Pagan morality

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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iambiguous
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Pagan morality

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This is something that has come to interest me as a result of my discussions with Maia. In particular how a Pagan community [one in which the community itself consisted of those who described themselves as Pagans] confronted the reality of conflicting goods.

In fact, I don't know if there are any actual Pagan communities. Communities that interact as, for example, the Amish do. They separate themselves from the larger culture. And this separation generally revolves around a religious or a "spiritual" path.

With the Amish, of course, there is a tradition that is called Rumspringa -- https://ohiosamishcountry.com/articles/ ... e%20church -- It's a practice whereby to whatever degree it unfolds from community-to-community adolescents are basically allowed to experiment with their lives. To try things that are not in the Amish tradition. To, in other words, allow them to determine for themselves [as much as this possible] whether they really do want to live this separate existence as a fully baptized Amish.

Only as I understand a Pagan community, there is no equivalent of the God of Abraham that, once one does choose to become a member of the community, everyone is required to adhere to a scripted life. And here the so-called "elders" in the Amish community go a long way toward determining what that means regarding almost every aspect of their communal lives.

As for any actual existing communities. If you Google it you get links like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopagani ... ted_States

But are they actual communities as in encompassed cinematically in the Wicker Man? Or Midsommar?

This as opposed to those who go to Pagan events or Pagan festivals...but then head back home to communities where there are actually very few other Pagans. It's in a Pagan community itself where each citizen is the embodiment of a spiritual relationship with nature but that spiritual relationship results in conflicting goods.

How is this handled "for all practical purposes"?

If anyone here is familiar with such communities, please weigh in.

First up:

ETHICS AND COMMUNITY
Principles of Moral Thought and Action
From the RELIGION LIBRARY site: Paganism
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Re: Pagan morality

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ETHICS AND COMMUNITY
Principles of Moral Thought and Action
From the RELIGION LIBRARY site: Paganism
Principles of Moral Thought and Action

"And [if] it harm none, do what ye will." Although written in the style of 16th-century English, this maxim, known as the Wiccan Rede, probably dates back only to the mid-20th century. It was first recorded in print in 1964, having been spoken by Doreen Valiente, a priestess who had been initiated by Gerald Gardner. Some observers of modern witchcraft speculate that it may represent a revision of Aleister Crowley's occult maxim, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," which first appeared in 1904. Regardless of its origin, the Rede - as a succinct moral code - spread rapidly throughout the Wiccan and religious witchcraft community.
Of course, this frame of mind as a moral precept would seem to revolve around the assumption that there is no God. Or, rather, no God in the sense that a transcending entity is said to exist who judges what we do on this side of the grave. Such that what we do choose on this side of the grave is "somehow" taken into account in making us worthy of immortality and salvation on the other side.

So, within any Pagan or Wiccan community, that, for me, would become the first order of business: establishing the "for all practical purposes" relationship between nature, the spiritual Self, and the afterlife.

Start here: https://www.learnreligions.com/pagan-vi ... fe-2561443

"Many Pagans believe that there is some sort of afterlife, although that tends to take varying forms, depending on the individual belief system. Some followers of NeoWiccan paths accept the afterlife as the Summerland, which Wiccan author Scott Cunningham described as a place where the soul goes on to live forever."

Is there an afterlife for a particular Pagan community...or for particular Pagans? And, if so, does behaving in such a way that you harm no one pass muster regarding whoever or whatever decides your fate for all the rest of eternity?
Balancing an emphasis on personal responsibility with an imperative for non-harm of others, it meshed beautifully with the zeitgeist of the 1960s, an era when status quo morality was being questioned in the light of student unrest, emerging feminist and gay/lesbian concerns with their attendant re-thinking of traditional sexual morality, and public disapproval of conflicts such as the war in Vietnam.
Okay, but then the part where Maia seemed to suggest that individual Pagans in sync with nature spiritually can come to opposite moral and political convictions. Some might embrace feminism, others reject it. Some might embrace experimenting sexually, others reject it. Some might embrace the conflict against Communism, others reject it. What of "balancing an emphasis on personal responsibility with an imperative for non-harm of others" given particular contexts then. Within the Pagan community itself.

