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Community Doesn’t Just Build Itself
So, there was a blogosphere dustup about whether Paganism is “dying”, complete with defensive denials, gross oversimplifications, and quite a bit of ridicule all around. All of which rather missed the point, in my opinion. My guess is that—in developed nations, anyway— if you looked at any subculture not made up exclusively of the young, you’d find numbers dwindling. Populations are graying, and that means that many kinds of communities are shrinking. And make no mistake about it: the American Pagan community is indeed getting older, on average, judging from what I see at Pantheacon. It seems that many second-generation Pagans, while they may enjoy being a part of the…
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On Becoming An Atheopagan
What is a religion? Is a religion what you believe? Is that what people in churches and temples and mosques throughout the world do on their appointed sabbath days? Believe? I found myself pondering this question after I fell out of love with Paganism , in 2004, following a series of experiences wherein dysfunctional and unethical behavior on the part of leaders in my Pagan community was excused as having been “directed by the gods”. This was simply intolerable to me. It flew in the face of science, of reason, and of ethics. It was wrong. I grew up an atheist. I believe in science and reason. In facts, and…
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What’s Wrong With Joy? A Rant.
You can ask me what is wrong with Trump voters, with the manbaby himself, with the terrifying sociopaths in the Congressional majority. You can ask me what the hole is in the world. And if you have the patience, you will hear me go on, for an hour perhaps, about every wrong policy position, every cruelty, every coldness and dismissiveness, every bigotry. But that won’t answer the question. I have been watching Sense8 on Netflix. I just finished the beginning of the second season, a two-hour episode. And after crying a lot, I come back to this most basic of conclusions about those who make war on their own people,…
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Atheopaganism and the Future
For thousands of years, since the very advent of human existence, there has been an evolving trajectory of religious history in Western societies. The story passes from the earliest animism and ancestor worship to the rise of belief in gods, the consolidation of authoritarian power under monotheisms, and the complete domination of Western societies by Christianity. It continues through the Enlightenment, the steady gains of science shattering the cosmological monopoly of the Abrahamic monotheisms, the increasing tension between orthodoxy and individuality splintering these monotheisms into thousands of sects, and finally, most recently, to the rise of the Nones: those who describe themselves as having no religious affiliation at all, which…
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Announcing NaturalPagans.com!
I am delighted to announce that the Atheopaganism blog is a part of a new aggregation website, NaturalPagans.com, where the writing of nontheist/non-supernatural Pagans can be found in one convenient place! Go check it out!
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May Morning
With love for all of you, on this the eve of May Day… May Morning Fresh as the day the world was made, This morning: dew-spattered through feather fans Of foxtail and wild rye. Mars is low on the horizon, for once. Still As a caught breath, the day, hushed, Holds for a slow-golding time, the rose hints Of bold and bright to come, of music Yet to be made, dances old as the village, new as tomorrow’s milk. How can it be, four billion, five hundred million years, the old and battered Earth, Veteran of ice and fire, meteor, petroleum, stupidity, avarice, ignorance How can it be, this innocence:…
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Why is Naturalism Radical?
One of the hottest points of contention between Atheopagans and both theists and hard-antitheist atheists has to do with naturalism. Naturalism is a philosophical position which holds that there is nothing which is not of the physical Universe: that there is nothing which is supernatural, and that such claimed supernatural phenomena as gods, spirits, souls, ghosts, and magic are fictitious. Theists dispute this out of hand, of course. It makes sense that nontheist Pagans have friction with theists over this point. But adamant antitheists like David Dennett and Richard Dawkins have conflict with it, too–because they insist that if you are a naturalistic tradition, you’re not really a religion. This is frankly…
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Once Upon a Time in the Eighties
A memory, for May Day/Beltane… It wasn’t really a fabled time. There was a lot wrong with it. That said, there were things about it that were golden. It was a moment in Northern California, in the Pagan community. It mostly took place in wild places, in woods and deep forests. We danced naked under the full moon. We celebrated our rituals around a blazing fire. We made love in meadows. We took drugs: psilocybin mushrooms, San Pedro cactus. MDMA. And in that golden, loving space, alive with the joy of living, the world singing around us, we grew. We evolved. We healed. Again, to be fair: there were those…
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Details on Moon Meet (edited July 20)
The first Pagan festival for Atheopagans, nontheist Pagans, and naturalist Pagans is actually happening. It’s called Moon Meet, and it will be August 4-6 of this year, on private land near Healdsburg in Sonoma County, California. It’s coming up, so CLICK HERE to register to join us! I am so excited about this gathering! There seems to be a trend in the naturalistic religion world right now: the drive to connect in real life. Shortly after announcing Moon Meet, I was invited to be a part of an email and Skype conversation involving many of the most prominent voices in the nontheist/naturalistic spirituality community about creating a conference or gathering in 2018. Imagine…
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Protip for Straight Pagan Men
There’s a thing straight Pagan men do. As I’ve observed it, they kind of do it a lot. Recently, I’ve had a couple of conversations that have brought this issue into high relief. They do it mostly to signal to women they don’t know very well—but are attracted to—that they are hip and cool and sex-positive. It’s this: they make sexual jokes. Double entendres, puns. “That’s what she said.” Guys, please stop this. It’s creepy. It makes people uncomfortable. Not to put too fine a point on it, when it’s unwelcome, it’s sexual harassment. By definition, unwelcome sexual overtures, jokes, suggestions are all sexual harassment. And here’s the thing, gentlemen: with…
