According to the website of a group that promotes faith in these Norse gods, these people are basing their beliefs on their ancient heritage and culture.* Yet the original Viking heritage involved raping, pillaging, and plundering others. Of course, these neopagans don’t want or promote a return to that. But it was the Christian influence that put an end to these actions! So why are they rejecting Christianity and bringing back part of their religious heritage but maintaining Christian—not Norse—principles of morality? Well, because these neopagans are being utterly inconsistent!
54 comments
Rape, pillage, plunder all sounds suspiciously like what ancient israelites did to a bunch of neighbouring tribes. that and genocide, lest we forget.
God ordered His People to rape, pillage and plunder others, numbskull! It's right there in the Bible, for crikey's sake!
That "original Viking heritage" took the Vikings to America in the tenth century, ya know. It took "Christian influence" another 3-4 centuries to find it.
All religions are utterly inconsistent, stupid!
When are they going to rename AiG to the more accurate:- Answers in Chapter 1 of Genesis, 'cos that's all we have read.
No one who has read past Chap 1 can believe that the babble is contradiction-free, or that it is a suitable text from which to sprout forth about morals and ethics.
Any truth to the rumour that that ArkPark is being renamed Poeland?
A lot of the atrocities committed by Norsemen have been exaggerated by Christian historians of the time. These Christians lived centuries before you Ken, but your mentality towards other faiths is no different to theirs. It's a shame that you battle against secularism that has put an end to religious dogma's influence on the state, in westernised countries at least, as then you'd needn't worry about state support towards violence and discrimination based on superstition.
"Well, because these neopagans are being utterly inconsistent!"
So? Why do we need to be consistent with anything? As long as we are not harming anyone, surely that's all that matters.
Sure hambone. Have you ever studied the Crusades, which got so out of hand, the local officials had to ask the Pope to intervene. Like the Fourth Crusade, when the Crusaders decided the Orthodox Church must be these Muslims they had heard about and they sacked Constantinople. Or the practice of re-supplying Crusading armies by sacking Jewish villages.
So yes, so much of a difference between the Vikings and the Crusaders.
While the ancient Vikings did do a lot of raiding, there is also reason to suspect that at least some of what was written about them was their enemies doing. To quote John Green of Crash Course:
"History isn't always written by the winners. When it gets written by the losers, they tend to be kinda sore about it".
This is bullshit, because the Norse raids didn't start until the very end of 8th century. This completely ignores over a millennia of Norse/Germanic heathenry that didn't include rape, pillage, and plunder any more than Christianity does, like in the Old Testament. Not to mention if you take the Old Testament at face value (like Ken Ham certainly does), the Israelites killed far more people than the Vikings ever did, and probably more than the Vikings and Migration-era Germanic tribes combined. Not to mention neither the Vikings nor the Migration Period Germans ever committed genocide of entire cultures like the Israelites did, multiple times.
I'd even venture to say that Germanic heathenry is a far better religion than Christianity, because there's only a few idiots like Wulf Ingessunu and WotansKrieger who practice it compared to millions of idiots like Ken Ham and his fundie flock. Not to mention WotansKrieger is just a crazy guy we can laugh at, whereas Ken Ham is actively trying to make his religion and pseudoscience law, and he has coreligionists in high places who want the same.
Looks like Ken Ham should add ethnology to things he is completely ignorant about.
THAT IS LITERALLY THE ONLY THING THE ISRAELITES OF THE BIBLE EVER DID! EVER! Not that early Christians were any better (they weren't. At all) but goddamn, Hambone. You are quite possibly the only man who can look into a mirror and genuinely believe he doesn't see his own reflection.
Not to mention that their era of pillage didn't come until centuries into their development as a civilization.
So Ken, what exactly would you call what Moses and his army did to the Midianites again? It wasn't "loving thy neighbor", now was it? And what, exactly, were they to do again with those 32,000 virgins they kept alive?
More like "slaughter, raping, pillaging, and plundering", right? And who told them to do this slaughter, raping, pillaging, and plundering? That was YOUR GOD, now wasn't it? Fine example of "christian morality" there.
Because if we don't keep Christian morality, we'll all start sailing around in longboats raping, pillaging, and plundering other cities.
Viking raids continued into the age of Christianity in Europe, they particularly attacked monks compounds because of the cruelty Christianity had visited on their people.
Modern peaceful Norway is how Christian Ken?
Ken like most Christians won't ever account for the higher levels of violence in the more Christian countries and lower level in less religious countries as meaningful, but they'll always dig up acts of the past in other lands as "unchristian behavior".
It's easy in America to pull this con too, "Crusades" is enough to shut any European up when they try this stunt but America (and Canada in related textbooks) buries the atrocities of Christianity in their academia.
Vikings are to Norse what pirates are to Europeans. Yes, they engaged in pillaging and murder, but they aren't representative of the vast number of people who lived in their hamlets, worshipped their gods and never drew weapons on anyone. The only reason we associate Norse myths with the Vikings is because the rest of Europe never saw the peaceful villagers appear on the horizons, just the berserkers and their dragon boats.
Of course, we all remember that bible passage (Industrialites 4, 7:8) "Thou shalt demand tax monies from all to line thy special-interest coffers, and shalt pursue that quest in the public courts. Blessed be thy endeavors to gull the public, yea, even up to the gates of the court of bankruptcy."
