zaangalewa
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- Jan 24, 2015
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I found this interesting about Christianity. Thought I'd share it. Not saying I agree with all of it, but it does have its points on origins of what religions "worship" or follow as doctrine.
Paganism In Christianity
Many aspects of traditional Christianity - holidays, practices and doctrines - came not from Christ or the Bible but from ancient pagan religion.www.ucg.org
I fear what's written in this article is the very very old pagan belief from the 19th, 20th and 21st century. For example: As far as I know knows no one really what the druids of the Celts believed in. The Celts wrote nothing down. And by the way - also a lot of old forms of pagan beliefs are a reaction on the Christian religion. Walhall is for example such a construct. Instead of the Christian heavens s.o. suggested to do a really heavenly thing: To drink together until everyone is totally drunken and to go in war afterwards - because this is a fine fun for idiots ... ah sorry: for warriors. Who wins a war, when he is totally drunken, must be in heaven, isn't it?
To separate all this nonsense from the true faith is a little difficult - not only in pagan religions but in all religions. Specially if is this religions base on verbal and not on written traditions.
Nonsense interpretations exist for example also in the Christian religion - what you can see very good in the phenomenon "burning witches". The standard prejudice in this context is: the Catholic church burned millions of witches (wise pagan women) after a kind of sado-maso torture made from inquisitors. But nearly nothing is true in this view to the world. In the middle ages, where pagans still existed, the belief in witches was seen as a wrong prejudice. Same today.
The real problem started much later in times after the reformation. As well Catholics and Protestants burned witches and everyone was either a Catholic or a Protestant in this time of history. It was like a kind of public festival to do so - in most cases produced from local authorities. Protestants burned 90% witches and 10% sorcerers - but Catholics were much murdern, ah sorry: "modern", practiced emancipation and burned 50% witches and 50% sorcerers. So the sex component has to do with Protestants and not with Catholics. And indeed: Where the inquisition was strong, nearly never a witch or sorcerer was burned. And it were also not 2 million burned witches, how the "tolerant" Prussians (not tolelrant in case of Catholics) cooked up during their anti-Catholic culture fight. It were indeed "only" 50,000 - a lot - too many - but nearly nothing compared with the stories the people believe in.
But what's perhaps the most important thing in context of religion is the concrete force of religion. Today live lots of people in fear of suicide bombers for example. People without strong faith on their own are not able to understand that religious people are able to sacrifice their own life for their belief - as absurde as this seems to be in the eyes of others.
But indeed is faith our complete spiritual, cultural and civilisatoric existence - what Göbekli Tepe shows very well. Before Göbekli Tepe was discovered the standrad idea of atheists had been religion was a kind of game, which was played when the people had started with agriculture and had a lot of time to invent fairytales. For example the fairytales of and around god. But Göbekli Tepe was not made from lazy people on reason of boredom. This first temple of the world, where all our civilisations come from, was made from hunter-gatherers. Looks like: First was faith, religion and culture - then came agriculture and civilisation. We are all basing first of all on spirituality.
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