Search

Mythicism

Wes wrote:

Well reading over this $1000 bet, I think you’ve created a straw man argument misrepresenting the “Jesus-myth theory”, you seem to be wanting a savior god with all the parallels of Jesus, that won’t be found because Jesus is not one of them, he’s all of them put together as an accumulation of selected folklore at the time.  Religion spreads by word of mouth from generation to generation and therefore changes with time and sometimes these ‘memes’ if you will survive a long time, others are borrowed from other cultures and make their way into other religions, et so on.  Studying theology and mythology you find that gods and religion evolve over time, at this point in time I couldn’t count the thousands of sects that branch out of just Judaism sects let alone Hinduism too.  I doubt you’ll give me the $1000 or even a part of it even if I could show sources for a lot of the parallels so I’m not going to try that route.  Instead I’m going to try to get you to see that religions evolve over time and Christianity is just another branch of religion that won over other Mediterranean gods and sons of gods before and after Christianity became prominent.  New religions are even sprouting up today and taking from old religions. 

It wasn’t that long ago since Mormons with Joseph Smith’s tales of seeing an angel that conveyed things like the Native Americans being the lost tribe of Israel. Which through DNA this has been confirmed bogus.  Even with a conviction of their leader being a con man the religion spread.  Smith borrowed old ideas of Christianity with new ideas to form the Mormon religion.  I’m not sure how old Ba’hai is but it is a religion that pretty much says all religions are true which allows anyone to join that probably already has a religion.  This is really convenient for evolving a religion is accepting old ideas.  Newer than that we have Scientology by Ron Hubbard, and New Age, New Thought, as well as ‘Spiritualism’ etc... Last three I have a book on ‘New Age’ but honestly didn’t study enough to feel confident in saying too much about.  Although I read one book ‘The New Age’ which I can’t find at the moment, I didn’t find anything worth going after in my search for ‘wisdom and compassionate living’ that I set out to do a long time ago in efforts to become a better me.  With this last religion I’m calling ‘Spiritualism’ that has been going on for some time now with occults of Alester Crowley, et al. they are separate I’m just putting them in a category together because they share some similar ideas some of old pagan occults that they created wicca with.  Along with ideas of ‘a new religion' 

This paragraph is a little off topic but here is a site of metaphysics that you can earn a metaphysics degree and be ‘one with nature’, http://www.metaphysics.com/ This is interesting that they have you read up on old literature as part of theology and add spiritual teachings of “New Thought” which includes meditation (OLD IDEA that is still around today and people act like it’s new in the USA because Christianity ‘prays’ instead of sitting for a long time in meditation which is the usual in places like India.) To me it seems to be selling religion, spirituality, wisdom and compassion, etc. promising it all for a cheap tuition.  Maybe you can’t see this but if you check out the founder on youtube you’ll see she’s a nutcase or on drugs, not one really in tuned with herself unless herself is acting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD_m_S1sZfQ&feature=relmfu

To be one with ‘nature’ is obviously an old idea that sums up part of what religion’s backbone is.  Although many modern ‘spiritualists’ reject the old religions for the most part some of them are like Ba’hai and such and do accept old concepts or dogma that has already been accepted.  The idea of a soul and a or many gods and trying to get closer to them is by no means original.  They are just doing it through meditation and other things now instead of communion and chanting (both still done today for the same reason)

Now for some of what you seem to be looking for. Parallels shouldn’t be that hard I’ve came across lots of things that at least in general have similar ‘themes’ or ‘dogma’ or complete stories of folklore. 

If you’ve read of Utnapishtim, Noah’s parallel in the book ‘Gilgamesh’, there is no doubt that it parallels with the flood story of Noah’s ark in the bible. (A source about it: http://www.icr.org/article/noah-flood-gilgamesh/ has a comparison chart betwixt the two)  This has details of the story that are just too concise to not be the same folktale.  You can also find this story in the Talmud and Qur’an (Surah Hud (11:27–51) mostly) as well as Hindu having a similar story.  Gilgamesh is at least back to the 3rd millennium bce.   The Atra-Hasis flood was ca. 1647-1626 BCE.  Here is one of several links on the net and pic in the british museum where the tablet rests.

