Evidence for Paganism

[remember_summer_days]

I made a profile post a while back that got like a bunch of responses so I'm just gonna do a proper thread.

So, as it goes, basically the OP. What's the evidence for Paganism?

I'm on a lazy mood right now, but personally I'm asking for evidence that conforms to the analytical tradition of philosophy of religion, ie, arguments from natural theology or arguments that fellow deductive/inductive/abductive lines of reasoning. I mean, you can post whatever you want in here but that's what I'm interested in. I've never heard any academic who specializes in the field (philosophy of religion) defend pagan cosmologies besides maybe panpsychism, so it would be interesting to hear of any philosophers who do.

 

[A L I X]

Well, I dont know a lot about paganism, but I can tell you one thing. Soon there will be no proof of it.

 

[PraxHeadroom]

no_chill textwall incoming...

 

[no_chill]

no_chill textwall incoming...

Actually no, I already said everything I wanted to say in RSDs profile post.
Also did I made threads related to this Maxims of Pagan Wisdom for example or my various profile posts. Why should I spend my time elaborating this any further when I instead could do meditation, remote viewing or think about Ishtar/ Venus? If someone has a specific question then I could answer.

Otherwise, "proofing something" that needs no proof or already is one. Think about how scientists couldn't prove what light is because it changes when being observed or travels back in time to change its state to whatever they think it is. Double slit experiment, the thought behind it is the same as here.




View: https://youtube.com/shorts/UTtnfj3ATAQ?si=TdxqRSih-2z-dGgK

 

[PraxHeadroom]

Fair enough, it's just that you're the most outspoken pagan here and I figured you would weigh in. I agree with you that trying to "prove" religious ideas is mostly pointless though. I'm not a Christian because I watched some priest debate Richard Dawkins, I'm a Christian because of trancendant personal experience. I have no way of making anyone else expierience that, so I don't expect them to change their minds.

 

[Ross_Я]

Well, I dont know a lot about paganism, but I can tell you one thing. Soon there will be no proof of it.

Fuck you, Kratos. I fucking loved killing you in MK9 and I'll do it again. Fuck you.

On topic: I didn't dig into Bible much, but, as far as I've read, it never actually quite denied the existence of other Gods. Also, reading the Old Testament, you gotta remember that it was written in BC years, when most of religions were polytheistic, including Yahwism. It is quite easy to find mentions of the other deities in the Old Testament. And the fact that it refers to Yahweh as "the only God" or anything like that does not automatically prove anything, since a lot of religions use those epithets in a kind of different meaning for Gods. Check this out:

"The Sole Image, who made [all] that exists. Single One, who made that which exists."
"Single One, without his equal."

These two snippets are from The Hymn To Amun-Re, 1400BC. I underline that they are not about Aten and atenism - the lines above are from The Hymn To Amun-Re, from a polytheistic religion. The meaning of calling Amun-Re the "Single One" and "Sole" is not to underline his mono-ism, but rather to underline his place in the pantheon of Gods. He is indeed a special one among Gods, for no other God could take his place (in this case, he is praised as the creator) - and similar passages can be encountered in a number of hymns about other Gods as well. Even mortals sometimes had praises like that one, being "unique" and "without equal".

It is quite fair to say that Yahweh - at some point of his "evolution", at least - was simply "unique among others", not literally "the only one". Not to mention that some passages of the Old Testament are straight away copies of other ancient texts from different cultures.

Here's a good text on the topic I've pretty much quoted in this post: www.academia.edu/37607148/Ancient_Egyptian_Monotheism_A_Comparative_Analysis - it is a short one, so I do recommend to dig in.

 

[microbyte]

One thing I'd like to point out about paganism and Christianity, is that you should place them in their contextual places in history. Paganism was ancient. Monotheism is new. Monotheism was persecuted for a long time. Now it's flipped (less so NOW, but within a few centuries). And I believe a good way this is done is by the bicameral mind theory, which actually influenced Snow Crash. It posits (among other things) that the split between mono and poly theism happened due to the evolution of consciousness. Wikipedia article about the book. Theres also a paper that Julian Jaynes wrote, but I was having trouble finding it.

 

[Ross_Я]

One thing I'd like to point out about paganism and Christianity, is that you should place them in their contextual places in history. Paganism was ancient. Monotheism is new. Monotheism was persecuted for a long time. Now it's flipped (less so NOW, but within a few centuries). And I believe a good way this is done is by the bicameral mind theory, which actually influenced Snow Crash. It posits (among other things) that the split between mono and poly theism happened due to the evolution of consciousness. Wikipedia article about the book. Theres also a paper that Julian Jaynes wrote, but I was having trouble finding it.

