I do have my 2 cent rant on Paganism and religious tolerance.
I feel we may
often demonstrate excessive qualities of tolerance. Many feel their logic
leads them to universalism or similar all inclusive syncretism. I think
that's erroneous logic. We don't have to defend as "true in a way, or true
for them, or for that time" every stupid claim anybody ever made about
religion, if they're just plain wrong. These days, we have been able to
hammer out a working consensus on the nature of reality, and it's largely
material. So if your religion, say, denies the reality of the material world,
you are not on the same logical plane as me, as well as different spiritual
level. In that case I don't believe your religion is even true for you, and
suspect you of pathological mental states instead; honestly I believe your
religion, no matter how internally consistent and well-organized, is
delusional, for it violates our common material basis for reality.
I said
all that to say all this. I don't think religions such as Paganism need to
recognize all peer religions as equal paths to the truth. I think the
assertion that all religions point to the same truth, is specious. I'm a
Pagan, and I don't think everybody else's religion is as good as mine. I have
decidedly negative opinions about most religions, which I refrain from
expressing because I'm just too damn good with words, and I'd hurt somebody's
feelings. I'm aware most Pagans stress tolerance because we're a powerless
minority (in the real world outside the Internet) presently under persecution
in many realms. That makes toleration a very useful concept. In the end, we
must not compromise truth by making it totally relativistic.
Saying this and
that wasn't enough for me. Here's the other: I don't believe monotheism is on
an equal footing with Paganism in the logical realm. I have published the
reason I believe monotheism to be logically invalid, at
http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird/pillars.html
but the short form is
that infinity cannot exist in a big-bang universe, for gravitational
singularity would prevent such a universe from coming into existence were any
infinitude present. Therefore, infinity does not exist, and never did, making
every monotheist deity who ever existed a really serious liar. Polytheistic
religions such as Paganism are not affected by this revelation, but
monotheism may be doomed. I hope so, anyway, because monotheists were
responsible for the worst social mistakes of all history, due to their
fateful logical error of overextending a non-scalable principle, trying to
stretch categories or generalizations too far.
The social costs of
monotheism are immense. Monotheistic religions by definition are exclusivist
religions. Perhaps polytheism can afford to allow all gods, except for the
monotheist deity, who tries to eat all others, in short is not a well-behaved
god, is not a civilized god, but is a cannibal god. That's why we keep him in
that jar in the corner. His religion is not even true for him, he is
exhibiting psychopathological symptoms, he is delusional and has failed the
test about relating to physicality. Prognosis is bleak.
Well, there you go.
If that wasn't worth a couple pennies you ought to let me know.
Blessed be
Johnny Thunderbird
heavyLight Books
http://fly.to/heavyLight
2 Cent Rant [Pagans and Tolerance] soc.religion.paganism 981110