Taamar wrote:
This is what worries me. It's exactly the same attitude that makes people fly planes into buildings. We've seen it in the inquisition, in the English civil war, the witch burnings, and more recently McCarthyism (in a less religious context).
Aside from the fact that McCarthyism is a totally nonreligious context it's only the same religious attitude in the most broad sense. In fact McCarthyism illustrates perfectly that religion really has nothing to do with this attitude so much as fear that ideas different than their own will become prevelant.
There is no reason it should be "worrying" you. It's a very long leap from "I think that what you believe is incorrect" to "I'm willing to kill you over it." Yes, this means there is a double standard that they have towards you, but it is absurd for you to worry about possible religious violence because people get their panties in a twist when you say "Blessed Be". Yes, there will always be some people who will engage in violence, but religious violence in our society is a small footnote of violence in general; most religious violence in the U.S. other than that perpetrated by outside attackers is conducted by people who would take any excuse to be violent.
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I'm stuck between acting as if I'm ashamed of my beliefs, which are a part of my daily life, or being accused of flaunting them.
Yes, you are. That's part of the unavoidable fact that there are assholes in the world. However, you can't reasonably ask that the assholes be ashamed of their beliefs (i.e. hide them from you) and then accuse them of flaunting them when they don't if you want to complain about this. You can either say "If they're going to flaunt them, so am I" or "I'm going to hide mine and then complain what assholes they are for flaunting theirs" but trying to have it both ways looks hypocritical.
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If I went to THEIR house and suggested that they come to a pagan gather you can bet your *** they'd calle me worse that 'overly agressive'. Of course, that would just be part of their belief system, right?
Whether it is or not, and regardless of what you mean by "worse" neither you nor they would be "aggressive" by going and knocking on the other's door, much less overly so. There's nothing aggressive about knocking on someone's door. That is why we have front doors, walks, and addresses, so a person can make contact with you. If you don't wish to continue after they've done so that's up to you.
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I should also point out that when you point out that you're straight, you're pointing out something that, insofar as we can tell, is fixed about your physiology. Religion, on the other hand, is not necessarily fixed. People can and do find, abandon, and change their faiths based on quite a few things. From their point of view, your response of "I'm a Pagan" reveals that you are in need, whereas me saying I'm straight is not going to reveal to a gay person that if only he keeps at it I'll catch the gay from him. They don't know that you won't eventually change your mind because some people do change their minds.
That is a very good point
Thank you.
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No more than the initial invitation was rubbing my nose in the fact that they feel safe enough in their majority to go door-to-door.
Except that they AREN'T in the majority (they're a small minority of what actually is the majority), and probably DON'T feel precisely safe, nor do they care about it. In fact, feeling that they're doing it despite possible danger would make them feel they were doing the "right thing".
Furthermore, they aren't "rubbing your nose in it". Like I said, that's what front doors are for. They can't read your mind and clearly some people DO welcome the invitation or they'd have gone to other methods.
I fully sympathize with your annoyance at their boorishness, but trying to paint it as some sort of unfair advantage they have is really not accurate.
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If you know it, then you should readily grasp that a major aspect of Christianity is that worship of other gods is not okay.
Killing infidels is a major point of fundamentalist Islam. That's rather more extreme than mere disapproval, but isn't it reassuring that pagans don't deeply believe that Christian souls are cleansed by fire?
Believeing that something is not okay is not the same as believing it IS ok to kill the person doing it, and it is a tremendous leap from one to the other. Saying "I'm afraid you might kill me because you disapprove of my behavior" ranges from unreasonable to paranoid.
As for it being comforting, yes it's rather comforting that I don't have to worry about pagans blowing things up, but I would be far more comforted if I saw muslims turning pagan.
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Some people open up with a barrage of blasphemy and abuse at the first sign of a cross or Bible because they just assume anyone who displays Christianity in any way is a follower of Reverend Phelps.
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Yeah, well, he's the loudest. Fortunately our pagan crazies (like the previously mentioned GlytterSong) look more like crazies and less like zealots.
For now, yes. I dn't predict any barrage of pagan jihadists any time soon, but it's really only a matter of time before you get your token crusaders too.