Post by Daniel on Oct 28, 2015 8:30:03 GMT -5
Could paganism make a comeback? It's not as crazy as it sounds.
Pascal Emmanuel
October 23, 2015
We live in a post-Christian era, we're told. But being defined by what you're after doesn't tell us what you're about. Spiritual longings go deep in the human heart — the New Atheists remain much less popular than the self-consciously spiritual Oprah Winfrey — and it remains to be seen to what spiritual calling the current era will respond.
Maybe... paganism?
Every once in a while you see a trend story about pagan revivals. This time, it seems to be going on in Iceland. Ironically, the idea of time going in cycles is a venerable pagan doctrine.
So, could we go back to paganism? This is more than an idle question. Our era is still — much more than we care to admit — very much defined by Christian ideals, which — much more than we care to admit — were very much defined in opposition to pagan ideals. Looking at the pagan worldviews that once ruled Europe should give us some insight into the West today, and, perhaps, its future.
A world full of agencies
As seen in the ancient Greek, Celtic, and Norse traditions, the pagan idea most alien to the modern worldview is probably the belief that the entire cosmos is animated by agencies. The seasons, the tides, the phases of the moon, and so on, all were ascribed to the divine, and to various gods, who could then be propitiated.
The modern scientific worldview seems to make this view obsolete. Now we know that the phases of the moon and the movement of the stars are animated by impersonal forces. Science seems to have drained the world of agency.
The pagan worldview was both enormously exciting and more than a little bit scary. To the pagan mind, the world was alive with energy and intelligence and purpose in a way that might be impossible for us, on the other side of the scientific revolution, to imagine. But this was scary because the intelligences that made the world alive were by no means necessarily friendly. In the ancient world, one was always aware of disease, famine, natural disaster.
But seeing the world as full of agency is by no means incompatible with a scientific worldview. Just because the scientific method treats the world as a mindless machine doesn't mean it is. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval thinker, believed that God's mind was perfectly rational and that he had created the world according to perfectly rational rules, which made scientific inquiry both possible and desirable.
continue reading
theweek.com/articles/584634/could-paganism-make-comeback-not-crazy-sounds
Pascal Emmanuel
October 23, 2015
We live in a post-Christian era, we're told. But being defined by what you're after doesn't tell us what you're about. Spiritual longings go deep in the human heart — the New Atheists remain much less popular than the self-consciously spiritual Oprah Winfrey — and it remains to be seen to what spiritual calling the current era will respond.
Maybe... paganism?
Every once in a while you see a trend story about pagan revivals. This time, it seems to be going on in Iceland. Ironically, the idea of time going in cycles is a venerable pagan doctrine.
So, could we go back to paganism? This is more than an idle question. Our era is still — much more than we care to admit — very much defined by Christian ideals, which — much more than we care to admit — were very much defined in opposition to pagan ideals. Looking at the pagan worldviews that once ruled Europe should give us some insight into the West today, and, perhaps, its future.
A world full of agencies
As seen in the ancient Greek, Celtic, and Norse traditions, the pagan idea most alien to the modern worldview is probably the belief that the entire cosmos is animated by agencies. The seasons, the tides, the phases of the moon, and so on, all were ascribed to the divine, and to various gods, who could then be propitiated.
The modern scientific worldview seems to make this view obsolete. Now we know that the phases of the moon and the movement of the stars are animated by impersonal forces. Science seems to have drained the world of agency.
The pagan worldview was both enormously exciting and more than a little bit scary. To the pagan mind, the world was alive with energy and intelligence and purpose in a way that might be impossible for us, on the other side of the scientific revolution, to imagine. But this was scary because the intelligences that made the world alive were by no means necessarily friendly. In the ancient world, one was always aware of disease, famine, natural disaster.
But seeing the world as full of agency is by no means incompatible with a scientific worldview. Just because the scientific method treats the world as a mindless machine doesn't mean it is. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval thinker, believed that God's mind was perfectly rational and that he had created the world according to perfectly rational rules, which made scientific inquiry both possible and desirable.
continue reading
theweek.com/articles/584634/could-paganism-make-comeback-not-crazy-sounds