 

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/cuneiform_the_atrahasis_epic.aspx

Your god Jehova/Ywhw was once Yah and before that probably a mixture of ideas from Enki and Ea as well as some other deities of Summerian and Babylonian gods.  The Hebrews at some time are believed to have migrated east at some point obviously bringing along their religion which finally ended up monotheistic and perhaps the bible makes a true account of the Canaanites stopping their worshiping of other gods like BAL ‘as he is a jealous god’ (Yhwh).  By any means they did stop worshiping all but Yah which became Yahweh.  This evolution of gods is inevitable as times change especially before written texts could be made more easily.  I think that is a common sense thing that you will agree with that a meme spreads and changes with spoken folklore even written tales get distorted and even false memes are often taken on as true.  Whether your Christian teachings have started off with truth or false folklore or a mixture of both I think is irrelevant to a point as far as getting the $1000 or at least a proportional amount as this won’t be answering your question but a much larger view of things than ‘is Jesus = (place god here)’.  My whole point is that this is all folklore coming down from your god you call Jehova to “Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (I need to check on the source but the city of Nazareth didn’t supposedly exist until several decades AFTER Eshoo/Yeshua/Iesus/Jesus supposedly lived there.)  I think you’ll find little if any new ideas in the NT about Jesus’ life.  I think you’ll admit that other gods have fulfilled the same predating folklore before it with very few exceptions, it might not be the same god that did it but its ideas were out there whether they were written down or spoken lore.  (Albeit spoken lore can’t be proven by me for over 2000 yrs. when it happens, I can only show memes of today that spread, change and last for different periods of time.)     

The idea of a soul: Ancient Egyptian belief man consisted of a body xa, a soul ba, I can’t prove it but in this video with David Beckman and an expert communion was also practiced by ancient Egyptians with bread of wheat and beer.  This was further idea of the soul was elaborated on by Plato’s substance dualism (ca. 550 B.Sc.), carried on by student Aristotle and came down through the bible.

Let’s go back to Genesis for a minute.  It’s not word for word no, but the ideas are still here.

“”

One paralell if you might say to Osiris same as Jesus that although common idea is an example that I don’t think you can refute here is the idea of a son whether it’s Osiris here or Heracles, et al. that were the sons of a god that loved them.  This is a very common theme in most religions that they came down to help mankind. 

 

John 3:16-17 -- For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten (only-born) Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:9-10 -- In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only begotten (only-born) Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

 

Compared to:

 

Hymn 7: Nut says: The King is the son of my heart.

Hymn 471: I am the essence of god, the son of god, the messenger of god.

 

 

Idea of resurrection and life after death was by Egyptians.  I’m sure you accept that he was resurrected after his death even though his body was torn to pieces instead of crucified the idea of heaven after being good was still put forth and idea of heaven was there with the Egyptians long before Eshoo/Iesus/Yeshua.  Tradition also holds that a communion of Osiris with wheat bread and beer became ceremonial.  This is very similar to the eating of bread and drinking wine for the body of Jesus. 

Also ancient Egyptian belief man consisted of a body xa, a soul ba, this was further elaborated on by Plato’s substance dualism, carried on by student Aristotle and came down through the bible.  Thus again we see that the ‘soul’ was not a unique idea of Christianity at all but borrowed from a religion way before it. 

