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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in polyatheism

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Polyatheism

So, the cat died.

Me, I'm not an Afterlife person. I think that when the breath is gone, we go back into the grand dance of everything, the eternal sabbat of the atoms. And this seems to me both beautiful and good.

But as I move through a house newly filled with absences, stillnesses where I expect movement, it somehow consoles me to think of the Antlered sitting cross-legged with all the animals around Him, and old Mr. Rudycat snugged up in His lap. Or, more likely, draped around His neck and across His shoulders like a black-and-white fur collar, but with a pink nose. And probably switching Him in the face with a long, black tail from time to time.

Yep, that's the Rude all right.

Emily was the first kid to grow up in the local pagan community, and you couldn't help but feel a sense of investment in her. Smart, talented, charismatic, it was evident to everyone that she was going to be High Priestess of Minnesota some day, if not the first pagan president. When she died unexpectedly at 21, her death shook us all.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Apparently there is something like nine times as much to do and explore in the spirit as there is physically, but without the burd
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    In the greater scheme of things, the loss of a pet seems a small grief, but it's a grief nonetheless. Thanks, Mark.
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    Beautifully said. As a fellow atheist Pagan, I like the framing and I'm sorry for your loss.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I once read that we lay down our path through the afterlife in the dreams we have when we are asleep. That we know the dead live
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Oh gods. You mean the scheduling crunch doesn't let up after death?
Fighting the Good Fight: Steven Dillon's Case for Polytheism

In his new book, The Case for Polytheism, philosopher Steven Dillon sets out to prove that belief in the existence of multiple “disembodied consciousnesses” (i.e. gods) can be rational, logically coherent, and intellectually credible.

And, for the most part, he succeeds—for one already inclined to belief, at least. Though this diehard polyatheist (= non-believer, but culturally polytheist), for one, remains unconvinced, Dillon is hardly to be faulted for not achieving the impossible. To have attempted the impossible in the first place in itself constitutes heroic endeavor.

Dillon's argument, however, is handicapped by an unexamined premise that he shares with John Michael Greer, whose World Full of Gods is also a notable contribution to the field of what the late Isaac Bonewits was wont to call “polytheology.” This is the premise that all gods ever worshiped by anyone, pagan or non-pagan, have the same ontological existence.

Now, to contend that many gods exist is by no means the same as contending that all gods exist. Is the polytheist to be permitted no skepticism whatsoever? Is to love the Many necessarily to be party to everything that the human heart has ever dreamed?

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  • tehomet
    tehomet says #
    Lost Gods of the Witches! Bring it on.
  • Lizzy Hood
    Lizzy Hood says #
    I will be looking forward to reading your book, sir.

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