On a more serious note, I recognized one of the guys from the trailer from a video clip I watched here: http://thatvideosite.com/view/797.html I'm not sure if this is from the movie or another work by the same guy. This seems a little more combative than just a documentary. If this is what the majority of the movie is like, I think it's more "preaching to the choir" than it is a serious and constructive addition to the discussion of religion....
no one here is saying that, brightside. i'm certainly not. it's a neat stereotype of Christians that allows them all to be grouped as idiots...but it's not a fair characterization.
movies like that usually are more designed for the choir. I dont think any Republican was convinced by Farenheit 911 that Bush is the evil scourge of this word, nor do I think Michael Moore expected it to.
Some of us may be more like that than others, just as there are some atheists out there who are more pigheaded than others. It's their perrogative. As for myself, I like to read ancient mythologies and pretty much anyhting that questions Christianity will catch my innterest for at least a little while. After all, I may disagre with them, but it's always a good idea to find out what the other side is thinking. I dont mind being called a fool, but please don't call me an ignorant fool
http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/pagan_ideas_getting_started.html Christianity doesn't have Pagan origins in the sense that early Christians copied facts from Pagan myths, or did up Christian sacraments gesture by gesture to redo Pagan rituals. Christianity has Pagan origins in the sense that the religious ideas around which Christianity was built are exactly the religious ideas common at the time Christianity began. Core Christian theologies are core Pagan theologies; early Christians simply adopted the religious preconceptions of their culture. Did they rearrange some things, innovate even? Sure. Everyone who ever started a religion did. But Christianity's most basic ideas—God, the Son of God, miracles as a sign of divinity, salvation, baptism, eucharist, souls, morality, Heaven, Hell, and many many more—are all Pagan ideas. Besides Jesus, Christianity believes in one God—and more than that, in a personal God who steps in to make people's lives better, or not, and who punishes us for doing bad things, and rewards us for being good. Christianity believes in prayer, in eternal life, in miracles, in prophecy, in a human soul, in heaven and hell. And you know what, Pagans believed in all those things generations before Jesus. Christianity was not new. Christianity was not unique. Christianity borrowed way more than the story of a Godman with magic powers who came back to life after he died. The first Christians took the basic ideas of their culture and built their new faith around them. Like all the ancient Pagans, they built a new religion out of old parts. There's more. Don't forget the Christian sacraments. Christians are initiated into their faith by baptism. They share a sacred meal of wine and bread, which they believe become the blood and flesh of Jesus. And generations before Jesus, Pagans practiced baptism and pagans shared sacred meals with their Gods. The first Christians took the basic ideas of their culture and adapted them to their new faith. They built a new religion out of old parts.
Thats a lot of bold statements that the site is making. is there anything beyond someone on a website typing these things up? Please don't link me to anymore sites where its just more accussations layered on top of each other.
I went there. Nothing substantitive on that site. I had to do my own research on Google to find so called proof of those accusations, some of which I am very aware of and have read about in the past. I wonder, why do people trash those who read the Bible and take it as fact when they themsleves read random websites and take those things as fact also?
again, obviously you didn't do a very good job of reading the site he has citations for everything he uses to show how cultures before Christians believed the same basic ideas that Chrisitians later adapoted to their own religion
saw em, wasn't impressed. try and twist hard enough and you can make the case that capitalism was invented by monkeys. sorry moe, it's nothing I haven't seen before. Only difference is, it has different citations than the other stuff I've seen.
so, what are you saying here? that it is just a big coincidence that Orsis died and rose to heaven after 3 days? that dozens of gods were said to be sons of god with a virgin mother? that personal salvation was a common theme throughout the acient world? there is no twisting here, these are myths that pre-Christians in that part of the world believed in for generations -we have their texts, we can directly see what they believed in and when first you said that the site is just making things up, then you said there was nothing of signifigence there, and now your just saying there are citations, but you are unconvinced (of what I'm not exactly sure) unconvinced that these pre-christian beliefs existed?
