Dion

Rant about 'teaching men not to rape'.

@Dynamo Frokane If you want to play devils' advocate you should take a look at rape laws across the world. There's a lot of countries where a man legally simply cannot be raped.

And even in some US states the laws are clear - you cannot get raped as a man unless someone penetrates you.

Second off, calling me/others MRA's right off the bat is kind of stupid too. Not that I'm not used to that from you by now.

It's important to realize too that the world doesn't revolve around America. Where I live, we have clearly established boundaries. Children in school (primary school, age 10-12) are taught about sex, drugs, rape etc. Just because the USA sucks at everything doesn't mean the rest of the world has to.

And actually, teaching college kids not to snatch a woman is exactly what's happening.

Here we are

What happened to you RP? You used to be cool!

@SmileyJaws I just don't find any RP's I'm interested in outside of the 1x1 section nowadays. Whenever I do a casual RP with my friends, it turns into 'post however much you want' rather quickly. I've learned to just stick with the people I know recently - helps me from getting disappointed with lackluster posts.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@Buddha Within Islam we more or less consider Jews and Christians as heretics as well. They're seen as practicing what could be described as "degenerated Islam", with muslims viewing ourselves as the most correct form of the original Abrahamic religion.

@Nerevarine

Aye, but they're different from sects/streams because they have established religious systems (popehood, Jewish councils) where as regular heretics don't usually have these kind of things on organized scales.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@Celaira Because paganism = bad. Christians called the Norse people pagan, they called the Romuvan pagan, they called the Native Americans pagan.

Basically, paganism is a collection name for any religion that isn't Abrahamic - at least that's always been my understanding.

So you have 'the accepted faiths' from a Christian/Muslim/Jews perspective:

• Christians
• Jews
• Muslims

They all dislike eachother to a degree but they all also agree that there's 1 god, and that he had disciples. The Jews killed Jesus, Quran mentions Jesus, and the Bible makes some mentions of Islamic figures.

They're like 3 versions of the same story.

Then you have the heretics;

• Reformed
• Protestant
• Shi'a (if you're Sunni)
• Sunni (if you're Shi'a)
• There's infinites of these. Any cult theoretically is a heretic cult.

Basically these fall within the 3 main Abrahamic religions but do not follow the 'standard' teachings. So they are part of the right faith but with the wrong interpretation.

Then you have pagans.

• Shinto (Japan)
• Taoism (China)
• Native American beliefs (USA)
• Norse-paganism (Scandinavia, Finland, Northern-Germany, Netherlands)
• Eastern Paganism (Slavic regions)
• Pff.. any religion that's not part of the main 3.

Therefore paganism is basically saying 'this isn't a good faith' because the word pagan originated from Christian viewpoints. It has the connotation that they're bad (though, honestly, you'll find that 99.99% of the pagans don't give a shit and own the label nowadays).

A more proper term would be Heathen, because 'Norse' pagans lived in the heath/meadows which is where that name came from. The Christians never went far north enough to see that a lot of pagans actually lived in snowy pine forests.

I have honestly never heard anyone call them 'the old gods' and that sounds more like a 'look at me, I'm interesting' thing because 'the old gods' can literally mean anything from Russian old gods (Yarilo, etc) to Norse old Gods (Odin, etc) to Slavic old gods (God, I don't know) to some ancient Native American spirits.

Nowadays people that follow Odin also call themselves Odinists but I've always found that name a bit stupid. I'm just Norse. I don't care what others call it - it's clear to me what they mean most of the time.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@ActRaiserTheReturned T-that's remarkably accurate.

Pagans did have a lot of sex. Adultery wasn't really an existing thing either - so you can go around and make a lot of husbands mad.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@Nerevarine I see. I mean that's not a 100% bad reason but if it's the only reason then yeah, I'm inclined to agree. You'll find that in most paganism trends - whenever ethnic tensions rise, paganism sees a growth in members if only because people cling to the little tradition they have.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@Nerevarine Is it cause the priest died? I imagine that shattered whatever little remains of the Romuvan there were. :/

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

Aside from the strong elements of animal sacrifice, curses based on seeking revenge, and the spooky imagery shared by a lot of former slave religions, very little! Santeria is a beautiful religion I encourage every pagan to research, based moreso on purity and destiny than the voodoo reputation it gets in Hollywood.

@DeadBeatWalking

I can see how that'd scare some people off. I did some reading, it sounds pretty interesting. Not my cup of tea faith wise, but definitely my cup of tea for reading material/drawing inspiration from it.

(Positive) Pagan/Nature Religion/Spirituality discussion

@DeadBeatWalking I noticed the same thing with edgy people trying to make my religion into something .. less.

Except it was Americans that, once the TV show 'Vikings' came out, decided that they were like 1% Swedish and thus were vikings.

Anyway I've never heard of Santeria, what's so 2spooky about it?

Rant about 'teaching men not to rape'.

@SmileyJaws Word. I agree.