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Halls of the Dark Muse

My Gods Are Better Than Your God

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by
Dark Muse
, 06-01-2012 at 02:35 PM (1147 Views)
I mentioned a while back how I was enamoring myself within Ancient Greek, and as part of that I was rereading "The Odyssey" of which I am now finished with, but I was reading it as part of a discussion for an online book group in which the discussion of the book is still taking place.

One of the things of which I have noticed is that a couple individuals in the course of the discussion bring up Christianity, as a comparison to the Ancient Greek religion and the differences between the gods/god and belief systems, which that in itself is fine, but there is a tendency which I noticed of people making remarks implying how much better the Christian God is, and making jibes and insults about the Greek gods or the Ancient Greek belief system.

And that I find irksome. If you want to discuss the religions from a literary point of view, that is one thing, but you don't need to be disrespecting.

As a Pagan the Greek gods are like my peeps. It would be as if I entered into a literary discussion of the Bible, but instead of just commenting upon the text itself kept making Anti-Christian remarks.

It has been a great effort of restraint upon my part not to turn the whole thing into a theological debate, and offer some of my opinions about Christianity in the discussion. But I have been trying to keep my own comments focused on just discussion the text itself and not let them draw me out into a whole my gods are better than you God thing.
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  1. LadyLuck's Avatar
    What you have detailed is one of the many reasons that I very rarely discuss religion I'm not adverse to other belief systems, more the attitude of many people in that they believe theirs is superior to others' beliefs. Don't all religions kind of get at the same things... what behaviors are socially acceptable or desirable and the consequences of not adhering to them?
  2. Dark Muse's Avatar
    The thing that really gets to me, is that is it really necessary at all to even bring up Christianity in a discussion of the Odyssey? While it might be useful to the discussion to talk about Greek Mythology and Greek culture, I don't really see where mentioning ones personal beliefs is at all useful to understanding the book. No one in the discussion even knows I am a Pagan, not because I mind if they do, but because it simply would not be relevant to the discussion to bring it up.
  3. LadyLuck's Avatar
    I think the comparison of poly and mono theistic beliefs is relevant, but not in the sense of one being better than another. That said, it is entirely unnecessary to say where you as an individual fall on the spectrum. Christianity may be useful in the discussion, but it would be highly irrelevant to say I'm Catholic. I can see why you are so frustrated, but perhaps it may be better to entirely bow out of the discussion. I catch myself doing it quite frequently.
  4. Dark Muse's Avatar
    I had considered bowing out if any more comments of that nature were made. I would not mind if it was done in a purely scholarly/literary point of view, but there is such a clear condescending attitude behind the comments of ha ha I am so glad I am a Christian and not one of those Heathens.
  5. qimissung's Avatar
    If they feel so strongly that way then why are they even bothering to read the literature of Ancient Greece????

    I would find it hard to continue on. I admire your tenacity.