neo-paganism, things i love and hate

[elliptic_curve]

i used to describe myself as neo-pagan, but then i became too embarassed at what a lot of other neo-pagans were doing/believing to want to associate myself with them. (let's face it, i hate everyone

Comments

[chief1ic]

Another one for your second list: people who claim to be pagan yet haven't read anything older than the latest Silver Ravenwhatshername book.

[pfloide]

Except for the "anything goes" attitude, I find most of those criticisms apply to a good many other religions with only a few minor adjustments for context. Lack of acceptance of scientific understanding of nature? Misrepresentation of anthropology? Sexual predator priests? Self-importance? Absurd literalism? Check - check - check - check - check...

Who is your prof? One thing I've observed is that the NRM people have certain criteria for what makes a religion significant that tend to exclude anything that doesn't fit an institutional model - not because it's unimportant, but because it's not their subject. They mean "religion" in some technical sense, and not anything like a spiritual (sub)culture. "Neo-Pagan" is a much vaguer term even than "Christian" mainly because it covers a lot of groups that are constantly having bacteria-style sex with their ideas (like, metaphorical plasmid-swapping) and fissioning into sub-sub-sub-splinters, and that's how it's supposed to be... That's an essential feature of what pagan means: