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On asking Christian theists why they believe in Christianity rather than Islam, and comparing the three Abrahamic faiths, I've heard a common refrain, from Theo Book, Albert Cipriani and theophilus, for example. They say Christianity is a continuation, fulfilment and completion of Judaism, whereas Islam is a satanic accretion upon the Biblical sources.

Completion and accretion is in the eye of the beholder. The sentiments Christians have about Islam are mirrored by those of Jews about Christianity. That is, Jews see Christianity as just a satanic accretion upon the Hebrew Scriptures as Islam. For Christians, the Bible is "Old Testament" plus "New Testament" with the Qur'an rejected; for Jews, the Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures (what the Christians call OT) with the Christian NT and Islamic Qur'an rejected for the same reasons.

Christians will often talk about Islam as being a syncretic merger of the pagan Arab "Moon God" religion with Judaeo-Christianity. Maybe this is true, but they'd better take the plank out of their eyes and see how Christianity is a syncretic merger of the Pagan Graeco-Roman "Sun God" religion with Judaism. Jews regard Christianity as unacceptable for the following reasons:

1. Judaism is unitarian. God is one, One person only. Saying He is three, that He has a mother and a son, is paganism, idolatry, blasphemy.

2. Judaism regards Christianity as a religion for lazy people. In Judaism, reward from God has to be earned by works. Making it a free gift as Christianity does is a satanic deception.

3. Judaism regards all commandments of the Pentateuch as binding eternally, even if they are not now feasible. Their replacement by the "blood sacrifice" of Jesus is a satanic invention of humans wanting to free themselves of God's burden.

What Christians think about Islam, Jews think about Christianity. For my part, I hold that Judaism too is an evolution of previously pagan beliefs (the Sumerian and Babylonian legends), and religion as a whole is man-made, beginning when Homo became Sapiens. None of them are the truth; naturalism is the truth.

lpetrich

I agree that there is a lot of backdoor paganism in Christianity, but I'd be hard-pressed to find Sun-God worship in it. The son-Sun pun works only in English and not in Latin (filius-sol) or Greek (huios-he:lios) or Hebrew (ben-shemesh).

The dying-and-resurrected god motif, which was very common in pagandom, was a much stronger contributor, IMO. If some god or hero did not die and be reborn, he/she would often visit the realm of the dead while still being alive.

And the virgin birth -- that is clearly inspired by the numerous stories of divine impregnations in pagandom. Joseph must join the fathers of Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great in the Legendary Divine Cuckoldry Club.

One counterargument is essentially that "the Christian God did not have sexual relations with that woman, Mary", but I believe that to be Clintonian hairsplitting.

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Toto

The Emperor Constantine is reported to have merged the religions of Mithras, Jesus, and Sol Invictus to create a common religion for the Roman Empire. It didn't last, but it did leave a lot of sun symbols in Christianity. I posted <a href="http://www.crosscircle.com/CH_2f.htm" target="_blank">this article from a pagan site</a> on another thread about a solar symbol used by the pope.

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No, I wasn't talking about phonetic similarity, I know it holds true only for the Germanic languages. Ignoring the word-play, the "strengthening" of the Sun from circa Dec 21 onwards was the rebirth of the Sun Child, like baby Jesus.

The point was to alert our Christian friends to the inconsistency of applying a different standard to Islam ("satanic accretion") than to Christianity ("divine fulfilment"). All religions are evolved, and religious revelationism is just as false in anthropology as is special creation in biology.