Atheistic Paganism - A Pagan Religious Naturalism

Is the sun a god? “No“, said the ancient Philosopher Anaxagoras and got persecuted for blasphemy in 430 BC. In his view all the stars were only glowing rocks in the sky. When the German poet Goethe wrote his Doctor Faustus, the stars have not only lost their religious meaning in mainstream Europe, but also their occult properties in the sciences. The stars very considered as “just a magnificent spectacle”.

But what does „just “mean here? If something is just a glowing rock, it is such in relation to something else, that must be more than a glowing rock. What might this something else be? Humans as animated beings, i.e. humans as beings with a soul, or rather other, true, gods? Modern science says today that the sun is just a physical process, a big ongoing fusion reaction. The general public perceives this statement as saying that the sun is different to us or the Christian God. Why? The reason for this is a Christian view on the sciences in the 17th century AC. Driven by the concept of a creator God, Philosophers with a Christian world view like Rene Descartes started to separate the world machine from soul and God. They did so by letting behind pagan thinkers like Aristotle or Plato, who incorporated soul into the material world. Hence after the 17th century there were humans’ souls with God on one side and the material world as a bunch of mere machines on the other. This had effects on the sciences. When many of us use the term „laws of nature” they refer to a supposed manual of laws written by some soul governing the world machine.

But this view also affected society. We can see this in the current climate crisis. Society has long thought that it is somehow detached from nature in which it can just intervene like one would adapt the parts of a machine. The catastrophic effects of ignoring the existential dependency of humans from nature are seen all over the world.
Also, those, who claim to negate the world of souls and God, Atheists, are still faithful to this view. They accept that religion is somehow different to science, lives apart from it and refers to a different realm. They need to do so any time when they refer to the religious realm as not existing, because they continuously repeat that the world is just material. New Atheism, as Richard Dawkins supports it, is a good example of a world view, which was developed in negation to another one, by claiming that something in the other view would not exist. But if this other stuff is not existing, why referring to it constantly? Why calling the sun just the fusion reaction if there is nothing else than physical and chemical processes? A consequent stance on the other hand would demand to get rid of the “just”, as it got rid of soul and the Christian God in the first place.

The sun is not just a fusion reaction. It is a fusion reaction! It is a fusion reaction, like the human is a very complex chemical reaction. Because there is neither soul-stuff in humans nor is there a soul-stuff in the sun. But if this is true, and there is no distinction in principle between the sun and a human, then the Sun is a god. Because what else could claim the title “god” if not a long living fusion reaction in relation to the short chemical reactions on earth, which existentially depend on its energy.

If someone is an Atheist (as I am) and that someone goes all the way with her atheism, she must realise that in a material worldview gods and religion naturally pop up, pagan gods and pagan religion. Of course, the sun is a god and it is worth our admiration.