Man, the [adjective] Animal

Omissions, corrections

Aristotle may have gotten a lot wrong, but I have to join MacIntyre in recognizing the Nicomachean Ethics as presenting a fundamentally sound way of approaching ethics. This is why I was profoundly disappointed by the way After Virtue dismissed the discussion of human nature and human goods found in book 1 of the NE. MacIntyre points out (rightly) that it is neither practicable nor desirable for a modern to accept Aristotle's teleological biology, but fails to offer any sort of replacement or updated biology--the tradition takes on the role that the biological teleology had.

This is a serious error. Aristotle did not open his discussion of ethics with a discussion of human nature for no reason and at random. He clearly and distinctly understood that a discussion of human goods has to begin with what humans are--if humans were something else, what is good for us to do would likewise be different. I am strongly tempted to generalize this and say that all ethical systems begin with, are underpinned by, and presuppose some particular view of what humans really are. Figuring out whether this claim holds up would be quite a challenge, but if it does, I think that it might elucidate in a yet clearer way why modern moral debates are in such disrepair--e.g., why it is so difficult to find a compelling reason to prefer utilitarianism over deontology or vice versa. But I digress.

In doing a bit of research and reading for this post, I was gratified to find that MacIntyre has changed his tune on this topic. In the introduction to his latest book, Dependent Rational Animals, (Thank you, Google Books!) MacIntyre falls back from this error, and outdoes himself in correcting it, spending the next 150 pages or so sketching out the philosophical importance of understanding that we are, in fact, animals. (And animals dependent on others, frequently subject to pain and illness) I regret that I have not yet found the money and time to acquire and read this book.

The various Paganisms each have their own approaches to answering what sort of thing a person is, and there are significant variations along with commonalities. Not all of these answers are equal; some are quite insightful, and some are thoughtless and perhaps even a bit dangerous.

The task of laying out exactly what humans are--what makes us distinctly "human"--is by its nature quixotic. Even to ask the question is to commit to certain epistemological and ontological ideas that could easily come under question. And while many of the aspects and faculties of humans are obvious and not very controversial, their relative ranking of importance to the human constitution (if there be such a thing) and how they are related to each other and to the whole are not at all obvious. And perhaps especially depressing, nearly every attempt to date to answer the question of what a human is has been astoundingly narrow, universalizing aspects of a particular culture to all humans.

Nonetheless, I would like to take this task in hand and give at least a broad answer.


We're Animals

I think MacIntyre is right in exploring the philosophical implications of our "animality." For millenia, philosophers have downplayed this aspect of ourselves, but it almost disappears from the philsophical consciousness of the West in the modern period. For Descartes, all bodies extended in space and time were passive, only reacting to external action, either fr0m other bodies or from mind. Animals, he believed, utterly lacked mind, and were nothing more than complex machines.

Still later, Immanuel Kant went even further, going so far as to say that all true ethics must be grounded in an understanding of personhood that has absolutely nothing to do with what kind bodies we have. What is moral for a human is the same thing that would be moral for space aliens, computer intelligences, or spiritual beings like angels.

Such short-sightedness is appalling, but not to be entirely unexpected. After all, preceding the modern period was the Medieval period, in which the Christian cosmology dominated the world. In the creation of the world, the animals were made on the fifth day, and humans on the sixth. Only to humans were given the gift of souls and eternal life, and the world would someday be destroyed and remade to give the righteous humans a place to live, while all animals would perish. In the wake of a milieu so pervaded with human exceptionalism, it is not surprising that Aristotle's simple observation, that man is an animal, was given little place.

Like on the Discovery Channel

Few thinkers have given due attention to this most fundamental aspect of ourselves. Even speaking about us as "embodied" is misleading; it almost implies a subterranean suspicion that we are in fact fundamentally disembodied, that we only have bodies, and are minds, in a kind of Cartesian dualism. I know of only a few modern thinkers who have given due consideration to it, particularly Merleau-Ponty (with whom I am less familiar than I would like). John Gray's Straw Dogs, for all its faults, is grounded in a keen awareness that we are animals.

Even so, when the awareness that we are animals arises, it is always with the consciousness that there is something different about humans, something exceptional. There is always some adjective. Man is the rational animal, the social animal, the spiritual animal. Man is the game-playing animal or the laughing animal. Man is the tool-using animal.

