Description

Paganism is rooted in experiential understanding and pluralism. At face value, these seem like pleasant ideas, but as Lao Tzu says, “the truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” I will discuss the two general frameworks for spiritual discernment and critique the pagan method.

YouTube video presentation of this argument here.

Two Frameworks

If you ask a classical theist why they believe in God, they’re usually going to propose God as the solution to concrete, universally recognizable logical concerns, like the origin and sustenance of the universe. We can see a quick example in Thomas Aquinas’ “second way.” He argues there are simultaneous causal regressions: you are caused by your organs, they are caused by cells, they are caused by molecules, and so on. But if every step of the regression relied on another step, then nothing would have causal power at all. A TV plugged into an infinite series of power strips would never turn on. So caused-causers must terminate in an uncaused-causer, and he goes on to prove this must be God. Classical theists take a similar approach to religious doctrine, appealing to historical evidence of some divine authority communicating particular beliefs to the absolute exclusion of contradictory beliefs.

What about pagans? Pagans do not attempt to justify their spiritual systems by appealing to objective fact-finding and authority, but intuition, experience, and tradition; that is, the mythos takes priority over the logos. This is why pagans are usually pantheists (God is the universe), panentheists (the universe is part of God), dualists (dual opposing forces), or polytheists (a court of gods) despite none of these having anywhere near the explanatory power and evidential weight Aquinas’ transcendental God does. This same thought process applies to doctrines. It’s not as if a notable contingent of infants are discussing taxes fresh out of the womb such that we need to appeal to reincarnation to explain it, or that rocks regularly start talking such that we need to appeal to animism; rather, these are proposed on spiritual bases and supported logically post-hoc.

This approach leads pagans into what I call “radical pluralism.” Gandhi demonstrated this mindset when responding to a question about his religious affiliation with, “Yes, [I am a Hindu]. I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.” On the one hand, radical pluralism sounds uncontroversial – don’t bother each other with dogmas, live and let live. But there is a real tension here, because radical pluralism is a dogma. Paganism defends itself from Abrahamic proselytization not with evidence and fact-finding – a game it could never win – but with system-level opposition. When the Christian missionary appears promising the truth, the pagan does not respond with syllogisms, but with the dogmatic assertion that there’s more to life than truth. The difference between pagans and classical theists is not facts, but paradigms. So, let us discuss the pagan paradigm.

Radical Pluralism

Radical pluralism markets itself as the harmless, enlightened alternative to pompous dogmatic bickering. But in reality, a world where truth belongs to each individual is far from harmless and enlightened. Radical pluralism offers no defense when intuition leads to dark places. Consider these words: “These Christians who talk of men ruling this world, must stop. Man is nothing special; he is but a part of this world… [he must] acquire the right sense of proportion about what is above us, about how we are woven into this cycle.” These are not the words of a peaceful shaman. They are the words of Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Holocaust. Now, my point is not that paganism is going to inevitably lead to another Holocaust. My point is that paganism is defenseless against and often encourages the sort of spiritual bankruptcy that inspired the Holocaust.

The pagan heritage includes a long history of ritual prostitution, human sacrifice, infanticide, and ritual torture. Many purport that we have civilized beyond these things, that we can adopt paganism without endangering our psyches. But the Reichsführer’s words (and actions) shed light on the fact that human nature hasn’t changed. Is it so difficult to understand the prevalence of human sacrifice among cultures which did not hold man in special regard, made in the very image of God with inalienable dignity, but which considered him merely a part of nature? Under this paradigm, is it so big a leap to go from hunting animals for sport to slaughtering infants to appease invented gods? Is it difficult to understand how this attitude could lead to inhumane social structures like the caste system, or influence Indian widows to voluntarily undergo Sati, ritual immolation upon the deaths of their husbands?

Indeed, behind the veil of inoffensive inclusivity, paganism hides a deep spiritual poverty. Standing against another armed with the truth is a greater act of love than standing beside them in their error. There’s an old story about General Charles Napier, commander of British forces in India, encountering some Hindu priests complaining about the illegalization of Sati. They accused him of interfering with their cultural practices, to which he replied, “Be it so. The burning of widows is your custom… but my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them. Let us all act according to national customs.” Though I do not wish to glorify imperialism, I certainly wish to glorify Napier’s actions. Imperialist or not, in that moment he loved the Hindu widows with a greater love than their own priestly countrymen.

Now, if you too believe that Napier’s words were justified, you must ask yourself why. He was an invader, he overrode 3,000 years of Hindu custom and likely even the consent of many widows. That doesn’t seem to reflect a radically pluralistic, mythos-oriented mindset. It seems to reflect a mindset which is logical, uncompromising, and grounded in Christian moral values. If you yourself are a pagan and find yourself willing to accept this mindset in this instance, don’t feel alone. Gandhi the Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Buddhist-Jew was more than happy to make use of such reasoning to argue against Sati himself! If radical pluralism were truly sufficient, Gandhi would have just accepted Sati as a valid custom. His refusal to do so is a silent admission that logic is not merely a post-hoc cheerleader for intuition, but the necessary master of it.

Classical theists operate within a shared, logical framework where questions can be posed and answered, undergirded by the understanding that logical conclusions carry an objective ethical obligation to assent. If Christians and Jews disagree, it’s like physicists arguing about competing theories. If pagans disagree, it’s like people arguing over whose favorite color is better. The difference is one of principle, and pagans like Gandhi recognize this. But if a logical framework oriented towards objective truth is the most powerful tool in our toolkit, why would we ever subordinate it to radical pluralism? What sense does it make to appeal to classical logical frameworks to answer solemn moral questions like the permissibility of Sati, and then turn around and appeal to intuition to justify the spirituality which defines one’s life?

As a final note, I suspect many neopagans will retreat into a defense of insignificance. Harmless hobbies like astrology, divination, or chakra work don’t define their lives, so it’s no big deal. But this very defense betrays the spiritual poverty I have described! By what metric does one deem these activities harmless? According to the three Abrahamic religions, occult practices are not harmless, but are “abominable” affronts to God (Tanakh, New Testament, Quran) and dangerous cooperation with evil spirits (Tanakh, New Testament, Quran). Neopagans will happily ignore this unified testimony and appeal to their intuition to declare the occult safe. But what is this if not turning spirituality into a playground? This willingness to contort the divine for one’s own personal pleasure is perhaps the ultimate expression of the radical pluralist’s error: believing that the spiritual world is only as powerful as we allow it to be.

Conclusion

Having the wrong ideas about life is dangerous. Paganism appears uncontroversial and enlightened: live and let live, believe what makes you happy. But in reality, paganism encourages the groundless imposition of personal intuitions onto a world which may well not reflect them. Believing things which just aren’t so is the definition of insanity, and assigning transcendental value to unsubstantiated claims is a recipe for disaster, as we see from history. We must approach the divine with the same solemnity we would approach a widow in mortal danger. This means applying logic to search for truth, wherever it may lead, regardless of our own predilections. It means rejecting the inebriation of spiritual intuition in favor of sobriety and discipline. And this, of course, means rejecting paganism.

Are you tempted to disagree with my position? Then I ask you this: do I have an ethical duty to assent to your disagreement if proven logical? If yes, then you concede the argument that we do have objective ethical and logical obligations. If no, then even making such an argument is a performative contradiction.