Christian Mythology: Does Anybody Really Believe It?

[Future_Man]

if nobody believes that all this stuff is true, why is it in the bible? and if you believe its not true but you believe in the infallibility of the bible… then… youre wrong?

the guy who writes this website sounds pretty crazy, as he is constantly referring to the predictions of a professional remote viewer. http://www.portalofevil.com has incredibly awesome daily links to crazy guys like this and other extremely random web creations.

this quote taken from here. although the gyu is crazy, he is talking about somebody else and it doesnt seem like you can make this stuff up. if he did, please correct me.

@crazy dude

The Jesus story, however, was not original. The entire story was plagiarized in bits and pieces, and sometimes blatantly intact, from ancient god/man mythology passed down by Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Persian cultures.

For example the Persian sun-god Mithra, a story dating back to about 1400 BC, talks about a hero born of a virgin in a stable on the winter solstice. He was attended by shepherds who brought gifts. He was said to have taken a last supper with his followers before returning to his father, the god of all. Mithra was believed not to have died, but ascended directly to heaven. Followers believed he would return at the end of time to raise the dead in a physical resurrection, for a final judgment. At that time, the world would be destroyed by fire. And yes, followers of Mithra were granted immortal life following baptism.

A book titled The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ by an author who identifies herself only as Acharya S, notes many other amazing similarities between Christianity and pre-Christian mythology.

Acharya states that Buddha also was born of a virgin, he had 12 disciples, he performed miracles, healed the sick, walked on water and fed 500 men from a small basket of cakes. The Buddha was transfigured on a mount, was crucified in a sin-atonement, suffered three days in hell and was resurrected. After this he ascended to heaven, or Nirvana. Writings refer to Buddha as the “Good Shepherd,” the “carpenter” and “Savior of the World.”

The Egyptian god figure Horus was said to have been born of the virgin Isis on December 25. He was born in a cave, his birth was announced by a star in the East, and he was attended by three wise men. He was a child teacher in the temple. He was baptized by Anup the Baptizer (John the Baptist?), he had 12 disciples, he performed miracles, walked on water, and raised a man named El-Azar-us from the dead. Horus also was transfigured on a mount, was crucified, buried in a tomb and resurrected. He was called a “fisher,” and was associated with the Lamb, Lion and Fish.

In India, the god/man Krishna was born of a virgin, his father was a carpenter, his birth was attended by angels, wise men and shepherds, and they brought presents of gold, frankincense and myrrh. There was a ruler who attempted to destroy the infant by ordering the slaughter of thousands of babies. Krishna worked miracles and wonders, raised the dead, healed lepers, the deaf and the blind. He used parables to teach people about charity and love. He was transfigured in front of his disciples. Some stories say Krishna died on a tree or was crucified between two thieves. He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

It is said that Constantine, who advanced the cause of Christianity by making it the official religion throughout Europe, originally followed the Mithraic cult before his conversion. The Vatican is filled with relics linking not only these two figures, but others as well.

In her book Acharya states that stored in the catacombs of the Vatican are pictures of the baby Horus being held by the virgin mother Isis - the original “Madonna and Child.” She writes: "the Vatican itself is built upon the papacy of Mithra who shares many qualities with Jesus and who existed as a deity long before the Jesus character was formalized.

The Christian hierarchy is nearly identical to the Mithraic version it replaced. Virtually all of the elements of the Catholic ritual, from miter to wafer to water to altar to doxology, are directly taken from earlier pagan mystery religions.

do you feel silly yet? but hey maybe i guess god could easily be going around the world and giving everybody the same divine interaction. upon reading this, dont you at least feel silly trying to convert those mithra worshippers?

read the rest of the website, its awesome. and kind of scary, until it makes you laugh.

[Uccisore]

In general, I don’t see the point to devoting my time to responding to a cut & paste from someone who isn’t here to back their claims, when even the person doing the pasting doesn’t know if what there are referencing is true. So, here you go:

christian-thinktank.com/copycat.html

[Future_Man]

@uccisores link

"It is all too easy to run eagerly after superficial parallels which cannot really be sustained under a closer scrutiny.

hey your right, that stuff is extremely superficial.

so your saying its a coincidence basically? lots of people thought and wrote a bunch of stupid lies and then god actually did it over a thousand years later. and at the year 33AD, the soul of the writer of the myth of mithra goes to gods office and is like “dude you totally ripped off my story”

and gods like “no way man, i… hey youre right LOL!!”

