Paganism is the only true religion?

Question

the monotony of reilgion bashing has inspired me to ask your thoughts on the fact that all cults have stole their myths from paganism - most likely from the egyptians. Then new cult leaders manipulated the myths to promote their new cult, whatever religion they called it. The myths were all about stories to guide everyone to make moral decisions - not to use against others or use as a reason for war

Answer 1

No self professed pagans haven't ever abedded wars. Catholics & Christians have. I do see everything as religious leaders have stole their myths from paganism symbols. None are evidently original !

Answer 2

However religions started (and I have posted stuff about that here on this forum before), We Pagans ourselves will tell you that there is no "only true religion".


Since the Divine is *manifest* in the natural world, we can learn about the Divine from observing that natural world. It is the primary source of our understanding, and the reason that Wiccans (and Pagans, generally) cannot claim to know the "one truth" or "one right way" - for just as there is no one right way to be a flower or tree or dog or bird or rock or cloud, there can be no ONE right way to experience the Divine or have a relationship with It.

So, then, what is a valid religion?

IMO, what gives a religion validity is if it inspires it's followers to practice practical, applied, impersonal compassion.

Answer 3

IN TIME the Roman Empire, in which early Christianity began, collapsed. Many historians claim that that collapse was also the time of the final victory of Christianity over paganism. Expressing a different viewpoint, Anglican bishop E. W. Barnes wrote: “As classical civilization collapsed, Christianity ceased to be the noble faith of Jesus the Christ: it became a religion useful as the social cement of a world in dissolution.”—The Rise of Christianity.

Before that collapse, during the second, third, and fourth centuries C.E., history records that in many ways those who claimed to follow Jesus kept themselves separate from the Roman world. But it also reveals the development of apostasy in doctrine, conduct, and organization, just as Jesus and his apostles had foretold. (Matthew 13:36-43; Acts 20:29, 30; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12; 2 Timothy 2:16-18; 2 Peter 2:1-3, 10-22) Eventually compromises came to be made with the Greco-Roman world, and some who claimed to be Christian adopted the world’s paganism (such as its festivals and its worship of a mother-goddess and a triune god), its philosophy (such as belief in an immortal soul), and its administrative organization (seen in the appearance of a clergy class). It was this corrupted version of Christianity that attracted the pagan masses and became a force that the Roman emperors first tried to stamp out but later came to terms with and endeavored to use to their own ends.

Church historian Augustus Neander showed the risks involved in this new relationship between “Christianity” and the world. If Christians sacrificed their separateness from the world, “the consequence would be a confusion of the church with the world . . . whereby the church would forfeit her purity, and, while seeming to conquer, would herself be conquered,” he wrote.—General History of the Christian Religion and Church, Volume 2, page 161.

This is what happened. In the early fourth century, Roman emperor Constantine tried to use the “Christian” religion of his day to cement his disintegrating empire. To this end, he granted professed Christians religious freedom and transferred some of the privileges of the pagan priesthood to their clergy class. The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: “Constantine brought the church out of its withdrawal from the world to accept social responsibility and helped pagan society to be won for the church.”

Answer 4

This is a natural part of the life cycle of any religion. New religions borrow things from old religions but put their own twists on it. The new religion grows, and then becomes more powerful, until it stagnates, becomes dogmatic, and collapses under its own weight. Then the cycle begins anew as new religions rise from the corpse of the old.

Answer 5

Probably. I have oftened maintained in family arguments that the only difference between many religions are the politics of the day that the splinter group(s) was formed.

Answer 6

No religion is the only one true religion. No one can say for sure that their religion is the right one so we shouldn'e even try and find the true one

Answer 7

Any religion is true religion for the one who believes so!

Answer 8

There is no one true religion for all, only one true religion of an individual.

Answer 9

Stories and morailty are one thing, the actual
beliefs are another.

That is, we owe a lot to our predecessors, but
"discovery of truth" doesn't wipe out everything else.

However, it does little to strengthen the
pillar this all hangs on - faith.

Answer 10

If I had the choice, it would be Atheism after Paganism.