Gods in paganism.

akari no ryu wrote:

I'm sorry Sapien, I figured you were capable of holding a polemic discussion on this.

No, really - polemical. And that's not a spelling error, it's grammar. If you wish to be a polemicist, you should use these words properly.

akari no ryu wrote:

Your view is as sophisticated, I suppose, as any Cultural Rapist and have no illusions, the view you're espousing is Cultural Rape (the decontextualisation of cultural patterns).

Cultural Rape. Capitalised, no less. Wow. I think you might be a bit of an hyperbole junky, akary no ryu.

akari no ryu wrote:

Personally, I don't find that sufficient.
Gay people are frivolous immature childish people who need psychiatric help, one and all.
This is my experience.
Now. Let's look at that statement and compare it to yours.
Where does the analogy break down?
I'm looking really hard.
Let's rephrase it to how, in any situation where someone is asking about gay people, it should have been said.
In my experience, gay people ....
In one, I am speaking as an authority and stating my experience as objective fact.
That this is my experience is not open to debate, that it is true is.
That I should never have uttered this as an objective fact is not open to debate as it is a blanket statement and that anyone claiming to act as an authority posting as such, which you did by posting in the manner you did, ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Now this analogy caught my attention possibly a little more than you might have intended, and I find it all quite muddled. I'm not sure I've made sense of it. Are you saying that to say 1) "Gay people are ... This is my experience," is morally different from saying 2) "In my experience, gay people are ... "? If so, I find this claim, well! more than semantic, in fact I'm not sure what I'd call it. Silly, to be charitable. The analogy breaks down, by the way, at the fact that the generalisation I made about pagans was not deeply offensive but, in my opinion, optimistic and laudatory.

I never, akari no ryu, consider my opinion to be authoritative. I am not an authority on anything - not in my profession, not in magick. As Perdurabo said, "There is no room for authority in magick". In fact, when discussing things with people I assume, if they are reasonable and intelligent, that this is putatively understood, of myself and of them. And so I tend not to preface statements with "the following is just what I believe" or IMHO, or YMMV - because it is a waste of time. It is taken as read.

akari no ryu wrote:

Please, challenge me again on this matter and I will go through all of your posts citing each logical fallacy that you've used and giving you the wikipedia entry.

Not to be glib, akari no ryu, but please do. I have been around discussion boards for some time, including some of a more rigorous philosophical culture than boards.ie, and I have been known, in my time, to scour posts for logical fallacies. I am not a philosopher by profession, but many of my friends are, and the rules of logic are not difficult to pick up. I have a somewhat amateur but relatively well-developed ability to recognise logical fallacy, and though I would not say that I never commit them myself, I do so infrequently and try to be stoically contrite when I do. I recognise none of what you have labelled in my posts as logical fallacies as such, and, to be quite honest, am not entirely convinced that you have the hang of it. Please show me what of the syllogisms that I have advanced are flawed and in what ways.

akari no ryu wrote:

To state that your personal belief is more sophisticated and that sophisticated people will agree with you is ignorant.
This is not my opinion.
This is not my belief.
This would be one of the defining attributes of ignorance.

Again, this seems to be a highly nuanced deployment of the word, and one I am not willing to propagate. If you can use a synonym to elucidate what exactly it is you mean by "ignorance" in this context, please do. If you mean something along the lines of tactless or impolite I could understand your perspective, without quite agreeing. Omlettes and broken eggs and all that.

akari no ryu wrote:

Please do not patronise me Sapien. You have not been doing well in this tete-a-tete and it makes you look petulant.

I apologise. Please believe that I am only trying to be helpful.

akari no ryu wrote:

If you are comfortable communicating your opinion as objective absolute fact, then you need a short sharp connection with reality.

Once again, I never intend to proffer my humble opinions a anything more than that. You may consider my failure to state this explicitly as despicable - I consider it common sense.

akari no ryu wrote:

Ah... the old art of "I can't actually fault his arguments so I'll fault his spelling". I'm dyslexic Sapien. I will make no apologies for my bad spelling. I try really really hard to catch them all, but occasionally a word that is difficult to dissemilate will slip through.
Congratulations.
You got me.
I missed one.

See above. Polemic is a subtle art, akari no ryu, and requires that one can say in a reasonable demeanour things that may outrage other people, intending that it will advance the boundaries of a debate - not become outraged at things said by others with reasonable intent, but transgressing boundaries peculiar to you.

akari no ryu wrote:

Really, how is that?
Do you understand my argument style?
Do you actually see what's going on here?
I sincerely doubt it.

I believe I do, though of course, and as always, I may be wrong.

akari no ryu wrote:

I really hope everyone else sees this non-sequitor as blatant bigotry.

I wonder do they, because I don't. If the bigotry to which you refer is my low esteem for literal, fundamentalist interpretations of Abrahamic, or any other scripture, I do not apologise for it, or agree with your terming it bigotry.

akari no ryu wrote:

Non-sequitor.
I did not say sharing personal experience was invalid. I said sharing personal experience and extrapolating to the whole of paganism is invalid.

It is imperfect, happily admitted. "Invalid" has a special meaning which I can't help but feel you abuse. Not every sentence is a syllogism.

akari no ryu wrote:

Mind pointing out where the Celtic Cycles discuss the creation of the Universe or the human race or are you just trying to throw in a red herring for the sake of it.

I'm not certain that it does (Celtic mythology not being a strong suit of mine), but it does overlap with "the history and prehistory of [part of] the Earth and [some of] its inhabitants", in ways that make it an awkward bedfellow for history, anthropology, archeology, paleontology, and probably more - this being my substantial point. Out of curiosity, is there really no Celtic creation myth?

akari no ryu wrote:

Wow, more poisoning the well.
Well, if you can't defeat their points, start muddying their name, it's nearly as good, no?