There is even what appears to be an influence if not plagiarism of the Ten Commandments coming out of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that I don’t think you can refute, I suppose you can but I think you can see it is if you read chapter 125.  Sacred-texts.com should have that if you don’t have it handy.  Much of the books of the NT came from the Therapeutae in Alexandria according to Eusebius of Caesarea which was a Jewish sect where Coptic Christianity seems to have raised a lot.  Of course other books of the cannon were written elsewhere around the Mediterranean.  Books of this kind were myriad at this time in history. Here is a short list of some of the books that did not make it into the bible although a few are in the African bible if memory serves me right the book of bees and perhaps book of Maccabees may be in their bibles.  The apocryphal writings were actually a lot more than this I’m sure, these are only a few that were popular and circulated enough that we have copies of them or at least references to them by other scholars and historians of those time periods.  Epistle of the Apostles, Gospel according to the Hebrews, Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of the Egyptians, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of the Nazarenes, Gospel of Nicodemus, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of the Savior, (Coptic) Gospel of Thomas, (Infancy) Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, Papyrus Egerton 2, Proto-Gospel of James, Secret Gospel of Mark.  (THOSE ARE ONLY THE GOSPELS SECTION OF ‘Lost Christianity’s’ by Bart D. Ehrman.  The point in listing these is to just get an idea of how many writings were around at these first 4 centuries or so of the Christian church, this is a very, very small portion of them.  I ask you how did the gospels now in the bible to be chosen as the word of god and trust in them and that the other gospels were not inspired by god?  This I’d really like a response to or thought put in by you as a person of integrity to be intellectually honest with oneself that these ideas (memes) were spread throughout the known world spreading around from village to village and country to country some dying out others remaining due to the Nicean counsel and other church fathers at different points of history.  This First Counsel of Nicaea actually was responsible for the Creed of Nicaea to argue over the divinity of Christ and if he was a god on earth or of the sky, and so on.  But these meetings or others at some point decided on what books to accept in the cannon and what not to, and not really so important who or when but that they did so.  Doing so they chose the fate of what Christianity would be.  Some of the books were obviously too late to be picked, others just didn’t fit what they wanted for various reasons and some we’ll never know why they were not picked and others that were picked.  It’s the picking of the books that I want to stress to you though.  These church fathers, priests NOT Jesus choose what Christianity has become, and how can you with intellectual integrity I say again can be satisfied with such a thing and calling it ‘holy’ and thinking the Apocrypha as ‘banned books of the devil or simply banned books of no creditability’ if that is what you may think as others will try to convince you of.  This should raise serious questions of doubt in your mind as a believer.  If not there is no hope in writing all of this as I feel you will not take anything but perhaps a letter from Paul saying he made it all up, which isn’t likely to happen.  If your ‘faith’ is that strong and will is that stubborn then nobody will get your $1000 whether they deserve it or at least a portion of it or not. 

I’m pretty verbose but getting about done if you can bear with me a little longer, if this paper hasn’t raised questions in your mind I think you are too stubborn and lack intellectual integrity to ever give up the $1000 bet that you may never pay because of stubbornness not because of lack of information found.  I feel I’ve raised enough doubt that any reasonable person should be questioning their ‘faith’ and as David Hume wisely pointed out as a fellow man of logic, “A wise man proportions his beliefs according to the evidence.”  The evidence for a man that performed miracles, died and was resurrected after ideas of such were already floating around is ignoring evidence.  I’ve ran into trouble myself finding the book of the dead and other Apocrypha writings to confirm or dismiss such ideas as Horus and others doing the same things but find it unlikely that with so many of the claims that it’s very likely that some are true and some have a lot of evidence for them being true like circumcision starting in Egypt, ideas of everlasting life in heaven is undeniable by Egyptians and so forth that one can’t ignore all of the claims.  I don’t believe them all either, many I just don’t find the evidence for either but I also know human psychology and evolution of religion and sharing of folklore to be crucial in religion and faiths.  Memes if you will of dogma that evolves/changes over time.  Certainly what barbaric Christianity that was of the OT has been renewed with the NT of Jesus, if you read Matt 5:17 I believe it is, Jesus came to FULLFILL the laws of the OT, not dismiss them.  Yet people have grown and not as barbaric and see that Jesus’ NEW COMMANDMENT “to love one another” is more important and fits today’s life in a better way.  Is this not Religion, Christianity in particular evolving into something more in touch with humanity with the progress of science and of mankind’s will for something better?  I don’t know if you’re Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Orthodox, Protestant, doesn’t really matter, what I do see that matters for all of us is to move on from old thinking to something new and to question EVERYTHING that we were taught.  Much of what we hear from media and internet are urban legends, all the time I’ll look something up that doesn’t sound quite right and I find that it never happen.  E.g. the soldier that got a prostitute and woke up the next morning in a bathtub missing his kidney is false if you’ve heard that one.  Things like this are easy to believe because man is gullible by nature having emotions and lacking critical thinking skills.  Logic though has ATHOURITY that no god that I know of does.  Believe in god if you wish, but I hope you won’t ignore evidence to do so.  I’ll end with this, I contend that you too are an atheist, only you believe in one more god than I do.  And if you can tell me why you don’t believe in other religions I can tell you why I don’t believe in yours.  I know if you think of that and how ridiculous some other religions are to you that you’ll find Christianity is the same.  There simply isn’t enough evidence to believe strongly that a man survived death and ascended to his father from Immaculate Conception, performed miracles, and other things that were told before his death by other religions.  Perhaps not by one religion but by parts of many that not all can be dismissed. 

