Abrahamic religion's

beefburrito

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans ?

Did Rome Fck up our chance of a better outlook ?

The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

smacl

beefburrito wrote: »

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

Just my opinion, but I reckon gobshítes and various other asshóles are distributed pretty evenly among the population irrespective of gender, colour or creed. I've met people I like a lot and others i similarly dislike in all walks of life.

beefburrito

smacl wrote: »

Just my opinion, but I reckon gobshítes and various other asshóles are distributed pretty evenly among the population irrespective of gender, colour or creed. I've met people I like a lot and others i similarly dislike in all walks of life.

well I don't hang out with people I don't like lol

pauldla

beefburrito wrote: »

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans ?

Did Rome Fck up our chance of a better outlook ?

The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

Seeing 'pagan' and 'grounded' in the same sentence, I wonder if you mean 'grounded' in the sense of 'no ipad for you this solstice' grounded...

Peregrinus

beefburrito wrote: »

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans ?

We were converted to Christianity without being invaded. There were invasions afterwards, and the invaders were pagans. But don't let the facts of history get in the way of the massive chip on your shoulder.

beefburrito wrote: »

The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.

Coughfacts of historyCough

beefburrito wrote: »

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

If "grounded" means ignorant of the most basic facts of Irish history and "cool" means overly-generous with apostrophes, yeah, I know at least one who fits the bill.;)

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Coughfacts of historyCough

Erm, not to put to fine a point on it P., but Christians have rather famously slaughtered huge numbers for holding opposing beliefs throughout history, whether it be heathens, pagans, those accused of witchcraft, heretics, or simply other Christians who disagreed on some of the finer points of what it means to be Christian.

While nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, the inquisition were there to protect Christendom from various types of heresy including witchcraft. A bit too much of the wrong kind of mold on your wholemeal loaf and you were royally forked, so to speak

robindch

beefburrito wrote: »

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans?

Main problem I see is that the monotheistic religions seem to have this endless wish to put themselves, and therefore their own religious faction, and therefore their own deity, above all others.

Polytheistic religions seem to be more relaxed in the presence of other religions and other deities, and correspondingly less interested in stamping the others out.

I suspect the above indicates why monotheistic religions have typically been more successful than polytheistic - simply that if you're continually attacking and trying to eliminate other religions, then ultimately, you'll be last man standing. Or last priest, I suppose.

uck51js9zml2yt

The Romans never invaded Ireland

Franz Von Peppercorn

beefburrito wrote: »

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans ?

Did Rome Fck up our chance of a better outlook ?

The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

Did they do all that in Ireland? Celtic Christianity was largely pagan with Christian additions.

Franz Von Peppercorn

smacl wrote: »

Erm, not to put to fine a point on it P., but Christians have rather famously slaughtered huge numbers for holding opposing beliefs throughout history, whether it be heathens, pagans, those accused of witchcraft, heretics, or simply other Christians who disagreed on some of the finer points of what it means to be Christian.

While nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, the inquisition were there to protect Christendom from various types of heresy including witchcraft. A bit too much of the wrong kind of mold on your wholemeal loaf and you were royally forked, so to speak

Apparently only 3000 people were killed in the Spanish Inquisition - the Spanish by and large just see it as Anglo propaganda. I’m inclined to agree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

smacl

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Apparently only 3000 people were killed in the Spanish Inquisition - the Spanish by and large just see it as Anglo propaganda. I’m inclined to agree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

Could well be, though the estimates are that around 200,000 Cathars were killed in the Albigensian Crusade, and it is commonly referred to as a genocide on that basis.

robindch

Yaretzi Late Hog wrote: »

The Romans never invaded Ireland

Neither did the Mongols nor the Spanish or Portuguese or Italians (though we got a bad dose of their high priests and scribes).

gozunda

Yaretzi Late Hog wrote: »

The Romans never invaded Ireland

And yet Ireland is perhaps unique in adopting a purely Roman patronym "Patricus" as the national prenom "Patrick". Interesting especially as "the Romans never invaded Ireland"

Franz Von Peppercorn

gozunda wrote: »

And yet Ireland is perhaps unique in adopting a purely Roman patronym "Patricus" as the national prenom "Patrick". Interesting especially as "the Romans never invaded Ireland"

The Roman Catholic Church (which Patrick didn’t really bring here either) isn’t the same as Rome.

