Sun, 16 Feb 2003

The Fourth Meditation

There are fundamental differences between polytheistic religions such as Asatru, and “revealed”, monotheistic religions such as Christianity. These run far deeper than mere differing practice. Perhaps the most basic of these differences concerns the nature of evil.

We are often accused of being either worshippers of Satan and overtly evil, or else of being naïve and rather childishly ignorant of evil and suffering. Neither supposition could be further from the truth.

It is very difficult to worship a deity you don’t believe exists. As we Asatruar do not believe in the Judeo-Christian Devil, it is impossible for us to worship him. The argument is often put forth that “Ah, but your deities are merely demons in the service of Satan, and thus you’re worshipping him out of ignorance.”, which, if true, still does not make us evil. This is a fundamental point: what, exactly, is evil?

We believe that true evil requires intent. By this we mean that, while an action can be said to have evil consequences, it is not evil in and of itself unless the evil consequence was intended. Accidents are not evil – crimes are, no matter that the outcome of either may be identical. In this regard, Asatru closely parallels the development of Western legal theory. In fact, most of the West’s most cherished legal and political institutions have there roots in this aspect of our thinking: the oldest sitting Parliment in the world is the Icelandic Althing.

This is a critical point. Tornadoes, earthquakes, naturally occurring disease, and other such “acts of nature” cannot, by this definition, be evil. Neither is death. They are not in the same category at all – arson may set fire to a forest, but so may lightening. To be called evil there must be evil intent – and electrons are incapable of having intent. Manslaughter is not murder: the result may be identical, and if there was negligence there should be an appropiate punishment, but the fact remains that evil requires intent.

Thus, whereas Christians (and Jews, Moslems, etc.) define evil as the definance of divine will, Asatrurar have a much more humanistic focus.

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