Barbelith Underground > Temple > Christianity

Your time would be better spent explaining your form of spiritual practice since I clearly don't understand it.

I attempted to do that in my first post to this thread. I wrote a lengthy post that was pitched as an introduction to my own spiritual practices and how they do not line up with the odd ideas you are trying to overlay onto a homogenous idea of "paganism". I had my whole post - and indeed my whole religion - cheerily dismissed by you like this:

"Your working model of deity is interesting as far as it goes but it is, at the end of the day, man-made. The claim of the Christian is that their way is God-made"

Hence over-bearing, supercilious and dismissive of other people's experience. Hence, here we all are. Perhaps attempting to take ownership of how your own attitudes and opinions have brought about the heated nature of this debate, might be a positive prelude to expecting others to do the same.

But I'm not Mother Theresa. I'm sorry I'm not a saint.

Not expecting you to be Mother Teresa. Just expecting you to be able to talk about your own faith and what it means to you in a constructive manner, as opposed to doing it on the basis of belittling the religious faiths of others. Religious faiths that you don't really seem to have taken the time to understand or think about very much, before steaming in with "God's honest truth" about them.

I made this statement to Gypsy Lantern in an earlier post and, having spent some time thinking on it and considering the objections raised, I regret having made this assumption.

That's better. Now we might conceivably be getting somewhere in this thread.

Since you feel ignored, I have spent some time going over some of your earlier points, but I fear you still won't like my responses:

Thanks. It's not important whether I "like" your responses, I just want you to contribute to this thread in a mode where you stop dismissing the beliefs and experience of others in broad strokes without listening to or engaging with their arguments to any extent. I wasn't being "catty" when I said you would get a reasoned debate when you begin making reasonable points. So far, you haven't been participating in this thread in a reasonable manner - just imposing your notion of "truth" without showing much interest or regard for any alternative perspectives that you might encounter. It's incredibly difficult to have a constructive conversation with someone who keeps on doing that.

What evidence is there for other deities existing outside of the imagination? That seems to be the nub here. Sure, Christ's historicity may be doubted, but no other deity seems to be even making the claim!

Shango incarnated as the fourth King of the Yoruba. Many of the Lwa and Orisha were at one point living personages who became "Sainted" after death and attained Lwa status. I would be surprised if there is a religion on the planet that did not include various God-men or God-women who were alleged to have had a physical and historical existence at one point or another. Indeed, during the historical Christ's lifetime, he was just one of many holy men to whom Divine status became attached, along with Simon Magus and a number of others.

I would say the nub of this debate is not so much a lack of evidence for other deities existing outside of the imagination, but a lack of comprehension on your part of how other spiritualities actually function in practice, and an infuriating tendency to make a knee-jerk caricature of these other spiritualities as "imaginary" based on your own rather incomplete understanding of what they are and how they work. If you could entertain that notion for a moment, we might be able to have a more reasoned conversation. I would like that.

It was based on my understanding that a polytheistic system is a system of classification created by the worshipper/practitioner of magic rather than something claimed to be handed down from a deity. I welcome correction, especially in the case of the Orisha tradition which I know little about. My question now, then, is what are the elements of such a working model of deity which are God-made?

In the Lwa and Orisha traditions, the basic mechanism is a constant two-way dialogue between worshiper and divinity. It is not that the religion was just handed down from a deity at a certain point in history, but that they continue to play an active role in it, often physically manifesting at religious services through the possession of celebrants and conversing with the congregation - offering advice, healing, prophecy and so on. But less dramatically, personal devotional services for the Lwa and Orisha involve a mechanism of silent (and not so silent) "communion" with deity, whereby you make offerings of food and drink and have a two-way conversation with the living personification of whichever "mystery of existence" you are approaching.

Now you could say this is all "imaginary", as you only have my word that it isn't. I don't really mind that, as you haven't shared the experiences that have led me to the conclusion that there is something more going on here than an over-active imagination. What causes problems, however, is when you label my experiences as "imaginary", whilst simultaneously claiming that your own religious life is simply "the truth" and not vulnerable to the same sort of criticism. Can you really not see the arrogance in this? And how it totally closes down the conversation before it can get started? That's all I'm trying to get you to see here. The only reasoning that you have so far offered for this hyperbolic assertion is the alleged historicity of Christ. The authority of this claim to historicity has been challenged repeatedly up thread, but you seem unwilling to even engage with any of those points, whilst maintaining this as the foundation of your argument. I would like you to address this.