Interestingly what did happen on these islands, was pagan attacks on largely Christian lands which lasted centuries, and in the case of our neighbours there were two significant pagan invasions.

gozunda

beefburrito wrote: »

If we weren't invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold, would we have progressed better as Pagans ?
Did Rome Fck up our chance of a better outlook ?

The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.

Any pagans and Atheists I know seem to be very grounded, non judgemental and cool to hang out with...

The various sandarababrahamic religions have used religious belief in an attempt to dominate different parts of the globe. Rome served simply as a staging point in just one part of that expension.

Indigenous religions destroyed by these power systems at least had veracity relating to the land and it's people.Time to reassert indigenous belief systems

gozunda

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The Roman Catholic Church (which Patrick didn’t really bring here either) isn’t the same as Rome.

Interestingly what did happen on these islands, was pagan attacks on largely Christian lands which lasted centuries, and in the case of our neighbours there were two significant pagan invasions.

Didn't say it was - the patnonym 'Patricus' predates Christianity .. 'Rome' was neither a Christian entity until much later

Franz Von Peppercorn

gozunda wrote: »

Didn't say it was - the patnonym 'Patricus' predates Christianity .. 'Rome' was neither a Christian entity until much later

Thanks for the rudimentary Latin lesson. I know that Patricus means - same root as Patrician. Not sure what point you were trying to make now.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

Could well be, though the estimates are that around 200,000 Cathars were killed in the Albigensian Crusade, and it is commonly referred to as a genocide on that basis.

Yes, but they hardly count as people killed for being pagans or witches or people who weren't willing to accept the Christian God, since they were none of these things.

I took beefburrito's "we" in the OP as a reference to Irish people. But, even if it's not, the notion that Christianity was largely spread through Roman invasions is historical nonsense. The Roman Empire was constructed first, and then Christianity spread through it by largely peaceful means. The Christianised empire was then subject to repeated invasions by largely pagan invaders.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yes, but they hardly count as people killed for being pagans or witches or people who weren't willing to accept the Christian God, since they were none of these things.

I took beefburrito's "we" in the OP as a reference to Irish people. But, even if it's not, the notion that Christianity was largely spread through Roman invasions is historical nonsense. The Roman Empire was constructed first, and then Christianity spread through it by largely peaceful means. The Christianised empire was then subject to repeated invasions by largely pagan invaders.

My point was that you dismissed the OPs suggestion that 'Christians slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.' Whatever about pagans, Christians have most definitely slaughtered those who don't agree with their beliefs, even when those people happened to be other Christians. While Christians have lots of words for those who don't tow the line, whether it be pagans, heathens, heretics, witches or whatever, historically they haven't been tolerant of them. To a large degree, words like heathen, pagan and heretic were used interchangeably. So if you look up the MW definition for pagan, it comes back with heathen, if you look up heathen we get 'relating to people or nations that do not acknowledge the God of the Bible', a heretic is 'a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma'. Heretics tend to be internal to Christendom, but all these words are essentially derogatory words used by Christians about non-Christians. Being in primary school in the 70s as an atheist, I regularly got labelled as a pagan by the good Christian folks around me.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

My point was that you dismissed the OPs suggestion that 'Christians slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god.' Whatever about pagans, Christians have most definitely slaughtered those who don't agree with their beliefs, even when those people happened to be other Christians. While Christians have lots of words for those who don't tow the line, whether it be pagans, heathens, heretics, witches or whatever, historically they haven't been tolerant of them. To a large degree, words like heathen, pagan and heretic were used interchangeably. So if you look up the MW definition for pagan, it comes back with heathen, if you look up heathen we get 'relating to people or nations that do not acknowledge the God of the Bible', a heretic is 'a person who differs in opinion from established religious dogma'. Heretics tend to be internal to Christendom, but all these words are essentially derogatory words used by Christians about non-Christians. Being in primary school in the 70s as an atheist, I regularly got labelled as a pagan by the good Christian folks around me.

