"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson, 1781
And intolerant ones at that. It's interesting to note that many who fled religious-based persecution in England, ended up practicing their own religious persecution once they established their own colony/beachhead in the New World. Rhode Island (via Roger Williams) was perhaps the first colony/region to extend *real* religous freedom to people who did not necessarily acknowledge/practice the religion of the colony.
Fantasy and paganism are not necessarily always and immediately evil, as you seem to assume. There were virtuous pagans, such as the Roman Cicero. But Cicero have access to Christianity and then reject it, as many people do today.
Some wiccans are probably well-meaning and on balance more good than evil. But dabbling in that sort of thing can be very dangerous, and it can certainly turn into evil by degrees.
BTW: I do know something about wicca, and more important to them than "do no harm" is the tenet, "Do what thou wilt." (meaning, do what you want.)
All one has to imagine of such "peaceful", "enlightened", and "enchanting" belief systems as Islam, Scientology, and Wicca, is a world or country dominated by the likes of them...
Pure Evil, even if its participants are oblivious.
And America was born, in part, for religious freedom.
Even Islam, which I consider intolerant and violent.
I partially agree. I will add that it is just plain stupid. Many of these so-called "pagans" don't have the slightest clue about the mythology, literature or history of these matters. See my FR profle and the thread Ethereal Explorations for some of my views on the Wicca stupidity.
A lot of these people have been watching too much television and live in a 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' fantasy world and don't have a real life of their own to live.
Here is a previous exchange I had with a "Wiccan" idiot:
They believe in the old gods like the Earth Mother and the Horned God of the hunt.
Like Baphomet or Pan?
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There is no Satan in Wicca...
There is Hecate and a whole assortment of devils. Satan is an entirely pagan entity. "Wicca" is a pagan religion...
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Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. How do they reconcile that with the fact that it is a Hebrew word?
The point is that in avoiding their true pagan roots, the Neo-Pagans are participating inadvertently in a Judaic word-fetishism. This should give some of the Judaic/Christian community cause for reflection and cooperation.
Food for thought...
From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth. Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Palestine, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness. Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness.
[21] For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretense of successsion to St. Peter, their whole hiearchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily percieve that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen empire.
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience of the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance, a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion…
"Wicca" is a religion of stupidity and psychotic superstition. Most of it is stolen from other pagan mythoi, including those of pagan Greece and pagan Egypt...
Of course Wicca is a silly pseudo-religion, but it accords with feminism that has shaped American life over the last three decades. It may even pick up devotees. Western monotheisms have been getting a bad press lately, what with Middle Eastern terrorism and sex scandals at home.
This is a point that the Catholic Church has made repeatedly. It's something that all FReepers should remember the next time they start grousing about feminazis and such. How many times has Rush Limbaugh been married anyway?
Of course, they do it without any expectation. They make no demands on the spirit, no self-sacrifice. They offer the greatest fool's gold of all: the free lunch. Which of course is why it's all make-believe, a fairy tale, the stuff of nursery stories.
It's also the cult's greatest weakness. Because people eventually come to realize that if they don't give anything up, they don't get anything. So dressing up in Halloween costumes and chanting 'round the campfire with the coven doesn't make the world a better place. There's no unity since there's no central authority. The "Whatever feels good" philosophy eventually collides with itself, chaos results, and the "disciples" go back to their day jobs. Alas, Mother Earth is left to fend for herself until the next anti-Christian reactionary era.
Almost none of the old denominations retains any centralized authority that can control the doctrine, liturgy, or membership of its peripheral congregations
The Bible is the check and balance on this. You read your Bible. If the church you belong to veers away from what's taught in the Bible, you get a new church.
This guy must not know about the Masonic Temple.