{"id":3644,"date":"2011-12-30T09:37:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T16:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3644"},"modified":"2011-12-30T13:38:45","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T20:38:45","slug":"an-atheistic-critique-of-wicca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3644","title":{"rendered":"An Atheistic Critique of Wicca"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blogging atheist Eric Steinhart, writing at Daniel Fincke’s Camels with Hammers,<\/em> turns his rhetorical guns on Wicca<\/a>. He thinks that a “woo-free Wicca” might be tolerable.<\/p>\n

There are a number of separate posts, and I have not read them all. But I get the impression that he is engaging with a very limited number of books, chosen more or less at random from the Llewellyn catalog<\/a>, plus something by the late Stewart Farrar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The irony is that there are indeed a huge number of books about Wicca, yet everyone calls it a religion of experience, “embodied religion,” and so forth. I am not sure that Steinhart gets that part. Has he been in circle? Has he experienced the fire and smoke and music of a large festival?<\/p>\n

I don’t mean that either experience would “convert” him, nor should they. And he probably would respond that they merely activate different parts of the brain, which has nothing to do with all those imaginary gods, etc.<\/p>\n

What interests me here too is that his postings provide another data point in the increasing role of contemporary Paganism \u2014 and Wicca (broadly defined) as its largest segment \u2014 as the new religious “other.”<\/p>\n

What people like Steinhart have yet to work out is that the rhetorical starting points are different when talking about polytheism, animism, etc. than when talking about the scriptural religions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blogging atheist Eric Steinhart, writing at Daniel Fincke’s Camels with Hammers, turns his rhetorical guns on Wicca. He thinks that a “woo-free Wicca” might be tolerable. There are a number of separate posts, and I have not read them all. But I get the impression that he is engaging with a very limited number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,167,5,6],"class_list":["post-3644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-atheism","tag-paganism","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-WM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5113,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5113","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":0},"title":"Wicca, Recategorized by Librarians, Now by Booksellers as Well","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2007, the\u00a0 news was that books on Wicca were re-categorized by the Library of Congress from BF (psychology, abnormal) to\u00a0 BP 600, a sort of catch-all for \"other beliefs and movements.\" A new Dewey Decimal number was assigned as well, for libraries using that system. Now the change is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"libraries\"","block_context":{"text":"libraries","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=libraries"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13198","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":1},"title":"The First Wiccan Book Published in India","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 7, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A little more than twenty years ago, in the preference to his landmark study of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft, The Triumph of the Moon, the historian Ronald Hutton wrote that \"the unique significance of pagan [sic] witchcraft to history is that it is the only religion which England has even given\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"India\"","block_context":{"text":"India","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=india"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/ANI-20221216115613-300x205.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":873,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=873","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":2},"title":"Wicca and Christianity","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I have not yet seen it, but English scholar Jo Pearson has a new book, Wicca and the Christian Heritage. Amazon-UK link here.From the publisher's catalog:What is Wicca? Is it witchcraft, Paganism, occultism, esotericism, magic, spirituality, mysticism, nature religion, secrecy, gnosis, the exotic or 'other'? Wicca has been defined by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3707,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3707","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":3},"title":"Wicca without “Woo”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I linked earlier to one of Eric Steinhart's series of discussions and critiques of Wicca from a non-theistic philosophical perspective. Here is the last, apparently, on Wicca without the \"woo\": It\u2019s probably not possible for Wicca to renounce the culture of woo.\u00a0 But an atheistic nature-religion in the United States\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":538,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=538","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":4},"title":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing on Paganism helps journalist earn awardFreelance writer and religion journalist Kimberly Winston won this year's American Academy of Religion journalism award in the category of \"news outlets with more than 100,000 circulation or on the Web.\"Her work has included writing on Wicca and Paganism, including a piece that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":892,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=892","url_meta":{"origin":3644,"position":5},"title":"Let’s Hear It for BP605.W53!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"When you visit a university library that uses Library of Congress call numbers, are you tired of finding books on Wicca in the BF's along with abnormal psychology?(For example, my book Her Hidden Children is at BF1566 .C55 2006. At least The Paganism Reader made it into the BL's, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"publishing\"","block_context":{"text":"publishing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=publishing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3650,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions\/3650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}