Yes, but when Christians have slaughtered, they have mostly slaughtered other Christians. I'm not defending this (you'll no doubt be relieved to learn) but it lends no support to the OP's claim that "The Christian's slaughtered pagans, burnt so called witches and anybody who wasn't willing to accept their god". And it's doubly significant, in that he presented that claim in support of his belief that we were "invaded and assimilated into the Abrahamic fold".

Assimilated into the Abrahamic fold we may have been, but there were no invasions involved in the process, and no slaughtering of those of who who refused to accept the Christian God. If the OP has to rewrite history to this extent in order to make a case against Christianity, that doesn't reflect well on the case against Christianity, does it?

I feel sure that much stronger cases could easily be made, and in an "Atheism and Agnosticism" forum such a weak case as this should be profoundly embarrassing.

smacl

Fair enough, the whole Rome thing is clearly utter tosh. As for Christians mostly only attacking other Christians, not so sure. Franz Von Peppercorn might be letting the Spanish off a bit lightly. While the inquisition may have only executed between 3,000 to 5,000 of the 150,000 they tried, 'it is estimated that during the initial Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era'. Now while you might put this down as empire building rather than religious expansion, it was in fact both, with the net result of Christians slaughtering a massive amount of pagans / heathens.

Peregrinus

smacl wrote: »

Fair enough, the whole Rome thing is clearly utter tosh. As for Christians mostly only attacking other Christians, not so sure. Franz Von Peppercorn might be letting the Spanish off a bit lightly. While the inquisition may have only executed between 3,000 to 5,000 of the 150,000 they tried, 'it is estimated that during the initial Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era'. Now while you might put this down as empire building rather than religious expansion, it was in fact both, with the net result of Christians slaughtering a massive amount of pagans / heathens.

Well, on that view Hiroshima and Nagasaki were examples of Christians slaughtering a massive amount of heathens, weren't they? I think if we are going to meaningfully categorise a slaughter as a slaughter by Christians, we need a bit more than the fact that the people doing the slaughtering are some species of Christian. The Spanish invasion of the Americas was motivated by a quest for gold. Perhaps we should describe this as an example of slaughter by materialists?

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, on that view Hiroshima and Nagasaki were examples of Christians slaughtering a massive amount of heathens, weren't they? I think if we are going to meaningfully categorise a slaughter as a slaughter by Christians, we need a bit more than the fact that the people doing the slaughtering are some species of Christian. The Spanish invasion of the Americas was motivated by a quest for gold. Perhaps we should describe this as an example of slaughter by materialists?

The difference here was that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't an attempt at religious expansionism, nor was Japan left as a Christian nation as a result of this attack. South America by comparison is now one of the largest Catholic populations on the planet, and while the invasion might have been largely for gold, the conquistadors were equally concerned with spreading the Catholic faith to heathen races.

Peregrinus

The irony is that the OP actually does raise an interesting what-if; what if Ireland hadn't embraced Christianity when it did, or at all?

It's a difficult one to grapple with, because the extreme likelihood is that if Ireland hadn't become Christian in the fifth century, history suggests that it would have do so later. All the other Celtic countries did. Every nothern European country did, as did every country not part of the Roman empire. Basically, every single country in Europe became Christian, and in no case was this the result of invasion, or of a policy of massacring non-believers. And, if we discount the possibility of supernatural action to bring this about, that I think must tell us something about the utility of Christianity; it must have been well-adapted to the social and existential needs of European societies of the time

smacl

Not sure that because something is pervasive we can say that it provides utility. Many parasites for example are highly pervasive and well adapted to their hosts, but that doesn't make them useful Christianity has no doubt played a very important role in history and continues to do so. Whether it has on balance being beneficial or detrimental is open to conjecture. Whether it will continue to be the dominant force that it once was in civilised society seems less likely. Certainly in this country religion appears to play a far smaller role in day to day life and Vatican dogma is largely ignored. On the plus side, there's no Pope Innocent to crusade against us for our sinful ways.

beefburrito

I asked a simple question and got mixed answers.

