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    Pagan Morality

    I got in a long talk today with my Christian brother, and we were talking about morals. He asked me where Pagan morals come from if not from a higher authoritative law maker. I'm curious to know how y'all would have answered that question.

    #2
    Re: Pagan Morality

    From within. To me being a Pagan is being true to yourself and accepting your morals and recognizing your flaws and your talents and embracing them both and living your life in a way that makes you feel like a good person. A lot of people jokingly say that it in the Catholic religion "if it feels good you should probably stop." Where being a Pagan is more about... if it feels good KEEP DOING IT. Because if what you are doing feels good before, during, and after then most likely it is a "good" thing.

    For example making love out of wedlock... In a Catholic view this is BAD. In a Pagan view (for some individuals NOT ALL) if it is mutual, there is love involved, and it makes you feel good... GREAT... keep doing that!
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      #3
      Re: Pagan Morality

      From understanding the consequences of our actions,and understanding how Nature will react.
      The rule is simple: You screw-up you can die senselessly, be dishonored or become an oathbreaker.

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        #4
        Re: Pagan Morality

        "An' it harm none, do as ye will". Which is from the same school of thought as "Do unto others as you would have done unto you", and other versions of anyone's "Golden Rule".
        For me personally there's also a lot of "To thine own self be true", as a subset of the first two.
        sigpic
        Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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          #5
          Re: Pagan Morality

          Each person is responsible for each word and act he/she performs - no blaming deities, parents, society, fate, blah, blah, blah. If there actually are gods, this must be what they want, or that "free will" option was a big mistake - and there's no point in obeying a deity that is that inept.

          Choose your acts wisely - what you do makes you into what you are.

          If you're a jerk, it's what you picked for yourself.
          Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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            #6
            Re: Pagan Morality

            [ I am so tired that I read "Pagan Mortality" ]

            I also think that morals should come from within. Our governments make laws, and if we break those laws we go to jail, but the other stuff comes from our own sense of right and wrong.

            I like Corbin's line Choose your acts wisely - what you do makes you into what you are.
            What you see depends on what you are looking for.

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              #7
              Re: Pagan Morality

              Morality I believe does and should come from within and yes if it fells good/right keep doing it. No one needs to tell me that helping someone/something out that needs help is the right thing to do. My whole inner self knows that and will wispier/scream in my head for days if I do not. The Gods and Goddess in nature do not want us to think we are top of the heap for we in fact are a small (but at times deadly pain in the backside to this planet)part of the big picture overall.
              The government makes laws that for the most part we may or may not chose to follow. The decision to do this comes from with in our self also unless you let others make your decisions for you. I truly think a large part of my being a Pagan is the fact that I'm responsible for my thoughts and actions. This means to me I can't simply devote a little time each week to being "Good" for an hour and come away absolved of a weeks/life time worth of wrong doing.

              I also agree with Corbin's statement of "Choose your acts wisely-what you do makes you what you are."
              Gargoyles watch over me...I can hear them snicker in the dark.


              Pull the operating handle (which protrudes from the right side of the receiver) smartly to the rear and release it.

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                #8
                Re: Pagan Morality

                Something to remember also is that your brother is viewing morality through a Judeo-Christian lens. That means he cannot be totally unbiased, and will judge what you tell him accordingly (although I have to say that I'm very pleased that you two are still able to discuss such things.)
                One thing I hate is when people do something awful and then claim 'The devil made me do it.'
                'No,' I say, YOU did it. You chose to do it and now you regret it. At least have the decency to put up your hand and say mea culpa or my bad or whatever.'
                Morality is really something we choose for ourselves. And if you read up on something like situation ethics you will realise that morality - even within some aspects of Christianity - is not fixed and can be fluid. Sometimes our morals have to respond to time and place as well as sitaution. What a person does, for example, as a matter of expediency in times of emergency might be quite different to what they do in the normal course of events.

                Remember there are all sort of magnets out there that can affect our moral compass.
                www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


                Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

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                  #9
                  Re: Pagan Morality

                  I got my morals from my parents.

                  If you borrow a cup of sugar from someone, return a full bag.
                  If you see a stranded driver, stop & help 'em out. That could be you on the side of the road one day.
                  Keep your business to yourself and you won't have any problems with other people airing your dirty laundry.
                  Tip service people of all ilk. A penny tip is a million times worse than bad service.
                  Never tell lies, only tell stories.
                  Sometimes it's ok to steal, but never from your neighbors and never in your own neighborhood.
                  It's ok to be naked, and it's ok to have sex. Just try to be respectful about it.
                  You hold doors open for anyone behind you, not just women and old folks.
                  The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

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                    #10
                    Re: Pagan Morality

                    I actually wrote a paper about this when I was taking a course about existentialism. It was from more of an atheistic existentialist point of view, but I still stand where I did when I wrote the paper.

