cry of the banshee wrote:
Brahm_K wrote:
cry of the banshee wrote:
Brahm_K wrote:
following the reaper wrote:
V, your nature argument only needs one word change. Change nature to God
Ya, that is kind of the vibe I'm getting with all the talk of nature's purpose. That said, I have to disagree with Sasheron on many of her points- always taking a slice of the bigger piece and arguing against sacrifices in favour of always doing whats best for you isn't exactly what good societies are built on. If one of my friends were to always behave selfishly, we'd call him a douchebag.
Before monotheism, nature was the basis of "religion", for example, Paganism .
Old religion vs. monotheism is another subject altogether, though, and promises 50 pages of point / counterpoint, so, count me out.
Ya, I don't want to go into another 50 page rant, but saying "paganism" (whatever that means, since its a Christian and anachronistic term) in general is based in nature is simply a huge generalization and largely not true. Or at least its a lot more complicated than that.
Anachronistic in what sense? Neo-paganism, perhaps, but I am referring to what the pre-christian peoples of Europe believed, not some new-age twattery designed to sell books.
Paganism = pre monotheistic religion.
And, paganism, whatever,
was based on the personification of the forces of nature, and the natural instincts in humans, which themselves were seen as personified by "gods".
What is about the term "nature" that is so difficult for some here to grasp?
Its anachronistic because the term pagan doesn't refer to any group that ever existed. The word "pagan" derives from the latin adjective "paganus", meaning rural, and was applied in the 4th-6th centuries by Christians to any group that wasn't Christian, which mainly happened to be rural folk at that point. There was no "pagan religion", and we can't generalize about all non-Christian religions. Hell, in the Greek religion class I'm taking now, my prof basically argues (and I agree) that there was no Greek religion at all, and that religion was based around the city state- certain Pan-Hellenic structures existed which connected the religious systems of most Greek cities (like Delphi, Homer's writings, some pan-hellenic gods and the Olympic Games) but even gods like Zeus were worshiped under different forms and epiphets wherever you went. So claiming that pagan religion was all about one thing is both anachronistic and probably wrong, since religious experience and worship differed as you went from place to place.
And some gods were definitely the personification of natural phenomena; Zeus controls the thunderbolt, Death is a god, as are most rivers. But most gods worshipped by the Greeks were anthropomorphic; and therefore not natural. In the Theogony, Zeus is painted as the king of the cosmos and one who brings human concepts like justice, law and wisdom to the universe. Anyway, it was the ritual and human side of the coin that could really matter; the Spartans sacrifice to Zeus before battle not because Poseidon represents the sea, but because they wanted to gain the god's favour as a rational being and because they wanted to see whether the omens were good or not. Most scholars of Greek religion anthropologists of myth tend not to see it as purely etiological (ie. meant to explain the natural universe) but as something that is also directly linked to the performance of ritual and the personal context in which the myth was delivered (ie: what is the poet trying to accomplish by talking about Zeus as the king of the universe?).
Anyway, the point here isn't that Greek religion (if we have to define it as one religion) or Roman religion or whatever didn't try to explain nature or represent nature. But ancient religions are a helluva lot more complicated than that. Really, I don't want to go into this all here, but can you please take my word that there's a lot more to ancient religions (or at least the ones I've studied, Greek and Roman religious systems) than nature? I don't really want to write about this anymore here.
As for the why its so difficult for us to "grasp the term 'nature'", sorry V, but its the way you're using it, treating nature as a sentient being which most people here seem to disagree with.
I wasn't really referring to Roman or Greek polytheism (you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about Roman / Greek polytheism, so I'll take your word for it). Rather, I am talking about the pre-Christian religions practiced by Europeans studied and written about by Margaret Mead. They are referred to as pagans, and I am aware of the origins of the word and why they were referred to as such, thank you.
I never stated that nature was or wasn't a sentient being, and again, if I expressed mysrelf poorly, my apologies. I merely stated (or meant to) that in nature, nature representing the random, (or perhaps not, who can really say?) order of things in which humans haven't a hand in, it takes a male and a female to procreate; that procreation is the means of perpetuating a species; and that said perpetuation of species is "natural", or instinctive, or choose your term; that, since two humans of the same sex cannot procreate, it goes against what is "natural".