Apologies if I come across as insincere but, as I have said, I am uncertain what meaning you have intended by the word ignorant.

akari no ryu wrote:

Actually, it's not a blanket statement. I explicitly contextualised that to my frame of reference and not the objective.

You misunderstand. I was admitting that my statement ("[A]ccording to many millions of adherents to Judaism and Christianity, you have in fact dismissed their sacred text") is probably a bit of a blanket statement, at least according to your rather draconian standards. It would, nevertheless, be difficult to argue that it is untrue - or do you disagree?

akari no ryu wrote:

Yes, it really does.
When one sets out to make a story up and explicitly says this is what they are doing, that kind of detracts from the spiritual value of the story contained within.

Whether Tolkien's inventions were written to be real or fictional accounts would be the least problematic element in them if one were to attempt to reconcile them with scientific and historical evidence regarding the origin of the Earth and its inhabitants.

akari no ryu wrote:

Again, quit it with the patronising. You're not really in a position to do so.

Perhaps not. I have assumed that the pitch of your reaction is due to an emotional or ego-based response. I realise that it may rather be a style, as you have suggested, that you affect to the end of achieving polemic. Either way I am quite certain that you have radically misinterpreted the tone of my initial and subsequent posts, and that a little poise and pause on your behalf might allow us come to some kind of resolution. If that is something you are interested in.

I personally feel that my face should be on the fourteenth trump by now, but to dwell on such notions would be to defeat the benefit.

Unfortunatly online forums can lead to this type of nit picking.

There will alsways be a disparity between those to see the Gods as gods and figures from past times and thier tales as fiction and try to use themas archetypes to access certain engry and use them as tools
and those who have a connection to living gods and a deep personal relationship and know how thier Gods evolve and work in a modren context.

Yes reading and reserach will gain you information some of it factual some of it incorrect or biased but while that information may start you out on a path
to connecting with the Gods it is not enough on it's own.

ok, will try to be helpful, there is no right or wrong way to view ones gods, if we relate to something, use it, someone asked in this thread why the norse gods chose to be norse?...They didn't, Norse people made them norse. Deity has no form or knows no geographical boundries, we as humans personify that energy as being human or human like, then we give it attributes appropriate to the region we live in so that we can relate to it. Thats not to say that as personalities they do not exist, just that we can relate to them better if they present themselves to us in forms and symbols that we can easily understand. The energy that is the devine is real as are the thousands of different aspects that it presents itself to us through. simply put, my opinion is that the reason Ganesh is an indian god in the form of an elephant and not a norse god, is because the norse people had never seen elephants.
OK?

once again i would say that a belief is a human frame of reference, all gods and goddesses are distinct entities, the symbols they use to communicate with us though are human symbols, dare i say...man created god in his own image. If there is a race of beings on a far away planet who are green and multi-limbed, its a fair guess to suppose that their gods are probably green and multi-limbed too.

Matthew Hopkins wrote:

well if ever there was a case for not looking for enlightenment online i think the last two pages are it.

I would have to agree. There is no use looking for enlightenment online and those who do are barking up the wrong tree... and yes the debate of the last few pages are tedious but they are not much to do with Paganism or indeed the OP's question and more to do with debating technique and as such may be better founded in some other forum.

However, although it is unlikely that someone would have a profound spiritual experience just from reading this thread or forum, the sharing of information and learning from each other in a knowledge base is very possible. It is often also a very good place to engage in debate which can open perceptions and question our thoughts and expand our understanding on the level of intellect. This may also be impetus for trying new things and widening the horizons of experience. There are many things that I have until recently ignored or not looked into and through the suggestions by way of things people have done or said, in person or online, I have gone about learning more.

It has been said that humans are social creatures and as such who of us has not found comfort in sharing common experience. If I had not been blessed with meeting some of the people I have met on my journey I may well have concluded that I was mad, but sharing common thoughts has given me the confidence to explore more and continues to push me to understand new experiences and learn new things but all of this needs to be from a framework of practical experience of course and it is in this vital area that the internet definitely falls short of the mark. Although, that said, boards is somewhat unlike many other internet forums in that people do meet at boards events and through these people have found others to share with and learn from, so its not all bad

It is also case in point that in order to communicate with the Gods we must also do so with each other. My strong belief in the imminence of divinity would place divinity within each person on this board as well as within the myth and legend of this land and of all others. It is beyond omni-potent and omni-present it is immanent (as with so much of personal spirituality words fail). Each person is not just a conduit or imbued with the gifts of the Gods, but every cell or atom IS deity and not just the creation of Deity. As my own experience and understanding of what deity is grows by the day I am more and more convinced of this imminence. Especially when communing with individual Deities and the language with which I speak with the God or Goddess of any pantheon is one that is most definitely distinct to that individual Deity but most definitely is common to the soul.

Just as a powerful Deity transcends all geographically placed boundaries, so does the soul of a person. Just as a person or indeed a culture of people may impose traits upon a deity, so do people create the conventions of the culture in the first place. That does not mean that there should not be an identity within that or aspects that define the person and likewise the Deity. In the same way that people want to fit in and belong, I do believe that the Gods do too.

Like a dance may be different to a region and specific to a culture or indeed the dancer, the dance can translate within the resonance of the soul. Just as many will perceive that that all dances come from rhythm and movement and at an essential level are for the same purpose, you can also see that a Jig is so lively, how a jive is so energetic and how a tango is so passionate.

now yer talkin.....I mean really talkin.
BB
Matt the Thrasher.
Luv yes all.