Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Oh god, don't get me started on the National Forest. Thousands of trees - no skills to maintain them. Just the trees going in - no other (associated) woodland species, beyond the occasional primrose and wild daffodil. No fungi, micro-invertertebrates, lichen. The birds will find their way in, but the grasses? (Never). National Plantation, more like ...

Thread seems to have gone astray on paganism and the pope...

Bright Blessings & Aum to All:

http://www.amergin.net/songofamergin.html

:-)

Quite! That sounds good and pagan to me. TSC I just read your excellent post about the origins of the Church of Rome over on the U-Know! forum. There is much to be said about the Pope, not just this one (but yes)- also throughout the centuries of indoctrination, suppression and the misuse of power - I speak as one that was taught not to question His authority as he was infallible. Fortunately, I grew up, broke the chains and freed my mind.

Fundamentalism is something to be avoided where ever it is coming from though; as much as I want to like Richard Dawkins I find his dogmatic brand of atheism dispiriting - I end up wanting to say "yes I know, can you stop shouting now".

Edit: I seem to be an hour behind everyone else so am answering your post before you actually made it ... clever eh!.

Thanks tjj.

You're right. Dawkins is very much a fundamentalist. It's all fish-in-barrels with him. He is incapable of understanding that 'God' ie. a ficitious judaeo/christian/islamic anthropormorphic 'male' figure in the sky, is an entirely and totally unnecessary, vastly over simplistic view of spirituality/gnosis etc, be it western hermetic or eastern in tradition. His argument stands purely on the 'god' concept. Beyond that, he is utterly out of his depth and has nothing to say.

:-)

Benedict is well known to have a special dislike of “paganism”. In a previous encyclical letter, SPE SALVI, On Christian Hope (1997) he asserts that Catholicism offers more hope for the future than polytheism with its “contradictory myths” -

“Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future …”

In the new encyclical he returns to his criticism of paganism, this time citing its particular reverence for Nature –

“…it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense…”