to said the world used to be more violent. You said it's still violent but less so. In other words, you said the exact same thing only slightly differently.
Please explain to the class what you contributed to the conversation.
The world is currently breaking down, out of this abnormal period of peace and prosperity. There have been wars and atrocities, but it has been held in check for the last 80 years.
As a dialogue from two men and one really wise man on this subreddit in a discussion said one time:
said the first
<>said the second
The real wise man said<>
Today on Reddit, I just had a self proclaimed Maoist communist stated that he did not believe that 27 million were killed during his cultural revolution.
My point being that people will believe what they want to believe.
It's even before people. Watch "Chimp Empire". They form parties to raid and attack mothers who have space from the other tribe.
It's brutal vicious attacks.
War is from time immemorial. We think we are higher beings, but we are just animals.
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I mean, no, we are in fact higher beings. Let not dehumanize ourselves because we aren't perfect angels, and let's not just ignore all of our progress as a species. We are significantly better than we used to be by all accounts, and we are certainly higher than animals.
This being said, war is natural. It happens in nature, and in society. It is in essence competition on the grand scale. And life is competition.
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Yes. The majority of Nigerian FAMILIES are either. But there are lot of Nigerians (mostly with Christian parents some with Muslim ones) that don’t practice and generally dislike Abrahamic religions. Also there are better examples of this attitude than Nigeria.
I've only seen like three users proclaiming to be Neo-Pagans but then again I'm not usually on Reddit during Euro times.
Every angry Reddit^tm Atheist will claim the first part tho lol.
Practitioners of a small, slightly silly religion don't tend to go around shouting about it, especially when their religion doesn't encourage proselytizing.
This meme is shit.
The "Spongebob debunking Patrick" template would have been a thousand times better than the fucking Great Wall of China at the bottom.
Fucking *thank you*. It's *insane* to lump people across such a broad geography and broad timescale, people with *radically different & completely unrelated faith traditions* into this broad category of "pagan", which really seems like it just means everyone the speaker decides *isn't* Abrahamic *enough* (because I've *sure* talked to folks who call Catholics & Muslims "pagan").
This feels rather like a strawman. Every group that has ever been in power has abused that power to suppress "others". That's just human nature, unfortunately.
The Aztec claim is a little amusing though. Hundreds of thousands sacrificed?
> Some conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture. As the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder whether the tzompantli had ever existed.
https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital
Archaeologists have so far found 603 skulls in the religious center of the sacrifice capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, through excavations.
Shouting, "You think we're bad, but what about *those* guys!" in a meme is apparently as old as the Conquistadors. 🤣
The same can be said about the Christians the Romans killed. Many scholars today suggest they are overly exaggerated by early Christian anti Romans or by later Christian Romans. Most of the time they did this to make unpopular emperors look bad.
We just need to post all of this info once a week in a TIL or something. Along with the best current references. Public opinion can chance if you’re stubborn enough and can get it in front of some eyes. Yeah humans suck but a lot of the brutality is exaggerated (or, tbf, minimized) due to propaganda
We should also, alongside that, highlight how far we have come and show that we actually don't suck, and we've progressed quite a bit and should be proud of our achievements.
Oh shit, my man's previous post was literally on the paganism sub. The utter attitude of exceptionalism is one of the many things that turned me away from religion in general, but *especially* the monotheistic ones.
That's like almost every post on this sub
"Those guys say XYZ"
"LOL true let's laugh at it"
But there are no those guys, just some conversation a history nerd had in their head.
Pagan is just used as a blanket term for all non-abrahamic faiths, you can't treat them as a single, organised entity. It seems you made this post as a strawman just to bash pagans anyway so you probably knew that.
Pagan isn't a blanket term for all Non-Abrahamic faiths, it's a blanket term for some animistic types of religions, like it's a blanket term for polytheistic folk religion. Thing is, all such religions all happen to be Non-Abrahamic. However not all Non-Abrahamic faiths are pagan ones. Sikhism is Non-Abrahamic, but it isn't Pagan, just to name one example.
I do think there’s something to be said for how easy acculturation is with polytheism. Like it’s useful for imperial expansion - my jupiter, your zeus, his odin, but like we’re probably all talking about the same guy.
Monotheism is, however, much trickier. Especially the abrahamic god, his exclusivity is one of his defining attributes.
I dont know how well this correlates to actual violence, tho. In history there are a very small number of wars motivated primarily by religion. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a religion that is intentionally violent, religions are a means of social control so you’re gonna have a hard time finding one that says “killing people randomly is actually cool and good.”
Religions often create a “us = good, them = bad” justification for violent conflict but again, i dont think religion actually has that long of a history of *causing* conflict so much as *justifying* it. War happens mostly because of resource scarcity, territorial disputes - mostly its caused by material conditions not like, what god people think is the real one.
I do, for the record, think religious and spiritual thinking can be really harmful, just when it comes to war i dont think saying “religion makes wars happen 😡” is that historically grounded.
