Of course: exceptions are a rule.

However, I think the "educated idiot" is a truism that uneducated people tell themselves in order to rationalize feelings of inadequacy.

In my many years of being involved with academia, both as a student and an instructor, I have met few "educated idiots." And most of those where not idiots from a cognitive viewpoint, but more from a social aspect.

At the expense of sounding elitist, most of the people with whom I work (my colleagues, not my students) have Masters' Degrees or higher. The students aspire to have degrees.

The OP mentioned high school graduates, but in today's world, having a high school degree is not a sign of being educated.

It goes to show how everything is relative: the holder of a high school diploma is scornful of his peers who do not have such a degree.

In other work instances, a high school diploma won't get you in the door.

Stick it in a snowbank! It will numb the pain. (Grin.)

Wow, what kind, sweet thing to say! When America falls, she will take down with her millions of people not only in this country, but in many other countries.

Aren't you the guy who started a forum discussing how people should do what makes them happy? Is this what makes you happy--the desire for the destruction of America and her many people? You want to see us suffer?

I have a two year old granddaughter. You want to laugh at her misery because you want the US to fall? You want to see her go hungry and have no place to live?

You are a cruel, careless, callous man--and I am saying that despite the fact that I could reprimanded by the moderators. Anyone who wishes ill to another person--especially the innocent--should be told how selfish he/she is.

So, tell me, HOW many American women responded to this plea???

Your illicit sex, wine, and porn is underground! Just because it isn't in the open doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.



Whoa, whoa, whoa! You are probably the biggest hypocrite that I have met online--and perhaps in person. WHY can't I be on dating sites and in chat rooms? Why are they "bad places"? So, that makes me an evil, whorish woman who is asking for men to make lewd remarks to me?


YOU are on a dating site! A "bad place" where you will be tempted.

Yet you choose to remain here.

That makes you as evil and corrupt as any citizen of the US. Oh, but wait, you are a MAN, and that's different from ME being on a dating site because I am a woman.

Dude, if dating sites are "bad places," then get your *** off NOW.

From what you say, women on dating sites and chat rooms are whores and deserve to be treated badly. Is that why YOU are on a dating sire? So you can talk to women nastily?

As for your preposterous statement about "an empty door tempting a saint," people are responsible for their actions. People cannot be absolved from responsibility for what they do because they are tempted.

I will bet that you have never received a positive comment from an American woman who was not desperate. Women of good self-esteem wouldn't touch you with a 20 foot pole.

Perhaps that is your problem: all the rejection that you have received has hurt your tiny ego.

Pffft.

The etymology of "pagan" comes from the Roman "pagani," which mean hill folk or country dwellers. It was a term of derision for the uneducated laborers who worked the land. Until the advent of Christianity as a major monotheistic religion, it was unnecessary to use "polytheistic" since most cultures believed in many gods. Zoroastrianism and Judaism are two exceptions, but even within Zoroastrianism, there was Mithra, a Christlike figure who was the go-between humans and Ahura Mazda.

"Pagan" predates the concept of Satan and has come to mean "polytheistic." Wiccans are pagan and so were the Druids--so are Hindus and many other religions. The only reason I can think of as to why a Wiccan would resent being called pagan is that it is often used as a term of scorn by mainstream Christians. Regardless of any resentment, Wiccans ARE pagans.

I have known many pagans, including Wiccans, and I have never known one to be insulted by the word "pagan."

Jews and Muslims are not pagans; even dictionary.com defines the word as someone not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim; any monotheistic faith would fall into the same category.

However, both "pagan" and "heathen" are sometimes used to refer to a person who has no religious beliefs. Interestingly, the Romans called Jews and Christians "atheists" because they didn't believe in the Roman gods.

Welcome to the real world! For the rest of your life, you will be judged on what you look like and what you wear. People give lip service to the whole "inside" being important--and some do buy into it--but overall, we are a society based on looks.

If you venture further out into the world, you will also be judged on how you talk, your education, and how much money you make.

Life is fair--the cake is not always cut into equal pieces.

By the way, I might be able to accept someone for the way that he/she is, but that doesn't mean that I want that person for a friend or lover. I don't like beards, for example, and if a man with a beard said, "This is me, take it or leave it," I would walk away.

I expect others to do the same if they don't like something integral about me.

I "respect" very few people, even ones with whom I agree. However, my demeanor is still polite and friendly until someone says something out of line.

In these forums, I often find people with whom I disagree find my disagreement as a lack of respect for them. I do not expect everyone to agree with me, and I can agree to disagree. Some cannot come to this state. When someone continues to present information to contradict what I say, I will present information to the contrary.

This has led some people to be very insulting! They take what I say as personal attacks against them when, in fact, I am disagreeing with what they claim.

I have run into this in real life, as well, and it has invariably been with men. If I disagree, I will say so! I am not sure what these men expect, but I suspect it has something to do with their machismo.

1. You can rail against the weather all you like! It will have the same effect as if you just accepted it.

2. Make sure you check the withholding on your check stubs.

3. Clean before vacation time rolls around.

4. Go barefoot.

Neo-Druids cannot reconstruct the arts of the ancient Druids. That is WHY they were oral!

Heart does not make "all" things: if so, the Morrigan would not have existed. The Druids accepted the dark along with the light.

