Could it be … Satan?
Via Pandagon, another broadside against neopaganism.
According to the ministry leader [Tom McMahon], Wicca is one of many such cults around the world — and they all have a common source. “They have a common denominator, they have a common idea — even their rituals are the same. Yet these people have never been connected to one another,” he comments.
Exsqueeze me? If McMahon was speaking of ancient, isolated, disparate cultures he *might* have an arguable point; but neo-paganisms have primarily flourished in developed western countries, where we have:
- relatively comfortable long-distance travel
- an alphabet
- language
- literacy
- the publishing industry
- telephones
- that series of tubes known as The Internets
All of which, I suspect I need to point out to Mr. McMahon, are excellent vectors for the transmission of religon and do not require supernormal aid or organization.
And the rituals are not the same (of course). But neopaganisms tend to be syncretic which does lend to the faiths a patina of similarity. When you also take into account that neopaganisms are mostly reconstructions of pagan European belief systems… well, you got yourself about three to four thousand years of “connection.”
“There must be an intelligent source that promotes this throughout the world; and the scriptures call him the adversary, the god of this world. It’s really Satan.”
Manifested in the unholy alliance of UPS and Barnes & Noble, I suppose.
What it really boils down to is this. Tom McMahon believes in two gods. He believes in the “good god,” which is the god he worships, and he believes in the “evil god,” which is the god that everyone else worships — whether they know it or not. Now, if that’s the way he wants to play it, fine. But when you have to ignore the very existence of books as part of your pseudo-rational “proof,” then maybe — just maybe — you’re talking out of your ass.
