Bob’s statements that people are “talking about God without knowing what they are talking about…†ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … 20#1898920
and that they are ‘unaware’ or ‘clearly have no idea’ etc made me shake my head at the irony.
Simply put, people like Bob may think they have 20, 30, 40 years of knowledge and experience in religious matters but I disagree. People who spend their life studying ONE aspect of ONE religion end up with ONE year of experience – repeated 20, 30 , 40 times. Drilling down over the same words in the same book time and time again is narrow and parochial. A person who does this may have lots of information about his specialty but this does not make him wise; on the contrary.
How much time do they spend studying other religions or spiritual beliefs or do they think the religion they were accidentally born into was the correct one?
How much time do they spent studying the possibility that there is no god?
How much time do they spent researching where the jesus stories (and the saying that have been attributed to him) actually came from?
Take a look at this; it’s an overview of what I think whenever I hear religious people calling others ignorant of scripture.
Wow, definitely appreciate the information on the video link. I’d be interested to see if any of the information isn’t factually correct, but great food for thought none-the-less.
(I hope nobody raises their hands.) Yeah I’ve seen that video before, it’s informative but feels unusually like brainwashing propaganda. I did some research and couldn’t find other sources that back up some of the claims in there…but then again I didn’t do an exhaustive study or anything. Just putting a red flag up here.
I don’t believe all those characteristics apply to Attis, Horus, Dionysus, and Krishna. I have studied the latter three elaborately, and haven’t come across such obvious parallels which did not evidently originate well after the beginning of the common era. Also, just check Wikipedia on Attis to see that there are no more than very broad similarities between him and Jesus.
Anyone who believes that the “mythological” Jesus does not exist is simply relying upon the dates of the gospels…which themselves are tentatively dated. Opinions fly on both sides concerning the accuracy of dating of the papryuses themselves.
Was carbon dating used on each one, or are the gospels only “conceptually” dated?
Regardless, one can argue that literary proof of Jesus was sequestered and destroyed by the pharisees after his crucifixion, and later manuscripts from the memories of the disciples came after.
Or one could appeal to the Matrix Hypothesis…that Jesus in fact existed, performed miracles, and raised from the dead (raising others as well)…but this occurred in a reality beyond the simulated reality that is our current perceptual experience…so that faith is needed in this reality.
Just a thought,
Jay M. Brewer superchristianity.com (a hypothesis of what was going on within the mind of Jesus Christ while dying upon the cross)
Wow, cool, some agreement that this isn’t good info anymore. I have to say, the books these assertions are based on come from the 19th century, and though as far as I can tell they ideas aren’t widely taken seriously anymore, they still crop up over 100 years later.
There was a Jesus from Galilee who was the son of Mary and Joseph.
Jesus had four brothers, James, Joses, Judas and Simon and at least two sisters.
Jesus was baptized by John.
*Some of John the Baptist’s disciples became followers of Jesus.
Jesus “returned in the power of the spirit” (Luke 4:14 - spirit possession?) and became an itinerant teacher who proclaimed the kingdom of God.
Jesus taught in a circuit to synagogues in Galilean villages using Capernaum as his hub.
Jesus consorted with and shared an open table with social outcasts and enjoyed a certain amount of popularity in Galilee and surrounding regions.
Jesus was known for curing some sick people and performing exorcisms.
*Jesus cured a lame man. (at Capernaum - Mk 2:1-12; Mt 9:1-8; Lk 5:17-26)
Some accused Jesus being mad or possessed by Beelzebul.
Jesus practiced prayer in seclusion.
*The Pharisees probably did expect heavenly signs related to the coming of God’s kingdom.
*The crowds who came to hear Jesus also expected such a sign.
The Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign.
*Jesus refused to provide heavenly signs.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass as a symbolic act.
*The disciples fled when Jesus was arrested.
Jesus was flogged and crucified by Roman soldiers during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate (26-36 C.E.)
Mary Magdalene was among the early witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus (Matthew and John).
Zhu Xi lamented the popularity of the new printing methods of his time that made books a fairly common commodity. While he argued that every book had something of value (He said he liked a line-or-two from Art of War, for example) there are clearly some texts that are better than others. With the rise of printing, people no longer focused and really got to know/internalized the worthwhile texts and instead would simply read a wide variety of different texts. This practice ultimately devalues texts because without familiarity, the amount of impact that any given text has upon you is diminished.
Spending many years reading a single text to become intimately familiar with it, and reading some other supporting texts to aid in increasing that familiarity makes perfect sense to me if someone wants to actually internalize what the text is trying to teach. It is a depth vs. breadth argument. Breadth is good for casual conversation but depth is really what we can set ourselves on.
Is this supposed to represent an argument? Does it matter to you that it is only tangentially related to the topic? We are discussing a film that argues that everything in the New Testament story of Jesus is based on ancient astrological symbolism and mythology. The question was asked if there were any elements of the gospel story that were original to it. The elements I listed are ones that, to the best of my knowledge, are specific to the Gospel account of Jesus of Nazareth. If you wish to argue about historical evidence you will have to do better than making an unsupported assertion.