The adjective always refers to our advanced mental abilities, our perception and logic, our complex social arrangments or the subtle spectrum of human emotion. This is the realm at which morality, for the most part, operates. Advanced moral capability is at the very least part and parcel of our sociality and rationality. But we must be careful. All too often, in our moral reasonings and social negotiations, we forget entirely that we are animals--or at the very least, we fail to come to terms with some of the implications.

The whole range of implications is too broad for this post, which has already grown too long, so I will narrow my focus. I first want to clarify one thing that is not an implication: the importance and value of our cultural creations, philosophies, religions, and so on. Art is no less beautiful, the transport of mystic insight no less significant, that they are done by animals. We need to rid ourselves of the idea of "just" an animal. The Darwinian discovery that we share our ancestors with the rest of the living world ought not tell us that we are less valuable; rather, we ought to recognize that the plants and animals around us literally are (however distantly) our cousins, aunts, and uncles and treat them accordingly.

The implication I want to focus on is that we must take seriously that humans are just one element in a larger ecology, that we occupy an ecological niche and depend on the web of life to sustain us. If the virtue of justice is to be considered as giving to each his due, there is much that is due to the non-human world. Without necessarily advocating for their position, I want to point out the deep ecologists as an example of one way to work out this revised understanding of justice.

But how does this relate to Paganism? How can a polytheistic or earth-centered religion work this out? I'll see if I can put the pieces together in something like a coherent way in the next post in my series on MacIntyre.

The Perils of a Single Vision

Monolithic, Up To a Point

One of the elements of the Aristotelian tradition is the view that the ideal-typical human is of a singular type. There is one best way to be, one way to be perfectly virtuous. This coheres well with the view that there is one best way for the State to be, and finally, on Aristotle's view, a single Unmoved Mover whose fundamental unity is the telos--end or function--toward which all things aim. The world, for Aristotle, is a cosmos, an ordered unity. And so it is that Aristotle, like Plato, believed that there is one kind of best man, the man that has all the virtues. And importantly, the virtues will never come into conflict with each other. Confusion about what to do is confusion about what the good is, and it can be remedied with the application of clear thinking and philosophizing.

This view of ethics is more than a little optimistic. For MacIntyre, the tradition more or less takes the place of the cosmos and the Aristotelian biology. Telos is provided by common agreements about what constitute the good for man. And it is never entirely self-consistent; as I noted in my last post, the struggle to clarify and understand the good is an integral part of the tradition.

Nonetheless, even for MacIntyre, differences about what constitutes the good--and thus what constitute the virtues--seem to be framed in terms of conflict. One might suppose, from his scanty words on the topic, that whichever conflict is present at the moment is not irresolvable, for the conflict presupposes certain broad agreements, and the terms used by the various sides are commensurable. Though resolving this conflict will lead to another, it can be resolved. And it remains the case that all interlocutors within the tradition agree that there is some best way to display the virtues in a particular time and place, even if they cannot agree what that way might be.

That MacIntyre would seem to take this view is unsurprising. Much of After Virtue is dedicated to the task of showing that the abandonment of the Aristotelian tradition by society as a whole underlies the fractured and irresolvable nature of modern ethical conflicts. For instance, in the middle of his discussion of Sophocles, MacIntyre writes:

There is a sharply contrasting modern tradition which holds that the variety and heterogeneity of human goods is such that their pursuit cannot be reconciled in any single moral order and that consequently any social order which either attempts such a reconciliation or which enforces the hegemony of one set of goods over all other is bound to turn into a straightjacket and very probably a totalitarian straightjacket for the human condition... I take it that this view entails a heterogeneity of the virtues as well of goods in general and that choice between rival claims in respect of the virtues has the same central place in the moral life for such theorists that choice between goods in general does. And where judgments express choices of this kind, we cannot characterize them as either true or false. (AV 143)

This way of characterizing the idea is typical within After Virtue. While MacIntyre does not say outright or explicitly that he believes a tradition is to be characterized as the sort of unity I outline above, he certainly implies it. I wish I knew if he wrote more clearly on the topic elsewhere; I can only assume, since he has characterized himself elsewhere as having an Augustinian Thomist viewpoint on moral theory, that my interpretation is more or less correct.