[Uccisore]

So, my link was to 30 pages of research, your reply was to one sentence on page 2 (to which, you didn’t even reply to it in the context in which it was written). Why do you even start threads if you don’t want to talk about the subject?

[scythekain]

presses buzzer

to annoy people?

[Future_Man]

this website is discombobulated and confusing.

@uccisores link

This means that Christian material and events after around 65ad is of little concern to me

really? so hes not talking about the gospel…? what was written before 65ad?

For example, the fact that the New Testament nowhere assigns a specific date (year, month, date, or day of week) to the birthday of Jesus, means that any allegations that the post-apolstolic church later ‘borrowed’ a birthday from a rival figure (e.g. Mithras, Sol Invictus) is irrelevant to the original objection above

ok fine, so the bible writers didnt steal it. christianity obviously did. why? as a means to shutup the religiously addicted public. does this say anything about the nature of the church? that they would just make something up that wasnt in the bible at all?

im still reading your link, but i would very much appreciate it if you could sum up their argument against me. id say that constantine was faced with making christianity the religion for his people and his people had all kinds of crap polluting their minds away from the simple and true logic of jesus’ actual message.

today, these rituals, fabricated only to placate the pagan roman hoardes, completely, utterly, horrifyingly destroy what could be a worldwide love of the golden rule. instead of people worshipping the golden rule, they worship a magic man who raises people from the dead, including you at rapture time, was born of a virgin (come on! why!?), and most importantly, requires that you go to a ridiculously expensive church and do things which appear to be pagan rituals.

every single superfluous dogma that is not directly related to the golden rule is one more twist of the knife in jesus’ back. i have found a logical reason why the knife was put their in the first place: normal roman hoards dont like jesus’ message and constantine didnt feel like teaching what it really was. do you have anything that says otherwise?

[Mad_Man_P]

Hi everyone

Obviously, there is a good reason why we shouldn’t believe everything we read… this includes the bible, tora and any other ancient writings…

Evidence, people… we’re looking for evidence and proof!!! Otherwise we might as well believe that the little robber duck in my tub is an almighty ruler of the universe… he’s just choosing to remain silent for now…

Where’s the evidence!?!?!? Where’s the proof??

There is NONE!!! it’s bullshit… Christianity and all religions end up in the same place… baseless claims… words in a book… with no evidence to back up their individual claims… no proof…

relying on human weakness to gain our trust, and then dive right into our savings account… “buy a key to heaven”… sound familiar?

waether It’ll cost 10 bcks, or a certain behaivior (which allows people to walk all over you) or your very life, is irrevant… you’re being used just the same!

[Uccisore]

really? so hes not talking about the gospel…? what was written before 65ad?

He is talking about the Gospels. As far as I’ve heard, the Synoptic Gospels themselves, or their source material, was written by around 40 A.D. Of course, various people with various agendas will give you different dates. But the author here is assuming that the Gospels were written easily before 65 AD.

ok fine, so the bible writers didnt steal it. christianity obviously did.

Stole what? December 25th? Have you ever even talked to a Christian who was more than 14 years old and believed that Christ was born on December 25th? I haven’t, and if there are any I’m sure none of them post here.

im still reading your link, but i would very much appreciate it if you could sum up their argument against me.

I can sum up a couple points, but if we disagree about them (and we will), we’ll just end up discussing the specifics again, I’m sure. Here’s a couple important general points though:

 Most of historical records about pagan faiths that have survived to this day were written by Christians or Jews. Even the few that were written by fellow pagans were certainly translated into English by Christians. Many of the similarities between Christian and pagan ideas can simply be accounted for by keeping in mind that almost anytime you're reading about an ancient pagan faith, you're reading about a [i]Christians interpretation[/i] of that faith. The appearence of words like "Salvation" or "Redeemer" shouldn't be all that surprising when you think of it that way. 
   Second point: Great length is went to to try to demonstrate how old the New Testament is, so it can be shown that it was written after similar pagan myths (in theory).  Unfortunately, very little effort is made to validate when the pagan myths themselves originated- it's just as plausible, in many cases, to assume that the pagan faiths were altered to better compete with Christianity, and not the other way around. 
   Third: There are certain themes in human life that are universally important. The fact that many religious myths involve an important birth, an important death, death transcended, or the idea of mankind being wicked shouldn't be surprising, and doesn't mean that one is copying the other- it just means that human religions are about what humans find important. 
Really though, these general points are no substitute for an actual analysis of the specifics. 

to annoy people?

We have a winner! Hand a giant stuffed duck to the man in the back.