What you will discover in this movie is a sceptic's faith (not fact)- Facts- 1. The early founder of Christianity is the human, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 2. Jesus of the Bible bears no resemblence to ancient pagan saviors. The Jesus of Roman Catholic tradition bears a resemblence to pagan tradition- for example the Legend of Orsiris and Isis (Egyptian paganism), but this is by design. A good read would be Alexander Hissup's book- Two Babylons- this book is a scholary examination of any crossover between paganism and authentic Christianity (which in reality there is none). 3. Contemporary Christians are more ingnorant today of the Bible in my opinion, the source of the origins of Christianity. Counterfeit origins are for the purpose of deception. Read your Bible for the truth.
i said the site was making lots of bold statements, i then asked you about any thing they have to back upw what they say. I then went through the site, checked the links and didn't really find anything I hadn't already heard and read about before. As for the twisting of myths. The Osiris rebirth myth has been used in many other texts in much better context than the author of this particular website. again, sorry, nothing new, nothing shocking, not impressed.
not to mention that Osiris' rebirth wasn't a rebirth to life...but a rebirth to death. he never joined the living again. he became god of the underworld...where he lived with the souls. this after his body was put back together on earth...his spirit hovered over his body and was then allowed to reign in the underworld. this is very different from the resurrected body that Christ had. having said all that...so what? every religion deals with death in some way. in many religions, there is triumph over death in a very literal sense. it does not follow that because those ancient religions believed as such, that Jesus Christ didn't do exactly what his followers at the time claimed he did. i just don't see the logic in it. but i suppose faith runs both ways.
I'm sorry Hotballa, MadMax and Rhester I will defer to your knowledge regarding Christianity but I do sense some quite a bit of defensiveness in your responses. No one is saying that Christianity is literally copying aspects from other religions but that there are interesting parallels between Christianity and other religions and that from a scholarly POV that may hint at some borrowing by early Christians. For instance: Yes its true that the story of Jesus's resurection doesn't match exactly the story of Osiris' but there does seem to be close parallels. One could say that it the stories are almost variants of each other. I would give you another example. The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a story of a great flood that drowned the World. Gilgamesh having heard of it ahead of time built a large boat to escape it and he and his companions were the only ones to survive and repopulate the World. This story bears such close parallels to Noah's story that many scholars have speculated that one might've copied the other or they both are based independently on the same event. Archealogist have found that a few thousand years ago there was a devestating flood of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that put nearly all of Mesopotamia under water and this event is believed to have inspired the Gilgamesh story and ancient Jews either experiencing it first hand or hearing about it incorporated that into the Biblical story of Noah. Another issue is that things like Baptism and the Eucharists are similar to rituals in many other religions, ie ritual cleansing, blessed food of the Gods, transubtantiation, and ritual consumption of the divine. Things like this are found in religions around the world even in Native American and other aboriginal beliefs. Further since Christianity has existed its well known that several Christian beliefs and rituals have been adopted by other religions so it should seem plausible that early Christians might've adopted the beliefs of others. None of this is conclusive proof that Christianity isn't a wholly original religion, in fact that is wrong since its directly descended from Judaism, nor should it remove the sacredness of Christian stories and rituals.
1. sorry if i came off defensive. i've heard this mythology argument over and over again, though. and i find it to be of little substance. the osiris thing i've heard more times than i can count. tell me what you see as the parallels. i don't see many. and the purpose of the story is entirely different. i wouldn't call them variants at all. 2. i agree with you that there are parallels to baptism and other sacraments. but again i get the "so what" feeling 3. perhaps i am defensive in the sense that these things are bantied about not to generate discussion but to raise eyebrows...to say something provoking...Rhester said there was clearly "borrowing" by the church. they chose pagan holidays as days to celebrate the birth and resurrection of Christ, for example. there's a ton of theology that sprung up from the Gospels that mirrors mythology. but that's all after the fact stuff. religion stuff. not the stuff that's recorded in the Gospels. it's a human/church response nearly 3 centuries later. so my defensiveness perhaps comes from the very first post in the thread....where it's not about just generating discussing..but by concluding that there is no god there. with the implication that i'm a mindless idiot following a feel-good story. hey, maybe i am. but if there's agenda on my side of this argument, there's very clearly agenda on the other side as well. that's where the defensiveness springs from, i'm sure. but looking back over my posts i don't see defensiveness...but maybe i'm defensive about my defensiveness 4. im very aware of the gilgamesh epic...fascinating stuff.
Defending Christianity on this bbs is like swimming in the Amazon; Eventually, the pirahanna will get you.