But even within After Virtue, there are indications that this understanding is not the only position that the savvy virtue theorist might be able to support.

Pleasures, not Pleasure; Goods, not the Good

MacIntyre at one point presents a blistering critique of utilitarianism. He attempts--and, I think, succeeds--to show that it is not possible to simply add up the various pleasures and subtract the various pains to determine an action that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. How does one compare, he asks, the pleasure of drinking coffee on a bright sunny morning with the pleasure of swimming in the ocean? As he points out, there is not merely quantitative but qualitative differences between various pleasures. They are incommensurable.

Likewise, the goods internal to the various practices can be incommensurable. The goods internal to playing chess are not the goods internal to playing basketball--though there may be commonalities and similarities. The goods internal to practices--and thus what might be considered virtues specific to those practices--might even come into conflict.

MacIntyre seems to view the tradition as unifying the virtues, reconciling all those characteristics that might be considered virtues under a single notion of the Good--or at least, the notion that there might be a single Good. But why must there be a single Good that everyone strives toward? Why must there be only one way to be virtuous?

I believe that pagan traditions both ancient and contemporary present a potential rejoinder to MacIntyre's view of a monolithic--and not irrelevantly, monotheistic--tradition. The very notion of polytheism seems to present a contrary view of tradition. Worshiping shining Apollo is not the same as worshiping the Great Mother--but why should they be? Polytheistic traditions seem to present a way to reconcile the various ways of being virtuous without reducing them to each other.

Exactly how this might work out within a contemporary paganism deserves to be worked out more carefully, but the necessary groundwork has not yet been worked out. There is at least one more topic that I will have to address--in my next post.

MacIntyre and Virtue Ethics

I've finally finished something I have been meaning to get around to for months. A night or two ago, I finished reading Alasdair MacIntyre's important book After Virtue. Within, MacIntyre sets out to vindicate a broadly Aristotelian tradition within ethics. Though he comes from a Catholic perspective, I think his perspective on ethics might not be unprofitable to Pagans.

In this post, I'm going to sketch out and more or less regurgitate what it is that MacIntyre means. I'll spend the next couple of posts analyzing what I see as strengths and weaknesses within the account of After Virtue, as well as laying out how I think his ideas might and might not apply to modern Pagans and Paganism.

Aristotelian ethics is the paradigmatic example of virtue ethics. Unlike popular modern ethical theories like utilitarianism, virtue ethics is not concerned primarily with particular actions, but with becoming the right kind of person--the kind of person who possesses the virtues. Not all systems of virtue ethics are Aristotelian, but the majority owe at least some great debt to the Philosopher. Though virtue ethical systems--at least, systems consciously conceived as virtue ethical--languished for most of the modern period, there has been a resurgence of interest in virtue ethics beginning in the late 1950's.

MacIntyre's notion of an Aristotelian ethic is fairly broad. He does not mean that such a system must be a commentary on Aristotle or a straightforward description of how to apply the Nicomachean Ethics. Rather, he means to indicate that there has been an ethical tradition beginning with Aristotle extending up through the medieval world that shares some basic characteristics established by its founder.

There are some serious theoretical considerations that must be dealt with before any attempt like MacIntyre's can get off the ground. The first is that Aristotelian ethics--indeed, all ethics, as MacIntyre argues, and I can't help agreeing--are dependent in large part for their character on the kind of social system in which they are embedded and find their expression. If we are to take this seriously, then it means that we cannot simply take a list of virtues from Aristotle and apply them to our world as Aristotle meant them to be applied to his own world. Furthermore, Aristotle's virtues are rendered sensible by a particular cosmology and a certain view of a teleological biology. No person raised in the modern world could hold to an Aristotelian cosmology or biology and remain intellectually honest.

But these concerns raise the larger question of how to identify virtues in the first place. What distinguishes a virtue from other character traits? Are they merely character traits thought to be desirable in a particular time and place? Could ruthlessness or greediness in business ventures ever be virtues, or are they always vices? MacIntyre merely sketches out the answers by identifying three traits he believes to be essential to a virtue:

Practice: For MacIntyre, virtues are intimately related to what he calls "practices." MacIntyre's definition of a "practice" is long and complex: "By a 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established coopreative human activity though which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended." (AV 187)

That is to say, a practice is a complex sort of cooperative activity that has "internal goods"--that is, there is something about it that makes it worthy of pursuing in itself--and puts into practice and extends wider ideas about excellence and goods. Chess is a practice. Checkers is not. A virtue, for MacIntyre, is a personal quality which enables one to attain those goods, and without which one cannot attain them.

