Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 12-30-2007, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

FWIW, there is a cache of Price's critique of Acharya S here:

http://web.archive.org/web/200604191...ev_murdock.htm

I think this is the heart of the review, and a clue as to why Price changed his mind:

Quote:

Ms. Murdock has read widely in the shadow world of what I like to call Extreme Biblical Studies, books written by eccentrics, freethinkers, and theosophists mainly in the 19th century and kept available today in coarsely manufactured reprint editions by obscure publishers. None of which should imply they are unworthy of regard: far from it! These delightful books are game preserves of otherwise extinct theories, some deservedly dead, others simply never widely known. And Murdock's book, a rehash of points from these books, shares their faults as well as their virtues. Writing at second hand, she is too quick to state as bald-faced fact what turn out to be, once one chases down her sources, either wild speculations or complex inferences from a chain of complicated data open to many interpretations. And sometimes she swallows their fanciful etymologies like so many shiny goldfish at a frat party. Worse yet, she just goofs here and there and betrays a lack of ability to weigh evidential claims.

From the rest of the review, you can see that if Acharya S had just rephased things to read "according to.. " "or speculated by. . ," and if she had cleaned up some minor errors, she would be more in tune with the cautious, scholarly approach that would not call forth such scorn from some of the posters here.

And there are some good points:

Quote:

Murdock presents us with a whole smorgasbord of 'unorthodox' theories, some of them quite legitimate, such as a deconstruction of the Rabbinical apologetic that had us imagining for so long that ancient Israelite religion was monotheistic. ...

There are other fascinating ideas in this book which deserve consideration. One is Gerald Massey's revisionist theory of docetism (The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ). Though the significance of the fact is seldom noticed, the jibes of ancient pagans who dismissed Christ as another like Hermes and Perseus certainly seem to imply they meant that Jesus had not existed as an historical figure at all. Massey suggests that this was the original docetism: right-thinking Christians believed 'Jesus' had never arrived on earth at all. The gospel stories were understood simply as allegories, none of them historical reports. What we are in the habit of calling docetism would have been a later attempt to harmonize original docetism with naive belief in the historical reality of the gospel tales: ....

Another fascinating theory rescued from obscurity in Murdock's pages is that of R.W. Bernard (Apollonius the Nazarene, 1956), and recently argued again independently by Margaret Morris (Jesus Augustus), that the New Testament depiction of Paul is largely drawn from traditions of Apollonius of Tyana. ....

Acharya S's recent works, under her real name, show that she is trying to up her scholarly reputation.

But that doesn't explain the cult like following, except that her book, like the Da Vinci code, makes a good story. It has good guys and bad guys, secret information revealed, a way for Truth to triumph. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Solitary Man · 12-31-2007, 12:48 AM

Quote of Ms. Murdock aka Archaya S. from Price's review:

Quote:

Murdock is quite correct in alleging that originally the Satan figure of the Bible was not a villain (no secret to anyone familiar with mainstream biblical studies; she writes as if there is only fundamentalism to deal with). But to support this point she notes that �In Dutch, a Lucifer is a match, a purely utilitarian object that brings light and fire� (p. 229), as if this were relevant linguistic evidence.

I cannot fathom how anyone can accept her after such a blunder.

hey look guys, i'm disagreeing with archaya s. i must be like spin and be frothing at the mouth!

jules? · 12-31-2007, 02:39 AM

Acharya S's followers appear to be from the the same stable as those of Hancock/Bauval/west et al who all draw on older super-civilisations beliefs but also use the trick to draw their readership into the conspiracy in that they, the reader is being brave in exposing it. It is that 'come closer and listen I have something important to tell YOU'. They then complain that the reason mainstream acdemia doesnt take them [or their readers] seriously is because they too are part of the conspiracy. It is a good method to keep a following and the cult status is achieved by having the 'message' at the end of the book. A message that will lift the darkness of conspiracy from the eyes of the follower.

Acharya' work fills a neat gap in the Mu/Atlantis story that accomidates the Jesus story. After reading the epic work of 'The Greatist Secret' by David Icke, a complete rework of the Illuminati trilogy, It appears to me that there is a need to tie up all loose ends in a comprehensive delusion theory.

Toto · 12-31-2007, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

...
I cannot fathom how anyone can accept her after such a blunder.

...

No one should accept her as an authority, but she is a human being, capable of growing and learning from mistakes.

Malachi151 · 12-31-2007, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solitary Man

...
I cannot fathom how anyone can accept her after such a blunder.

...

