Pagan defeated Easily, Other Belief Won. Why?

**Emperor** · June 27, 2007, 01:59 PM

Itt is odd that the pagans were defeated easily by other religion. Like Christainity, Islam, Jew and Buddha rised up and the pagans defeated and scattered. I don't get it, the pagans were large and powerful, while the others were small. I don't get it.

**hellheaven1987** · June 27, 2007, 02:04 PM

Lol, Chinese are still largely "Pagan" today.

And I am proud I am Pagan!

**Emperor** · June 27, 2007, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by hellheaven1987

Lol, Chinese are still largely "Pagan" today.

And I am proud I am Pagan!

Buddhist and Confucisim not Pagans. What type of pagan are you?

**hellheaven1987** · June 27, 2007, 02:51 PM

Originally Posted by Emperor

Buddhist and Confucisim not Pagans. What type of pagan are you?

Seriously, very few Chinese fellow any single religion. We worship our tranditional Gods and Godness, our ancesters, and others; for example, I am Catholics too!

Sounds more like a Viking, worships anything we can find.

**Copperknickers II** · August 16, 2008, 05:25 AM

Originally Posted by hellheaven1987

Lol, Chinese are still largely "Pagan" today.

And I am proud I am Pagan!

Most people are Pagan. Pagan just means non-Christian, as it was invented by Christians to refer to enemies (though usually not Muslims and Jews). Hinduism, buddhism, roman, greek and egyptian religions are all pagan, and look how powerful they were/are.

**mocker** · June 27, 2007, 03:07 PM

Vikings had a pantheon of their own, thank you very much.

Regarding the topic:
The Pagans were hardly defeated "easily".

Could you narrow the topic down, please?
For example, which defeats are you talking about?
Military defeats?

**hellheaven1987** · June 27, 2007, 03:30 PM

Originally Posted by mocker

Vikings had a pantheon of their own, thank you very much.

Mmm... I don't know that. I thought they worshipped both their Gods (from ancient German) and Christan God.

**mocker** · June 27, 2007, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by hellheaven1987

Mmm... I don't know that. I thought they worshipped both their Gods (from ancient German) and Christan God.

The Norse pantheon was as just as much German as it was Greek, Roman, or Egyptian for that matter.

But yes, you are somewhat right:
As the conversion of Scandinavia started to get a foothold, many Northmen would invoke Christ( probably governing peace and purity) as a god just as easily as they would invoke Thor (God of Storms and War, among other domains), or any other Norse god (Frøy, Tyr, Odin, etc). They did not, however, believe in an almighty God at this point.

**hellheaven1987** · June 27, 2007, 07:13 PM

Originally Posted by mocker

They did not, however, believe in an almighty God at this point.

I know that, I remember a book I have read before said many Vikings worshipped Christan God because it was better to get another level of divine protection on battlefield!

**Green** · August 16, 2008, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by mocker

The Norse pantheon was as just as much German as it was Greek, Roman, or Egyptian for that matter.

But yes, you are somewhat right:
As the conversion of Scandinavia started to get a foothold, many Northmen would invoke Christ( probably governing peace and purity) as a god just as easily as they would invoke Thor (God of Storms and War, among other domains), or any other Norse god (Frøy, Tyr, Odin, etc). They did not, however, believe in an almighty God at this point.

Actually Christ was invoked often in Christian-converted areas as a warrior God. A bit of cross-cultural bleeding as well as inspiration from the Old Testament.

And the pagans weren't defeated 'easily'. Right up to and beyond the Baltic Crusades, the Baltic nations remained a stronghold of paganism.

**Sosobra** · June 27, 2007, 04:51 PM

Pagan religions where not for the most part as intolerant as the big 3 , and they didn't aggressively seek converts. Christianity and Islam had and stillhave a compulsion to convert which pagan (rome,greek, celtic) did not have.

**God-Emperor of Mankind** · June 27, 2007, 05:05 PM

Well according to archeologists the old norse, the asatru worshiping people didn't convert people because it was between the person in question and the god he worship. Religion was a personal matter in other words and not something you should meddle or interfere with. Of course this changed when christianity came along. Then the asatru worshippers became more open about who they worshipped and it became less of a private matter.
A nice example is that there were no thor's hammer(on necklaces and stuff like that) in the north until christianity appeared. Then people were walking around with crosses around their necks thus less private and to compete with that, the hammers started to appear.
I think the mindset that religion is a private matter is still something deeply rooted in the mind of people up here hence why our nations are secular.

**Who** · June 27, 2007, 06:17 PM

I thought it was because the Mono-theists were much more organized as a unit, while the pagans seemed to still be small warring factions.

**LegionnaireX** · June 27, 2007, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by Who

I thought it was because the Mono-theists were much more organized as a unit, while the pagans seemed to still be small warring factions.

That is what I was going to say. Christianity was a large united group of people under the same set of beliefs. Pagans worshiped their own tribal/local Gods, there was no large united group. Therefore it was easy to convert them and turn them against one another.

**TaiMaiShu5** · June 27, 2007, 10:36 PM

some of you guys are confused about what paganism really is.. paganism is the worship of the earth gods and galatic gods..they were into celestial cycles .ie(mayan calander most advanced calander in history) they were into alot of astrology they may worship different gods but in the text and facts of old paganism it was all the same gods just given different names in other cultures..

But why they got defeated easily?? alot of Christians forced pagans to convert and some pagans converted willingly also when pagan towns were pillaged they destroyed their acient text they were deemed as a cult of satanic rituals to most christians..notice how most christians believe astrology is evil but they dont know christianity came from astrology..thats why the spanish destroyed the most of the aztecs and mayan beiliefs and hieroglyphs

**Curtana** · June 28, 2007, 04:56 AM

The triumph of monotheism is due to Rome (and Roman Catholicism) and then Mohammed. There were socio-political reasons as well as religious reasons.
Given the vast swathe of human history it is a bit rich to see the move to monotheism as 'easy'. What is a meaningful definition of paganism anyway? The interpretation of what is pagan has changed since the concepts original inception. Christians invented the term for people who were not Christian or Jewish.
Christianity is 2000 years old. Islam is 1400 years old. Judaism is quite a lot older but was a minority religion for most of that time.
For most of history almost everyone was 'pagan'.
Human civilization is at least 8000 years old. The last ice age sets an upper limit of about 12,000 years. Were the first homo sapiens pagans? That would push the limit back to maybe as much as 100,000 years. Maybe we were pagans before we were even homo sapiens? In the grand scheme of things monotheism is the blink of an eye.
Personally I think monotheism has a limited shelf-life just like every other organised religious movement throughout history. Wait a few hundred years and ask why monotheism was so easily supplanted by whatever supplanted it; 'Environmentalism', probably.

**boofhead** · June 28, 2007, 04:59 AM

Pagans were not defeated easily. There are millions around to this very day, and many monotheists are in fact reverting to Paganism.

The Gauls sacked Rome TWICE FFS.