Not until you introduce into the equation an awkward deity like the great 'I AM' of the Old Testament who claims to be that Oneness of deity, and refuses to be placed within a polytheistic framework

This is another point that has also already been addressed upthread, quite eloquently and plausibly by Id-entity, and then reiterated below by Tuna Ghost. You really need to engage with that counter-argument at some point, rather than just repeatedly banging on about the jealous God thing as if it hasn't already been responded to quite satisfactorily.

The African Diaspora religions actually are a monotheism, and the One God is known variously as Oludumare, Bon Dui Bon, Gran Maitre, etc - and considered synonymous with YHVH, Allah, Jah, and all other understandings of the One God. I do not place any other Gods before the One God. But I recognise within God's creation a host of other intelligences that are both transcendent and immanent in the world. The Lwa and Orisha are considered a part of God's creation, and by communion with these presences I come to understand more of nature: human nature, nature at large, and the nature of the Divine. I have a language for relating to the sea, the rivers, the forest, fire, hunting, romance, and a range of other "mysteries of existence", and through dialogue with these mysteries I come to understand more of what it means to be a human being living on the planet Earth. My understanding is that this is the point and purpose for being here - to live an embodied life in dialogue with nature, and by so doing, I become closer to God who made all of it and who - in my interpretation - *is* all of it.

I don't consider the One God as being "on a level" with the other deities that I relate to. That was your error and your misunderstanding that you are overlaying onto me despite my efforts to communicate the complexity of the interactions between Christianity and Orisha worship, as it functions in traditions such as Vodou, Santeria, Candomble, et al.

I can see how the saints or angels are similar to deities on the level of devotional practice, but not in how they are conceived of by the devotee. They are not understood by Christians as 'emanations' of God, but as creations. You may think that is splitting hairs, but it is an important clarification for a faith that takes pains to distinguish the creator from his creation.

It's also an article of faith that you have personally chosen to adhere to. As I said earlier, I cannot personally conceive of a One God that is not the totality of existence. I don't think it is a particularly sophisticated or constructive approach to conceive of various "competing" deities on a level with one another, and one of these beings claiming to be the actual true creator guy amongst all of these imposters. I see this as an inherent problem that only leads to conflict. It doesn't make any sense to me that the God of one little area on the planet would be the real deal, and the conception of the Divine on every other continent would be delusional and worthless. I think this is a problematic interpretation of several points of scripture that may well have been mistranslated in the first place.

That is a characture of my position, and a bad one at that. You've spat the dummy cos what I asserted was that Jesus Christ is real and can't be placed in a pantheon at your whim, or mine for that matter

It wasn't a caricature of your position, it was simply the logical extension of the argument you seemed to be making. You are claiming that Christ is real in a way that other deities are not, and not really making any effort to substantiate that claim aside from vague mutterings about the alleged historicity of Jesus - which you don't bother to elaborate on whilst conspicuously shying away from all of the arguments that unpack that historicity and which actually make up the bulk of this thread.

I'm not "spitting my dummy" or "throwing a wobbly", thanks very much. Please stop characterising anything that you don't like to hear and which you don't appear able to adequately respond to as "emotional". It is a particularly juvenile debating tactic, and doesn't get us very far. You have made certain points in a strong manner. Your argument has been unpacked quite thoroughly by virtually everyone else participating in this thread. You have yet to respond to any of this criticism, but seem to want to continue clinging to your original position as if nothing else had been offered other than a few heated remarks. My tone in this thread may have been overly combative, but it is born of frustration at your inability or unwillingness to debate your position here to the expected standard of tolerance and etiquette for the beliefs of others.

It sounds to me like you are the one making claims to be privy to truth that has passed the rest of us (or at least me) by.

No - I'm simply responding to someone who seems to arrogantly believe that their own spiritual "truth", be it grounded in intellectual/rational or mystical experience, can somehow trump and invalidate the spiritual "truths" of others. I find this a particularly objectionable position, and I attempting to communicate the problems I have with your perspective.

Am I the biggest fish you have to fry right now?

This thread is a whitebait on the edge of my hearty fish supper.

grim reader

20:06 / 07.04.08

I just want you to contribute to this thread in a mode where you stop dismissing the beliefs and experience of others in broad strokes without listening to or engaging with their arguments to any extent.
GL, I accept what your saying here.