Again, as noted above, for other "separatists" communities like the Amish, there is a "transcending font" -- God -- that acts to cohere everyone to a scripted morality. But in a Pagan community? Or in, say, a Pagan commune?
The Wiccan Rede's simple and common sense ethic allowed both the new freedoms of the age to flourish, while preserving a basic sense of responsibility and care for others --- at least in terms of refraining from harm.
Anyone here part of a Wiccan community? Or familiar with one? Given a specific context what "for all practical purposes" encompasses a "simple and common sense" ethics?

In particular in regard to a "conflicting good" conflagration like abortion. Refrain from killing the unborn...or refrain from forcing women to give birth?

Conflicting harms.
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Re: Pagan morality

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"Pagan" was originally a dustbin category of all non christian cults. It was an insult word indicating, literally the countryside and the bumpkins who live there, unmodernised.
The cult of the christ grew throughout the empire via the cities; originally voluntarily and latterly, after Constantine, belief was compulsory. The Pagans, holding out in the hinterlands were persecuted by the power of the city dwellers and the new cult was imposed with the usual burnings, duckings and being thrown to the lions. Being Christian was the new way to honour the empire and the emperor; failure to do so and resistance was useless ending in becoming cat food for the pleasure of the christian mob.

But Paganism is not a coherent, organised, or homogenous religion, it was a whole bunch of disparate ideas which may have included astrology, worship of various entities from genii loci, penates, isis and other oriental/egyptian forms, emperor worship; green man stuff; hepatoscopy; divination. pantheonic worship (celtic, germanic, grecian); persian, zoroastrianism.

Today its anything you want it to be. Victorian druid mumbo jumbo; dream catchers; reiki; fakey; reflexology; homeopthy; smelly oils, herbs, so-called "celtic gods"; crystals. A complete mishmash - none of which bear any relationship to the pre-christian religions that were coherent and formed creeds which were internally coherent.

I think it would be a long stretch to pretend that a few stoned, tofu eating hippies in a pub drinking their half pints of real ale represents a community - but I suppose any two people brought together with shared interests might be called a community??
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Re: Pagan morality

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Sculptor wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:34 pm "Pagan" was originally a dustbin category of all non christian cults. It was an insult word indicating, literally the countryside and the bumpkins who live there, unmodernised.
The cult of the christ grew throughout the empire via the cities; originally voluntarily and latterly, after Constantine, belief was compulsory. The Pagans, holding out in the hinterlands were persecuted by the power of the city dwellers and the new cult was imposed with the usual burnings, duckings and being thrown to the lions. Being Christian was the new way to honour the empire and the emperor; failure to do so and resistance was useless ending in becoming cat food for the pleasure of the christian mob.

But Paganism is not a coherent, organised, or homogenous religion, it was a whole bunch of disparate ideas which may have included astrology, worship of various entities from genii loci, penates, isis and other oriental/egyptian forms, emperor worship; green man stuff; hepatoscopy; divination. pantheonic worship (celtic, germanic, grecian); persian, zoroastrianism.

Today its anything you want it to be. Victorian druid mumbo jumbo; dream catchers; reiki; fakey; reflexology; homeopthy; smelly oils, herbs, so-called "celtic gods"; crystals. A complete mishmash - none of which bear any relationship to the pre-christian religions that were coherent and formed creeds which were internally coherent.

I think it would be a long stretch to pretend that a few stoned, tofu eating hippies in a pub drinking their half pints of real ale represents a community - but I suppose any two people brought together with shared interests might be called a community??
Well put. And, in many respects, I react to it in much the same manner. On the other hand, as with those on other "spiritual paths" I have met over the years, there are still going to be Pagans who are able to articulate their own spiritual relationship with nature in a way that cannot just be dismissed as something one would expect from a country bumpkin.

And given that human beings are clearly a part of nature, and how nature itself is all around us, I can understand someone feeling that they are a part of it in a way that I myself do not grasp or feel. In my own online and email exchanges with Maia, I have garnered enough respect for her intelligence to grasp that the existential chasm between the life she lived/lives and the life I lived/live is crucial in creating the communication gap between us. She is hardly some simpleton "duped" by it all.

