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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Squirrel Nutkin" data-source="post: 299032" data-attributes="member: 32">Sure thing, Al! Check out this snippet from an <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/" target="_blank">Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance</a> article about the Family Research Council:Paganism:  The most common definition on the Internet is: Wicca or other Neopagan religion. The first 14 hits on the Google search engine all returned this meaning: Wicca is a recently created religion based, in part, on the religious deities, symbols, seasonal days of celebration, etc. of the ancient Celts. A Wiccan is a follower of Wicca. Neopaganism is a family of modern faith traditions, each of which has been recently reconstructed from beliefs, deities, symbols, practices and other elements of an ancient religion. Followers of a Neopagan religion often refer to themselves as Pagans or Neopagans. The most common definition used by conservative Christian is: an ancient, defunct polytheistic religion, such as faiths once followed by the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, etc. Five of the first six hits on the Goshen search engine returned this meaning.  The meaning that is presumably used in the FRC essay is: a non-Abramic religion. That is, one that does not recognize Abraham as a patriarch. It is other than Christianity, Islam and Judaism. This definition of "Paganism" includes Agnosticism, Atheism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Humanism, Taoism, etc. About 45% of the people of the world are Pagans, by this definition. The term is sometimes used in other contexts, such as:  a religion which is other than Christianity and Judaism. a general-purpose religious snarl word used to refer to any religion which is to be ridiculed or hated. a religion followed by modern-day primitive societies.</blockquote>

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