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David Aaronovitch has a go at the Reverend Angela Tilby in today's Grauniad who, he feels, abused her spot on Thought For The Day to launch an unprovoked attack on paganism
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You can say what you like about pagans, but just try bad-mouthing one of the monotheisms in this way, and see what happens. This is partly because most of us unthinkingly subscribe to the Whig Theory of Religious Development, in which (to quote the Catholic Encyclopaedia) religionsdeveloped upwardsfrom totemism, animism, solar or astral myth, and nature worship, via zoolatry and polytheism, eventually to reach the enlightened and civilised state of monotheism. So we begin with millions of spirits, sprites and demons and advance, inexorably, whittling as we go, until we have just one omnipotent deity. Then along comes Richard Dawkins and tries to reduce that figure still further.
But actually the informal beatification of Diana is no more pagan than, say, the beatification of Padre Pio (the stigmata'ed priest made St Pio of Pietralcina just last year), or any of the other canonisations of the Catholic church. Catholics try, rather unconvincingly, to show how conferring sainthood is different in principle to the pagan apotheosis (the process that made Claudius, for instance, into a God), but the distinction doesn't quite wash. Yet Tilby did not use Catholicism as her point of criticism.
After noting that monotheism is anti-pluralistic, and contributes to intolerance, he concludes:
Actually, it is all about sex. Pagan religions tend to be about a respect for, and a connection with, nature. So, as the Catholic Encyclopaedia notes, it was in the pagan fertility cults associated with thedying and rising godthat theworst perversions existed. Old Ishtar, Cybele (later Artemis, later Diana) and Astarte all had their temple whores, and their lewd rites.
Lewd rites: that's exactly what I'd like more of on Thought For The Day. And less Angela Tilby.
Why Diana is as good a god as any - The Guardian, 15th July 2003.
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at 21:22. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
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Comments
1: Posted by: Larry Lurex | July 16, 2003 11:33 AM
Actually, if they brought back temple whores, there may actually be a rise in attendance (boom! boom!)
At least then they could keep sex holy.
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