[Future_Man]

i guess it was kind of to annoy. i mean theres no way to prove that constantine didnt sit down and think “alright whats a cool thing to say about this stuff- oh! that thing that happened to my old god facade mithra.”

the point i really wanted to make was that there is absolutely no verifiable reason for why god would ever want us to believe that jesus came out of a virgin. so i always wondered, why would they say such a crazy thing, assuming that its all lies.

now i know, its because other people said it for some unrelated crazy reason, and the reason why constantine wanted to push it on his christians was because they already believed that kind of stuff. (besides the virgin birth, which was hilariously tacked on much later right?)

if nothing empirically verifiably happens as a result of believing that jesus came from a virgin, and its clear that constantine or somebody could have stolen the ideas, how could god expect me to believe it when believing apparently does me no good? more importantly: WHY would he care if i do?

and since youll say that he doesnt care and you can be a different religion as long as you follow the golden rule: why does anybody follow these rituals when you admit that god doesnt really care?

[Uccisore]

the point i really wanted to make was that there is absolutely no verifiable reason for why god would ever want us to believe that jesus came out of a virgin. so i always wondered, why would they say such a crazy thing, assuming that its all lies.

But don't you see, that if you [i]assume it's all lies [/i]right from the start, you're never going to get a satisfactory answer? All the skeptics are going to say is whatever psychological or sociological explanation for human behavior is popular at the time, and none of the believer's explanations will make sense to you, because you've already decided that everything they say is BS.  What's even your motivation in examining Christianity, if 'Christian claims are all BS' is one of your starting principals?
 Case in point: We already aren't talking about the article I showed you anymore, or even the brief summary points I made from it.  Why aren't you talking about them? It's not because they aren't well-written good explanations for the question you asked. It's that [i]because of your assumptions[/i], any explanation that doesn't start off saying Christianity is bull is inadmissable. 

if nothing empirically verifiably happens as a result of believing that jesus came from a virgin,

Beliefs about history don’t lead to empirically verifable results in the first place- If you stopped believing there was ever such a person as Julius Ceaser tomorrow, what empirical results would you expect from that?

and since youll say that he doesnt care and you can be a different religion as long as you follow the golden rule:

I don’t say that, though. The Golden Rule is only the second most important moral principal according to the words of Jesus. That’s been one of your key errors in understanding Christianity from the get go.

[aviemus]

I think that people just want to believe it, but dont’ take it much further from home, if you know what I mean.

[Future_Man]

I don’t say that, though[that god loves non christians???]. The Golden Rule is only the second most important moral principal according to the words of Jesus.

this is important! what do you say about an isolated island man who loves his neighbor, gives to them and never lies to them or tries to control them and he realizes that this is a very important thing and acts on it.

he never heard of jesus. hes fine right? the rituals that could have been given to him were not needed in order for him to get to heaven. i think what youll say is that anybody who heard about jesus’ rituals and then decided to say no, thats the guy who is screwed right?

if god endorses non-christianity and says that its ok for people to exist like that, and he shows us these christian rituals that have no empirical benefit that is any different from other religions, the ones that he endorsed in lieu of christianity, how could he expect us to choose christianity? simply the urgency of the preachers?

say you were never taught a religion, but you grew up to age 20 and realized that you dont understand the universe, but you understand that it was a gift and youve learned to honor the gift. you go to a religion convention and god is secretly watching overhead as you check out the various religions, more than one of whichs claims that you must be a member or face some nasty consequences.

and you see buddhism, that seems kind of cool. and of course, since all of your lifteime of religious knowledge will be focused on whichever religion you choose, you can go in with the assumption that they are all true. i think wed all pick buddhism if we knew for sure it was true, i dont know, but i do know that a ton of people would not pick christianity.

now imagine god looking down from the sky. hes got a guy who is very much following the golden rule, at the religion convention. he believes everything he hears, and he sees all of the rituals that each religion will demand that he do. he sees unleavened bread, golden chalices and little rugs for kneeling which dont appear to do anything. he sees guys in a trance, totally relaxed, silent, enjoying anti-materialism.

god sees him picking up a huge pile of pamphlets at the buddhism stand. the ceiling explodes with lightning that doesnt just flash, but stays there and burns hundreds of people. his little lightning hand grabs a christianity pamphlet and brings it over to the new buddhist.

does he describe the beautiful golden rule and all the great things that will happen to your life if you follow it, or does he go to the fine print section and point out Rule 89 Subsection W-6. “Thou must be Catholic”?

