I reject all those things as well as superstitious and archaic. Am I your real enemy as well?

93 93/93

I (Sheta, that is) agree with the opposing consensus that atheism isn’t a threat to magic any more than it was last week, which is summed up well enough with the example of Randi. However, the definitions of “witch” and “pagan” tend to overlap more for most people than they apparently do for you. They’re pretty arbitrary definitions in general, for that matter.

I do wish Don would speak up to clarify things. When he gets time I think I’ll just have to ask him in greater detail. I was surprised to read this from him. He doesn’t tend to be irrational, and I think this article borders on paranoid. He did tell me that it might not be appropriate for Rending the Veil. I’m willing to put unpopular stuff up. It gets people talking.

I could see from the first sentence that I was not going to like this article. “For decades witches and other modern pagans”…not all witches are pagans. A witch is someone who practices magic and can be of any religion or no religion at all.

As far as atheism being the enemy of people who practice magic, that’s not true at all. There are a lot of magic practitioners that do not believe in gods, spirits, or Santa, but only in the power of their mind, which is pretty much all you need to practice magic.

Anyway, this author has a very narrow view of what atheism is really all about. Sure there are a**holes out there who are atheists (I consider Randi to be one of them…can’t stand that man) but there are also a**holes in every other belief system or philosophy.

“Atheism has the potential to become a much greater threat to witchcraft, paganism, and New Age practices than Christianity ever was, even in its darkest and most intolerant days, because even then, when witches were being burned at the stake throughout most of Europe, both pagans and Christians shared a belief in higher spiritual powers and in supernatural agencies.”

WTF??

You’d rather be burned alive by a Christian than have an atheist tell you that they don’t believe in your gods or your magic?

There is something definitely wrong here.

The modern Atheist movement (of which I am an active participant) have as their main goal the removal of religious based thought from public policy. We uphold the practice of ANY religion, we are adamantly against our legislature making laws that curtail human freedom based upon fairy tales. (i.e. no gay marriage, no stem cell research, putting the 10 commandments in public court houses, etc, etc). Even Richard Dawkins considers himself a spiritual person and says that he is in awe of the beauty of the universe.

Too bad this isn’t atheism. Atheism is lack of belief in god, this is scientific naturalism.

-B

PS If Atheism were to bring about a holocaust of belief, then the astral wouldn’t be empty, it would populated entirely with World of Warcraft characters.

- Sheta
RTV Ed.