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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Press X to doubt.

The fact that it is doubtful is itself of first importance, because it is beyond doubt that, say, the Romans were pagans, if "pagan" means anything. On the other hand if "pagan" means anything, there must also be religious practices that are or were not pagan.

Most predicates outside math and the hard sciences are fuzzy, that is, matters of degrees -- and finding threads of truth to "x satisfies P" is always easy but also therefore always uninformative. The questions in this case are (1) is "pagan", as opposed to non-pagan, a meaningful (if of course rough) categorical distinction among religious practices? (2) if so what are its characteristics, and what are its alternatives and their characteristics? and (3) do the Hebrews fall inside or outside of the "pagan" cluster, by comparison with its paragons such as Rome and pre-Christian Scandanavia?

Are you saying yes, (something), and yes? If so I'd like to know what the something is. That is not the commonsense answer so you owe a good argument, beginning with an explicit answer to (2): what is it to be pagan, and what are the alternatives?

I'm not about to start defining pagannes, but for one if you're polytheistic you can't claim not to be a pagan faith. If you're doing stupid voodoo-woo-woo tier shit you can't claim not to be pagans.

I'm not about to start defining pagannes,

I don't think I am obliged to pay much attention to your claim that the Hebrews were pagans, when (1) it is against common sense, and (2) you decline to give a definition, along with what you feel are clear examples and non-examples, of pagan religions.