"According to the website of a group that promotes faith in 3-in-1 Christian god(s), these people are basing their beliefs on their ancient heritage and culture.* Yet the original Abrahamic faith heritage involved raping, pillaging, and plundering others. Of course, these Christians don’t want or promote a return to that. But it was the rational, moral, and scientific influence that put an end to these actions! So why are they rejecting reality and bringing back part of their religious heritage but maintaining ethical -not Christian- principles of morality? Well, because these Christians are being utterly inconsistent!"
Fixed that for ya, Hamhock.
"raping, pillaging, and plundering others" was probably not mentioned because it was a standard feature of most pre-modern cultures, and continues to flare up whenever people think they can get away with it. Discuss this with Belgians, Croats, etc.
Thecsame Christian influence that brought us the Inquisition, Crusades, Witch Trials, the rape and slaughter of Native American you history fail
But it was the Christian influence that put an end to these actions!
Nonsense. The Goths and Vandals who had originally held pretty much the same Norse beliefs continued their conquests long after they adopted Christianity. Nobody has ever stopped a war by telling people "Jesus wouldn't like it". Christianity certainly didn't stop the world wars.
raping, pillaging, and plundering others. ... it was the Christian influence that put an end to these actions!
Hmm, I wonder what Cortez and Montezuma would have to say about that, not to mention the people who lived on the route the Cusaders took to Jerusalem and back.
"Yet the original Viking heritage involved raping, pillaging, and plundering others. Of course, these neopagans don’t want or promote a return to that. But it was the Christian influence that put an end to these actions!"
So they put an end to the Viking heritage of slaughter, raping, pillaging and plundering others, and started a Christian heritage of slaughter, raping, pillaging, and plundering others?
Right, that's way more moral.
Ken, here's the deal; When you can show me a culture or society that hasn't "raped", "pillaged", or "plundered" in their history, then you can claim them as a moral standard. Until then, can you at least stop pretending that Christianity is a unified society? I mean, even the apostles fought with other Christians.
[deadpan]
"Do what thou wilt, an it harm none" is pagan morality.
Hosea 13:16 is Christian (and to an extent, Jewish) morality.
You are practicing pagan morality.
Die, heathen.
[/deadpan]
Thor carries a hammer.
Your god got attached to lumber.
@Canadiest
Well, yeah.and tends to be non-violent to the point of being defenseless, what do you think would happen?
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy:
When the age of the Vikings came to a close, they must have sensed
But it was the Christian influence that put an end to these actions!
No, it wasn't, you lying sack of shit. You cannot claim basic decency as the property of Christianity.
Write on the board "Not all Norsemen were Vikings" a thousand times.
That's the lenient version. The strict version is "Not all Norsemen were Vikings, Norse communities actually had solid legal and democratic concepts, they were part of international trade rather than simple barbarians, and they probably bathed more than most other Europeans at the time too."
Also, I predict you're going to get trolled by followers of Loki. Don't say anything, they're being honest after all.
Vikings were also settlers, top of France and Ireland still have Nordic place/family names. Maybe they ran people off to settle, at any rate they became peaceful residents.
How were large stretches of America settled Ken? How did much of Europe become Christian?
A lot of Europeans reading this probably wonder how Ken thinks he can get away with shit general scenarios like this. It's because America has steadfast refused to record any Christian atrocities/wars/dictatorships and royal/regime collaborations in their history books. In Europe OR in their country.
Being Canadian and having the same textbooks I had to discover this stuff out post-school. It's why the fundamentalists are against higher learning in general and Universities/extensive libraries and the internet in particular. They've censored and rewrote this history otherwise and want to keep it that way.
You can't keep blaming everything but the Bible on the Catholics or Pagans. Y'all got a lot of shit you've never answered for and it goes on to this day.
@Canadiest:
Vikings were also settlers, top of France and Ireland still have Nordic place/family names.
It goes even further. The whole of Russia is named after a Norse tribe, the Rus, who, among other cities, founded Kiev.
Being Canadian and having the same textbooks I had to discover this stuff out post-school.
To be fair, during my school time in Germany stuff like this didn’t come up in history class, either. I don’t know if the situation has changed in the last 20 years or so, but I had to find out all the stuff that now fascinates me about history for myself after finishing school.
A quick visit to the Yorvik Centre here in York, would do you a power of good, Kenny-boy:
image
The 'Celtic Cross' is used almost as much as the ancient Egyptian Ankh by Neo-Pagans.
Your call. [/hyper-paradox]
From a cultural perspective, my ancestors didn't embrace christianity fully until a thousand years ago, and then threw it off for another form of it during the reformation relatively soon after, and the old beliefs still stuck around, and are sticking around to this day.
And the only time my ancestors went a pillaging was when they were christians. Otherwise they were traders and occasional pirates.
Fuck off Ken.
An add on to the last post -
Norse was merely an aspect of the Germanic religions; we know more about it than the southern parts due to the efforts of Karl the Great to successfully Christianize the kingdoms of Frisia and Saxony after their conquest by his father and his own conquests. Recording the faith of pagans wasn't something he was too keen on; and neither were the missionaries.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