I forgot . . . I also cannot begin to count the number of men from overseas who have also approached me on dating sites and chat rooms in order to scam me for money.

That's REALLY ethical and moral, isn't it?

Remove the plank in your own eye before worrying about the speck in the eye of another.

I have not traveled out of the US (except to Canada), but for years, I was an aficionado of chat rooms in various venues.

I was consistently approached by men from the Mid East, India, and other parts of the world who wanted nothing more than to have sex talk or see me naked on cam.

I KNOW that not all men in the Mid East and India are sleazy, sex deprived men, but I developed a real antipathy of men from those countries who are online. What they preached was not what they practiced.

I would also like to mention the 24 hour marriages that used to be common (and perhaps still are) in the Mid East; men would marry a woman for 24 hours just to have sex with her legally and morally. When the 24 hours was up, the "marriage" was dissolved.

I talked to a young man in India who was resigned to waiting for his parents to choose a wife for him. He spoke of his friends who frequented whorehouses in order to satisfy their sexual needs before marriage and after marriage.

Don't play "holier than thou"--your own country has the same double standards as does the US. You just cover up the activities that we bring out in the open.

By the way, I LIKE sex--no man can any woman and then throw her away without her consent. Outside of rape, sex is a mutually agreed upon act.

The Druids (male and female) were the priestly caste of the Celts, but I suppose that you know that. "Heart" did not make a person a Druid: there was a long period of study, and the course of study was entirely oral--nothing was written. This was done for two reasons:

1. The novice KNEW what he/she needed to know and internalized the knowledge.

2. It was so the untrained could not obtain the information.




My credentials are an MA in English. My thesis was on archetypal myth in the works of Shelley and Woolf. I have been teaching mythology for over seven years on a college level, both archetypal myth (including Egyptian and Sumerian) and the evolution of modern monsters from mythic roots. I have dedicated the last decade of my life to studying archetypal myth. By no means do I know everything (by NO means), but I have to correct erroneous statements when I see them.

You ask what granaries have to with the underworld--um, I don't remember connecting the two. I said Bast (who is not a goddess of the underworld) was worshiped in her cat form because cats protected the grain.

In addition, the Egyptians didn't have an "underworld"; Tuat (or Duat), the afterlife, was located in a nebulous place to the west.

As for your statement about snakes being better rodent catchers--take it up with the dead Egyptians! I am merely repeating the most common theories for the anthropomorphic deities of Egypt. (By the way, the "Egyptians" called their country "Kemet"; the Greeks named it "Egypt.")

I am not sure which point you are trying to make in response to my comments about Akhenaten. He shifted the power away from the temples of the many gods and took it for himself, but that wasn't the point that you made in your other post and it wasn't to what I replied. I said "Aten Ra" was a misnomer in relation to the one god that Akhenaten worshiped; it was merely "Aten." In the 18th dynasty, monotheism was short-lived, and polytheism didn't "give way" to monotheism--not until centuries later when Islam became the religion of Egypt.

You don't have to repeat how Osiris' solar barge traversed the heavens; I am quite familiar with the myth.

I am also not sure of the point that you are making about the neo-druids. I was making the point that people can call themselves Druids, but the Druids are all dead. When they died, they took their knowledge with them.

"Dark arts"? A bit melodramatic. The arts are the arts--they are like fire, the intent is up to the user.

Since I don't believe a "collector," what people "sacrifice" is entirely in their heads.

If you perceive my comments as biting, I am merely trying to set the record straight.

History not best learned from college texts; it is best learned by reading primary sources and commentary by experts who delve deeply and spend their lives dedicated to the study of their chosen fields. I know that when I teach a class, I am giving the students a bare glimpse into what "is." The rest of their learning is up to them.

Whoa! Where did you get that definition?

Do you mean my peers or the students whom we teach?

Join my religion.

There is no paradox.

Even IF there is a creatrix, humans still created every deity in existence. We give deities names, faces, and attributes.

All druids are dead. There are neo-druids, but the ancient druids would shudder at the audacity of such untrained people assuming their title.

Really, read something besides websites when you discuss ancient history/religion. The religion of Egypt wasn't called "Pantheon," but the pantheon was the council of gods or the most important deities: all polytheistic religions had a pantheon.

Bast is a guardian because cats guarded the grain of ancient Egypt; they killed rats and other vermin. When your main supply of food is grain, the cats that helped protect that grain were important.

In some myth, Atum comes before Ra, but the beliefs of Egyptians or any other pagan religion is not so simple. Sometimes, the deities are combined and become such gods as Aten-Ra.

The polytheistic beliefs didn't "give way" to the monotheistic reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, but rather, he forced his beliefs on the people. As soon as he died--and we don't know how he died--the populace reverted to their former polytheistic ways. In addition, the god of Akhenaten was just "Aten," not "Aten-Ra," which would have not been a monotheistic deity.

Before you make judgments on the beliefs of a culture, it is wise to know what the culture thought--not overlaying modern ideas on those ancient beliefs. The Egyptians personified the animals around them because they viewed them in a different way than you do.

Your estimation of Kali is a bit off the mark: all destroyers are creators and creatrixes. Without destruction, there is no creation. Kali dances on the head of Shiva and he smiles because he understands the necessity. As a dark goddess, she is akin to Hekate and the Morrigan: women/goddesses were the portals to life and the portals to death.