Okay Done, I’m poor and could really use the money and hope you’ll consider giving me at least a portion for my work, but I don’t expect it.  That’s for you to be honest with yourself and decide if I’ve given you the doubt and evidence that you need to feel I’ve deserved it.  I hope this will at least warrant thought and a response from you whether I get any of the money or not I’m not after destroying people personally on their faith.  I’m after truth and compassionate wisdom and feel that logic and science is the best way to get there.  Hopefully I’ve at least planted seeds of doubt or seeds of curiosity about the world around you to look further into yourself and the world around you.  Namaste.

I responded:

Well reading over this $1000 bet, I think you’ve created a straw man argument misrepresenting the “Jesus-myth theory”, you seem to be wanting a savior god with all the parallels of Jesus, that won’t be found because Jesus is not one of them, he’s all of them put together as an accumulation of selected folklore at the time.

How am I “misrepresenting” the theory if I’m simply listing the parallels that mythicists claim exist?  It’s not my theory – it’s theirs.  They’re the ones saying the Horus was crucified, that Krishna was virgin-born, that Mithra was resurrected.  Not me.  I’m just asking them to provide some kind of evidence for their claims. Now, if you’ll agree that the majority of the parallel claims are false but that ENOUGH are true to prove copycatting, then you’ll have to stop and ask yourself why it is that mythicists felt the need to fabricate so many parallels if they already had enough to prove the theory.

Studying theology and mythology you find that gods and religion evolve over time,

I agree that religion and people’s perceptions of god evolve over time, but the question at hand is whether the Jesus story is simply an expansion of the stories of earlier deities, which does not appear to be the case.

 I doubt you’ll give me the $1000 or even a part of it even if I could show sources for a lot of the parallels so I’m not going to try that route.

As long as you can provide evidence for at least half of the mythicist claims for any one of the deities, the money is yours.  I’d love to see ONE mythicist honest enough to admit that the reason no one can meet my challenge is that the majority of the parallels are false, but I’m not counting on them doing that.

If you’ve read of Utnapishtim, Noah’s parallel in the book ‘Gilgamesh’, there is no doubt that it parallels with the flood story of Noah’s ark in the bible. (A source about it: http://www.icr.org/article/noah-flood-gilgamesh/ has a comparison chart betwixt the two)  This has details of the story that are just too concise to not be the same folktale.

I agree that the story of Noah’s ark is a fable, likely based on earlier fables.  Practically every civilization on Earth has their own version of the flood story.  But I’m interested in whether  the Jesus story was a fable, not whether the Noah story was, so this is completely irrelevant.

Your god Jehova/Ywhw was once Yah and before that probably a mixture of ideas from Enki and Ea as well as some other deities of Summerian and Babylonian gods.

God is God, and existed for all of eternity, so He Himself didn’t come to exist out of the gods of earlier civilizations.  If you want to say that people’s understandings of God evolved, that’s fine, but, again, it’s irrelevant to the question of whether the Jesus story was inspired by the stories of earlier deities.  Let’s stick with the issue at hand, please.

Whether your Christian teachings have started off with truth or false folklore or a mixture of both I think is irrelevant to a point as far as getting the $1000 or at least a proportional amount as this won’t be answering your question but a much larger view of things than ‘is Jesus = (place god here)’.  My whole point is that this is all folklore coming down from your god you call Jehova to “Jesus Christ of Nazareth” (I need to check on the source but the city of Nazareth didn’t supposedly exist until several decades AFTER Eshoo/Yeshua/Iesus/Jesus supposedly lived there.)

That’s a view of some fringe scholars, but most historians agree that Nazareth existed in Jesus’ day, and we’ve even found a house there from Jesus’ time.

