Didn't the message and spirit of heavy metal and dark themes like Satan come out of Christianity? All these black metal bands or a death band like Deicide are notorious for the pagan and anti-Judeo Christianity themes. If it wasn't for those, what would there be left to rail against? There would be no heavy metal if it wasn't for Christianity. If not, then if it was just paganism that was popular then maybe metal would rebel against that too.

Lots of Metal isn't even about anti-Christianity now. You have your BM bands that have lyrical themes of history, war, nature, suicide, etc. The same applies to many other genres of metal.

Christians should be thankful for metal.

\m/

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here

I agree, I am kind of confused. I think Metal came out of the need to rebel against the norm and what was generally accepted, and yeah, maybe Christianity was one of the main targets, but I'm sure if it didn't exist, there would just be another thing there in it's place.

If Christianity had never existed, methinks the fact that metal bands wouldn't have anything to sing about would pale in comparison to the other alternate-history timeline-changing events that would have occured as a result. Have some perspective.

In a nutshell - exactly.

The thing that I want to know is, for those artists that truely detest Christianity or religion to the utmost, do you think that their hate for it is so great that they would wish it had never existed so that they would have nothing to express their hatred for? I hope that clears it up.

/thread

Aren't most christian beliefs derived from paganism?

Such as Christmas, I believe. It was actually a Pagan holiday, I think...(correct me if I'm wrong).

Most bands that do express a hatred for christianity base it on logic and a disgust for the easiness with which the masses are able to be manipulated. Unless you're Glen Benton it only occupies a small percentage of the themes of metal, most metal is opposed to it without needing to rant endlessly about it. There are many much darker corners of humanity and the human mind than 2000 year old lies.
christianity is based on bastardisations theft from already existing cultures and religions, it's filled with countless holes, etc...
As for metal depending on its existence, complete bullshit. As I just said, christianity stole from already existing cultures and religions, so that alone dismisses the argument as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, Jesus is also (probably) an entity created entirely from mashing together several older deities/mythical heroes like Krishna, Hercules and Mithras and the various largely forgotten messianic figures from the time that Jesus purportedly existed.

6:46 through 9:49 of this video explain the Mythras thing rather well, if anyone is curious.

Yep. Christ was born in the summer, I believe, not in a winter month. Unless he was born in Australia.

edit: IF he was ever born I dunno who told me the summer thing, i remember flicking through the channels and watched this islamic channel for personal amusement and I heard it there.



All religions are basically derived from pagan beliefs... Allah was one of the idols in the kabbah, apparently and he wanted Muhammad to kill all the dudes who associated him with socalled fake idols

The more you learn about religion, the more apparent it is where they took their things from.

Zoroastrianism.

I think it's true that metal is what it is today because of the Western Judeo-Christian philosophy and theology that influenced it. Even though metal has come to reject much of that framework, metal's lyrical themes and the concepts expressed in them have, arguably, been thoroughly shaped by the long influence of Christianity on Western culture. Reading pre-Christian literature reveals just how different the modern world's perspective is, and many of those differences can be explained through Christianity's influence. Sure, some things have survived from paganism and pre-Christian belief, but even in that case we can only make comparisons because Christians gave accounts of paganism. In effect, our concept of pagan beliefs, including everything from the Norse pantheon to the Greeks, is ripped straight from Christian books and, so, is filtered through a Christian lens.

Metal would be very different if it weren't for Christianity, although I'm sure that with the development of modern musical technology it would occur to someone to write similar music. To paraphrase Nietzsche in The Gay Science, it's not just people who accept a certain idea who are influenced by it, but also people who reject it. Sometimes, vehement criticism is the highest form of flattery.

Is it DsO's influence that severely damaged your brain or what?

There's plenty of archaeological evidence surviving from prechristian times, including sacred texts and literature.

There are a number of texts that survive from Ancient Greece and Rome, sure, my argument is that the Western understanding of Greek paganism is largely filtered through a Christian lens. The mountain of medieval Christian writing on the Greeks and Romans has noticeable impacts on modern concepts. Sure, historians can understand ancient Greece and Rome, but most people don't. Furthermore, Greek and Roman paganism is virtually the only form that we have major sources from. We don't have any texts from Northern Europe about pagan gods that weren't written by Christians, and most of those were written by monks. The simple fact is that paganism was, in most cases, transmitted orally.

It's got nothing to do with being a Christian or thinking it's a good thing, it's just history, which I just happen to be getting a degree in within two weeks.

I'm sure that in the absence of Christianity, people would still take delight in opposing the religion which would inevitably exist in its place. There's remarkably little difference between major religions when you really look at them.

Sumer/Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, China, Japan, etc. don't count?

First, I was implicitly talking about the Western world; most of the pagan religions you mention have not been studied in depth in the Western world and certainly have not had a significant effect on its cultural development. Second, virtually every source we have from that early in time was translated and preserved by some other group; Greek thought by the medieval Christians (Augustine, the Scholastics) and Muslims, Japanese and Chinese by Buddhists, Egyptian was hardly preserved at all, we just got fucking lucky that the Book of the Dead survived.

To sum up my argument in three sentences: The only forms of paganism that significantly impacted Western thought (because they were not viewed through the lens of Orientalism) are Greek, Roman, Norse, Germanic, Celtic, and related beliefs. The vast majority of our knowledge and the interpretative framework for studying them was transmitted to us by medieval Christians. Metal is predominantly a Western phenomenon and, therefore, is shaped by a long tradition of Christian thought, which provides the only account of Western paganism.

Plus the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts and a whole lot of other, less significant religious texts.

The worlds partially enslaved to an elaborate fairy tale, confused between worshipping a virgin mother, a undead apparition risen from death, and some all powerful force that is the embodiment of everything and yet does absolutely nothing leaving everything to a clever faith dependent mechanism.
Mankind has made itself a monster trying to appease this imagination, also passing the blame onto another fantasy as the enemy of the afore mentioned entity when things go afoul or the bodies pile too high trying to enforce will and worship of this phantom.
Armies march under a flag and doctrine of peace and yet leave only death and hatred in their wake as they go to spread the good word.

I think christianity can fuck off, the world would have been just fine without it as I imagine metal could of as well. There is never any thanks to give to this death cult.

No, this is all wrong. Metal is not about mindless rebellion, it is about rebelling against what is wrong. If paganism is not wrong, metal would not rebel against it.

what? that had to be a joke.

Why?
Why rebel just for the sake of rebelling like some goth Slipknot fan against their parents?

Sure; that's irrelevant to the argument, though.

Even if there wasn't Christianity, I'm sure we'd find something else to hate.