Two Christian children produce a home-made rap targeted at ‘pagan atheists’, asking us to see the light. It is kind of cute actually. What I would like is to have someone follow-up on these children say ten years from now to see if they are still believers.
Seth says
I could only stand to listen to thirty-seven seconds of that; I predict that no matter what the kids believe, in a decade they’ll just be embarrassed by having this out in public.
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The title of this post actually reminds me that Christopher Hitchens occasionally labelled himself a ‘Protestant atheist’, usually after the clever joke about the Irish militant roadblock. He seems to have meant that his values and his inquiry and his ethics had a fundamentally Protestant character to them, a legacy he would not abandon simply because its organising principle was vacuous.
In that vein, I sometimes identify myself as a ‘pagan atheist’. I don’t believe in any gods outside of the human mind, but I have a much greater respect for pre-Christian societies and ethics and philosophy than I do for post-Roman European thought. I particularly like what seem to be Celtic and Nordic ways of living in nature and relating to one another, and I will always be resentful at the near-total erasure of my Celtic and Germanic ancestral cultures by the vile death cult from Judea.
Artor says
Hi Seth, me too. I saw the post title, “Pagan Atheists,” and I thought it might be about something else. I’ve been a pagan atheist for 20 years now, and a regular atheist for almost 10 before that.
cafeeineaddicted says
Well, you can try and look them up now. This video was first put up 7 years ago.
Here’s the original.
smrnda says
I would say I’m a Jewish atheist, but it seems kind of redundant. /snark
On ‘pagan atheist’ I would use the term more for people who engage in pagan practices but who don’t actually believe in their gods and goddesses as actual entities -- some of them do, some of them seem to think it’s more just a way of personalizing concepts, nature etc.
John Morales says
There are two senses of the term ‘pagan’: (1) having a religion other than Christianity and (2) not being Christian.
So, ‘pagan atheist’ is either oxymoronic or (as smrnda notes) otiose.
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On the video, I find it much like any other indoctrinated kiddies’ posturing: sad and mildly depressing.
(But perhaps, as Mano notes, they will eventually overcome their childhood indoctrination. I did.)
doublereed says
Pagan Atheists is the name of my Black Sabbath cover band.