Is Paganism good or evil?

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Note: This is more or less a sequel to one of my previous threads. Here a link to it: viewtopic.php?t=300864

Since I've herd in the aforementioned thread that the Devil/Satan might be based on one or several pagan gods, I've come to wonder which Pagan Gods are the most ethical and environmentally friendly?

Are these Pagan gods just as or more corrupted as Christianity itself? Or are they simply given a bad name because of the Christian Church's never-ending lust for world (and religious) domination?

Please take note that I have a profound interest in paganism itself. Although I have yet to sympathize or identify with any pagan god or goddess.

Tell me all about them!

Well, as shamanistic animism is the first religion of human kind, virtually every culture on earth will have a pagan underpinning. The traditions are varied and numerous. I suppose if you were interested, you might (respectfully) approach a local tradition native to where you live, or where you are from if you are immigrant. Any tradition that takes your fancy can be studied, it just depends where your interests or connections are.
People are always saying the popular image of the Christian devil was a rip off of the Celtic god Cernunnos, often used by today's wiccans to represent the horned god consort of the goddess. But it's just a theory as far as I know.
Most pagan gods would be considered "environmentally friendly" I suppose as paganism is often closely interrelated with the land, many pagan gods symbolising aspects of the land (or the sun, the moon, etc - the natural environment, you get the idea). There are also pagan spirits which are tied to a natural environmental aspect - the spirit of the river Liffey in Ireland comes to mind, and many pagans believe in local spirits of place. Many of them aren't particularly ethical though, or at least have non-humanlike ethics. There are often correspondences of gods of justice, say for example, across traditions so which ones you may be interested in depend on tradition. It would be very difficult to sum up every pagan god ever known across all world traditions in one post.
As for corruption, I believe all religions are corrupt, because they are human constructs and humans are corrupt. That doesn't make them worthless, though. The root of paganism is old, and yes many aspects have been altered or twisted or misinterpreted or downright lost over time. Traditions have come and gone. There is not one "pure" tradition dating back to the dawn of humankind, regardless of what some traditions will tell you, and even if there was, it's highly doubtful such a tradition would be acceptable to us today anyway. Some pagan gods got a bad name just because that's what they are like, that was their role in the tradition and time. Christian faith may have had a hand in demonising them, but some Christian traditions like Catholicism took another route and actually preserved some of the native pagan deities' aspects in their own saints, martyrs and patrons, that otherwise would have been lost under conquest. It always seemed simplistic to me that so many pagans just blame Christianity for everything. They, like basically all religions, have done good and bad, and the same goes for paganism (again of you want to look at the issue in a distinctly polarised fashion at all). It would depend on who you ask. Inherently it is neither - just another religion.
Care to get specific?

I can't speak that much on the pagan deities of the far east, Pacific islands, Africa, or native America, etc. that well but I can say a little bit about those of the Mediterranean basin as well as a little bit on the Nordic deities being that they seem to follow a very similar model.

The ancients had a preference, particularly before writing was prolific, to try and code human knowledge of nature and various findings of the subjective, ideas that were found to be of enough credibility to merit them as advanced metaphysical concepts to allegories of living divine entities. These entities by and large were meant to mirror the qualities that they believed the seven planets, the regions of the sky, the various elements, and the various strata of heaven and hell to have and the stories also hem together certain psychological and energetic elements of the human psyche that were observed up to that point and accordingly these ideas, to the extent that they believed the association of these ideas important, held together in their clusters by various events that the gods and goddesses either participated in or caused. This includes the ways in which they were born, the gods and goddesses in particular who they may have had sympathy or antipathy with, their sexual dalliances were the interweaving of themes.

In that way a lot of the more advanced pagan mysteries had a sort of pantheism where the angulations and undulations of nature had specific male and female identities. Plenty of these stories are something of a code for the sun's movement through the zodiac through the course of the year as well as other bits of Farmers Almanac type information. In one sense the deities were philosophic constructs a bit like trying to code a science book in an adventure novel, except that through the minds of their followers and enough personifying of nature it seemed to work both ways - ie. they had deities that they could talk to, deities who could nurture them and aid them in work-shopping certain competencies and abilities. While such relationships were held in a devout manner by many of the people involved it was still overall a lot like the Catholic Communion of Saints on steroids - ie. you had a pharmacy of deities to work with according to your needs and imbalances in your pursuit to rectify such imbalances (ie. the four humors, elements of Aristotle, etc.).