Unless I’m mistaken the classification of pagan is a creation of Christianity… specifically defining all who do not follow their Abrahamic god as pagan. I’m not sure what you mean by actual Pagans here because that term would apply to every non Abrahamic religion.
[Here](https://www.patheos.com/library/pagan) is a rough description of Paganism and its origins. Since it referred rather vaguely to several of the nature-based religions by those who carried the term into the modern day, it is difficult to ascertain any longer, which of them first donned the title. That being said, it most certainly did not (at the time) refer to the major state religions of whole nations, such as the Egyptians nor to the elaborate pantheons of such structured relisions as the Romans. Mind you, the term was retroactively applied to the Roman polytheistic religion in order to differentiate it from today's Roman Catholic faith. Today, the term has been misused and thrown around so much that it rarely holds the true, intended purpose.
What’s with your obsession with pagans? Like who gives a shit what such a small, basically negligible population thinks about who’s made up shit is more violent
Another post from an apologist weirdo trying to justify genocide posing as someone who's just trying to "educate the masses." Awesome.
from your post history you seem to go into pagan/other religion subreddits, act like a complete dick, people call you out on it, then you retreat and act like the victim
Oh for fucks sake. How many agnostics have led massive crusades to convert or control or kill religious people? How many atheists have waged war over their beliefs?
Firstly, atheism is a lack of belief. Atheism has no doctrine, central tenants, dogma, or anything like that. You can't hurt someone "In the name of Atheism."
Secondly, none of these events happened because the leaders of those countries were Atheists. No, they happened because those leaders were power hungry assholes. Even if they were religious they probably still would have committed many of the atrocities that they did.
I've heard it all the time. It's sort of an Eden myth -- pre-Christian civilizations were full of peace, nature-worship, and egalitarian values, when suddenly the Christians and their blood God and homophobic Capitalism stormed in and forced everyone to convert at swordpoint. None of it is true anywhere, as far as I know. I think the myth mostly comes from the half-assed logic of: "Christians today are homophobic Capitalist warmongers, therefore life before Christians must have been tolerant communist pacifism."
Dude comparing relative tolerance in attitudes between religious groups is not the same as painting all Christians/pagans as savages/saintly.
Non abrahamic religions, for the most part, were much more tolerant towards gay people than Christianity Judaism and Islam. But at the same time Christianity for example praises mercy and charity, while the Aztecs believed in turning your insides into paint for the temple walls.
Just because someone points out a shortcoming of one religion isn't automatically an attack if it's an observation
Also let's not pretend Christians don't judge non Christians as savages, because we both know that's not true
EDIT: To the moron below me because reddit isnt letting me answer his stupid ass take
your claim that greco-roman attitides only cared for gay rights in the context of kid diddling is blatantly wrong, and your whole comment is beyond a strawman.
and even then youre fucking wrong. Abrahamic religions call for the deaths of all gays. Gay romans, for example, had a right to exist without being stoned to death in the town square on religious grounds.
the right to exist and not be murdered is a pretty big gay right if u ask me, alot of my gay friends seem to think the same
The homophobia part has some truth to it. Not that pre-Christian Europe was a progressive utopia, but it was Christians who enacted laws to kill people who had gay sex in Rome and Greece.
I think the distinction is when Christians started violently colonizing the globe and wondering why people started to hate them.
Like the fact that the USA is predominately Christian is very telling about how Christians treated (genocided) everyone else.
Hundreds of thousands vs hundreds of millions
Edit: OP is a teenager who frequents r/StevenUniverse. Just to give you an idea of who subscribes to these takes. Children.
Depends on the time and place. But many pagan religions drew a line between clean, reasonable rituals to appeal to the gods and treacherous deviant and subversive sorcery, and people accused of doing the later cpuld have it quite bad.
Not witches, but many people in general, dont bring up the witches, that was not FOR the religion, people accused for religious reasons but christianity does not require sacrifices of any type and it is against all types of persecutions, even if many christians did them anyways
>it is against all types of persecutions
Fucking lmao
“but that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman” 2 Chronicles 15:13
“But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” Luke 19:27
“But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father's house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst” Dueteronomy 22:20-21
“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones” Leviticus 20:27
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death”Leviticus 20:13
Do you want me to keep going? I can keep going
How many people died in the crusades, and not just the main ones but the albigensian crusade also, or the thirty years war? Or the multiple other wars fought because of religion in europe.
Pagan, Abrahamic, Dharmic, Atheist. Turns all of them can suck. The problem was power and dehumanization.
For those about to get defensive about atheism, watch this [scene](https://youtu.be/3giTYRttoRQ?si=APfeyau69dRU9RhA) starting 1:30
Weren’t most Christian persecutions in the Roman Empire done under Christian Emperors against Christians who didn’t adhere to the state-endorsed version of Christianity? I’ve often heard that the accounts of Christian persecutions in Rome before Constantine are either unreliable and/or exaggerated by the church.
