Reminder that historically, most Christians weren't philosophers like Gregory of Nyssa or Origen of Alexandria. They were rabid peasants who held insane and obviously superstitious beliefs like black cats being demons. Yeah, the church may have denounced witch burnings and declared that witches weren't real, but that didn't stop your average peasant from believing their neighbor was a witch because she looked at him funny for 0.5 seconds. Witch burnings weren’t top-down decisions from the church (who condemned them), but rather disorganized grassroots movements spearheaded by superstitious peasants.Even today, the majority of “Christians” get their theology from Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno, and modern pop culture slop. I guarantee you that your average Christian today believes in heretical things without realizing it.
>>18251150You're basically just saying that Christian plebs were plebs. Duh. What's your point? You think atheist plebs are any different?
>>18251150black cats are demons doe
>>18251152I’m just saying there’s a difference between the intellectual religion practiced by educated elites and the folk religion practiced by the majority of the population. In every organized society this has always been the case. Look at Ancient Greece and Rome for example. Most educated pagans (nobility, scholars, philosophers, etc) took traditional myths as allegories or mythologized distortions of real events and believed that the gods weren’t actually anthropomorphic beings as traditionally depicted, but rather abstract metaphysical spirits who all emanated from a single divine source. They argued that the only reason the gods were depicted as humanoid was because people depicted them in their own image and thus attributed human traits like emotions and appearance to them. For example Xenophanes, a pre-Socratic philosopher, remarked that if cows had hands they’d draw the gods to look like cows. Some like Plato even went as far as to argue that works like the Iliad should be censored because they contained “lies” about the gods doing bad things and engaging in humanlike behavior.Meanwhile, your average plebeian did genuinely think that the gods literally lived atop Mt. Olympus and that beings such as centaurs and sirens were literally real.
>>18251192This also applied to other organized pagan societies like Egypt and Babylon. I don’t think most Egyptian priests genuinely thought their gods had animal heads and probably viewed that as symbolic. Meanwhile, your average Egyptian peasant did genuinely think the gods were humanoid beings with animal heads.
>>18251192I mean, yes and no. The core of any religion is its practice. On top of that you usually have educated elites answering questions that mostly come from other educated elites - how does your religion relate to Aristotelian essences, what is the nature of time etc. In Christianity you do have these elites make a handful of clarifications about dogma, but other than that it's clear that the true carriers of the faith are saints, not philosophers.As for Greek paganism, they definitely understand the symbolic nature of religions, as seen rather explicitly in Symposion, but the "real" religion is the folk one. It's the priests and mystics, who might or might not concede to philosophers about the stories being too humanlike. Also, funnily enough, there seem to be limited evidence that the Greek pantheon has animistic roots and Hera did actually have cow features.
>>18251192>>18251194So basically peasants had a cooler imagination than intellectuals. Many such cases.Also kinda funny how intellectuals argue about the power of the Gods yet for them is impossible that the Gods in their omnipotence choose to have animal heads and human bodies.Just like today intellectualoids ruining anything that is funny and cool because is not "muh deep philosophical" stuff.
>>18251150So you're saying the solution for superstition is we need to become more Christian
>>18251192>folk religionJesus is a nazarene hippie that speaks aramaic. Tell me father, what do the elite have to say about him?
>>18251259Technically the Jesus of the gospels speaks Greek with a little Aramaic or Hebrew thrown in here and there for dramatic effect, a bit like Paul does.
ok
>>18251150>Even today, the majority of “Christians” get their theology from Paradise Lost, Dante’s InfernoThe people you're talking about certainly don't bother to read these works and know almost nothing about them. Obviously you haven't read them either and don't know what you're talking about.