Call it spiritual, call it something else, but it is still more apprehensible to me than the guy in the sky hawking Heaven to the flocks of sheep.

Instead, it's the gap between morality as embodied by the individual Pagan and morality as embodied by a Pagan community that is most obscure to me.
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Re: Pagan morality

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iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:42 pm
Sculptor wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:34 pm "Pagan" was originally a dustbin category of all non christian cults. It was an insult word indicating, literally the countryside and the bumpkins who live there, unmodernised.
The cult of the christ grew throughout the empire via the cities; originally voluntarily and latterly, after Constantine, belief was compulsory. The Pagans, holding out in the hinterlands were persecuted by the power of the city dwellers and the new cult was imposed with the usual burnings, duckings and being thrown to the lions. Being Christian was the new way to honour the empire and the emperor; failure to do so and resistance was useless ending in becoming cat food for the pleasure of the christian mob.

But Paganism is not a coherent, organised, or homogenous religion, it was a whole bunch of disparate ideas which may have included astrology, worship of various entities from genii loci, penates, isis and other oriental/egyptian forms, emperor worship; green man stuff; hepatoscopy; divination. pantheonic worship (celtic, germanic, grecian); persian, zoroastrianism.

Today its anything you want it to be. Victorian druid mumbo jumbo; dream catchers; reiki; fakey; reflexology; homeopthy; smelly oils, herbs, so-called "celtic gods"; crystals. A complete mishmash - none of which bear any relationship to the pre-christian religions that were coherent and formed creeds which were internally coherent.

I think it would be a long stretch to pretend that a few stoned, tofu eating hippies in a pub drinking their half pints of real ale represents a community - but I suppose any two people brought together with shared interests might be called a community??
Well put. And, in many respects, I react to it in much the same manner. On the other hand, as with those on other "spiritual paths" I have met over the years, there are still going to be Pagans who are able to articulate their own spiritual relationship with nature in a way that cannot just be dismissed as something one would expect from a country bumpkin.
Obviously my use of the phrase was to characterise the attitude of the newly Christian Roman establishment.
Many religious people are articulate and educated, even if they live in the country or the town.
But here is one moment in history where the romantic and "bucolic" view was suspended to support the control mechanisms of prejudice.

And given that human beings are clearly a part of nature, and how nature itself is all around us, I can understand someone feeling that they are a part of it in a way that I myself do not grasp or feel. In my own online and email exchanges with Maia, I have garnered enough respect for her intelligence to grasp that the existential chasm between the life she lived/lives and the life I lived/live is crucial in creating the communication gap between us. She is hardly some simpleton "duped" by it all.
Personally I do not regard the following things as "natural": astrology; dream catchers; gods and deities; spirits of the woods; magic; seances; ouija boards; lay-lines; druids; pentagrams; need I go on??

Call it spiritual, call it something else, but it is still more apprehensible to me than the guy in the sky hawking Heaven to the flocks of sheep.
Really?
How is that?

Instead, it's the gap between morality as embodied by the individual Pagan and morality as embodied by a Pagan community that is most obscure to me.
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Re: Pagan morality

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iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:42 pm Well put. And, in many respects, I react to it in much the same manner. On the other hand, as with those on other "spiritual paths" I have met over the years, there are still going to be Pagans who are able to articulate their own spiritual relationship with nature in a way that cannot just be dismissed as something one would expect from a country bumpkin.
Sculptor wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:04 pmObviously my use of the phrase was to characterise the attitude of the newly Christian Roman establishment.
Many religious people are articulate and educated, even if they live in the country or the town.
But here is one moment in history where the romantic and "bucolic" view was suspended to support the control mechanisms of prejudice.

