Firehair--

I can speak only for myself, but I don't have any problems or issues with Wicca per se. My dear departed aunt Faith was Wiccan, Goddess bless 'er, and before she passed we agreed as that we'd see each other again, me through my path and her through hers. The core of the Wrede (sp?), "do as you will, but harm none," I find to be an admirable and laudable creed.

As I said in the previous thread which you may or may not have missed, I follow two faiths: Christianity mainly, and the Dakota Sacred Pipe. I grew up with both. I believe in the literal, historical truth of the creation myths of neither. I believe in their symbolic, spiritual, and mythic power, but I don't believe that they happened in history. No back of the turtle, no talking coyote (and I love Coyote stories), no six-days-then-rest, no rib, no universal flood. The universe is billions of years old, and far more mysterious and wild than any creation myth has yet captured.

My father is an historian, so I grew up in a family steeped in history. So I'm a little bit pagan myself, but I'm with T-Bird on the issue of people insisting on unsupportable, often demonstrably untrue, historical and factual claims. Our best example for these things is, I think the Dalai Lama, who when asked what Buddhists would do if science were to prove reincarnation impossible, replied "then we would stop believing in it, of course."

People are free to believe whatever creation myths they want, but when those involve actual historical claims, it's unfair of them to say it's disrespectful towards them to state plainly that you don't believe them.

Chris