Beliefs about history don’t lead to empirically verifable results in the first place- If you stopped believing there was ever such a person as Julius Ceaser tomorrow, what empirical results would you expect from that?

well if julius ceaser did some interesting things that was like a mistake for me to avoid in the future, or if i could learn something from his life, then certainly id lose by forgetting about him. jesus taught to always follow the golden rule and his life was a good way to learn about that. buddha wasnt?

and more importantly, my god doesnt require that i believe in julius. only my potentially perfect life does. god did tell me to remember julius and jesus, he told my by the lessons that i should learn. if i learn the same exact lessons without them, why would god care? what difference would it make in the world? why would a god care about something that has no effect on the world? are we breaking something that exists solely in the other world?

the main point of this thread was to tell all my allies that i found yet another silly thing. but more importantly, if theres any reason why i shouldnt believe that constantine made this extra stuff up, id love to hear that. i mean your linked talked about how its not straight up plagiarism, but there is no way to argue against the possibility that if const wanted to take simple ideas from here and there, he easily could have. its not proof that christianity is pure lies, but if youre looking for evidence to support the idea that constantine is the father of christian evil, i found some. and it doesnt look like thats changing.

[Uccisore]

what do you say about an isolated island man who loves his neighbor, gives to them and never lies to them or tries to control them and he realizes that this is a very important thing and acts on it.

I say that I don't know, but God is just and merciful. This person, as described, isn't following what [i]Jesus said[/i] was the most important commandment, though. 
I'd also that that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and that the person you're talking about is most likely imaginary. If Christianity is real, we have to talk about real people. If there's some magical sinless person out there who's never heard of Jesus, then Christianity may well be irrelevant to that person, for all I know. But that doesn't apply to me, or you, or anybody I've ever heard of throughout history. 
The rest of your post is assuming the Golden Rule is the most important thing, even according to Jesus, which is not true. So I'm not really sure how to respond. 

the main point of this thread was to tell all my allies that i found yet another silly thing.

Right, you found a bunch of crap on the Net and wanted all your anti-Christian buddies to gather around and make fun of Christians with you. I realize that. The circumstances have changed, however, and now that I’ve shown you why the article is bunk, you’ve backed into a corner and seem completely unwilling to discuss it any further.
That’s the silly thing I’m showing my allies.

but more importantly, if theres any reason why i shouldnt believe that constantine made this extra stuff up, id love to hear that.

How about because you shouldn't believe products of your own imagination?  If you're going to just decide to believe that constantine did that, why not believe his wife did it, or his dog did it? Without evidence, all three ideas have equal support.  Or, how about the idea that the Gospels were written a century or more before Constantine was born? That seems important. 
Of course the article doesn't argue against the [i]possibility[/i]. You can't argue against possibilities when it comes to history.  What the article does, is shoot down all the [i]evidence[/i] you provided for that possibility. It goes back to my previous statement- no matter how slim the evidence for pagan corruption of Christianity becomes, you're going to believe it anyway because

1.) It’s always going to be a possibility, and
2.) You’ve already made up your mind that Christianity is bunk, and your faith is unshakable on that point.

[Phaedrus]

To be fair, a limited amount of our knowledge of pagan cultures come from Christian or Jewish writtings. We have records in many languages, and the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptions left information about other cultures. But an immense amount of our present knowledge of them comes from archeology. It’s entirely consistent with modern understandings of archeology & history to say that many elements of the Jewish & Christian mythology (and I don’t mean “mythology” in a pejorative sense) came from older pagan beliefs. They in turn also borrowed from older myths. That doesn’t necessarily make the Bible any less true- it merely means that the symbolism and imagery of humanity always contains some universal elements. That’s what gives mythology its power.

[scythekain]

@Phaedrus

To be fair, a limited amount of our knowledge of pagan cultures come from Christian or Jewish writtings. We have records in many languages, and the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptions left information about other cultures. But an immense amount of our present knowledge of them comes from archeology. It’s entirely consistent with modern understandings of archeology & history to say that many elements of the Jewish & Christian mythology (and I don’t mean “mythology” in a pejorative sense) came from older pagan beliefs. They in turn also borrowed from older myths. That doesn’t necessarily make the Bible any less true- it merely means that the symbolism and imagery of humanity always contains some universal elements. That’s what gives mythology its power.

certainly, I mean hell and the devils pitchforks come from greek influences. of course the idea of “hell” had been kicked around by the zoroastrian religion in the middle eastern area, and certainly that’s probably where the greek legends of hades come from.