A moment's consideration will reveal that the classical virtues become prerequisites for most practices. Justice, for instance, the virtue of rendering to each his due, of not cheating, is quite obviously necessary. A chess player will not attain the internal goods of chess if he constantly cheats in order to win; he will only attain external goods like praise for his victory.

Unity in Narrative: MacIntyre argues that the unity of one's life--the identification of one's present self with one's past and future selves--is not to be found in logical strict identity, but the unity of a character in a narrative. He argues that narrative is not something imposed upon human events by storytellers after the fact, but an integral part of human life as it is actually lived.

As a result, virtues cannot be seen merely as character qualities which allow for the attainment of the goods arising from practices, but as qualities which make a life seen as a whole, in the sweep of its narrative arc, wholesome or defective. The virtue of justice is not exhibited merely in fairly dealing with others within a practice or profession, but in all one's dealings. And what constitutes fair dealings depends on the intersections of the various narratives involved in those dealings, and which narratives one is attempting to play out. Any action one takes is not to be taken as the atomic unit of ethics, but only becomes intelligible--and thus ethically significant--within a broader narrative context.

Tradition: No life is lived alone. Our own narrative context is embedded within a much broader narrative, one that began long before our own births. This larger narrative sweep, with its inherited notions of various goods, and various notions of how to achieve them, MacIntyre calls a tradition. He locates himself within a broadly Aristotelian tradition, running from Aristotle himself through the Middle Ages up to such figures as Jane Austen. No tradition, he notes, is entirely monolithic, and indeed the conflicts and struggles within the tradition to define itself is an integral part of every tradition; without such struggle, there could be no life, no narrative. These traditions provide us with the apparatus we need to live a good life--though what that is can only be found within the tradition itself.


To qualify as a virtue, a personal quality or characteristic must pass each of these three steps: it must be necessary to achieve the inner goods of a practice or practices, it must be locatable within the narrative unity of individual lives, and it must have a place within the larger tradition.

I will deal with some of these ideas in my next few posts.

The Path(s) to God(s)

In my last post, I distinguished (albeit somewhat arbitrarily) between spirituality and religion. The difference, as I set it down, lies in the fact that religion has a constellation of rituals, practices, and images, which spirituality does not have. (To be only slightly more precise, spirituality can have these, but they're not the focus, and they're less insisted upon.) Collectively, I call this constellation the tradition of the religion, and it is this tradition which defines it as a religion.

For instance, Christianity has the Bible as its primary texts, is organized into churches which (usually) meet on Sundays, and something akin to the Nicene Creed is accepted by most. Wicca has as its primary images the God and the Goddess, is organized into covens, and requires the casting of circles, but has no creed or primary texts.

It is through tradition that the moral aspects of religion may find expression. While the presence of the numinous may involve a sense of encountering a morally pure being, or of being purified, or of being exhorted to moral excellence, this is usually (but not always) going to be undirected without tradition. That is not to say that tradition necessarily dictates moral injunctions, but that it provides a structure by which ethics can be related to the numinous.

This is particularly effective, as advocates for the 365-day bible and other daily Scriptural devotions know, when the tradition involves doing something every day. If this is not only possible to do within the tradition, but essential to it--as for Muslims, the daily prayers, and as for many reconstructions, the daily rituals for the ancestors and the gods--then the way it can shape the contours of daily life, and the experience of living in the presence of numinous beings, cannot be overstated.

Every living tradition has something it is like to be involved in it--something that its practitioners might perceive as its "essence." This is not to say that all members of the tradition will agree on what it is, but to say that, for a Christian, being Christian is a certain way of being, and for a Buddhist, being Buddhist is a certain way of being. Tradition is shaped in part by people's shifting experience of what it is like to be part of it.