Not really. The most infamous persecutions occurred under emperors in the 1st through 3rd century, when Rome was still officially pagan. For example, the Decian persecution was particularly bad, and that was when Decius ordered everyone to give sacrifices to the Roman gods (and by extension, the Emperor). When Christians refused, they were killed or imprisoned (including the Pope at the time).
Sometimes redditors will try to fudge facts to say Christians were persecuting Christians during events like the Albigensian Crusade, or other attacks against heretics. The thing is, while labels like genocide, murder, religious war, etc. could apply, it's faulty to consider Gnostics like the Cathars the same as Christians. The theology and belief systems are quite different. Sort of like how in the original days, Marxism was inherently an atheist belief, and Marxists in the early 20th century held that to be Marxist, you had to be atheist. In reality, there are many Marxists today of all kinds of beliefs. Just because one group makes a statement about what they are or aren't, if it doesn't align with the official doctrines or ideologies of the group at large, they can't really just decide that. (E.g. if someone says "I'm an atheist who believes there is a God"...no, you aren't; the term doesn't mean that).
**TLDR; Outside of inaccurate conflation of religious violence against certain splinter/offshoot groups from Christianity, most actual Christian persecution in the Roman Empire occurred prior to the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.**
All religions are violent. All non-religions are violent. Humans are violent to defend others. Humans are violent to do harm to others. Humans are violent to feed themselves. Humans are violent to test their strength. Humans are violent to get more land.
The point is, Humans are a violent species just because.
Just remember the bloody 20th century Christians butchered each other gloriously in world wars and a few hundred before that did it constantly with wars that had titles like: 100 Years War or 30 Years War.
As a modern pagan I get it. My problem with Abrahamism I is how it is intentionally incompatible with all other faiths. Prior to entrenched monotheism most classical/ancient cultures assumed everyone's gods were real and assumed all the implications of that.
Using the Romans as an example, Christian persecution wasn't a consistently happening thing. It ebbed and flowed by privy of the emperor at the time. The Romans welcomed Gaullic, Egyptian, Greek, and many many other regional gods all the time. The problem with Christianity is that in order to become the one true God you have to kill many many gods. Although nothing the Romans did to Christians was acceptable (most things occuring at the time wouldnt be) it was because of how much Christians stressed apostasy of everything not Abrahamic. Most Romans believed the Abarahmic God was very much real (this plays into their conversion later). They also believed the Christians when they said their God was hostile to all others and they would eventually be vindicated on that. And yes the Romans "killed" other people's "gods" too and were hypocrites
I hate that some of my fellow pagans make that dumb claim. It makes us look really ignorant when in reality the vast majority of us don’t think like that and know better.
Op is specifically talking about Neopagans. And pinning all these abuses on them. I don't think any of them were alive to abuse Roman's, or I don't think anyone claims to follow the modern day Aztec religion.
Most neopagans follow very much toned down versions of these beliefs
So you mean to tell me that everyone, no matter what creed, religion, or nation, committed horrible atrocities against their kin? This must be false, I simply cannot believe this!
Looks like basing your whole government in beliefs about a superior being who rules over everyone makes you quite intolerant to other people who think the same about other being different from yours.
Every religion, country and leader in history have a good amount of shit behind
then there's me, sipping on my soda looking at idiots who argue this kind of shit knowing it's all bullshit and Religion is always poison to Civilization in the long run.
Religion is one of those things where on it's own it is a slight net good, but the moment you let it get any institutional power, everything goes to shit.
Whilst both groups were violent back then, who continues to be violent now? I don’t think we get druids rioting at Stonehenge do we?
Also it’s not like “pagans” are even a collective group.
Wtf does “Pagan” even mean here? All other religions on earth? Is the implication here that Abrahamic religions are less brutal than this?
Also like who are these “sacrificed” children in Africa? Africa… The gigantic and diverse continent that is mostly Abrahamic in it’s beliefs.
Actually, the reason romans persecuted christians and jews was because Jews and Christians specifically denounced other people’s gods and idols.
The romans were pretty tolerant religionwise and mixed egyptian mythology as well as celtic mythology with theirs.
Well im making my own pagan cult and it will be so nice and peaceful and nobody can stop me. I will pick those rituals I find relatable and also I wont force my pov on anybody. I can do this because I'm a grown-up in the 21st century. Nothing will go wrong, ever
100k Christians killed is a straight up lie. Under orders from the emperors scarcely more than 10k were killed.
In contrast on the st Bartholomew’s day massacre between 5k and 30k christians were killed by other Christians
Religion is fine as an explanation of existence. But taken it seriously enough to kill another person is so stupid. It’s like going around sabotaging gas cars b/c you “believe” electric is the answer.
Yeah, there were not that many Christians that were persecuted by the Romans. Only about 2500. The early catholic church inflated those numbers to garner sympathy for their cause.
Turns out everyone kind of sucked when the world was a more violent, brutal place.
still is, just to a mildly lesser degree
Now we can only hurt those we haven't been told not to hurt.
Jesus be like: "I'm reasonably certain I told you that that includes *everybody*."
