Just because the big aggressively-hegemonizing monotheist traditions are the worst about the fear-mongering, logical fallacies, and magical thinking doesn't mean they're the only ones who do it.
However, they do get a lot of attention when atheists are talking about religion, mainly because they're the ones who are doing the most oppressing of everybody... including us, and including Pagans.
If you would feel more included were I to talk about the problems I have with the Wiccan traditions I've come into contact with (such as with the Wiccan circle I've been part of for the past few years), I can do that. However, there are a couple of reasons I don't drag that particular group out and flog them on my various blogs. The first is that they're seriously not as heinous as the monotheist traditions that piss me off more, and they're not even as heinous as a lot of other Pagan traditions and communities. It's why when I talk about Christianity being homophobic I talk more about the RCC than the United Methodists. It's not that they don't both count as Christians, it's that the RCC provides the most numerous and clear-cut examples of common ways that the nasty stuff plays out.
So actually, in fact, I do have a problem with a lot of Pagan traditions. I'm not neglecting to mention them because I've never encountered them, and I'm not neglecting to mention them because they have never done anything worthy of mention. It's that there are so many worse traditions that so much better exemplify the problems I'm talking about. If I were talking about pseudoscience and quack medicine, I'd leave the Christians alone and start talking about Pagans, but that's more my partners pet issue than my own.
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chiming
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Date: 2010-11-09 07:46 pm (UTC)From:However, they do get a lot of attention when atheists are talking about religion, mainly because they're the ones who are doing the most oppressing of everybody... including us, and including Pagans.
If you would feel more included were I to talk about the problems I have with the Wiccan traditions I've come into contact with (such as with the Wiccan circle I've been part of for the past few years), I can do that. However, there are a couple of reasons I don't drag that particular group out and flog them on my various blogs. The first is that they're seriously not as heinous as the monotheist traditions that piss me off more, and they're not even as heinous as a lot of other Pagan traditions and communities. It's why when I talk about Christianity being homophobic I talk more about the RCC than the United Methodists. It's not that they don't both count as Christians, it's that the RCC provides the most numerous and clear-cut examples of common ways that the nasty stuff plays out.
So actually, in fact, I do have a problem with a lot of Pagan traditions. I'm not neglecting to mention them because I've never encountered them, and I'm not neglecting to mention them because they have never done anything worthy of mention. It's that there are so many worse traditions that so much better exemplify the problems I'm talking about. If I were talking about pseudoscience and quack medicine, I'd leave the Christians alone and start talking about Pagans, but that's more my partners pet issue than my own.