Traditions can involve doctrines or dogmas. To the extent that these are clearly logically articulable, they are subject to the relevant kinds of analysis; certain empirical claims--for instance, that crystals can help cure cancer, or that a particular holy book relates an accurate history--can be investigated scientifically. Logical contradictions or serious implausibilities can vitiate an entire tradition, if found in essential doctrines.

Tradition allows for the formation of a religious community, though a religious community may not always be necessary for the founding of a tradition.

One of the things which tends to distinguish religious traditions from other kinds of traditions is the explicit or implicit way in which it upholds, supports, and/or exhorts a vision of life. When the tradition is cut off from that life, it loses much of its purpose. Moreover, the vision of life espoused or expounded by a tradition is a means by which it may be critiqued. A vision of life that is unworkable or inauthentic should not be followed.

For instance, one could criticize the pseudo-religious New Age authors for inadequately dealing with human suffering, or for irresponsibly drawing attention away from real problems like sustainability and social justice.

The vision of life--or kinds of visions, at least--underpinning pagan religions tends to involve a life lived in the sense of the immanent divine. The numinous is not simply transcendent or to be found only by looking within, but can be experienced through or as within things external, but intimately to hand, such as rivers, mountains, trees, images of gods (vulgarly called "idols" by Christians), etc. The embodied nature of human life is generally embraced, and ethics is to be seen as the embodied, social behavior it is, directed more by concerns about virtue and living the good life than by commandments absolutely enjoining particular behaviors. In essence, a more authentic embracing of human experience, even in its diversity, is sought.

How one "chooses" or "comes to" or "creates" a tradition requires a post of its own.


To sum up: Religion, as I see it, essentially involves two aspects: experience of the numinous, and the constellation of practices, beliefs, and images that I call tradition. The experience of the numinous provides the impetus, the essential core that gives the religion significance and inspires reflection and meditation. The tradition allows the religion to coalesce as a religion, and take a form more tangible than an amorphous spirituality.

Beyond Belief

I'd like to lay out two theoretical areas--though often intermixed in practice--that define pagan religion as I practice it and intend to develop it further.

First, there is what might be called the "spiritual" level. I am sometimes confronted the numinous. In part, this is a sense of a presence, a personality or at least experiencer, within something not normally considered a person--a stream, a tree, a mountain, a bay. Such is the intuition underlying animism. But there is more than that to the numinous. It is the sensation that one is in the presence of the immanent divine. Each experience differs, so it is hard to pinpoint what differentiates the numinous from the merely present. The sense can be of something masculine, or feminine, beneficent or uncaring, self-harmonious and tranquil or tempestuous and raging. But there is something else I cannot quite describe which gives it an immensity of presence to the mind. (Though a little effort can sometimes quash the sense altogether.)

If you haven't experienced something of this sort, you may not have any idea what I'm talking about.

When I say that no particular proposition need be adopted about these beings, I merely express the understanding that the experience of them--the sense of them as being, as having presence--does not entail any particular placement of them in a broader metaphysics. The personal ontology of experience differs from the propositional ontology of metaphysics.

Similarly, acceptance and experience of the presence of a close friend or a family member does not entail any particular metaphysical position. A reductive physicalist might accept that, ultimately, the sense of their presence just is physical interactions in his own brain, as resulting from light waves reflecting from the molecules which make up his friend. A radical solipsist would believe that, ultimately, the presence of his friend was the result of persistent, ineradicable self-delusion. In both cases, however, the personal ontology of experience remains the same. It is impossible for either one to accept the non-existence of the experience of the presence. Only the articulation in terms of a metaphysics differs.

Thus, the articulation of a polytheism in terms of acceding to a sense of presence of this kind is compatible with almost any metaphysics. The existence of gods, as usually conceived as independently existing immaterial beings of power and beneficence, is as compatible with this experience simpliciter as their non-existence is.

Thus far, the understanding of the numinous I have explained is not entirely sufficient for polytheism. While my experience seems to be of multiple presences, others have similar experiences in terms of a single presence whom they call God. While I believe that polytheism is a more natural sense--one that emerges more or less naturally when contradictory ideological commitments are not present--I cannot ignore the fact that in these inchoate, pre-propositional experiences, many people seem to have monotheistic experiences.