That said I don't think the good or evil question is particularly appropriate. On one hand if you devoutly follow the modern orthodoxy of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, everything that's not the one God is of the adversary. Similarly if you're of the pagan mindset you'll tend to just see deities as either man-made or truly existent anthropomorphisms of nature and asking of gods and goddesses are good or evil is a bit like making an inquiry to moral compass of icebergs.

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!"
This is what I'd like to think

The old pagan religions are vastly lost, mostly because the languages that they spoke were lost. We know little to nothing about the beliefs and practices of most "barbarian" pagan religions.

Neither.

Pagan gods are bad-ass. Vilified and demonized by narrow-minded, superstitious fools, but proudly refusing to give up the old ways. Because the old ways are beautiful, honorable, and worth preserving. Pagan gods fight the good fight, against the ignorance and corruption that pervades the religions that seek to persecute them.

Paganism is about spiritual freedom, truth, and enlightenment - not being oppressed, controlled, and manipulated by an organization that profits from keeping its followers in the dark, as ignorant, mindless sheep. It's not nearly as 'mysterious' as it's made out to be; it was simply illegal for the past several centuries, and thus had to be practiced in secret.

My allegiance is to the old Goat of the Red Cave, who has been taking us safely in death since the paleolithic, and looks after all of his children, whether we believe in him or not. And I can assure you he is most definitely good.

Neither, but its older than monotheism I am pretty sure.

Whether Pagan beliefs are inherently wrong is irrelevant if an inquiry on an individual's behaviour is relevant. If a person is a pagan and is a civil and well-adjusted member of society then such trivialities are of absolutely no issue whatsoever.

I honestly can sense that whatever issue is problematic, insofar as this thread is concerned, is whether a person's beliefs make the difference between behaviour that is expected in a person that makes up the law abiding echelons of society and those who are criminal and marginalized. This is incorrect thinking - religous belief has no influence on individual orthopraxy.

259 years ago, the great philosopher David Hume made the following observation in The Natural History of Religion (1757):

Source: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/340

In other words, polytheist religions (which are often designated as "Pagan") may have a tendency to be much more tolerant towards dissident religious views than monotheistic religions.

^^^

Yes. The Romans did not persecute Christians and Jews because the Romans were intolerant. They did so because the Christians and Jews were intolerant and refused to give the state cults their due.

Also, strictly speaking the Greeks and Romans were polytheists, but not pagans. They called the 'country folk' who worshipped spirits, nature, etc. pagan.

And that's why I think that Christianity should be completely forgotten for sake of the earth and Humanity! It's bad enough that so many human lives are either tortured, misguided, controlled (in a bad way) or simply dead because...Christianity. That the kind of logic that %90 of humanity is using right now as we speak. And the worst part is that, in the mist of the moral, social and religious confusion, we are complete forgetting that we are tearing mother nature apart with our "industries" most of which are horribly managed and out of control.

I'm not saying that we should take up arms against Christianity. I'm saying, should they wish to remain relevant, they should stop wasting their time with politics and religious domination and just work together with the rest of the world in order so we can not only make the planet earth a better place for a human being as well as saving it from an ecological demise.

