"Neopaganism is a joke"...my response to another village idiot.

I was going to write a review here about a recent book I purchased, but I will save that for another day. Because as I was checking out my dashboard, I found a comment awaiting moderation that I felt needed to be addressed. This comment from's from my post "What is Vanatru?" It is a post I wrote as a means of explaining Vanatru to those who might be unfamiliar with how it differs from Asatru, from my own perspective.

This comment comes from, SURPRISE!, a user by the name of Anonymous. You know, the ones the rest of us call cowards? But anyway, here is their lovely and informative comment.

"Neopaganism is a joke, and not a particularly elaborate one. You don’t have an unbroken chain of initiation, and some major part of your myths come from non-pagan mythographers. And, indeed, you don’t know how the true pagans interpreted those myths. So, your religion is not legitimate. Come to the Catholic Church, here we have an unbroken chain of initiation, our texts are well-preserved, and the tradition of interpretation of those texts is yet living." 

Instead of catering to emotion here, which is undoubtedly the type of attention MEHmonyous thought they would get, lets address the claims made here and see if these claims are logical and/or relevant.

• Neopaganism is a non elaborate joke. Webster's defines a "joke" as something said or done to provoke laughter. "Elaborate" is defined as "involving many carefully arranged parts or details; detailed and complicated in design and planning." I think any logical human being would realize that the average human being does not choose their faith or religion as a means of provoking laughter. As to being non-elaborate, when using neopaganism as an umbrella term, neopaganism does have many parts and details, and is also detailed and complicated in design and planning. There are thousands of pagan faiths which are being revived, each one with it's own rituals, ceremonies, and forms of belief. Some neopagan ceremonies can last for hours or even days in the extreme, all within a well defined ritual framework, depending on the particular faith. So we can say that this statement fails in terms of logic alone. GRADE= FAIL
• No unbroken chain of initiation. In most cases of neopagan religions, this is true. There are sects of the Wiccan religion who arguably possess unbroken chains of initiation, though not for a particularly long period of history, as they have only been around for about a century at best. The logical question to ask here is "what is the relevance of an unbroken chain of initiation? Is the argument here based on the ASSUMPTION that an unbroken chain of initiation makes one religion better than another? Perhaps the author is more concerned with purity than relevant knowledge? GRADE= FAIL =.0099 PNTS. FOR EFFORT
• Mythos by NON PAGAN writers. The faith of a writer is meaningless. What matters is the reliability of the writer which is self evident in a careful analysis of both the writing itself and any known historical data about them and the cultural context of their writing. Many modern day pagans make a concerted effort to weed out sources, consult a variety of translations, and examine the sources in comparison with historical, cultural, anthropological, and archeological evidence. This same argument against reliability could easily apply to biblical sources as well. Did you know the oldest surviving Hebrew biblical texts date to 200 CE, about 200-250 years after the reported birth of Jesus? Which means these supposedly historical events were written over two centuries AFTER they supposedly occurred? Tell me how factual a history of let's say, the life of one individual soldier in the American Revolutionary War that you yourself might write? This comment utterly fails in relevance. Grade= FAIL. 
• Don't know how pagans interpreted myths. Ever heard of this thing called academic research? You know like HISTORY, ARCHEAOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, LITERARY ANALYSIS, FOLKLORE, and in some cases LITERARY EVIDENCE WRITTEN BY WITNESSES OR EVEN PAGANS THEMSELVES? You can't make this argument against pagan religion when the exact same thing is true of historical Christians as well. GRADE= FAIL PLUS
• not legitimate. No evidence has been given by the commenter about paganism that another could not make against Christianity. Therefore it follows that if paganism is illegitimate, Christianity is a bastard as well. 
• Interpretation of Bible is yet living. Interpretation of pagan sources is also "yet living." Can I ask when is the last time you visited a college campus? I mean an actual one, not a community college. New Interpretations of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Buddhist, and European mythological texts are being studied and translated by scholars on a daily basis. I mean scholars, not fundamentalists psuedo scholars who want to interpret the bible to fit their latest presidential candidate or reproductive legislation. GRADE = FAIL

CLOSING NOTES

I will be leaving the comments of anonymous visible on the blog, complete with a link to this response. As for  the generous invitation to join the Catholic Church, I will PASS. I prefer my humorous religion filled with relevant spiritual experience which supports ideas such as gender, sexual, racial, and all other types of equality. I will stay with my neopagan religion which builds my character, dignity, and intelligence on a daily basis without arbitrary threats of violence or eternal suffering because I can't be a "good little girl." I will stay with my neopagan ways which have enabled me to move away from abusive relationships and people and into a comfortable life with a beautiful and peaceful family that supports me through ever storm. I will stay true to my pagan gods and the ways they make themselves evident throughout my daily life, rather than be satisfied with a singular deity who chooses to remain unknowable because he is somehow above human understanding. There's more but I don't feel like writing anymore.

In Frith

Cena