Neo-Paganists are the names given to people who are of faith similar to Wicca, but are not considred Wicca.

That is not quite accurate. I have met, online and in e-mail mostly, people whose faith in the old gods and especially the Goddess is similar to Wicca (which would qualify them as neo-paganist by your definition), but whose faith, they assure me comes in an unbroken tradition as old as or older than those traditions that embrace the title "Wicca."

They would reject the implication that their faith is a fairly recent revival or an imitation of the old ways, as the prefix "neo-" would indicate

My mom's a neo-paganist.

Tom, you sort of have a point. But then again there are pagans that have relatively new religions (or revivals). So what do we call them? Should there be "old school" pagans and "neo-paganists?" Ahh, it's too hot today.

Odds that this message will inspire a negative reaction--2 to 1

Odds that Webber will go into spontaneous combustion--5 to 1.

Peter, Peter, Peter, you are such a twit. Why do you continue to insult people, then act like you did nothing wrong? Are you really that dumb? Did your father beat you about the head whenever you had the nerve to actually have an opinion of your own instead of ripping off propaganda pamphlets? That would certainly explain a lot.

(pays the Bet Master)

Shill: Uh, wait. You'll notice I didn't use a single exclamation or word that would've been removed by Censorware. In fact that was incredibly mild considering my personality. You shouldn't have to pay.

Brian, he does have to pay the original Bet Master, Peter did elicit a negative reponse. He just doesn't have to pay the apprentice who bet that you would "go into spontaneous combustion."

Ha ha! Once again, the Bet Master is right--right--right!

It's easy to be right if you predict the obvious. If Peter flames, someone will react. If you shoot an arrow into the air, it will fall to earth...

"I shot an arrow in the air.
It fell to Earth I know not where."

We shot a missile in the air
We fear it fell to Earth somewhere.
Though we were aiming for the Moon,
Red China claims we hit Kowloon.

But still relevant, nonetheless.

Brian, when are you gonna remember not to react to Peter anymore? That's what he wants, but if we all ignore him he will (we can only hope) go away. And if he doesn't, and just gets more and more flustered when he's completely ignored then maybe he'll finally leave. I just hope that Sax puts him out of our collective misery very soon.

I find the idea of "unbroken tradition" to be questionable. Not impossible, just questionable.

I met a Neo Pagan once who went on a rant on why hated Wiccans.

Too bad MAD dosen't exist any more. And I do not consider the AOL-Time-Warner ad version to be MAD.

You're right, Pesti. MAD's now like "SNL" and the Detroit Tigers. Perversely interesting to watch as at times it resembles its former self, but ultimately a poor imitation.

It is is impossible. It would require neo-pagans, to have been indoctrinated in the faith by people who were also of said religion, in a unbroken chain of learning from worshippers in antiquity. Since all Pagans in Europe were converted to Christianity, this has not happened. No neo-pagan sects cannot claim direct descent. What they can claim is to be based on what we do know of ancient religions (Mostly from secondhand sources), mixed with speculation. It would be like trying to form Christianity based on fragments of the Bible.

Since all Pagans in Europe were converted to Christianity.... Pesti

This statement is just as unprovable as the statement (which I reported without comment) to which you are applying it (to wit: ...whose faith, they assure me, comes in an unbroken tradition ....)

Despite centuries of persecution and assimilation, the Jewish faith has remained alive. Why is it so hard to believe in even the possibility that other non-Christian faiths did, too? There are lots of out-of-the-way locations where small groups of them could survive.

Where? Name these people. History shows that Jews are well documented since the 500's, and their odds weren't that bad, as they are here right now. You overlook that the Jews would have died as a religion and culture many times, had not they made the right reforms when they did (Aka, writing down how to read Hebrew, building the Rabbi and Synagouge system, writing the Bible down, moving to America) There are barely any Zoroastrians left either, despite once having been the dominant religion of a chain of great empires. Even Hinduism almost died out at one point, and has had major revisions since the axial age.

The main problem with ancient religions is that they weren't about forgiveness, they weren't about redemption, they were mostly about bribeing natural powers. Christians come around promising a afterlife, a loving God, and a rather egalitarian faith, with the force of law, and standing around a temple paying a preist to make sacrifices to avoid the wrath of the gods doesn't sound so great. While the idea of a ancient cult living in the hidden valley that worshipping Hecate may sound great in Victorian Science Fiction. Pagan religion died out because it was 1. oral, 2. Priest based, and 3. quid pro quo factor. Kill all the preists, and burn all the temples, and remove any legal requirements to it and it doesn't have much left.

Where? Name these people. Pesti

I'm not the one who made the sweeping claim. All I said was that both statements (that some pagan sects survived in Europe and that they all died out utterly) are equally unprovable.

The Statement "all the dinosaurs died out" is also unprovable, as a few could be hidingout in the Congo. The same could be said for the Native Tasmanians. The pagan religions are as dead as the cultures that worshipped them. No Pagans are recorded in Europe since the conversion of the Vikings. Neo-Pagans do not owe their pedigree to the ancients, but to 19th Romanticism. It may sound romantic to believe that a few crypto-pagans have been hiding in Europe since the Dark Ages, but there is no proof of such. "Lost" usually means "assimilated." There is lots of proof that Europeans in the middle ages were devoted Christians.

Matt,

You miss the obvious explanation. Dinosaurs are hiding behind furniture.

Actually, they are hiding under the furniture.

Seriously though, that is the problem with inductive reasoning. You really can't make sweeping statements like that, no matter how true you know them to be. It's the same problem that we've discussed from the other side in the various "evolution" threads and why evolution is "just" a theory.

I find the idea of "unbroken tradition" to be questionable. Not impossible, just questionable. Pesti in August

It is is impossible. Pesti in October

Two months ago, you basically agreed with me. What changed?

TomM,

If I may, I'd like to defend Pesti here.

Matt if I'm 100% off base please feel free to correct me. (Heck, feel free to correct me if I'm 87.432% off base.)

It is not rational. If someone rolls a seven you shrug. If they roll a seven nine times you assume the dice are loaded.

It is also possible that crazy monkey's have broken into my apartment and are taking a break from typing the collected works of William Shakespeare by posting this message. (Hey, it's possible.)

In the two months Pesti thought about it and decide that the dice are loaded. It is still possible they are not.

Tyrannosaurs, though rarely seen
Are certainly still around.
And no-one knows just where or when
The next one will be found.

...except me.

Two months? More like 14 months. Read the date, again.

The reason? Think about how fast Europeans were converted during the Reformation. Or how fast the Philipeans were converted? Or how possible it is that a small cult of humans could survive 1000 years of cultural imperialism, risk death to find new blood, and remember everything along the way. Or how the unbroken lines don't seem to match up with our current knowlege of prehistorical Europe, but do by Robert Graves's decades understanding of the age? Of course it ultimately doesn't matter, they are a false religion if they are fifty or 5,000 years old. Maybe there were underground pagans in the dark ages, but I find it doubtful any survived in Christiandom past the year 1000, in Scandanavia past the end of the middle ages.

Are there any neo-pagans here? (Not Wiccan-whatever-ending-you-want-me-to-try-to-remember-so-I-can-get-it-wrong-and-accidentally-insult-you.)