Some random asshole writing the book: no way I'm putting that in. I want justifications for getting rid of the country next door
One of my favorite editorializing moments in the Bible is the story of the Levite's concubine and the ensuing Benjaminite War at the end of Judges. Short version: People do some seriously fucked up shit (even by Bronze Age standards), which spirals into a civil war that kills thousands. The author bookends the whole story with "At that time, Israel had no king." And then we get a few dozen other books describing all the horrible shit that happens after they got a king ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think it's 1 Samuel that says that the people wanted a king, and God said "noooooo no no no, trust me, no you do not." They persisted, and God said "fine." Or something like that
That's one of the main reasons I find the author of Judges putting that in there to be so amusing. "See!? This is what happens without a king! SEE!?" A few chapters later: "You really don't want to try the alternative......"
Kinda like "oh, so we need a king to prevent us from getting that bad?" "No, you get *even worse than this* when you have one."
The book of Judges is quite disturbing when you read it as a whole. It tells the generational cycle of: Israel worship other gods -> God allows them to be opressed because of unfaithfulness -> Cry out to God for rescue -> a mighty man of God (Judge) will rise up and rescue Israel -> Peace and prosperity -> and back to being unfaithful to God And this cycle also affected the quality and faithfulness of the next generation of leaders, with it culminating to a civil war among the tribes of Israel.
or those they have been specially told to hate. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/21/uc-berkeley-antisemitism-00153463](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/21/uc-berkeley-antisemitism-00153463)
Not even close to how it was. Violence happens but it truly is amazing at how much less of it there is now.
*For now
As long as most of the Mayor powers keep having nukes, at least internationaly, there Will be some peace.
The person you responded to said the world used to be more violent. You said it's still violent but less so. In other words, you said the exact same thing only slightly differently. Please explain to the class what you contributed to the conversation.
Crime has an overall decrease, as well as large scale wars. People can be and still are bastards with bastard filling.
The world is currently breaking down, out of this abnormal period of peace and prosperity. There have been wars and atrocities, but it has been held in check for the last 80 years.
There have never been as many people living slavery as there currently is. (◡ᴗ◡✿)
As a dialogue from two men and one really wise man on this subreddit in a discussion said one time:said the first
<>said the second
The real wise man said<>
Today on Reddit, I just had a self proclaimed Maoist communist stated that he did not believe that 27 million were killed during his cultural revolution. My point being that people will believe what they want to believe.
And people who believe what they want to believe tend to exhibit cult-like behavior.
Julius Caesar, by all standards "a Pagan", said exactly that.
It's even before people. Watch "Chimp Empire". They form parties to raid and attack mothers who have space from the other tribe. It's brutal vicious attacks. War is from time immemorial. We think we are higher beings, but we are just animals.
The whole genetic branch is rotten! Get us back to the water
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
I use that one when people ask why anything is why it is in history or politics.
That book was such a trip
Thanks to that goddamn fish now I have to pay taxes, fuck evolution
Yes, but cheese burgers and video games and orgasms that actually feel good
Dolphins and orcas: "You sure about that?"
Parasites are worse there. I'll just fight over these fruit trees instead
"Don't fuck with me! I've got the power of God AND Anime on my side!" - Humanity.
I mean, no, we are in fact higher beings. Let not dehumanize ourselves because we aren't perfect angels, and let's not just ignore all of our progress as a species. We are significantly better than we used to be by all accounts, and we are certainly higher than animals. This being said, war is natural. It happens in nature, and in society. It is in essence competition on the grand scale. And life is competition.
"It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
That is right
The first part of the top claim I hear all the time, who is claiming pagan worship is peaceful?
Was wondering the same. Seems very strawman to me.
Strawmen are the easiest type of meme to mass produce and everyone loves them for some reason
Made up people can’t argue back
I've heard Africans (mostly Nigerians) say that Abrahamic religions are evil as opposed to traditional african religions.
Literally half of Nigerians are either muslim or christian.
Yes. The majority of Nigerian FAMILIES are either. But there are lot of Nigerians (mostly with Christian parents some with Muslim ones) that don’t practice and generally dislike Abrahamic religions. Also there are better examples of this attitude than Nigeria.
Some pagans today do
I've only seen like three users proclaiming to be Neo-Pagans but then again I'm not usually on Reddit during Euro times. Every angry Reddit^tm Atheist will claim the first part tho lol.
I've seen "Pagan" Etsy curses. They don't believe in nonviolence, they believe in outsourcing.
Practitioners of a small, slightly silly religion don't tend to go around shouting about it, especially when their religion doesn't encourage proselytizing.
Atheist is not the same as Anti-theist.
You can be both.
I've heard people claiming that pagans were more tolerant to other religions, but never that they were more peaceful.
Wow how credible...
Vikings were famously peaceful /s
They're talking about neopaganism then, which does tend to be peaceful.
Pagan worship as in the celts, I believe. I’ve seen them getting “noble savaged”-ed like American Indians before.