No one should accept her as an authority, but she is a human being, capable of growing and learning from mistakes.

Maybe so, but unless she is willing to completely denounce all of her writings to date then this point is moot. Personally I think that she does tremendous damage to the JM position both because of the popularity of her claims and the absurdity and unfounded basis of them.

It seems that any time I talk to people about this subject, both in person and on the internet, by far the most popular and widely held views by people who think that Jesus never existed are those like the ones Acharya S promotes.

Jesus is just an exact copy of pagan gods, the invention of Christianity was a Roman imperial conspiracy, the works of the New Testament were all produced in the 2rd-4th centuries, etc. It pains me to hear so many atheists spouting this nonsense, and it surely makes them and this whole field look foolish when they say such things to knowledgeable Christians.

I've had several Acharya S fans tell me that New Testament Christianity has "NOTHING", "absolutely nothing", to do with Judaism and contains no Jewish theology or references AT ALL.

Such claims are so absolutely foolish that its hard to even fathom. All one need do is open the New Testament to just about any random page to see quotes from the OT scriptures, so how people can even make such claims is beyond me, but a number of people defending her works have told me this.

They also seem inordinately hug up on the issue of Christmas "Jesus' birthday" being December 25th, and seem incapable of recognizing that this has nothing at all to do with the origins of Christianity or the Jesus story. For many, this seems to be some kind of smoking gun, which is, in fact, totally meaningless.

Roger Pearse · 12-31-2007, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

No one should accept her as an authority, but she is a human being, capable of growing and learning from mistakes.

It is surely possible, tho, that none of the books are actually written by the pin-up with an evidently bogus name whose picture appears on them. I don't know whether anyone has considered this possibility -- that the whole thing is a publishing scam?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Geetarmoore · 12-31-2007, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

I've had several Acharya S fans tell me that New Testament Christianity has "NOTHING", "absolutely nothing", to do with Judaism and contains no Jewish theology or references AT ALL.

Such claims are so absolutely foolish that its hard to even fathom. All one need do is open the New Testament to just about any random page to see quotes from the OT scriptures, so how people can even make such claims is beyond me, but a number of people defending her works have told me this.

I'm just playing devils advocate here; But I've read 3 of her works, and she doesn't at all make the claim that Christianity isn't based in or upon Jewish scripture or Theology. She goes into great depth to show midrash of the OT in creating NT scripture, in fact.

Geetarmoore · 12-31-2007, 09:47 AM

I'm going to read Christ Conspiracy again. I haven't read it in a few years, but when I read it, I thought the 'conspiracy' part was pretty much played down. Seemed like the title didn't match the content. Where I always felt she was most stretching over other sources of academia were her never ending list of gods that shared exact historical criteria with Jesus..Seemed way too good, perfect or convenient to be true....

The "conspiracy" she spawns is so long playing that is more resembles an evolution of belief, with a few key momentary shifts pushing directions. I've read similar ideas in other books.

One of the things that makes her work so hard to read is her pure hatred and disdain for religion and Christianity in specific. She fumes to the point that it doesn't sound as if it's a scholarly work, but rather a diatribe - I'm sure that puts people off.

Anyway, I'm going to read it again and give it more attention this time through to see what the fuss is from it.

ApostateAbe · 12-31-2007, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geetarmoore

I think they appear 'cult-like', because they're constantly being attacked, and really have started to take in personally. I have read 3 of Acharya's works; Christ Conspiracy, Fingerprints of Christ, and the new 'Zeitgeist companion guide'.

It didn't help her case at all to be tied in with that horrible movie, to tell the truth. Part 2 at the very least is so bad that it discredits anything being said in part 1 by pure proximity.

However, the astro-theological connection to Christianity makes a lot of logical sense to me, but 'making sense' isn't 'evidence', so I need to do my own research. One of the things that Acharya states in the Zeitgeist companion is that the information she draws on isn't easy to find, and it isn't written up conveniently in story form. This makes corroboration of her 'evidence' difficult, and I am willing to buy into at least some of this reasoning.

I do find it funny that when it comes to refutation of Achayra's scholarship, all I have been able to find is a bunch of people saying that it's wrong in wholesale, without first having read it, and without much in the way of evidence of their own. A big theme seems to be that the gentlemen who laid the groundwork upon which much of her study rests, were 'discredited' in the 1800's when their work was unveiled. Who discredited it? Where is their evidence against it? What were their motives?

