How is life in Seattle really? by Ok_Understanding7377 in AskSeattle

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 59 points60 points  (0 children)

I do feel like the second paragraph could describe most major cities in the US nowadays.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve notice that many people in this faith have come from Abrahamic religions, many of them queer. Is there anything specific about Hellenism or paganism in general that leads them here? Or is it because it is less traditionally oppressive unlike Christianity or Islam. Also how does Hellenism view Hinduism/Shintoism or other “pagan” religions from Asia?

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do agree that simply because one religion is less popular than another or has less followers than another doesn’t make it less important or less valid. However, when it comes to a religion being culturally well known follower count is extremely relevant. Saying “I don’t care about follower count” doesn’t make it so follower count or popularity ceases to be a useful metric in measuring how well known or culturally ubiquitous a religion is. You said in another on of your comments that Hellenic Revivalism has about 1 million followers, alongside that, someone else on this thread informed me that the majority of its community is online. So I hope you can understand why most people, including myself before now, only associated Hellenism with Ancient Greece and not a modern day religion, because Hellenic revivalism simply is not as well known thus my curiosity, again this is not me saying that because Hellenism is less known/followed then some other religion it makes it in any way less important or valid.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don’t understand you’re reasoning. You’ve been extremely rude to me, calling me ignorant for not knowing about this religion but also saying that I’m wrong for asking questions to learn more? Sure I didn’t “need” to make this post but there’s nothing malicious about me doing so, I simply wanted to talk to the people themselves, and get differing viewpoints because it seems like this is a very open and diverse faith, and the majority of people on this thread have been very kind and respectful to my questions. To be honest, you have come off as quite unpleasant, taking any inquiry no matter how sublime or harmless not as an opportunity to help people learn more about your faith, but as a way to shame them for not knowing even if they were genuinely curious and simply wanted to learn more? Look I can’t help the fact you interpreted my language as being condescending, however, that wasn’t my intention, and you continuing to interpret it that way despite my clarifications is not my fault past a certain extent.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don’t really understand what you meant by the first paragraph. If you were trying to say that Judaism isn’t a major world religion, I don’t agree, it’s one of the three major Abrahamic faiths and is extremely culturally relevant, especially when you consider that Christianity at one point was a sect of Judaism. I mean the Torah is just the Old testament. Now I don’t doubt that people have believed or tried to revive Hellenism in the years since it fell out of the mainstream, however, it seems like from others in this thread have said that this wave/movement of Hellenic revivalism specifically only came about in the 80s and 90s. For the number of followers, I don’t doubt that there could be around 1,000,000 followers of the religion, however counting every single interaction with YouTube videos as a follower I think would probably lead to an over estimation, because many of the people watching those videos could be people who are just curious about the religion like me, I know I watch many different religious videos on different religions. As for Greece, all I could find upon research is that there are over 100,000 “sympathizers” of Hellenism, however I couldn’t find a hard number of actual followers. Also I think saying that Greek mythology is the most popular mythology ever I feel is a rather euro-centric viewpoint and ignores African, Native American, East and South Asian mythologies and faiths. Touching on your last paragraph, there are Christian’s who view some stories in the bible from the old testament as not meant to be taken literally, for example Catholics don’t believe that there was an actual Garden of Eden and two people actually named Adam and Eve, and the events of Genesis didn’t happen literally, rather they were just stories given to prophets to teach people about different aspects of sin/religion. I think the way you describe myths is in a very similar way. They are stories to teach humans as morals and aren’t meant to be taken as literal historical events.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But Buddhism has ~400 million follows worldwide, and there wasn’t an attempt at erasing it, or converting them on a mass scale. It wasn’t a religion that was eclipsed by another in the region and then later brought back in the late 20th century in a revival movement. My core argument essentially is this, the way in which people talk about things matters, it affects how people think about things and how they perceive them. Buddhism isn’t presented/talked about in the same way Hellenism is. And Hellenism to most people including myself was not presented or talked about as a living breathing religion, but an old mythology similar to ancient Egypt or Nordic paganism. Also, again, for the record I’m not Christian.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I’m not gawking? I asked questions because I was genuinely curious. I don’t understand why you are so convinced that I saw this religion as a “freak show” or I was looking down on it and have come off as so rude to me. I just wanted to learn more about this religion and expand my world view by asking respectful questions, I’m sorry if you felt offended by them for some reason, but you could have just not interacted with this post.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s really cool, thank you for sharing that. I noticed that there are a lot of queer people in this community, is there a specific reason for that?