Sure, religion has always been used for political purposes. Historically, this or that One True Path will ascend, while others will descend. Especially given the reality of what Marx called "political economy".
iambiguous wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:42 pm And given that human beings are clearly a part of nature, and how nature itself is all around us, I can understand someone feeling that they are a part of it in a way that I myself do not grasp or feel. In my own online and email exchanges with Maia, I have garnered enough respect for her intelligence to grasp that the existential chasm between the life she lived/lives and the life I lived/live is crucial in creating the communication gap between us. She is hardly some simpleton "duped" by it all.
Sculptor wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:04 pmPersonally I do not regard the following things as "natural": astrology; dream catchers; gods and deities; spirits of the woods; magic; seances; ouija boards; lay-lines; druids; pentagrams; need I go on??
Nor for the most part do I. But in my view that doesn't make this part...

"And given that human beings are clearly a part of nature, and how nature itself is all around us, I can understand someone feeling that they are a part of it in a way that I myself do not grasp or feel."

...go away. The profound mystery embedded in the very existence of biological life "somehow" evolving out of the lifeless laws of matter going back to the Big Bang. Or before?

A "spiritual" reality in the sense that those like Einstein groped and grappled with:

"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."

"The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science."

"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."

Call it spiritual, call it something else, but it is still more apprehensible to me than the guy in the sky hawking Heaven to the flocks of sheep.
Sculptor wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:04 pmReally?
How is that?
Mother Nature doesn't demand that you worship her. There's no Scripture from her demanding that you choose between Heaven or Hell. There's no Judgment Day. There is simply the brute facticity of her laws.

And here scientists, in using the "scientific method", posit an either/or world where someone is either able to demonstrate that what they believe "in their head" is in fact true objectively for all of us or they are not able to.

Whereas in the spiritual realm the most sophisticated of thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal have never posited anything other than a more rather than less sophisticated existential "leap of faith"...or a "wager".

The part I root in dasein, of course.
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Re: Pagan morality

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iambiguous wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:18 pm Mother Nature doesn't demand that you worship her. There's no Scripture from her demanding that you choose between Heaven or Hell. There's no Judgment Day. There is simply the brute facticity of her laws.

And here scientists, in using the "scientific method", posit an either/or world where someone is either able to demonstrate that what they believe "in their head" is in fact true objectively for all of us or they are not able to.

Whereas in the spiritual realm the most sophisticated of thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal have never posited anything other than a more rather than less sophisticated existential "leap of faith"...or a "wager".

The part I root in dasein, of course.
God is a phantom so it's not god that demands worship but the humans that continue to invent gods.
Thus there is nothing different essentially between the monotheisms and the Paganisms.
Both are reflections of the failings of humans to understand the world about them.

I think you are being disingenuous lumping this together with science. it's not perfect but does actually seem to respond to the world as we find it.
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Re: Pagan morality

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Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm
iambiguous wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:18 pm Mother Nature doesn't demand that you worship her. There's no Scripture from her demanding that you choose between Heaven or Hell. There's no Judgment Day. There is simply the brute facticity of her laws.

And here scientists, in using the "scientific method", posit an either/or world where someone is either able to demonstrate that what they believe "in their head" is in fact true objectively for all of us or they are not able to.

Whereas in the spiritual realm the most sophisticated of thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal have never posited anything other than a more rather than less sophisticated existential "leap of faith"...or a "wager".

The part I root in dasein, of course.
God is a phantom so it's not god that demands worship but the humans that continue to invent gods.
See? There you go again. Asserting that God is a phantom as though this is not just something that "here and now" you believe "in your head" to be true. Whereas I recognize that when I too argue that "here and now" from my own subjective frame of mind God is a phantom, I acknowledge that there is no way that I can demonstrate this to in fact be true given both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rules".

And that God is one possibility for the existence of existence itself. But then for those who believe this, I suggest we take the discussion here:
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm Thus there is nothing different essentially between the monotheisms and the Paganisms.
That's flat out ridiculous. Or, perhaps, we can explore in more detail what you mean by "essential". Given particular contexts. There are Christians and Pagans who are able to articulate their beliefs in a more or a less sophisticated manner.
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm Both are reflections of the failings of humans to understand the world about them.
No, both are reflections of the gap between "infinitesimally insignificant specks of existence" that mere mortals are given the "vastness of all there is".

And how are you really any different given the manner in which, in my view, you come off here over and again as someone who actually believes that he does fully understand the world around us.
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm I think you are being disingenuous lumping this together with science. it's not perfect but does actually seem to respond to the world as we find it.
On the other hand, Albert Einstein was a scientist himself wasn't he?

