“If I only had a brain.”

See and consider the comments above by HC68.

With you it’s straw men all the way down.

And who is saying that Aristotle, Socrates. Plato, the Stoics, etc., are to be erased and discarded?

— om

Though some of their thinking and programs should be left in the past. Plato, esp. is a mixed bag, Aristotle is better overall, but not all good input. Again, over time we took the good from them and mostly eschewed the bad.

The thing is that the really nasty parts of Classical paganism are mostly forgotten except by historians and classicists. The myths we read about are bowdlerized, esp. the Classical ones, but the Norse ones are somewhat sanitized in most popularizations, too. As for the pre-Indo-European paganism of Europe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindow_Man

We don’t absolutely know it was ritual human sacrifice, but that’s the way to bet.

The ancient Greeks provided much of the philosophical foundation of the West, in spite of being pagans. Do we throw out Greek philosophy because they were pagans?

Christianity incorporated much philosophy from Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics into its theology. Thomas Aquinas is a strong, clean example. Do we throw out Aquinaas?

— huxley

The early Church took much of what was good from Classical Civilization, and left the rest behind. What they left behind was left behind mostly for very good reasons.

Modern Western Christendom owes less to Greece than is often believed. Classical Greece is not directly ancestral to our society, it’s more like an aunt or uncle. If we’re looking for pagan roots, we owe more to the Norse pagans (as C.S. Lewis observed) than we do to pagan Greece.

Our political institutions, languages, customs, all owe more to northern Europe than they do to Greece. That’s not an entirely comfortable heritage. But it’s so.

And who is saying that Aristotle, Socrates. Plato, the Stoics, etc., are to be erased and discarded?

That is your straw man huxley.

The Bible has a few things to say about paganism, see the Old and New Testaments.

But the neo-paganists needed something new? License?

Christianity incorporated much philosophy from Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics into its theology. Thomas Aquinas is a strong, clean example. Do we throw out Aquinaas?

Eschew special pleading.

Further, do we get to blame paganism for the Nazis and Communists?

Yes, I have read history probably as much as anyone here who didn’t major in it.

Astounding (not) that non-Christians aren’t perfect either since all humans aren’t. saints.

This. A lot of bad things have been done in the name of religion, causing some to disdain religion. But consider this: in the 20th century there were two ideologies who had contempt for religion and considered themselves above it. They murdered tens if not hundreds of millions of people.

Could be worse, could be pagans.

Some history could be useful.