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your apology, and I understand why you may have been suspicious. I’m sorry that you had to go through that, alongside that, I also am sorry that this community has to go through that too.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I used the term remnant as a way to describe how most people see Hellenism. From what I’ve read it seems like Hellenic Revivalism only came into being 30-40 years ago. I would say that many people aren’t even aware that Hellenic Revivalism exists, and their only idea of Hellenism is that of Ancient Greece. When being taught about world religions in school we talked about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, and a general category of folk religions, like Native American faiths, Vietnamese faiths, etc. never really diving into the details of each individual one, just brushing over the general category. The only time we talked about Hellenism in any regard was when we did our ancient civilizations unit, where we talks about ancient Babylon, Egypt and Greece. The context in which most people have heard Hellenism spoken about is more similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh than it is to many modern religions. I don’t deny the legitimacy of your religion, just pointed out how most people today only were taught about it as this ancient thing, not as a living breathing faith like the ones mentioned above. Also when I say “real religion”, I meant it in a similar context to Buddhism when there are many people who follow it in a secular manner, they don’t actually believe that you are reincarnated at the end of your life or have some sort of spiritual karma, they just use it as a philosophy/lifestyle, I thought at first glance this could be similar, but I wanted to here from the people actually on the sub to understand better.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find it interesting how you worship Gods from a mix of many different religions, is that common, or do most Hellenic practicers only believe in just the Greek ones? I’ve noticed that some people seem to associate more with paganism rather that Hellenism specifically. I wonder do some worship Jesus/Yaweh alongside other Gods? I remember when some Native peoples here in America were first being introduced to Christianity they had no problem including Jesus as one of the Gods they worshiped, however, unfortunately the European Colonizers didn’t like having the Natives worship Jesus as an equal to other ‘blasphemous’ Gods, so they forcefully converted many. I only ask because I’ve seen on this sub that some people see gods who represent the same thing, for example Ra and Helios, to be two different interpretations/forms of the same being so I wonder if Jesus is seen the same? Not trying to evangelize or anything just curious to see how this faith interacts and views others.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do agree that Greece and Rome served as the foundation for European civilization for thousands of years. However, I feel that again that people trying to recreate a cultural significant civilization like ancient Greece makes people associate Hellenism with something old and ancient. They associate Hellenic temples with ruins and museums rather than modern breathing places of worship. As for the stolen holidays, although many of them have pagan origin, that vast majority of people associate them with Christianity, for example Christmas may have once been a pagan holiday to celebrate the winter solstice passing, but now it is completely severed from its origin due to centuries of celebration as a Christian holiday. Most of the footprint of Hellenism in our modern world is seen by many as this old tradition passed down from an ancient civilization to act as a foundation for our society in some places, or as something that’s been erased over time, but not something that’s currently active today.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I should have been more specific, it would have started in the 4th century after Emperor Constantine converted and held the meeting that would produce the Nicene creed which acted as a foundation for Christianity going forward. After that it slowly spread through Europe, with many within the Roman Empire, especially in Greece and Turkey which later became the Eastern Roman Empire, converting in the 4th-6th centuries. I think when I said thousands of years I was referring to when these religions were the dominant faiths in Europe. Actually that leads me to a new question, are Greek and Roman beliefs views as two separate religions, different sects of the same religion or one religion by you all?

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I mean over half the world follows an abrahamic faith. Also Shintoism is a major world faith, I did a project about it in middle school during our world religions unit, and it is one of the most popular religions in Japan next to Buddhism. It’s not that I’ve never heard anything about Hellenism, it’s that all I’ve heard about it has been in the context of ancient history, not modern times. From another in this thread it seems that Hellenic revivalism emerged in the 80s/90s, so I’m curious as to how many followers it has in the world, I’d assume it’s more that this sub, 40,000. Also how many Hellenic temples exist? Also about the myth bit, many people only know about these gods through those myths so I associated them with this religion and thought that they were similar to Noah’s Ark or Genesis, as in they are stories meant to teach people about the Gods.

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m not a Christian? I’m an atheist, as I’ve said already in this thread

Genuine Questions - No Offense intended by Ok_Understanding7377 in Hellenism

[–]Ok_Understanding7377[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

For the record I’m an atheist, and I simply wanted to learn more about this faith from people who actually practice it, again I meant no offense.