Both history of religion and comparative religion seem to agree that religious experiences differ across cultures and through time. Ideas about those experiences shape them as they are experienced, similarly to the way one's experience of a spoon is shaped by the concept of the spoon, and regular use of spoons. (Anyone who has learned to use a new utensil in this way is probably familiar with the change in how the thing is experienced when one learns what it is for, and then when it has been used.) Likewise, the meaning of great cultural texts, such as the King James Bible or Dante's Divine Comedy are experienced differently in different times.

When faced with inchoate, pre-propositional numinous experience, we must answer the question of what to do with this experience. Some simply take the experience as just a nice experience, and leave it at that. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, I think that the history of humanity shows that, in these experiences lies the potential for personal and social change, if interpreted and applied properly.

Thus, we are faced with a dual task. On the one hand, we must remain true to the experience if our interpretations are to be seen as relevant. On the other hand, we must recognize that the task of interpretation is at least in part constructive. It is possible to set out criteria by which the constructive aspect can proceed. This dual task I refer to as constructive exploration--exploration in that it attempts to remain true to the experience, and constructive in that, as the exploration proceeds, the thing that is explored is also constructed.

Constructive exploration of the numinous experience tends to proceed, in my experience, along two lines: the spiritual and the religious. The spiritual approach attempts to articulate the experience mostly in terms of experience, and in terms of practice mainly generally. In contrast, the religious approach--usually seen as involving creedal codification, though this is not essential, and I think is probably detrimental--involves specifics of behavior much more explicitly, either in terms of ethical injunctions, or ritual, or both. The religious approach also tends toward adoption or construction of more or less clearly conceived religious images seen as significant, if not central. (The image of Christ crucified, for instance, whether portrayed in sculpture or in the prose of the Gospels, is central to Christianity.) These images, as objects of meditation, become objects of experience and means of attaining more subtly refined numinous experience.

So much for the aspect of religion related to the numinous. Of the images and practices I will have more to say in my next post.

Why Paganism? or: Why Not Atheism? Pt. 2

Reading back over that last post, I see that I failed to make a distinction I should have.

Atheism in most forms arises out of epistemological commitments. Generally speaking, atheists suppose a sort of scientific empiricism to be the way things go. We are justified in thinking something exists because we experience it, or because we can infer it inductively from experience--preferably with the aid of scientific experimentation and mathematical or statistical analysis--and we can communicate and agree about its existence.

This kind of reasoning is very good at establishing the kind of thing that can be described in terms of defined causal relationships with other things. What the atheist means to say is that there is no reasonable way to infer the existence of things causally related to the world in the way gods are supposed to be, from the existence of the things discovered by empirical reasoning, in the way that empirical reasoning progresses.

When the atheist says "gods do not exist," this is what he means. And frankly, I'm not interested in arguing with him. I'll cede the point, and go on with polytheism anyway.

Why? The religious experience, the sense that there are gods, the sense of the presence of gods, is not the kind of thing that is amenable to empirical observation. The closest thing to it that the scientist can observe is the brain of the person having the experience. There is no testable hypothesis.

It may well be the case that we cannot reasonably posit the existence of gods as the sort of thing that is related in a particular causal way with other things. And that's fine. But if I were to say that I feel the presence of Neptune or Jupiter (the gods, not the planets, obviously), would I really be saying that Neptune or Jupiter is in a particular causal relationship with me about which we can have empirical observation.

Thus, I can completely agree with what the atheist means when he says "gods do not exist," and still be a polytheist. Gods do exist--just not in the way he means.

Why Paganism? or: Why Not Atheism?

I really didn't mean for this post to take so long. Being the sort of person I am, I don't feel like I can start on a project like a blog without setting down, in the first place, what it is that I'm trying to do. My goals may change, but the initial direction needs to be put in place.

The question "What is paganism" is too big for me to really summarize in a single post. I have a hard time summarizing in one post just what my paganism is. Instead, I thought I'd propose my general attitude toward religion in general in terms of the biggest intellectual challenge to any Western religious person: atheism.

This is not some purely intellectual problem only of interest to academics. There are atheists in the world. They are not just a bunch of disillusioned ex-Christians who, bitter about the failure of their own religion, dismiss all religions. Nor are atheists just scientists who misapply their method in an irrational attempt to impose control and order on the world. Atheism is frequently the result of thoughtful, intellectually curious religious people trying to figure out their religion--and finding no reason to believe in it.

