Was the death of Hellenic and Norse paganism a bad thing?

[Kingpoleon]

No, paganism inherently supports an old, ultra-traditionalist order. Paganism was orthodoxy and tradition for most of the world for five thousand years; they were “as orthodox as the devil - and as wicked.”

[Kingpoleon]

Now I don't cry for the loss of religions old and new but the Christianization of Europe coincided with massive acts of brutality and destruction of livelihoods more fulfilling then the clout the Abrahamics with their vastly more stratified society brought in. I am of the opinion that the cultural tyranny of those who spread Christianity, at this point immensely expired from being a religion of reform, ruined things until Christianity started self-destructing and fragmenting with the Reformation and revolutions of the late 18^th century onward.

The level of cultural imperialism and feigned ignorance of what Christianity did to expand itself in Europe is unsurprising coming out of Evangelicals here, what's a downer is that a few people who should know better are agreeing with this notion and the falsehoods spread by the Abrahamics.

Hey! This is the largest number of people I’ve ever seen attacked as a group*. Good job!

*Roughly 3,650,000,000 people, for the record.

[Kingpoleon]

Ehh, maybe my post works best when referring to the Norse societies pre conversion.

You don’t actually believe that paganism is remotely a force for good, do you?

Paganism typically has its roots in the belief that your people have a patron god, often the common ancestor of your race. That kind of implicit racial superiority is not good for the foundations of a society.

[Kingpoleon]

The idea that all people are fundamentally equal in the eyes of God was a radical innovation in its time. People living today struggle to appreciate how big of a deal the Parable of the Good Samaritan actually is. Folks who try to paint Christianity as a negative social influence are comparing the real historical Christian societies to a utopia that never was.

“The inhabitants of Africa, where they have equal motives and equal means of improvement, are not inferior to the inhabitants of Europe; to some of them they are greatly superior. … Certainly the African is in no respect inferior to the European. … Freedom is unquestionably the birth right of all mankind; Africans as well as Europeans: to keep the former in a state of slavery, is a constant violation of that right, and therefore also of justice.” - John Wesley

In the 1700s, as Europe developed a new and unprecedented idea of racial inferiority in the halls of government and universities, a great and unprecedented application of equality was brought forth into the world in the halls of the church.

Paganism and the evils brought forth from it are naturally the ways of man apart from God, and I see little authority to argue Christianity in the wrong and paganism - a root of sacrifice, murder, and oppression of every sort - in the right.

[Kingpoleon]

To argue that the 18th Century Enlightenment was purely a Christian phenomenon is as absurd as to argue it was a purely secular one. Keep in mind that one of the justifications offered for slavery was that it was a means for Christianizing pagans.

Sure, but I’m not calling Wesley and Whitefield Enlightenment leaders in this instance - indeed, almost none of the Enlightenment thinkers embraced the radical idea of racial equality.