I appreciate the people who didn't give me a personal dig such one reaction to me alluding to coolness etc.

We weren't invaded by the Roman's but we were surly ruled by popery from Rome...

Hotblack Desiato

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The Roman Catholic Church (which Patrick didn’t really bring here either)

No but we got to have someone to blame for the 1500 years of misery!

Franz Von Peppercorn

smacl wrote: »

Fair enough, the whole Rome thing is clearly utter tosh. As for Christians mostly only attacking other Christians, not so sure. Franz Von Peppercorn might be letting the Spanish off a bit lightly. While the inquisition may have only executed between 3,000 to 5,000 of the 150,000 they tried, 'it is estimated that during the initial Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era'. Now while you might put this down as empire building rather than religious expansion, it was in fact both, with the net result of Christians slaughtering a massive amount of pagans / heathens.

The Spanish colonisation of the south Americas was often opposed and condemned by catholics and clergy. As the link you provided showed. In fact the atrocities were condemned by a catholic priest in a book later used as an anti catholic/Spanish propaganda.


Also most of the deaths are attributed to small pox etc. Unlike North America the diseases were not deliberately promoted. See Amherst for North America.

It’s also part of the black legend as the genocide of North America was more thorough and deliberate. You just have to look at the demographics for that. Southern America is mixed race in general - Spanish and native (and black in areas that had black slavery - even there there’s a lot of intermarriage).

Until recent migrations the US was white and black, with no intermarriage. That’s because the whites in the north didn’t intermarry unlike the Spanish, and they did in fact engage in deliberate genocide. Trail of tears.

And it was in general the US ideology of manifest destiny - in part an enlightment philosophy of bringing progress and enlightenment values to the American west that drove that genocide.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:American_progress.JPG#mw-jump-to-license

Franz Von Peppercorn

beefburrito wrote: »

I asked a simple question and got mixed answers.

I appreciate the people who didn't give me a personal dig such one reaction to me alluding to coolness etc.

We weren't invaded by the Roman's but we were surly ruled by popery from Rome...

You asked a historically inaccurate question. Also we weren’t ruled by Rome. The first 500 years after Patrick we were Celtic catholic, the next one thousand baring the last hundred ireland was ruled largely by England or the British. The control waxed and waned. For some of that the British were catholic, for lots of it they were Protestant and for a fair portion of that Catholicism was effectively outlawed.

Popery? Why do Irish atheists sound like the orange order?

smacl

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The Spanish colonisation of the south Americas was often opposed and condemned by catholics and clergy. As the link you provided showed. In fact the atrocities were condemned by a catholic priest in a book later used as an anti catholic/Spanish propaganda.

I'm guessing we're reading different parts of the same page so, from that page in relation to South America

With the initial conquest of the Americas completed, the Spanish implemented the encomienda system. In theory, encomienda placed groups of indigenous peoples under Spanish oversight to foster cultural assimilation and conversion to Christianity, but in practice led to the legally sanctioned exploitation of natural resources and forced labor under brutal conditions with a high death rate. Though the Spaniards did not set out to exterminate the indigenous peoples, believing their numbers to be inexhaustible, their actions led to the annihilation of entire tribes such as the Arawak.[34] In the 1760s, an expedition dispatched to fortify California, led by Gaspar de Portolà and Junípero Serra, was marked by slavery, forced conversions and genocide through the introduction of disease.

The fact that these atrocities were condemned by one priest doesn't mean that they weren't condoned by the church to which he belonged.