                    Morality is relative and there's no external truth regarding morals. We construct our own systems of what is right or wrong BUT, you can have a code of morality and say something is right or wrong because you wouldn't want someone doing that same thing to you. You wouldn't want someone stealing from you, or murdering you. We as humans have developed such awareness and therefore can use it. Also, in the case of more extreme actions such as murder, you limit that other person's freedom.

                    The details as to what "freedom" is are kind of tricky (just talk to an American and a Brit about this and you'll see exactly what I mean...both will likely say the other isn't "free" because they have different cultural values), and likewise what is considered "murder" tends to vary between cultures and over time, but you can still live by the basic code of striving to live up to what you would want for yourself and granting others BASIC freedoms. I think on these grounds you can campaign for human rights in other countries without believing in absolute morality.

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                      #11
                      Re: Pagan Morality

                      My moral outlook originates from a combination of factors--how I was raised, the values and morals of the society I exist in, my experiences as a person, ect...
                      Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                        #12
                        Re: Pagan Morality

                        I can't really live by a moral code, really only ones I have are freedom, do all I can for lovers, and not dating exes of friends or family. I tend to live by societal law because I fancy my freedom whether I agree with the law, see the value in it or not.
                        -=Ex Ignorantia Ad Sapientiam; E Luce Ad Tenebras=-

                        My art and writing http://khaotyk-artwerx.tk/
                        (whole site is marked adult, the adult and gore sections are in their own section so you can opt not to view them, adult and/or gore stories are marked with an *)

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                          #13
                          Re: Pagan Morality

                          Originally posted by Branflakes View Post
                          I got in a long talk today with my Christian brother, and we were talking about morals. He asked me where Pagan morals come from if not from a higher authoritative law maker. I'm curious to know how y'all would have answered that question.
                          As a Pagan I would have answered much like I'm about to answer now (as an Atheist): Morality is learned, not ingrained. As a point of reference, I would point to the dozens of cases of Wild-Children (kids that got lost and survived through the sheer size of their balls) wherein they were nigh impossible to reintegrate with society, many of whom showed extremely violent and decidedly immoral behaviors. I would then, probably, inform him that his 10 Commandments were largely taken from Hammurabi's Laws, which were not spiritual/religious in nature, but rather were the first known recorded societal laws - laws that most people agreed were fair and necessary (and IIRC didn't have a damn thing about religion involved).

                          Then I'd probably ask him how moral it is to kill your kid because he backtalked, or stone your daughter because she was careless enough to get raped (maybe even by a Christian!)...

                          ...and that's about the time that we'd get into an argument
                          Last edited by Roknrol; 16 Mar 2011, 18:08. Reason: Added a parenthetical...

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                            #14
                            Re: Pagan Morality

                            Great thread here! Everybody has pretty much hit the nail on the head. From my own personal experiences in life, all I have to add is this. Be mindfull of what you do (or don't do), it can, and WILL come around to bite you in the backside one day! If you tend to do right by others and yourself, things will generally work themselves in the right way.

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                              #15
                              Re: Pagan Morality

                              Morality is largely constructed out of the culture expressing it, as far as I can tell. Children raised in every culture are indoctrinated in that culture's values from birth, by just about every institution (and relative) they encounter, and such enculturation is very hard to overcome, especially if the individual is able to remain "uncontaminated" by contact with people or ideas from other cultures. Rigid and narrow cultures are the most concerned about punishing individuals who are not "ideologically pure" to the shared values.

                              Things which are highly moral and necessary in one culture may be anathema or "deadly sin" in another one. If a thing is "wrong" in one culture, it really is wrong to those people enculturated in it, and will be viewed so by others of that culture. Cultures inherit -- and modify over time -- the moral values of those earlier cultures they have descended from. Christianity inherited the Roman Empire after Constantine bought its soul in exchange for political power, and look how it turned out. A thoroughly Christianized Rome became so corrupt that only then was the Empire destroyed. Pagan Rome never fell (unless you so consider its takeover by Christianity).

                              When you have only one small group, intent on their self-interest (Vatican and its stooges, anyone?) (Saddam and his Baathist party?) are making the rules for the rest of Humanity (or as much of it as it can conquer), do you really expect a system which is fair to interests other than that group's or its biggest supporters? Of course, they also often throw in some window-dressing to serve as a distraction from what they are really up to.
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