Comment by RhodoGSA
5 years ago
Rarely does anyone ever ask my religion but when people do i tell them Hellenism (Belief in the greek gods). People often give me a quizzical look - but when you study the 'religion' you find interesting beliefs that help you in modern day.
For instance, claiming you don't have 100% complete faith in the myths and gods wasn't a heretic offense. Everyone respected the fact that the stories were arch-types that displayed courage, anger, revenge, ect.
Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion.
Christianity from the very early days (The skims' under Constantine) was a very absolute one. There was a right and wrong. There was only one god and you are wrong and a heretic for believing in another.
That's why Hellenism works so well for me. I do not claim to be a moral precept but i do offer you this; A peace treaty. You can believe what you want to believe as long as you respect my own moral reasoning. In the grand scheme of things as long as there is no direct harm to you for my actions you must accept and respect them but i do not have to bow to them. It cannot be a suicidal pact, meaning if i do not believe in YOUR GOD, slip up and don't call you a 'They' or say somethings 'Gay'.
I truly believe one of the biggest problems with current society is everyone believes they are a moral precept and have all the answers. Love your neighbor.
>Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion.
More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. After all there is only one sky. It doesn't make any sense to think that our sky god is different from their sky god, or our sun god is different from their sun god, though being gods they can manifest in different forms.
But then it's shocking how many people seem to think that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship different gods. There's only one god of Abraham, which arguably Hindus call Brahman. They're all just names and stories, there's only one reality*.
* citation needed
>More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods.
Ironically, Christianity kind of did the same thing, rather believing everyone else's gods were just demons or sorcerers in league with Satan. In further irony, this led to a lot of syncretism of pagan beliefs and rituals into Christianity.
Note that they understood the myths to be archetypes, but outright atheism was a charge punishable by death. That's what they got Socrates on.
Also note that they were pretty limited in their tolerance. If people got pissed at you, they wrote your name on a piece of pottery (ostrakon). If enough names were gathered, you were banished -- the root of the word "ostracized".
On the upside, they were very tolerant of transgender and intersex individuals. Note in particular the case of Callo/Callon, who changed their sex and pronouns.
I'm certainly not a religious expert, but from my understanding Christianity's main innovations were not monotheism or absolute morality. Those concepts had been around for a very long time and Christianity adopted those ideas that from others and then added their own innovations on top of that.