The ‘elements’ you listed were by and large entirely trivial. For example, you say that Jesus was from Galilee, that his parents were Mary and Joseph, and that he had brothers and sisters, etc.
And this is somehow supposed to be unique to the Jesus story?
Give me a break. That’s laughable. We are all from somewhere and have parents!
When you finally get to the gist of the matter by bringing up such things as Jesus’ faith healing tricks, well big deal. Lots of men in the ancient world were purported to be faith healers. Do you really need links to verify this claim or do you concede its truth?
The argument is not about the commonplace events that were alleged to have happened in Jesus’ life nor the location in which they were alleged to have occurred. The argument is about whether the supernatural events that have been attributed to Jesus by Christians are unique to the Jesus story.
The elements that you are now calling trivial demonstrate that there are details in Jesus’ life that don’t fit ancient astrological mythic patterns desribed in the film. Details that don’t fall into the pattern disprove the argument that the gospel narrative merely repeats the myths.
An apt analogy for understanding God is to think of us as orphans and that are parents are in a distant land (on business, whatever). We know we have parents, but we’ve always been brought up by a foster family and we only know about our parents insofar as they’ve been described by others. So while we don’t know exactly who God is, we still can know there’s a God and try to act like a detective and figure some things out.
‘Drilling down over the same words in the same book time and time again is narrow and parochial.’
Each person needs to take some time to consider other possibilities, but it’s also sometimes erroneously considered ‘narrow-minded’ to take a position on anything. Many subtleties are noticed upon rereading most any work and thus it is reasonable to say that multiple readings and years of experience with a tradition and set of books does actually give a stronger, better understanding. Dissent here largely stems from a modern praise of prideful refusal to submit to authority, as non-rational topics require authority as a guide to truth.
How much time do they spend studying other religions or spiritual beliefs or do they think the religion they were accidentally born into was the correct one?
How much time do the religious (or athiests/agnostics, for that matter) spend considering alternatives? We only have so much time; we can consider the alternatives, but it is also possible that we happened to have been born into a family or community with a correct view of metaphysical reality such that we can simply adopt the ‘correct’ views.
I have been brought up in the Catholic schooling tradition for 13 years and I do generally feel people who criticize Christianity are ignorant of Scripture, as I recently gave it some reading and found myself quite ignorant of some things. I think Christianity is really a closed axiomatic system of faith: one either accepts it or denies it. There are some instrumental reasons which might aid in rationalizing one’s position, but there is no substitute for faith.
Claims that Christianity isn’t ‘original’ in its ideas or that it borrowed from mythology don’t really address the issue of whether or not Christ actually was the Son of God or if Christianity is indeed true. Yes, there were similar myths in the ancient times, but they were simply myths. The challenge of faith is affirming that Christianity is not a mere myth, but actually is true, as opposed to the myths of the day.
How does the claim that Jesus had parents, brothers, and sisters, that he was raised in the Galilee area not “fit ancient astrological mythic patterns”?
How do we know we have parents? Is this knowledge a priori or a posteriori?
You’ve read biology and know how individuals come into this world. You’ve probably seen your parents. You probably have seen at least some of their parents. You’ve seen your friends parents. You may have given birth yourself or witnessed your wife giving birth. It is through our experience that we come to know that people have parents.
How do we know that anyone has a heavenly father? What experiences have you had in this world that lead you to accept that conclusion with the same certainty that you accept the conclusion that you have parents?
Sure it’s possible but how likely is it? Is it just happenstance that the vast majority of the citizens of Dallas are Christian and that those of Riyadh are Muslim or is it pretty darn likely that it’s a cultural thing?
If correspondence with reality were the deciding criterion for religious belief then wouldn’t we see either more Christians in Riyadh or more Muslims in Dallas?
But if instead cultural memes were the deciding criterion for religious belief then we would expect to see exactly that which we see now. It seems to be pretty clear at this point that truth in religion depends not upon any perceived correspondence with reality but instead upon what your family, friends, and neighbors happen to believe.
Indeed.
The question to many, however, is this: Which is the more reliable method by which to know reality, faith or reason?
. . . and the answer to that is obvious.
Since I want to know reality as well as I can know it, I choose reason.
Did Horus have a brother named James? Did he have at least two sisters? Was he born in Galilee? Was his father a carpenter? Did his family give him a hard time when he started his ministry? Did people sometimes claim he was demon possessed? Did he teach people to turn the other cheek? Did he like to go off by himself and pray? Did he refuse to provide a sign as proof that he was of God? Did his disciples have a hard time understanding him? These are all elements of the Jesus narrative. They don’t seem fit neatly into the “Jesus myth theory.” They seem more like idiosyncratic details of a historical biography.