I think you’ll find little if any new ideas in the NT about Jesus’ life.

Only if I take the mythicist claims as true despite the lack of evidence for most of them.  Which, obviously, I do not.

 I think you’ll admit that other gods have fulfilled the same predating folklore before it with very few exceptions

That’s the kind of thing I’m asking mythicists to prove, actually.

The idea of a soul: Ancient Egyptian belief man consisted of a body xa, a soul ba, I can’t prove it but in this video with David Beckman and an expert communion was also practiced by ancient Egyptians with bread of wheat and beer.

No one is saying that the idea of a soul originated with Jesus.  People have believed in souls before and after, so what does this have to do with whether Jesus existed or not?

One paralell if you might say to Osiris same as Jesus that although common idea is an example that I don’t think you can refute here is the idea of a son whether it’s Osiris here or Heracles, et al. that were the sons of a god that loved them.  This is a very common theme in most religions that they came down to help mankind. 

Sure, I’ll admit that there were sons of deities that were loved by their gods, but that’s not a very striking parallel.  Most people are loved by their fathers, whether their father is a god or not.  There’s nothing unique about being loved by your father.

Idea of resurrection and life after death was by Egyptians.

Again, no one is claiming that the idea of resurrection began with Jesus.  In fact, it’s mentioned in the Old Testament as well.  So it’s also irrelevant to the question of whether Jesus existed or not.

 I’m sure you accept that he was resurrected after his death even though his body was torn to pieces instead of crucified

Yes, but the problem is that mythicists make the claim that Osiris, and other deities, were crucified, when they weren’t.  If the “they were resurrected” parallel were enough (and, in fact, the majority of deities that mythicists claim were resurrected, weren’t), why make up bogus claims in order to make their case?  If the handful of valid similarities are enough to prove copycatting, then why haven’t they just used the handful of valid similarities instead of making up fake ones on top of them?

 the idea of heaven after being good was still put forth and idea of heaven was there with the Egyptians long before Eshoo/Iesus/Yeshua. 

And again, no one is claiming that the idea of Heaven or an afterlife originated with Jesus, so this is irrelevant.

Tradition also holds that a communion of Osiris with wheat bread and beer became ceremonial.  This is very similar to the eating of bread and drinking wine for the body of Jesus.

Yes, eating and drinking stuff has been quite common throughout history.  But the idea of the bread being the deity’s body and the wine being His blood is original to Christianity, unless you can show evidence otherwise.

Also ancient Egyptian belief man consisted of a body xa, a soul ba, this was further elaborated on by Plato’s substance dualism, carried on by student Aristotle and came down through the bible.  Thus again we see that the ‘soul’ was not a unique idea of Christianity at all but borrowed from a religion way before it.

Yes, the idea of a “soul” predates Christianity.  Again, no one is saying that Jesus originated the concept of a “soul”.

There is even what appears to be an influence if not plagiarism of the Ten Commandments coming out of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that I don’t think you can refute,

I do here, actually: http://www.kingdavid8.com/_full_article.php?id=aa5da8cc-6283-11e1-be10-176ee32615f7

But, again, let’s stick with the Jesus parallels.

I suppose you can but I think you can see it is if you read chapter 125.  Sacred-texts.com should have that if you don’t have it handy.  Much of the books of the NT came from the Therapeutae in Alexandria according to Eusebius of Caesarea which was a Jewish sect where Coptic Christianity seems to have raised a lot.  Of course other books of the cannon were written elsewhere around the Mediterranean.  Books of this kind were myriad at this time in history. Here is a short list of some of the books that did not make it into the bible although a few are in the African bible if memory serves me right the book of bees and perhaps book of Maccabees may be in their bibles.

Again, let’s just stick with the question of whether the Jesus story was based on the stories of earlier deities.  All of this is completely irrelevant to that issue.

I ask you how did the gospels now in the bible to be chosen as the word of god and trust in them and that the other gospels were not inspired by god?

The Gospels in the Bible are the only ones that can be reliably shown to have been written in the first century and can be shown to likely relate to their credited authors (either written by them personally, or written by people under their authority).  The Gospel of Thomas is the only other one that I think could have been related to its credited author.  The others likely originated in the 2nd century or later, by people who were not present at the events, nor getting their information from those who were.  That doesn’t automatically make them unreliable, but since we already have four Gospels that have quite a bit of authority, the other Gospels are pretty much irrelevant.

But, again, this has nothing to do with whether Jesus existed or not, so let’s get back to that issue, okay?

 This First Counsel of Nicaea actually was responsible for the Creed of Nicaea to argue over the divinity of Christ and if he was a god on earth or of the sky, and so on.

Actually, nothing about Jesus originated with the Counsel of Nicaea.  They took the various ideas about Jesus that already existed and more or less weeded through them, in an attempt to unite the church.  And the Gospels existed long before the Counsel of Nicaea, so the counsel certainly wasn’t responsible for what they said about Jesus, which is the basis for what people believe about Jesus.

And again, this is irrelevant to the issue of whether Jesus existed or was a fable.

Some of the books were obviously too late to be picked, others just didn’t fit what they wanted for various reasons and some we’ll never know why they were not picked and others that were picked.  It’s the picking of the books that I want to stress to you though.  These church fathers, priests NOT Jesus choose what Christianity has become,

I think you’re seriously overemphasizing their power.  The Gospels, and other New Testament texts, were written in the 1st century and have had far more sway over what Christianity has become than the Counsel of Nicaea did.  As far as I can tell, the Council made no decisions that seem to have been inappropriate or damaging to Christianity.  All they really did was unite a divided church.

And, again, this has nothing to do with the question of whether Jesus existed or not.

 and how can you with intellectual integrity I say again can be satisfied with such a thing and calling it ‘holy’ and thinking the Apocrypha as ‘banned books of the devil or simply banned books of no creditability’ if that is what you may think as others will try to convince you of.

As with the Council themselves, I give far more consideration to sources closer to the events than I do to sources further away from the events.  The Biblical Gospels date to the 1st century, while most of the “alternate Gospels” date to far later.  That doesn’t mean that they have zero credibility, but logic tells me that it’s unlikely if not impossible that they can have greater credibility than the writings of those in the 1st century.  Where the later Gospels agree with the Biblical Gospels, I would have no real problem with them.  Where they severely disagree, I will, of course, favor the earlier sources over the later ones.  It just seems rational.  I don’t think the later Gospels are evil or demonic, just that they lack the level of authority that sources closer to the events do.

This should raise serious questions of doubt in your mind as a believer.

Why?  Are you saying it’s more rational to favor sources centuries after the events over sources from the same century as the events?

If not there is no hope in writing all of this as I feel you will not take anything but perhaps a letter from Paul saying he made it all up, which isn’t likely to happen.

Since it’s very unlikely he did, then I suppose not.  Look, when I’m asked to consider whether something is true, I ask myself two questions – Is there evidence for it?  And is the evidence convincing?  I’ve read the stories of the events surrounding Jesus, and find them convincing.  But when it comes to the bulk of the mythicist claims, I have yet to even see the evidence in the first place.  If you want to convince me that Jesus was a fable, then feel free to present the evidence for it.  But as long as mythicists continue to avoid presenting the evidence for the majority of the claims for even a single deity, while still arguing that the majority of the claims are true, I’m going to have a very, very hard time taking them seriously.

I’m pretty verbose but getting about done if you can bear with me a little longer, if this paper hasn’t raised questions in your mind I think you are too stubborn and lack intellectual integrity to ever give up the $1000 bet that you may never pay because of stubbornness not because of lack of information found.

The questions you’ve raised are questioned I considered years ago and already answered to my own satisfaction.

 I feel I’ve raised enough doubt that any reasonable person should be questioning their ‘faith’ and as David Hume wisely pointed out as a fellow man of logic, “A wise man proportions his beliefs according to the evidence.”

Which is exactly what I do.  I go where the evidence points, as long as I find the evidence convincing.  But anyone who believes in the mythicist stuff without having ever seen the evidence for most of the claims is clearly not proportioning his beliefs according to the evidence.

The evidence for a man that performed miracles, died and was resurrected after ideas of such were already floating around is ignoring evidence.

The parallels between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are far more striking than any parallels Jesus has with earlier deities (as long as we’re going with VALID parallels, and not just stuff that has no evidence to support it), yet that doesn’t mean that JFK was a fictional character based on Abe Lincoln.  I’ve weighed the evidence, and found it strongly supports the historicity of Jesus.  Even non-Christian university-level scholars like Bart Ehrman agree that Jesus existed at the very least.  There isn’t a single university-level historian who argues that Jesus didn’t exist, since they, too, require evidence for a theory before they will believe in it, and the evidence clearly favors Jesus’ existence.

I’ve ran into trouble myself finding the book of the dead and other Apocrypha writings to confirm or dismiss such ideas as Horus and others doing the same things but find it unlikely that with so many of the claims that it’s very likely that some are true and some have a lot of evidence for them being true like circumcision starting in Egypt, ideas of everlasting life in heaven is undeniable by Egyptians and so forth that one can’t ignore all of the claims.

Again, no one is claiming that the ideas of the soul, circumcision, and the afterlife originated with Jesus, so it’s completely irrelevant to the question of whether He existed or not.

I don’t know if you’re Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Orthodox, Protestant, doesn’t really matter, what I do see that matters for all of us is to move on from old thinking to something new and to question EVERYTHING that we were taught.

I have no problem with people questioning what they were taught.  I’ve done so, myself.  But I do ask that people question them RATIONALLY.  Believing in mythicism, when not even mythicists can find evidence for most of the claims, is not questioning things rationally.

 Things like this are easy to believe because man is gullible by nature having emotions and lacking critical thinking skills.  Logic though has ATHOURITY that no god that I know of does.

Which is why people need to use logic when thinking about these things.  They need to look at the evidence before they’ll believe something.  If people did that, no one would ever become a mythicist.

Believe in god if you wish, but I hope you won’t ignore evidence to do so.

Evidence is all I’m asking for, and I’ve posted it to my website every time someone has presented it.  And as you can see, it’s not much when it comes to the mythicist claims.  I’d say about 90% of them have no evidence to support them.  And if the other 10% were enough to be convincing, then why have mythicists bothered to fabricate the other 90%?

I’ll end with this, I contend that you too are an atheist, only you believe in one more god than I do.

The definition of an atheist is one who believes in no gods.  So someone who believes in a single God cannot, by definition, be an atheist.  I’m amazed at how many atheists try to argue that monotheism somehow equals atheism, which totally ignores the definition of atheism and monotheism.

And if you can tell me why you don’t believe in other religions I can tell you why I don’t believe in yours.

I think all religions, Christianity included, are varying degrees of true and false.  But I believe in Jesus because I find the evidence for Him convincing.  That doesn’t make other religions completely UNTRUE, but I find Jesus worth believing in, so I do.

I know if you think of that and how ridiculous some other religions are to you that you’ll find Christianity is the same.

No, I find the evidence strongly supporting Jesus.

There simply isn’t enough evidence to believe strongly that a man survived death and ascended to his father from Immaculate Conception, performed miracles, and other things that were told before his death by other religions.

The only part of that statement which lacks the evidence is the end part, where you talk about it being told before his death by other religions.  If you want to present the evidence for the bulk of the mythicist claims for a single deity, I’ll gladly take a look at it.  But unless you can, I’ll have no choice but to go on considering it a theory that is seriously lacking in evidence and wondering why anyone believes in it.

Okay Done, I’m poor and could really use the money and hope you’ll consider giving me at least a portion for my work, but I don’t expect it.  That’s for you to be honest with yourself and decide if I’ve given you the doubt and evidence that you need to feel I’ve deserved it.

Ummm…what evidence have you given?

Hopefully I’ve at least planted seeds of doubt or seeds of curiosity about the world around you to look further into yourself and the world around you.

Those seeds were planted long ago, and were what caused me to turn away from atheism and, eventually, embrace Jesus as my savior.  Again, my process is to go where the evidence points, as long as the evidence is convincing.  But mythicism is so incredibly lacking in evidence that I can’t imagine why any rational person would ever take it seriously.  It’s not a question of whether the evidence for mythicism is convincing, but whether the evidence even exists in the first place.

Please log in to post comments. Not a member? Register. It's free!