But, given the quotes above, a fool?
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Re: Pagan morality

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iambiguous wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 11:16 pm
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm
iambiguous wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:18 pm Mother Nature doesn't demand that you worship her. There's no Scripture from her demanding that you choose between Heaven or Hell. There's no Judgment Day. There is simply the brute facticity of her laws.

And here scientists, in using the "scientific method", posit an either/or world where someone is either able to demonstrate that what they believe "in their head" is in fact true objectively for all of us or they are not able to.

Whereas in the spiritual realm the most sophisticated of thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal have never posited anything other than a more rather than less sophisticated existential "leap of faith"...or a "wager".

The part I root in dasein, of course.
God is a phantom so it's not god that demands worship but the humans that continue to invent gods.
See? There you go again. Asserting that God is a phantom as though this is not just something that "here and now" you believe "in your head" to be true. Whereas I recognize that when I too argue that "here and now" from my own subjective frame of mind God is a phantom, I acknowledge that there is no way that I can demonstrate this to in fact be true given both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rules".

And that God is one possibility for the existence of existence itself. But then for those who believe this, I suggest we take the discussion here:
1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm Thus there is nothing different essentially between the monotheisms and the Paganisms.
That's flat out ridiculous. Or, perhaps, we can explore in more detail what you mean by "essential". Given particular contexts. There are Christians and Pagans who are able to articulate their beliefs in a more or a less sophisticated manner.
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm Both are reflections of the failings of humans to understand the world about them.
No, both are reflections of the gap between "infinitesimally insignificant specks of existence" that mere mortals are given the "vastness of all there is".

And how are you really any different given the manner in which, in my view, you come off here over and again as someone who actually believes that he does fully understand the world around us.
Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:45 pm I think you are being disingenuous lumping this together with science. it's not perfect but does actually seem to respond to the world as we find it.
On the other hand, Albert Einstein was a scientist himself wasn't he?

But, given the quotes above, a fool?
Einstein believed in the majesty of the order of the universe. Though he used the word "GOD" he was essentially an atheist to the common versions of god presented here. Like Spinoza he was talking about the geometric structure of reality.
I have studied Spinoza and know that Einstein acknowledges his view point as his own.
Well boohoo. Here's one atheist that believes exactly what they believed I just do not think it makes sense to call the deterministic certainties of the universe "god". It's worth mentioning that most Spinoza scholars call him atheist too, despite, and in many ways because of his particular "proof of god"; which resulted in the Jewish religious community of Holland excommunicating him.

His view is as far away from the Abrahamic god, and all the pagan, and polytheistic constructions of god as it is possible to get. And that is one reason why I say that pagan and monotheism is basically the same set of delusions; imaginings of entities that require appeasement, worship, prayer, obedience, and devotion. Pagan and mono god are "flat out" the same class of delusion.

Such beings are only evident in the minds of people who want to continue to believe their childhood indoctrinations.

PS.
I have no idea what you mean by the phrase " I acknowledge that there is no way that I can demonstrate this to in fact be true given both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rules"."
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Re: Pagan morality

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Sculptor wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:10 am
Einstein believed in the majesty of the order of the universe. Though he used the word "GOD" he was essentially an atheist to the common versions of god presented here. Like Spinoza he was talking about the geometric structure of reality.
I have studied Spinoza and know that Einstein acknowledges his view point as his own.
Again, the staggering gap between what any of us think we know about the universe -- the multiverse? -- and all that there possibly is to be known about it. Some will stick God in there...others don't. Some experience this "spiritually" -- whatever that means -- and others don't.

As though along with all the rest of us, Einstein and Spinoza weren't themselves "infinitesimally insignificant specks of existence". Yet over and again your scoffing contempt for those able to take that Kierkegaardian leap of faith to God. As though what you think about all of it really is the closest to the "whole truth" we can get going back to the existence of existence itself.

And to the extent that particular Pagans derive their "spirituality" from nature itself and not from a "transcendental" entity "up there" somewhere demanding that you obey His Commandments or burn in Hell, I certainly see clear distinctions.

