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Flame » in reply to Paganism went out of fashion when people got tired of all those human sacrifices

Dancing naked around Stonehenge never goes out of style
Robert — (archived)

And as Mary Anne points out, paganism has evolved toward more civilized behavior in parallel with most other religions.

You may be confusing paganism with Satanism, which Christians prefer to label pagan, rather than admit that Satanism is a thoroughly Christian denomination. "What???" I can hear you say. Well, consider that Satan is the Christian God's nemesis. Satanism is simply the dark side of Christianity, the other side of the Christian coin. You can't believe in Satan without also believing in the Christian God.

And, where Satanism is explicitly anti-Christian (while being intimately tied to Christianity), paganism isn't anti-Christian, despite a long history of persecution that might make one sympathetic to anti-Christian leanings among pagans. But as I'm sure I've said elsewhere, their polytheism pushes in the direction of accommodation and being a "big tent", while monotheisms push people toward exclusion and conflict.

Aside from the opportunity to dance naked in the moonlight around Stonehenge, on a more serious note I find that paganism's reverence for nature resonates with me. As does the essential humility of considering humans to be a part of nature, rather than somehow separate and above it as Christianity teaches. The latter is pure nonsense to anybody who knows anything about biology, while scientific reality supports the pagan's view of humanity's integral role in the web of life.

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