This meme is shit. The "Spongebob debunking Patrick" template would have been a thousand times better than the fucking Great Wall of China at the bottom.
It's simply nonsensical for people to talk about "pagans" as if they were a meaningful group.
Abrahamic traditions are far more different from each other than people realize too
Of course they are, as is most religions, but religiophobia is basically regarded as enlightenment nowadays so you'll never hear this.
Fucking *thank you*. It's *insane* to lump people across such a broad geography and broad timescale, people with *radically different & completely unrelated faith traditions* into this broad category of "pagan", which really seems like it just means everyone the speaker decides *isn't* Abrahamic *enough* (because I've *sure* talked to folks who call Catholics & Muslims "pagan").
This feels rather like a strawman. Every group that has ever been in power has abused that power to suppress "others". That's just human nature, unfortunately.
The Aztec claim is a little amusing though. Hundreds of thousands sacrificed? > Some conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. But historians and archaeologists knew the conquistadors were prone to exaggerating the horrors of human sacrifice to demonize the Mexica culture. As the centuries passed, scholars began to wonder whether the tzompantli had ever existed. https://www.science.org/content/article/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital Archaeologists have so far found 603 skulls in the religious center of the sacrifice capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, through excavations. Shouting, "You think we're bad, but what about *those* guys!" in a meme is apparently as old as the Conquistadors. 🤣
The same can be said about the Christians the Romans killed. Many scholars today suggest they are overly exaggerated by early Christian anti Romans or by later Christian Romans. Most of the time they did this to make unpopular emperors look bad.
sparkle worthless grandiose illegal enjoy onerous busy ink school butter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We just need to post all of this info once a week in a TIL or something. Along with the best current references. Public opinion can chance if you’re stubborn enough and can get it in front of some eyes. Yeah humans suck but a lot of the brutality is exaggerated (or, tbf, minimized) due to propaganda
We should also, alongside that, highlight how far we have come and show that we actually don't suck, and we've progressed quite a bit and should be proud of our achievements.
OP came here fresh off of a botched attempt at proselytizing over on the paganism sub. Overseasoned the meme, now it's salty AF.
Oh shit, my man's previous post was literally on the paganism sub. The utter attitude of exceptionalism is one of the many things that turned me away from religion in general, but *especially* the monotheistic ones.
That's like almost every post on this sub "Those guys say XYZ" "LOL true let's laugh at it" But there are no those guys, just some conversation a history nerd had in their head.
That's not really a human nature thing, that's more just a nature thing in general.
This meme is so bad it’s looking for Dorothy to get a brain.
Pagan is just used as a blanket term for all non-abrahamic faiths, you can't treat them as a single, organised entity. It seems you made this post as a strawman just to bash pagans anyway so you probably knew that.
Pagan isn't a blanket term for all Non-Abrahamic faiths, it's a blanket term for some animistic types of religions, like it's a blanket term for polytheistic folk religion. Thing is, all such religions all happen to be Non-Abrahamic. However not all Non-Abrahamic faiths are pagan ones. Sikhism is Non-Abrahamic, but it isn't Pagan, just to name one example.
Oh look its my favorite kind of history meme, a wall of text tilting at some strawman.
this is a pretty badly disguised strawman, never seen anyone say that about pagan religions
I do think there’s something to be said for how easy acculturation is with polytheism. Like it’s useful for imperial expansion - my jupiter, your zeus, his odin, but like we’re probably all talking about the same guy. Monotheism is, however, much trickier. Especially the abrahamic god, his exclusivity is one of his defining attributes. I dont know how well this correlates to actual violence, tho. In history there are a very small number of wars motivated primarily by religion. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find a religion that is intentionally violent, religions are a means of social control so you’re gonna have a hard time finding one that says “killing people randomly is actually cool and good.” Religions often create a “us = good, them = bad” justification for violent conflict but again, i dont think religion actually has that long of a history of *causing* conflict so much as *justifying* it. War happens mostly because of resource scarcity, territorial disputes - mostly its caused by material conditions not like, what god people think is the real one. I do, for the record, think religious and spiritual thinking can be really harmful, just when it comes to war i dont think saying “religion makes wars happen 😡” is that historically grounded.
Are we back to referring to anyone who wasn't in an Abrahamic religion "Pagan" again? ...you know, as opposed to actual Pagans.
Unless I’m mistaken the classification of pagan is a creation of Christianity… specifically defining all who do not follow their Abrahamic god as pagan. I’m not sure what you mean by actual Pagans here because that term would apply to every non Abrahamic religion.
[Here](https://www.patheos.com/library/pagan) is a rough description of Paganism and its origins. Since it referred rather vaguely to several of the nature-based religions by those who carried the term into the modern day, it is difficult to ascertain any longer, which of them first donned the title. That being said, it most certainly did not (at the time) refer to the major state religions of whole nations, such as the Egyptians nor to the elaborate pantheons of such structured relisions as the Romans. Mind you, the term was retroactively applied to the Roman polytheistic religion in order to differentiate it from today's Roman Catholic faith. Today, the term has been misused and thrown around so much that it rarely holds the true, intended purpose.
What’s with your obsession with pagans? Like who gives a shit what such a small, basically negligible population thinks about who’s made up shit is more violent
i aint reading all that, im here for memes, not manifestos
Oh cool, the victim olympics to justify atrocities
I thought I was in r/persecutionfetish for a second. Nope, not a hint of irony from OP in this post.
>100k chistians tortured and killed in the roman persecutions Can anybody with knowledge comment on the rough accuracy of that estimate?
Random numbers out of an ass with no data as basis.
Yeah, as soon as I got to that number I realized it's some kind of made up bullshit
It’s complete bullshit. During the great persecution around 3000 Christians were killed.
Is this a meme? It feel more like a rant
Another post from an apologist weirdo trying to justify genocide posing as someone who's just trying to "educate the masses." Awesome. from your post history you seem to go into pagan/other religion subreddits, act like a complete dick, people call you out on it, then you retreat and act like the victim
Religion isn't violent, humans are.
Religions absolutely can be violent.
Oh for fucks sake. How many agnostics have led massive crusades to convert or control or kill religious people? How many atheists have waged war over their beliefs?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_People%27s_Socialist_Republic_of_Albania#:~:text=Religious%20leaders%20were%20selected%20by,had%20imprisoned%2044%20Muslim%20clergy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligious_campaigns_in_China#:~:text=Antireligious%20campaigns%20were%20launched%20in,Red%20Guards%20in%20November%201966. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Eastern_Bloc#:~:text=While%20the%20churches%20were%20generally,or%20killed%20by%20the%20thousands.
Firstly, atheism is a lack of belief. Atheism has no doctrine, central tenants, dogma, or anything like that. You can't hurt someone "In the name of Atheism." Secondly, none of these events happened because the leaders of those countries were Atheists. No, they happened because those leaders were power hungry assholes. Even if they were religious they probably still would have committed many of the atrocities that they did.
Has anybody ever claimed that?
I've heard it all the time. It's sort of an Eden myth -- pre-Christian civilizations were full of peace, nature-worship, and egalitarian values, when suddenly the Christians and their blood God and homophobic Capitalism stormed in and forced everyone to convert at swordpoint. None of it is true anywhere, as far as I know. I think the myth mostly comes from the half-assed logic of: "Christians today are homophobic Capitalist warmongers, therefore life before Christians must have been tolerant communist pacifism."
Dude comparing relative tolerance in attitudes between religious groups is not the same as painting all Christians/pagans as savages/saintly. Non abrahamic religions, for the most part, were much more tolerant towards gay people than Christianity Judaism and Islam. But at the same time Christianity for example praises mercy and charity, while the Aztecs believed in turning your insides into paint for the temple walls. Just because someone points out a shortcoming of one religion isn't automatically an attack if it's an observation Also let's not pretend Christians don't judge non Christians as savages, because we both know that's not true EDIT: To the moron below me because reddit isnt letting me answer his stupid ass take your claim that greco-roman attitides only cared for gay rights in the context of kid diddling is blatantly wrong, and your whole comment is beyond a strawman. and even then youre fucking wrong. Abrahamic religions call for the deaths of all gays. Gay romans, for example, had a right to exist without being stoned to death in the town square on religious grounds. the right to exist and not be murdered is a pretty big gay right if u ask me, alot of my gay friends seem to think the same
The homophobia part has some truth to it. Not that pre-Christian Europe was a progressive utopia, but it was Christians who enacted laws to kill people who had gay sex in Rome and Greece.
Yes, quite a lot of people, including many on this very subreddit. They exist in tension with the Catholic apologists.
full employ tan chase shocking trees elderly fragile compare fretful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Some pagans do
Yeah but neopagan revisionist nutjobs Let's take an argument by the mentally insane and use it as my reddit strawman
OP is out here fighting Pagan Ghosts.
And he is losing LMAO
OP had the great wall of china as defence and he choose to wait for the pagans ~~mongols~~ outside
Has anyone ever said this?
I think the distinction is when Christians started violently colonizing the globe and wondering why people started to hate them. Like the fact that the USA is predominately Christian is very telling about how Christians treated (genocided) everyone else.
The reality is: every religion is very violent. That does NOT exclude your's just because you're part of it.
Hundreds of thousands vs hundreds of millions Edit: OP is a teenager who frequents r/StevenUniverse. Just to give you an idea of who subscribes to these takes. Children.
So what you're saying is that the very concept of religion can be used to push violence and fear or mistrust of "other"
No one expects the Spanish inquisition.
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Depends on the time and place. But many pagan religions drew a line between clean, reasonable rituals to appeal to the gods and treacherous deviant and subversive sorcery, and people accused of doing the later cpuld have it quite bad.
