Abstract: Modern intellectuals, especially those
who base their world view upon science, pride themselves on
being totally separate from the sphere of religion. They
believe their view of the world to be based on empirical data
and built up with reason alone, leaving them entirely
distinct from all religion. This pride is unfounded. In fact
their approach and conclusions are grounded in one of the
major old- time religions, namely, paganism.
Many of the ideas, and probably all of the intellectual
skills, that characterize the modern secular world were once
integral parts of a way of life one of whose prominent
features was the worship of idols. All of the Western world
is built upon the foundation of paganism. Although paganism
and Christianity were open rivals for hundreds of years,
eventually they seemed to have made their peace. The truth is
that the conflict moved underground, and paganism eventually
triumphed so thoroughly that important characteristics of the
ancient religious world are no longer familiar or even
understood.
Part I: The Transmission and Transformation of Pagan
Ideas
Introduction
Large parts of modern thought, including its ambience and its
approaches to problems, and including the selection and
definition of the problems that it wants to solve, the very
way people perceive the world and their approach to the
business of living, are based on pagan Greek and Roman
learning and the pagan view of the world. By now, the roots
of the pagan learning of the Greeks and the Romans have grown
leaves and branches, and have spread to cover just about
everything. And there are alternatives.
The basic thesis argued here is that the roots of large
portions of the dominant Western thought are in paganism and
that this has destructive consequences.
The hegemony of pagan learning includes both the arts and the
sciences. It includes, prominently, literature and literary
criticism, physics and cosmology, history and geology,
psychology and economics. Perhaps least affected are the
technical fields such as engineering and computer science,
although they are still informed by it in important ways. Law
seems to be in the middle, as it is based on common law which
is of pagan origin, but much of the reasoning is neutral and
the principles are technical.
No one has any doubt that there was such a contribution, and
that the contribution is broad, deep and complex. This
uncontroversial fact that forms the basis of the main point
made here and not any particular thesis about the nature of
the contribution.
I believe that this source of modern intellectual life
affects the product. This is not to say that modern knowledge
is — either directly or indirectly — the worship
of pagan gods in any sense, but it is to say that its nature
is informed by its origins and this has definite
consequences. In particular it suggests that certain
criticisms of modern society and culture cannot be met by any
sort of fix that remains within the system based on paganism,
but require a radical (in an intellectual sense, not
necessarily in a political or practical sense) solution that
uproots the pagan principles that are the roots of the
problems uncovered.
For many, the most interesting aspect of this insight may be
the simple knowledge that there are alternatives. Western
culture is so strong, so pervasive and so broadly distributed
these days, that it is hard to even get exposure to anything
radically different. Many choices that were made by Western
culture (and could have been otherwise) are no longer
perceived as choices. That is the way things are, or that is
simply what people do — or so people think today. But
there are alternatives, in some cases radical alternatives in
other cases less revolutionary ones, but definitely different
alternatives nonetheless.
When paganism flourished in the Greek and Roman
civilizations, it had an extremely well-developed cultural,
social and scientific content. While the West has long
abandoned the specifically religious and ritualistic elements
of classical culture (that is, the worship of idols and many
gods, and all the festivals and rituals associated with
that), the rest of it, meaning the cultural and scientific
content, has been eagerly embraced and in fact lies at the
bottom of virtually all aspects of the modern life of Western
society.
In its heyday, the various components (that have since become
quite disparate) were seen by all as parts of a single
picture. Different parts were perhaps not perceived then as
partaking of an underlying, organic unity but as being
congenial, compatible components in a harmonious social
scene, like an extreme gastronome might look with collegial
sympathy at a body-builder or at someone obsessed with carnal
pleasures. They share a basic understanding of a
preoccupation with the pleasures of the flesh, though each
certainly considers his or her own preoccupation to be quite
distinct from the others. Nonetheless, from the outside, say
from the canonical standpoint of the severe Protestant
culture that was dominant in eighteenth century America, they
can all be seen as sharing a single fundamental "sin" of
excessive concern with matters of material pleasure.
The classical world was much broader and deeper than this
rather simple example. Yet I want to assert, if not argue,
that all of it should also be seen as parts of a single
organic system. Some parts were elaborated by men of
considerable intellectual power and others by men of rather
less intellectual achievement but powerful emotions and
others still by men in whom passion was dominant. Some were
religious (in the pagan sense) and expressed their approach
to life within the pagan religion, and others were much less
religious and worked within non-ritualistic parameters. Yet
all can and should be seen as part of a single
weltanschauung, even if in those days — and in many
other days — it was not perceived as such.
Classical drama, philosophy, poetry, literature,
architecture, rhetoric and politics are generally of-a-piece
with the contemporary religion, its theology and ritual
practices, in very important aspects.
This was seen very clearly by both pagans and Christians in
the early centuries of Christianity. The two were seen,
overall, as struggling, competing systems. Christianity won
and for hundreds of years, almost all pagan writing —
with a few notable exceptions mainly in philosophy and
science — was ignored. Eventually they even forgot that
it existed.
When European thinkers discovered the full range of the
literary products of the Classical world in the period known
as the Renaissance, they were very strongly and favorably
impressed. The whole European world at that time was
Christian, including these early discoverers, and they did
reject thoroughly the pagan rituals and the beliefs that were
of a religious character. Stories about gods and descriptions
of ancient rituals did not attract any followers, in contrast
to the literature, art and philosophy that were eagerly
embraced and soon became the intellectual foundations of the
Western world.
Also, many pagan rituals and observances had been
incorporated into Church rites. In many cases they had been
substantially transformed and they were certainly purged of
their basest elements. Yet the festivals of the church and
many of the rituals are clear derivatives of pagan
precedents. This was well-documented by many Protestant
writers.
End of Part I
Part 2
Part 3
