this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Atheism
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Most people in protestant mevements for example don't even believe in a god or Jesus. There is no underlying tenet. There is no blind faith. Do you want to tell me that new paganists all truely believe that there is a thundergod? No they don't. Religion is mostly not about believing in higher beings. Even ancient Greeks have likely not all really believed in their mythology.
Christians don’t believe in Jesus is a ridiculous claim on its face.
Modern paganism isn’t a true religion because it’s a bunch of older ideas rehashed as a protest against the dominant theologies of our time. It’s like pastafarianism but instead of being parody it’s cultural opposition.
Greeks had philosophers discussing these ideas but it’s a bit silly to extrapolate to the whole population.
All that aside, you still miss the point. The people that do believe in these religions believe them on blind faith and childhood indoctrination. Exceptions exist but they don’t invalidate the rule.
I have grown up in a Protestant comunity. Most of them do not believe in God and Jesus as real people/beings. And you can go on to say that that doesn't make much sense because they are Christian, but they believe in the philosophy of actual Christianity. Without all the Catholic bullshit. Like treating EVERYONE (including women) as absolute equals. That's the only thing that connects all Lutherans.
You are not the religion police. Paganism means reexploring lost culture and philosophy. Culture and philosophy that has been taken from us by Catholics and Romans mainly. You do not have to blindly believe in god's to be religious. Buddhists don't believe in any kind of god.
I didn't say that the entire greek population was atheist or something. Most greeks believes in some of the stories. The once that we're unexplainable otherwise. But when mythology was "inconvenient" to them they ignored it.
The percentage of people that unconditionally believe in magic men in the sky is way lower than you think. Toxic religion is a problem, but it is only practiced by a small portion of believing church members. To say that all that just see their religion as culture, philosophy or an easyer way to exept their inevitable death is wrong and goes against what you probably want to achieve.
Protestants do believe in Jesus as the son of God. That’s literally a central tenet of the Nicean Creed, the foundation of every sect of Christianity. If you don’t believe that then you definitionally aren’t Christian. The big difference is they don’t believe in trans-substantiation and don’t do the Eucharist. It sounds like you haven’t really looked into this much tbh.
I’m not policing anything, paganism is as much a religion as Scientology. It’s a mush mash of disparate practices from ancient religions scattered through ancient Europe and the Mediterranean.
I never implied you said this about Greeks by the way. Very dishonest portrayal. I said that you’re basing this position off the writings of philosophers and such, of which there were very few.
This last thing is you just asserting something as true. So if I say, no the vast majority of religious adherents believe the religions they follow I’ve provided the exact same amount of evidence. It also makes far more sense than the idea of “almost no one believes the religion they were raised with”.