I have very recently been involved in an altercation at her forum with a couple of her admin people. A new poster got on to claim that Achayra had misrepresented Krishna, and that Krishna was not born of a virgin on Dec. 25th, and other things that Achayra clearly states in her book. The admins got quite aggressive with the poster after providing some supporting evidence which wasn't accepted, and eventually threatened a banning. I stepped in to basically call the admins for the BS of threatening a banning based on a disagreement and discussion of ideas; something that I naively thought a forum was intended to propagate. I was called out in a very aggressive way by the forum moderator for supporting a 'fundamentalist'.

I had actually done my own research on Krishna, and I easily found evidence independent of Achayra that supported Krishna being thought of as a miraculous birth (not virginal, but not sexual either) of Devaki, and that Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu, a sun deity. I couldn't track down a birth period (I haven't tried either), but one doesn't have to extrapolate very far to figure that a sun deity might follow the natural cycle of the solstices.

I guess what I am saying is that I would love to see someone actually totally refute Achayra, or at least pinpoint exactly where her work falls down. So far, all that I have seen are a bunch of people who dismiss it in wholesale, without having actually read it outside of her website. Even the OP expresses disdain that he might actually have to buy her books to waste time researching them. How intellectually honest is that?

I think Acharya S's work lacks thorough criticism because it is immune to it. It is not falsifiable. She makes a bunch of claims, and she will do one of three things:

1) doesn't cite the source
2) cites a source that no longer exists
3) cites a secondary source that doesn't cite its sources

Her work doesn't have thorough scholarly criticism because it doesn't even begin to be a work of scholarship. All you can do is say, "Where is the evidence?" The end!

Geetarmoore · 12-31-2007, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think Acharya S's work lacks thorough criticism because it is immune to it. It is not falsifiable. She makes a bunch of claims, and she will do one of three things:

1) doesn't cite the source
2) cites a source that no longer exists
3) cites a secondary source that doesn't cite its sources

Her work doesn't have thorough scholarly criticism because it doesn't even begin to be a work of scholarship. All you can do is say, "Where is the evidence?" The end!

What percentage of her work matches that lack of evidence pattern? 25%? 50%? 75%? 100%? Her claims certainly aren't all without evidence, which is the way many play it off to be. That's where a thorough, critical review would be helpful. - pinpoint the areas that can not be supported by evidence. I know much of it is, because I've read the exact same claims in other books by people who are well respected in their scholarship.

I do know that when I had questions about claims in Christ Conspiracy, I was directed toward her other book 'Suns of God' for evidence of her previous claims. A circular chain that I'm not at all comfortable with, honestly.

I still think a wholesale dismissal - which is practically what I've always seen - doesn't do anyone any good. Maybe I'll tear it apart when I read it again and start digging into each claim. It might make a good critical thinking exercise.

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12-31-2007, 02:39 AM	#13
jules? Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: mind the time rift, cardiff, wales Posts: 645	Acharya S's followers appear to be from the the same stable as those of Hancock/Bauval/west et al who all draw on older super-civilisations beliefs but also use the trick to draw their readership into the conspiracy in that they, the reader is being brave in exposing it. It is that 'come closer and listen I have something important to tell YOU'. They then complain that the reason mainstream acdemia doesnt take them [or their readers] seriously is because they too are part of the conspiracy. It is a good method to keep a following and the cult status is achieved by having the 'message' at the end of the book. A message that will lift the darkness of conspiracy from the eyes of the follower. Acharya' work fills a neat gap in the Mu/Atlantis story that accomidates the Jesus story. After reading the epic work of 'The Greatist Secret' by David Icke, a complete rework of the Illuminati trilogy, It appears to me that there is a need to tie up all loose ends in a comprehensive delusion theory.

12-31-2007, 09:47 AM	#18
Geetarmoore Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Michigan Posts: 93	I'm going to read Christ Conspiracy again. I haven't read it in a few years, but when I read it, I thought the 'conspiracy' part was pretty much played down. Seemed like the title didn't match the content. Where I always felt she was most stretching over other sources of academia were her never ending list of gods that shared exact historical criteria with Jesus..Seemed way too good, perfect or convenient to be true.... The "conspiracy" she spawns is so long playing that is more resembles an evolution of belief, with a few key momentary shifts pushing directions. I've read similar ideas in other books. One of the things that makes her work so hard to read is her pure hatred and disdain for religion and Christianity in specific. She fumes to the point that it doesn't sound as if it's a scholarly work, but rather a diatribe - I'm sure that puts people off. Anyway, I'm going to read it again and give it more attention this time through to see what the fuss is from it.

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