And, given what I've noted from you so far, someone is delusional about God and religion if they don't think about them exactly as you do. The Satyr Syndrome let's call it. Whereas my main approach is to accept that others might think about these things differently than I do because the lives that we have lived and the experiences that we have had can be profoundly different in turn.

So, okay, I tell them, what's left given that other than the extent to which we are actually able to demonstrate what we believe about either God or religion to others?

With Maia there is her "spiritual Self". Something that she seems in all honesty and sincerity to believe in. But only to the extent she can communicate it to others or to demonstrate it to others in terms of her own value judgments, will the gaps in communication narrow. I still root that in dasein and in the "psychology of objectivism". But in not being her what can I myself effectively convey to her? All I can do, in respecting her intelligence, is to sustain my attempt to get in closer. Or to just give up and move on to others. And, of late, Maia has not been around. So perhaps she is back to seeing philosophy as she once put it in an email as a "soul-crunching" or "soul crushing" exercise.
Sculptor wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:10 am I have no idea what you mean by the phrase " I acknowledge that there is no way that I can demonstrate this to in fact be true given both "the gap" and "Rummy's Rules"."
Okay, there's what I believe now about my own existence out in the world around me. But then there's the gap between what I believe now and all that there actually is to be known about the existence of existence such that the "human condition" itself becomes wholly explicable "inside" it.

As for Rummy's Rules...

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

...you tell me how our speculations here regarding Pagan morality are not embedded in them.
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Re: Pagan morality

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"Again, the staggering gap between what any of us think we know about the universe -- the multiverse? -- and all that there possibly is to be known about it."

yeah but biggs u gotta be parsimonious. there are stupid theories and then there are really stupid theories. anthropomorphic messianic religions are really stupid while Buddhism is only stupid, for example.

our problem is we can't stage a theory of immortality of any sort - from an eternal return of material universes to a platonic kingdom in heaven and everything in between - without sending our language on vacation and skating on frictioneless metaphysical ice (paraphrasing W).

but still u can parse metaphysical philosophies and rate them on a scale of stupid to stupidest. Remember when Socrates got those dudes to believe that becuz there would only be arguing among many gods, one boss god must exist? That right there. A monotheistic model is more logical than a polytheistic model, but only a little less stupid.

as another example, the theory of extraterrestrials designing human dna or seeding the planet with life is by many accounts much more believable than the Christian theory of origins. so while they're both stupid, one is outrageously stupid.

the question a master heckler like u has to aks himself is when faced with two such theories, which do u heckle more?
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Re: Pagan morality

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ETHICS AND COMMUNITY
Principles of Moral Thought and Action
From the RELIGION LIBRARY site: Paganism
Many variations of the Rede have emerged since its first appearance in the 1960s, some versions subtly re-defining its moral parameters.
Here again this begs the question: if there are many variations are all of them equally reasonable? acceptable? warranted? Is each member of the Wiccan/Pagan community permitted to embody his or her own "moral parameters" regarding interactions in the community that result in conflict pertaining to value judgments?

That's the part that most intrigues me. The extent to which in a Pagan community, might makes right, right makes might or moderation, negotiation and compromise prevails when there are differences of opinions about behaviors either prescribed or proscribed.
One common variant appends "Lest in thy self-defense it be," modifying the prohibition against harm in the interest of self-protection. The Wiccan community does not have a consensus view on how to interpret the Rede; some see it as a spiritual maxim pertaining only to magic, while others regard it as governing all conduct. For some, the prohibition on harm extends to an unwillingness to engage in military service, while others see no such limitation inherent in the Rede.
You know what's coming: self-defense, the prohibition of harm, the unwillingness to engage in this or that behavior given what particular context? If "all conduct" what of conflicting goods such as abortion? No harm to the fetus or no harm to the pregnant woman desperate not to be?

And if there is no consensus here in a particular community then who or what decides the fate of the fetus or the pregnant woman?