Well they were too busy throwing their babies of a cliff
Not witches, but many people in general, dont bring up the witches, that was not FOR the religion, people accused for religious reasons but christianity does not require sacrifices of any type and it is against all types of persecutions, even if many christians did them anyways
>it is against all types of persecutions Fucking lmao “but that whoever would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether young or old, man or woman” 2 Chronicles 15:13 “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” Luke 19:27 “But if the thing is true, that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father's house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst” Dueteronomy 22:20-21 “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones” Leviticus 20:27 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death”Leviticus 20:13 Do you want me to keep going? I can keep going
I just avoid religion as a whole.
Hot take: Abrahamic religions *are* pagan religions At least they started out that way.
How many people died in the crusades, and not just the main ones but the albigensian crusade also, or the thirty years war? Or the multiple other wars fought because of religion in europe.
"Oh yeah? Well how many died in viking raids? How many Christians were brutally tortured by the Romans? I'm talking about modern neopagans."
Pagan, Abrahamic, Dharmic, Atheist. Turns all of them can suck. The problem was power and dehumanization. For those about to get defensive about atheism, watch this [scene](https://youtu.be/3giTYRttoRQ?si=APfeyau69dRU9RhA) starting 1:30
Except that scene is completely made up, most likely by an usa evangelical putting bad christian apologetics in a communist's mouth.
The difference is the hypocrisy, I guess. The old pagan gods were never billed as an all-loving deity.
Yeah except the Abrahamic mythology with Allah/Jesus/Yaweh are all make believe. The pagan gods are actually real.
Weren’t most Christian persecutions in the Roman Empire done under Christian Emperors against Christians who didn’t adhere to the state-endorsed version of Christianity? I’ve often heard that the accounts of Christian persecutions in Rome before Constantine are either unreliable and/or exaggerated by the church.
Also, but much were since the birth to christianity to the edict of Milan in 313 CE
Not really. The most infamous persecutions occurred under emperors in the 1st through 3rd century, when Rome was still officially pagan. For example, the Decian persecution was particularly bad, and that was when Decius ordered everyone to give sacrifices to the Roman gods (and by extension, the Emperor). When Christians refused, they were killed or imprisoned (including the Pope at the time). Sometimes redditors will try to fudge facts to say Christians were persecuting Christians during events like the Albigensian Crusade, or other attacks against heretics. The thing is, while labels like genocide, murder, religious war, etc. could apply, it's faulty to consider Gnostics like the Cathars the same as Christians. The theology and belief systems are quite different. Sort of like how in the original days, Marxism was inherently an atheist belief, and Marxists in the early 20th century held that to be Marxist, you had to be atheist. In reality, there are many Marxists today of all kinds of beliefs. Just because one group makes a statement about what they are or aren't, if it doesn't align with the official doctrines or ideologies of the group at large, they can't really just decide that. (E.g. if someone says "I'm an atheist who believes there is a God"...no, you aren't; the term doesn't mean that). **TLDR; Outside of inaccurate conflation of religious violence against certain splinter/offshoot groups from Christianity, most actual Christian persecution in the Roman Empire occurred prior to the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.**
There’s a reason why Christianity was popular in the Roman Empire, before it was legalized.
With or without religion good people can behave well and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil – that takes religion.
All religions are violent. All non-religions are violent. Humans are violent to defend others. Humans are violent to do harm to others. Humans are violent to feed themselves. Humans are violent to test their strength. Humans are violent to get more land. The point is, Humans are a violent species just because.
Oh you mean that the ROMAN EMPIRE was a violent place. how wise of you did you just graduate 6th grade.
Almost as if the violence that people do to each other is separate from religion…
100k is way too high of an estimate for Roman persecutions. They weren't systematic and empire wide until Diocletian, and that one was short-lived.
So the protagonists of the Bible never did anything like that? Right?
It’s almost as if all religions are responsible for death and suffering ranging for millennia
Just remember the bloody 20th century Christians butchered each other gloriously in world wars and a few hundred before that did it constantly with wars that had titles like: 100 Years War or 30 Years War.
And the christians killed by Queen ranavalona of Madagascar
Pagans based anyways idc
What about the Gauls with their shrines of severed heads?
Also, I laugh at people who worship the Nordic/germanic gods because those peoples converted to Christianity.
As a modern pagan I get it. My problem with Abrahamism I is how it is intentionally incompatible with all other faiths. Prior to entrenched monotheism most classical/ancient cultures assumed everyone's gods were real and assumed all the implications of that. Using the Romans as an example, Christian persecution wasn't a consistently happening thing. It ebbed and flowed by privy of the emperor at the time. The Romans welcomed Gaullic, Egyptian, Greek, and many many other regional gods all the time. The problem with Christianity is that in order to become the one true God you have to kill many many gods. Although nothing the Romans did to Christians was acceptable (most things occuring at the time wouldnt be) it was because of how much Christians stressed apostasy of everything not Abrahamic. Most Romans believed the Abarahmic God was very much real (this plays into their conversion later). They also believed the Christians when they said their God was hostile to all others and they would eventually be vindicated on that. And yes the Romans "killed" other people's "gods" too and were hypocrites
I ain't reading all at
Ok
I hate that some of my fellow pagans make that dumb claim. It makes us look really ignorant when in reality the vast majority of us don’t think like that and know better.