I wish WP had a flashing "generalisation warning" icon. Keep in mind, many charities are Christian based. Many individuals and sects of Christianity believe that service to the poor is an integral part of their faith, and exercising that faith in the world. Like any religious group, individual sects are going to believe and practice different things, while still under the umbrella term of "Christianity." Many groups see humankind's proper relationship to the natural world as one of stewardship. That Earth was given to them by God to care for. They would like be as unimpressed with environmental abuse as you, seeing this as a violation of what their god told them to do. Why assume all of them are interested at all in "politics and religious domination" ? I can tell you there are Christian groups out there who don't, and have never, cared about this. Tarring them all with the same brush irrespective of variance seems unfair.
Why would you want the world to forget about a religion that has had innumerable influences on our kind throughout centuries (and no, not all of them are negative) with many intricacies and mysteries, history and culture, art and architecture, rituals and stories? Why would you want the world to forget about a faith that offers millions of people worldwide comfort and hope, and an ideal to do better by? What about its influences on other world faiths such as Islam? A little temperance goes a long way. Writing something off just because you disagree with it isn't going to get you very far in my view.
Since this is such a polarised discussion, consider this - one of the inaccurate ideas some pagans and pagan groups hold is that paganism is all hearts and flowers, peace and love and save the whale. It decidedly is not, and certainly hasn't always been. The ancient Mayan civilisation were pagan, and practiced human sacrifice and slavery, as did the ancient Egyptian pagans. Many animist island tribes similarly ritualised cannibalism, rape and murder. Several ancient pagan Celtic tribes were literal headhunters, and routinely practised seasonal warfare against neighbouring clans. Today, there are several subgroups inspired by the work of Aleister Crowley or Anton LaVey that aren't the sort of folk you'd want to have dinner with (or at least I didn't). And the pagan deities themselves - one of my favourites is the Irish goddess Mórríghan, who is credited with some very shady stuff, being patroness of war, sorcery, death, outlaws, violent sex and general doom, not to mention other areas if you believe in the pantheistic theory put forth in the book "Guises of the Morrigan" (a good read).
The point is no religion out there is 100% anything. None is all good, none is all bad. None is free from bad decisions and erroneous beliefs, just as none of them completely lack beauty, wisdom, growth and value. None is all uniformly the same regardless of time, place, culture and the individuals practicing it. All religions change over time as views and its people change. I'm not saying that makes any one religion right or wrong, better than any other, or more or less worth allegiance. But you have to consider the whole picture in deciding what you believe about any of them, not just finding facts that support conclusions already made, and ignore the rest.

Wow....You really had me thinking there. So much so that it took me a while to make a reply to this (probably out of shame ). I'm sorry I generalized Christianity and the people who believe in it. The reason why I thought it would be best for the world to forget about Christianity is because I I feel like all the good things about Christianity are outweighed by the all bad things about it (corruption, hypocrisy, the bible's inconsistencies and cryptic nature, ect. ).

Take note that I live in a country where a lot of people (as well as religious and political leaders) often make foolish decisions that offer me no hope of any redeeming quality from them... *sigh* Now that I think about it I've never given Christians a fair chance. I've never never decided to go to a Christian Church out of my own will and fully experience what is it like to pray and listen to a mass (or at least it's been a long time since I've tried), I've never opened myself socially enough so that I can witness what a good Christian person is like (or maybe I was so carried away because of my hate towards the religion itself that I completely forget about them).

You're right, I need to see the whole picture, not a small, hateful window as to what Christianity (or any religion) really is.

It's funny, I complained so much about how Christianity is close-minded and yet, look at me; I'm a close-minded moron who judges Christians for the same thing I am. There's a saying that my mom and dad use every now-and-then that goes "The thief judges because of his condition". What does it mean? It means that those who often judge others is because they have the same or similar flaws as that of the ones they judge. So if someone judges someone for stealing, it should be evident that that someone has had some experience stealing someone else's property. After all, how can you judge someone for his/her corruption if you don't know what is it like to do the same?

I'm curious about these "Aleister Crowley" and "Anton LaVey" characters. Who are they? And why aren't they the sort to "want to have dinner with"?

Also what did you mean when you said that other world faiths such as Islam were influenced by Christianity? For all I know Islam's reputation isn't exactly a bright one. (because of ISIS and the terrorism stuff.)

I thought there was already a thread of this....anyways I'd say neither, interesting for sure though.

"There's a saying that my mom and dad use every now-and-then that goes "The thief judges because of his condition". What does it mean? It means that those who often judge others is because they have the same or similar flaws as that of the ones they judge. So if someone judges someone for stealing, it should be evident that that someone has had some experience stealing someone else's property. After all, how can you judge someone for his/her corruption if you don't know what is it like to do the same?"

I've given sayings like that one some thought over the years and think that they're not as accurate as some people think they are or want them to be. For example: in most of the Western world, it's generally agreed upon that others who've never killed anyone have every right to judge/criticize another who has taken a life. Similarly, it's totally acceptable to look up to someone who has acted with tremendous courage or kindness even--or especially if--the admirers have never done such a thing and might never do it.

I put a little more weight on the "walk a mile in my shoes" cliché, since some people use the kind of saying you mentioned just as a cranky retort or even a baseless accusation. The "walk a mile" is usually more about respect and understanding.

I lived in an area with great diversity of many kinds and am thankful that I've seen people of all religions in many lights. When I hear someone talk about "a good Christian/Jew/etc." , though, I listen carefully because it can be used to describe someone's values or ideals, pay a compliment, or malign someone.

Good.The black robes are very slimming.