It's the part that revolves around a "spiritual" relationship with nature that makes this all so obscure for me. If this is always an individual thing then how can social interactions be sustained at all without one or another irresistible force meeting one or another immovable object: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresisti ... ce_paradox

In other words, when it ceases to be a "philosophical paradox" and becomes an actually "human all too human" reality?
Despite its popularity among Wiccans and some other modern Pagans, the Wiccan Rede is hardly universally observed in the Pagan community. Most non-Wiccans regard it as strictly a Wiccan text, and seek other principles for moral guidance. Many adherents of ethnic Pagan revivalist traditions look to the heritage of their chosen culture for guidance. For example, Celtic and Norse pagans advocate a life grounded in virtue as understood in the great myths and legends of northern Europe.
So, basically, Pagans are just like all the rest of us. They live a particular life in a particular historical and cultural and experiential context and from that come to acquire traditions that predispose them to one set of virtues rather than another. They just connect the dots [spiritually] to nature rather than to a god/the God or to ideology or to deontology or to biological imperatives.
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iambiguous
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Re: Pagan morality

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Principles of Moral Thought and Action
From the RELIGION LIBRARY site: Paganism
Here is a list of "Nine Noble Virtues" as used by some Norse Pagans:

Courage - the ability to face both the joys and the challenges of life fearlessly;
Truth - honesty and integrity in one's words as well as one's actions;
Honor - strength of character as reflected in one's behavior and trustworthiness;
Fidelity - loyalty and faithfulness to family, tribal, and spiritual commitments;
Discipline - consistency in effort toward reaching one's goals;
Hospitality - kindness to strangers, travelers, and those who are in need;
Industriousness - willingness to work hard toward excellence in productivity;
Self-Reliance - pride in the ability to care for one's own needs;
Perseverance - refusal to admit defeat or to let obstacles thwart one's efforts.

On the other hand, without reference to a particular context and to moral narratives pertaining to one or another set of behaviors aimed at sustaining one or another community standard regarding one or another situation in which conflicting goods might exist, this is basically the equivalent of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt be truthful, courageous, honorable, etc., to that which the community itself has embraced as the most reasonable and virtuous interactions within the community itself.

Each and every community down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally then able to sustain their own "standards" content in the belief that their own reflects either the One True Path or [at least] the "best of all possible worlds".

On the other hand...
As is the case of the Wiccan Rede, the culturally specific values of various Pagan traditions are not universally accepted - not even within a specific cultural tradition.
Though, again, how is that not just like all the rest of us with our own historical, cultural and personal experiences shaping and molding our own existential value judgments. Only with Pagans there is this "spiritual" element. Not linked to a particular God, perhaps, but still something that can be embraced as the equivalent of an "intrinsic self" that basically allows you to rationalize anything that you happen to believe "here and now". Each Pagan with his or her own "spiritual Self" predicated entirely on his or her own personal experiences with nature itself.
Many Pagans consider environmental stewardship and care for the earth to be a central tenet of their religious ethics. Such an emphasis arises less out of traditional maxims or virtues and more out of the widespread contemporary recognition that humanity needs to redefine our relationship with the earth. Consequently, some Pagans feel inspired to engage in personal environmental activities (recycling, organic gardening, using green energy and reusable items like cloth grocery bags), participate in environmental advocacy groups (from national organizations like the Sierra Club to regional and local associations devoted to conservation work), and engage in political action on behalf of environmental causes. Others within the larger Pagan community may choose not to engage in such activity, either because they do not consider it spiritually necessary or because they do not see a necessary connection between Pagan spirituality and environmental activism. For example, they may prefer to engage in spiritual or magical efforts on behalf of nature, rather than emphasizing social or political action.
Spiritual and magical efforts. That must have the fossil fuel industry quaking in their boots.

But, again, the most crucial factor being that in whatever way you choose to confront the climate change debate as a Pagan, you are able to intertwine and then embed your own personal agenda into this spiritual Self that enables you to at least be comforted that your efforts are in sync with something that transcends your own infinitesimally insignificant existence. You are part of an overarching "soulful" Reality that for some puts them "at one" with the universe -- the Goddess! -- itself.

Thus, from my frame of mind, it always revolves basically around what you are able to "think up" that least disturbs you about the, at times, grim realities of world that we live in.
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