Bicameral theory. It is interesting, but that Julian Jaynes dude is a bit deranged. I mean, I hope you are not saying you are agreeing with the notion that people got self-conscious in Greece.
And it's not like polytheism wasn't persecuted at least on ocassion. When Akhenaten promoted his Aten, he started to persecute all other temples in Egypt quite violently. You may even wonder why the heck all other temples didn't rebel against their pharaoh, but egyptians were in general kind of chill in religious matters. That ended with a lot of early christians escaping from Rome into Egypt, and later with christians pretty much killing whatever was left of ancient egyptian religion.
But anyway, yes, as I've said, when Akhenaten established atenism, worship of other Gods was persecuted. That was 14th century BC, so define "new" in "montheism is new". And keep in mind that is simply pretty much impossible for us to find realiable evidence of various accounts from even earlier centuries - otherwise we might've found other occurences of monotheism.

What I'm saying is that I do not entirely throw out bicameral theory out of the window, but I definitely do not think it is anyhow strongly connected with polytheism/monotheism, and if it happened - it definitely happened way before 4000 BC. If the theory of evolution is anything to go by, it shows us that such radical biological changes just do not happen in a span of a century.

 

[Kyou]

One thing I'd like to point out about paganism and Christianity, is that you should place them in their contextual places in history. Paganism was ancient. Monotheism is new. Monotheism was persecuted for a long time. Now it's flipped (less so NOW, but within a few centuries). And I believe a good way this is done is by the bicameral mind theory, which actually influenced Snow Crash. It posits (among other things) that the split between mono and poly theism happened due to the evolution of consciousness. Wikipedia article about the book. Theres also a paper that Julian Jaynes wrote, but I was having trouble finding it.

I picked up this book last month and there's so much I want to say about it, but I'm not sure. It's too scholarly in its approach to be entirely pseud-material. At the same time, it's important to note that on almost every second page, there was at least one sentence along the lines of "this is of course just a guess, and I'm skimming over a lot of nuances here" or "more research needs to be done before I can really say anything." The worst part, it seems, is that for the latter there has been very little development in terms of said research. And what is out there is hard to find, as you've experienced for yourself.

It's strange, since the book itself is split into three parts, although Jaynes mentions a parts 4 and 5 which he decided to split off into a separate book (and just never finished, I guess) so his theory itself is incomplete, and he admits this very often. Despite this, it seems quite a few historians/psychologists have accepted its soundness, yet for some reason they're reluctant to really delve into fleshing out the bicameral model in its entirety.

It has given me what I guess could be called a crisis of faith, one of those things that I think I just need to let sit in the back of my mind for another decade before I re-examine it and come to conclusions.

What I'm saying is that I do not entirely throw out bicameral theory out of the window, but I definitely do not think it is anyhow strongly connected with polytheism/monotheism, and if it happened - it definitely happened way before 4000 BC. If the theory of evolution is anything to go by, it shows us that such radical biological changes just do not happen in a span of a century.

I've found this to be one of the most contentious points in the book. Radical biological changes don't occur within the span of a century? Sure, but the book itself implies that the change was a lot more gradual over the span from the second to first millennium BC, despite a few passages making it seem like he's saying it takes place radically over a few generations. And we're talking about the brain here. Can extreme neurological changes happen over the span of 100 years? Of course, can't they can change dramatically over the span of just a few? Neuroplasticity, I mean. But of course, even that has both a lot of debate surrounding how valid that actually is. The same is true of the very left-brain/right-brain dualism which he uses to introduce the theory in the first place.

Now, this is getting into topics that a way beyond my pay grade for shitposting on forum dot agora road dot com, but still. Much like most of the philosophical implications of psychology and neurology, it's all just a big "IDK".

 

[Ross_Я]

I will be frank: I did not read the book, and pretty much all the info about theory I know comes from a Wikipedia article and from few online conversations. Take from it whatever you want, I do not find myself interested in this book too much. I'm pretty much quite set on my idea that if this theory is true, it all happened in a very distant past and is of no further interest to me.

I've found this to be one of the most contentious points in the book. Radical biological changes don't occur within the span of a century? Sure, but the book itself implies that the change was a lot more gradual over the span from the second to first millennium BC, despite a few passages making it seem like he's saying it takes place radically over a few generations. And we're talking about the brain here. Can extreme neurological changes happen over the span of 100 years? Of course, can't they can change dramatically over the span of just a few? Neuroplasticity, I mean.