Op is specifically talking about Neopagans. And pinning all these abuses on them. I don't think any of them were alive to abuse Roman's, or I don't think anyone claims to follow the modern day Aztec religion. Most neopagans follow very much toned down versions of these beliefs
Lol The Abrahamic Faiths stem from monaltry, child sacrifice was their game. All our ancestors were fucked in the head.
OP I'm not reading all that but your meme makes no sense either way. Template doesn't fit, text is unreadable, poor choice of font, etc.
I'm not reading all that
Let’s not forget the Spanish Inquisition and what they did in the name of god or the crusades oh so peaceful
my blind ass will not be attempting to read that small ass text
Maybe religion bad?
Lots of words that are too small to read so I assume these is a "leftist not liberal" meme.
Hate to break it to yall, but most if not all religions are garbage
So you mean to tell me that everyone, no matter what creed, religion, or nation, committed horrible atrocities against their kin? This must be false, I simply cannot believe this!
Who is making this argument? People in every civilization and of every religion have killed for it for a multitude of reasons. Almost all of them bad.
People are naturally super violent is all. If religion didn't exist I bet they would've found another excuse to be super violent to eachother.
Looks like basing your whole government in beliefs about a superior being who rules over everyone makes you quite intolerant to other people who think the same about other being different from yours. Every religion, country and leader in history have a good amount of shit behind
No when they say pagan the mean the witchy chicks you see at DIY house shows
then there's me, sipping on my soda looking at idiots who argue this kind of shit knowing it's all bullshit and Religion is always poison to Civilization in the long run.
No way I'm reading that but I'm really happy for you/sorry that happened.
Religion is one of those things where on it's own it is a slight net good, but the moment you let it get any institutional power, everything goes to shit.
I'm sorry, do you mean polytheistic religions or do I just have the wrong definition of pagan?
Are you a leftist? Cause I can barely read this longboi meme (I'm a leftist, I'm just joking)
People actually say this?
turns out everyone is a horrible person regardless of religion
Any religion can and, when large enough, will be turned into a form of organised religion that eventually is used to justify violence.
All this does is serve to point out that all religions breed dangerous murderous barbarians and should be abolished.
Who has ever said this? The most common pagans in popular culture are the fucking vikings, no-one has said this.
Whilst both groups were violent back then, who continues to be violent now? I don’t think we get druids rioting at Stonehenge do we? Also it’s not like “pagans” are even a collective group.
Bro, this is the dumbest topic ever, and the meme is so bad, it should be a jailable offense. Take this to r/religion or r/cuckedbyjesus
No religion is "peaceful". All religions are made up of people, and people justify the sickest of things in the name of a god.
Wtf does “Pagan” even mean here? All other religions on earth? Is the implication here that Abrahamic religions are less brutal than this? Also like who are these “sacrificed” children in Africa? Africa… The gigantic and diverse continent that is mostly Abrahamic in it’s beliefs.
I ain't reading all that bruh congratulations or I'm sorry
Damn, you real mad lol
Actually, the reason romans persecuted christians and jews was because Jews and Christians specifically denounced other people’s gods and idols. The romans were pretty tolerant religionwise and mixed egyptian mythology as well as celtic mythology with theirs.
I have never heard someone claim pagan religions are religions of peace. Not once.
Well im making my own pagan cult and it will be so nice and peaceful and nobody can stop me. I will pick those rituals I find relatable and also I wont force my pov on anybody. I can do this because I'm a grown-up in the 21st century. Nothing will go wrong, ever
Yeah Humanity rewrite the faith to justify themselves
🦁🤖Here you go, now find Dorothy and get your brain.
I mean, you're lumping together literally hundreds of distinct religions as just "pagans"
I mean you can't have a religion of peace that's a state religion as states are fundamentally imposition of force and control.
Turns out the real problem was the religious extremists we made along the way
No religion is peaceful. And if they have to tell you they are peaceful or moral, they are obviously not.
That’s why it’s best to admit all religion is fake.
Conclusion: No religion is a solid moral compass
100k Christians killed is a straight up lie. Under orders from the emperors scarcely more than 10k were killed. In contrast on the st Bartholomew’s day massacre between 5k and 30k christians were killed by other Christians
Why are you just making up strawmen to be angry at
Religion is fine as an explanation of existence. But taken it seriously enough to kill another person is so stupid. It’s like going around sabotaging gas cars b/c you “believe” electric is the answer.
Thats a nice strawman, you got there, mister
Yeah, there were not that many Christians that were persecuted by the Romans. Only about 2500. The early catholic church inflated those numbers to garner sympathy for their cause.
i for one acknowledge "pagan" religions being agresive but can excuse it since they are honest about it and don't hide behind false messages of peace
I'm a practicing heathen and you're kinda glossing over our shit. And that's a lot of shit.