This is not just something Christians and Muslims grapple with. Just recently, Deo of the popular pagan podcast Deo's Shadow announced that he was ending his podcast not only because of increasing demands on his time, but because he has come to atheism:

Making deòs Shadow was usually a joy, and as the show grew more popular, we had many opportunities for new experiences which helped us to grow as people. One of the interesting side-effects of such growth is that one can end up growing out of that which induces the growth. We’ve moved on from Paganism and are now practicing atheists. (link)

So why atheism? He explains himself:

Having subsequently dropped Paganism, the question would seem to be: why not replace it with another spiritual perspective? I submit that this is the wrong question. The question ought to be: What accounts for anyone ever taking up another belief system having dropped a previous one? I think there are probably two good reasons for holding a belief. The first is evidence. The second is training. When it comes to religious belief, we lack the first independently of the interpretations furnished by the second. “Training” could mean simply being raised in a particular religious culture. Or it could mean being brainwashed by a cult… or, less ominously, being immersed in a religious culture that eventually becomes second-nature.(link)

So why adopt paganism as a belief system? It's not as if we were brought up to believe it. And it's not as if paganism has intrinsically more evidence than any other religion. (And all religions, one might point out, do make claims that contradict others. Polytheism is directly contradictory to monotheism; there cannot be many gods if there is only one God.)

Such is Deo's reasoning. Educated in philosophy as he is, he could probably go much further and expound argument upon argument, precisely elucidating every point, demonstrating his reasoning quasi-mathematically in terms of the predicate calculus. And he would probably be right. His arguments would probably work, and would probably stand up to logical criticism reasonably well--by my lights, at least.

So what exactly am I saying? It probably sounds as if I'm affirming the truth of atheism. That I'm saying it's unreasonable to believe in gods, that there is no strong evidential or a priori reason to affirm the proposition that gods exist.

That's exactly what I'm saying. But I call myself a polytheist anyway. Here's why.

I can affirm that the atheist position is correct. I can examine their arguments and agree with them. But in addition to this, I would also like to say that atheism misses the point.

Atheism analyzes religion as if it's a collection of logical propositions to assent to. A set of claims that one either believes, or does not believe. But is this really what religion is? Is this what religion is supposed to be? A Christian will say that, even if there's more to it, religion requires at least that. I disagree.

I have said that I am a polytheist. On the surface, this does seem to imply that my religion requires assent to at one proposition, belief in at least one claim: gods exist.

But what does this mean? It is consistent with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism, Stoicism and Academic skepticism, just to name a few examples from ancient Greek philosophy. It is consistent, as well, with the claim that the gods are Jungian archetypes. It is consistent with the claim that gods are anthropomorphizations of natural physical or elements. There is, essentially, no particular metaphysical or existential proposition that can be derived from the statement "gods exist," and the statement does not depend on the truth of any metaphysical or existential proposition.

When I say "gods exist," I am affirming the value of a number of kinds of practices, like sacrifice and prayer. I am saying that there are divine mysteries to be experienced but never told, tales of gods to be told which can be interpreted in many useful, pleasing, or even life-changing ways.

Where does the requirement to assent to a proposition come in? Atheism, on my view, misses the point.

First!

I've been thinking about doing this blogging thing for a while. Here, then, are my first tentative steps in that direction. At the time of this writing, I haven't even finished setting up the basic requirements. The current template is highly tentative. The blogroll isn't finished. I have no idea how the page will look when I'm done.

The purpose of this blog is mostly to be a place where I can put down my thoughts. As the title suggests, I'll be focusing on paganism. As I write my thoughts down, they will take on form. By making them public, I invite comments and criticism.

My Bachelor's degree is in philosophy, which was an interest of mine even before college. It's something I still pursue in my free time. I am sure that will become obvious in my later posts. That is not to say that I will be doing philosophy (except in a very broad sense of the term) or even philosophy lite. It is merely to say that studying philosophy has left me with a number of tendencies--toward examination of concepts, logical argumentation, clarity over aesthetics--that I will make no attempt to suppress.

Along those lines, my next post will be an preliminary overview of what I mean by "paganism" in the context of this blog--how I make sense of the movement, and what I mean when I say that I myself am pagan.