This is kind of a valid point. Like, putting a bullet into the head is quite a radical biological change, and it happens in a second.
However, I'm talking about an evolutionary kind of change here. Those changes in the brain we are talking about - you need them not only change neuroplastically, but imprint these changes onto DNA. And then spread those changes in the DNA globe-wide. Onto the whole human races, without losing all our... well, races - you know, asian, caucasian, african, all that kind of differences.
To stuff it all within a century - or even within a millenium - means to imply that either every single one of human races developed the very same changes in the brain at pretty much the same time - which is very doubtful - or some kind of selective breeding across the entire human race. Which is fun, but doubtful.

Also he called modern Japan (as in, 70s, Showa-era) a

Hey! Finish that! That's the most interesting part!

 

[Kyou]

This is kind of a valid point. Like, putting a bullet into the head is quite a radical biological change, and it happens in a second.
However, I'm talking about an evolutionary kind of change here. Those changes in the brain we are talking about - you need them not only change neuroplastically, but imprint these changes onto DNA. And then spread those changes in the DNA globe-wide. Onto the whole human races, without losing all our... well, races - you know, asian, caucasian, african, all that kind of differences.
To stuff it all within a century - or even within a millenium - means to imply that either every single one of human races developed the very same changes in the brain at pretty much the same time - which is very doubtful - or some kind of selective breeding across the entire human race. Which is fun, but doubtful.

He's implying that they didn't, actually. He delves into southern american civilizations and uses them as an example of a bicameral culture, well into the first millennium AD. The implication here is that they were able to change mentally from the time of the conquistadors to the modern day. Possible? Probably not, idk. I could hypothesize that perhaps the biological shift from bicameral to consciousness is a lot more like a "switch" that the brain has the innate potential for. In fact, he at one point refers to people being "trained" into a bicameral mode of thinking, whatever that means.

But you're right about Asia, though. He pretty much ignores the entire history of the continent, which I imagine would be germane to consider for a revised, more up-to-date version of the theory; the other big doubt I have is about native americans, since he doesn't mention them even a single time. I fail to see how the extreme difference between the northern and southern aboriginals can somehow fit into the model.

 

[Kyou]

ALSO FUN FACT ABOUT THE BOOK in one of the few parts about east Asian cultures he implies modern Japan (as in, "the Japan of today," he says, in the 70s, I'm talking post-war Showa era economic bubble Japan here) is """perhaps""" a bicameral state. This is the most questionable line in the whole book what the FUCK did he mean by this

 

[mydadiscar]

because i feel like its right fuck u

 

[mydadiscar]

 

[remember_summer_days]

because i feel like its right fuck u

Well I feel like its wrong thats what Im asking

 

[remember_summer_days]

View attachment 85439

Gonna pray to Celestia and Luna

 

[mydadiscar]

Gonna pray to Celestia and Luna

fucking bronies. ah well, waifuism will always reign supreme

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2bxDWqGz9I

 

[remember_summer_days]

fucking bronies. ah well, waifuism will always reign supreme
View attachment 85453
View attachment 85454

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2bxDWqGz9I

I once read a paper by a philosopher arguing that one of the reasons God may be 'hidden' is because it requires a higher and greater form of love and commitment to love someone you dont see or know if its even real...

 

[Ashman]

if you look at Pagan mythology from a purely materialistic view the pantheon present there were probably a series of great men/women who sang praises of up
to the point of deityfication. Stuff like the theory that Wotan was a warlord who migrated from the Volga? to Scandinavia. Maybe they did hold supernational powers
to the point of godhood. If I am correct in pagan mythology the gods themselves were moral. The Germanic gods will die in Ragonark, the Greek gods will get overthrowned
just like they overthrew the Titans. The idea of gods being immortal is only expressed in Abrahamic religion as far as I know. I do believe in the existance of spritual forces (the Cathedral in NRx thought is what I can describe as a spritual force). The birth of the universe and the existance of the law of conservation of mass strongly imply the existance of a supernational being that surpasses our universe as nothing can be created from nothing.

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Wotanic victory.....

 

[Chuffed]

Observation from an outsider: people that spend time collecting dead animal parts and rocks tend to have more loose ends and unhappiness in their lives. I'm not necessarily making a dig here, I guess I'm posing a chicken/egg question: is it unfulfilled people looking for answers that are drawn to this or is the OP's question on the money (evidence for paganism existing, therefore of course people are here for this truth?).