Having said that, my original point about the difficulties of placing Christ in a pantheon still stands. I don't think I was 'imposing' my view, however. Anyone with membership to the board is free to respond. Its not like I'm running a re-education camp or burning people at the stake.

When I called pagan gods imaginary and presumed to call your faith system man-made, the response I got was not to correct me but to lash out and lay the blame for the long history of religious strife and intolerance on my shoulders, as well as to call me a 'shit magician', which you might even be right about, i'm shit at a lot of things. I'm particularly shit at admitting when I'm wrong, but i hope you will accept with grace the fact that i admit being wrong to have said your system is 'man made'.

Obviously another thing I am shit at is fully articulating my arguments, for example when i have said 'no other deity is even making those claims'. Of course I'm aware of all sorts of people claiming some sort of divine nature. I guess what I am looking for in a divine claim is someone making the claims *worth making*. A claim to divinity which is happy to be relativised pales in significance next to a claim such as Christ's "I am the way, the truth, the life".

Having accepted that I was wrong about your faith's claim to revelation (having lumped it in with paganisms that *don't* make those claims), I can see that the original post is problematic when dealing with forms of paganism that assert reality of their gods outside of the imagination. There is obviously still room for difference there, but I thank you for a post which has challenged the points made.

What causes problems, however, is when you label my experiences as "imaginary", whilst simultaneously claiming that your own religious life is simply "the truth" and not vulnerable to the same sort of criticism.

To be fair, I asked what it was that indicated it was somthing more than imagination. You asserted you had 'met' JC and Shango; I would question St Paul's vision on the road to Damascus in the same way. I'm not placing a visionary experience in competition with yours. Like you said, i'm a shit magician and my visions couldn't possibly match up with yours.

It is not arrogant to assert one's beliefs are the truth. A belief *is* an assertion of truth. You yourself make certain claims to truth that, if true, invalidate certain claims of the Church. I didn't pussyfoot around this difference, but honed in on where we are in fundamental disagreement. I'm sorry to have infuriated you, but it is more honest than pretending that our two views are compatible. I don't doubt that, whilst disagreeing, we can still learn something from one another.

I wonder how you can you say my religious life is not vulnerable to criticism? You are just as capable of typing on this board as I am. I've certainly felt criticised, and I have no problem with that.

The only reasoning that you have so far offered for this hyperbolic assertion is the alleged historicity of Christ. The authority of this claim to historicity has been challenged repeatedly up thread, but you seem unwilling to even engage with any of those points, whilst maintaining this as the foundation of your argument. I would like you to address this.

I don't mind addressing this, but if your own interpretation of Christ is not based on historical knowledge of Him then what is it based on? You've said yourself that the bible is open to all sorts of interpretation and have placed doubt in ever being able to trust what it says. That renders it all but useless when it comes to finding out from it anything about the man Jesus. If your faith does not trust the gospels as a record of Christ's life, where is it getting its picture of Christ from?

Regarding historicity of Christ; The authority of the Church's interpretation of the NT relies upon a claim to unbroken apostolic succession, as well as the fact that the canon was authored and defined by the Church. Its is generally accepted that Mark's gospel was the first, written around 70AD or so. As I understand it, what was up until then communicated verbally was written down to preserve the story because the apostles, and other disciples who knew Jesus personally, were dying or being martyred. Christianity was popular among the poor, few of whom were literate, and so the need to write it all down didn't become pressing until the eye witnesses to the gospel were almost extinct. I've heard the theory that the earliest copies of Mark do not contain reference to the resurrected Christ, and ends at the empty tomb, and believe that it is widely accepted among Catholic scholars (I seem to recall Pope B16 mentioning this in his book 'Jesus of Nazareth'). However, to say it means the resurrection was tagged on afterwards would be odd given that other Biblical texts contemporaneous with Mark (such as Paul's letters) openly preach the resurrection.

This is another point that has also already been addressed upthread, quite eloquently and plausibly by Id-entity, and then reiterated below by Tuna Ghost. You really need to engage with that counter-argument at some point, rather than just repeatedly banging on about the jealous God thing as if it hasn't already been responded to quite satisfactorily.
Excuse me for not burning myself out trying to respond to every single line written on this thread in a timeframe that satisfies you. In fact, the post by Id.entity.thing gave me pause for thought, enough that I was discussing it on Saturday with my wife over lunch.

