Posted by Maik Rockstar on March 04, 2001 at 23:55:47:
In Reply to: Re: discussions - some words about pagan gods posted by Ann Bonny on March 03, 2001 at 23:39:04:
You're right when you say: "Pagan gods were a remarkable creation of human mind, according to the needs, the mentality, the epoch, the psyche".
- Paganism is a perfect reflection of the human psyche and the mentality of our ancestors who created it.
But you are wrong when you say: "The monotheist revealed religions are the perfect opposite"
- No, they are not. Because religion in general is a mirror of mankind. A monotheistic religion is no more or less a product of human imagination than a pagan one.
Once upon a time i despised all religions, but then i got to know paganism and the psychologic background of it and suddenly i could identify with it. Since then i dont feel hostility against the concepts of a "god" and against religion in general. If you asked me some years or even months ago what i think about religion in a general way i would have answered: "its all bullshit, its all evil, its all work of the devil". Nowadays i can say: "If i would have lived in the same environment, under the same circumstances that my ancestors did, i would have probably developed gods myself".
You have to imagine that "water" was not just water for the early men. Nowadays water for us is something that can be explained chemically; just a soup of particles.
A mountain for them was not just a result of plate tectonic but it was often considered as a god.
The whole world was somehow "alive". There was nothing that was totally dead. Everything had a meaning, everything was part of the whole.
The observation of movement was always linked with a "cause" which had to be lively. The wind that moves the bough of the trees had really to be something livingly, a being thats maybe even intelligent. There was nothing stupid, nothing useless. Everything had its own personal meaning, and all together built the divine. Thats how people long before our times must have seen the world. And thats what is summarized "paganism".
The monotheist religions are in contrary strange religions for me which i cant really identify with. And the real bad thing about them is: they claim to be absolute. And apart from that, i think they try to estrange manking from itself, taking away the selflove and the love to nature.
Maik