Id.entity said...
I've pointed out (I think) where I and some other Jews have doctrinal differences with the "Jealous G-d" interpretation of the commandment "to put no other gods before my face." It's not a mainstream position in Judaism. It is one held by several Rabbis of my immediate acquaintance who are excellent Torah scholars, and disputed by many other Rabbis who are equally good Torah scholars.
...
I have disagreements about the idea that Jewish culture is monotheistic AND expressly non-polytheistic—while Judaism is undoubtedly monotheistic in that it views the Source as One, ...

The OT is clearly a history of the Hebrew people's covenant with that jealous deity and repeated apostasy by large groups. I'm not denying the 'jewishness' of people who marry worship of the jealous God with polytheistic practice, but I would find it doubtful that the prophets of the OT would accept such practices.

...close study of the stories of Genesis reveals that Judaism's earliest forms regarded that One as manifesting in plurality. Early Israelite emphasis on the monotheistic interpretation of the Divine was, in my view, politically motivated—the priests in that time saw a necessity to protect Israel's identity by ordering all the people to worship only one God in one way. In a modern context, the survival of the Jewish people is not threatened by interpretation of the Divine as both unity and plurality. On the contrary, one of the things I find most beautiful and meaningful about the Judaism I have been brought into contact with is that it can hold both—and according to the particular rabbinic authorities whose words I have taken to heart in this matter, it has been doing so since the dawn of human history.

I don't see any problem with 'the One' manifesting as plurality (obviously, cos I'm a trinitarian). I am guessing you are talking here about the creation story, and maybe the story of Abraham at the Oak of Mamre. But given the zeal against polytheism displayed in the OT, clearly you cannot take any old god and say it is an aspect of the One jealous God. For example, Baal or Moloch or Belial, or the gods of the ancient egyptians, are gods that the jealous God is clearly against. I know it is argued that the trinity is sneaking polytheism into christian monotheism, but (accepting the One can 'manifest as plurality'), the trinity purports to be the jealous God's self-revelation. The pantheons of, for example, the hellenes or the norsemen, cannot make this claim.

Tuna's point was...
Then don't place Yahweh right next to them [other gods]. A Oneness of deity, even as you've described it, does not invalidate the existence of any of the other deities you've mentioned. I really don't think anyone is attempting to equate a Oneness with one or many of its parts. I think you may be missing this key piece of information.

Again, that would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the jealous God is (often violently) opposed to other figures being considered divine according to the OT. This version of the One is perfectly acceptable until you try to pass it off as being the same as the jealous God in the OT.

It is such apparently ahistorical treatments of Christ and the God of the OT which, rightly or wrongly, led me to make the remark about GL's faith system being 'man-made'.

Gypsy, thanks for the fuller explaination of your faith. Does this statement indicate you are a pantheist as well as a monotheist?: "I become closer to God who made all of it and who - in my interpretation - *is* all of it. "

You also say...
[The Christian understanding of saints and the Creator/Creation divide is] also an article of faith that you have personally chosen to adhere to. As I said earlier, I cannot personally conceive of a One God that is not the totality of existence.

This is fine, as long as we're agreed that just because a polytheist's worship of gods looks like Christian prayer to saints, and is even analagous to it, they are not the same thing.

On the point of relativism and objective truth, i want to pick up on the following...
... I do not choose to participate in orthodox Catholicism (or orthodox Santeria for that matter), as I cannot align myself with a religion which has to invalidate the spirituality of other cultures or groups in order to assert its own existence...
The flip side of that, however, is that position invalidates orthodox Catholicism. This whole thing reminds me of people who argue for free speech, until a Nazi wants a platform, in which case they say "We should deny free speech to those who would deny free speech to others." This leaves them in the absurd position of having to deny themselves free speech.

I think its often not much more than an insecurity in ones own faith and beliefs that causes people to attack the religious beliefs of others as being "wrong" or "incorrect".
Yet you have to face the fact that you consider my position incorrect. However, I don't think that necessarily means you're insecure, it just means you believe something different to me. I have far more respect for an argument that is open about why I am wrong, rather than casting vague accusations of intolerance and arrogance. The truth is arrogant by necessity, because it must by definition render other things false.

There is stuff on this thread that I have not responded to, and some stuff which I haven't even gotten round to reading yet. Gypsy, please don't think because I've not responded to something that I am ignoring it. I have ignored some comments, but most of what i haven't answered I am ruminating on. I'm glad to see the discussion is turning toward questions of objective/subjective truth and relativism, cos i think those questions really lay bare the problems folk here have with the Roman Catholic position.

Christianity - the end point of Paganism?