Freethought & Rationalism Archive

GakuseiDon · 09-07-2012, 06:46 PM

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave31

LOL, yeah, the "New Age" lie gets passed around a lot by those who also don't know her work. It's just another cheap shot to pile the rest. The jealousy, misogyny and malicious smears are a real problem as many others have noticed:

Dave31, according to her website, Acharya S calls herself "part and parcel of the Creative Life Force that permeates the cosmos". She also seems to believe in a conspiracy of ancient orders to use Christianity to control us, which she is eager to expose so as to bring in a new age (so to speak) of Enlightenment. These are "New Age" concepts, since a New Age requires the extinguishing of the Old one.

Can you confirm that Acharya S has claimed the following please? My bold throughout the quotes below.
http://www.truthbeknown.com/atheist.htm

It has been suggested that I am an "atheist" and am "very destructive." However, I am neither a theist nor an atheist, although, for the most part, I prefer atheists because they can think for themselves and are not as vicious as "believers."...

I categorize myself as neither of these, since I prefer to view the entire cosmos as divine and awesome. I may thus be called "pantheistic." I may also be considered a mystic, a "homo novus," or, as it were, a new woman...

And yes, I am here to destroy. I am the intellectual aspect of Kali, the destroyer, of Shiva, of Zeus the thunderer, and of Jehovah the flattener of cities. But I am also a part and parcel of the Creative Life Force that permeates the cosmos, and upon the ruined foundations of dead and rotten ideologies I build anew...

The truth is that we all have wisdom, and my wisdom is telling me that now is the time to wake up to our universal selves, as we sit on the edge of global chaos...Thus, like Kali, I am hacking away at the veil that keeps you sightless and asleep to the ethereal and awe-inspiring nature of the cosmos.

Dave31, are you part of the Creative Life Force that permeates the cosmos? How about Acharya S? In your view, is she part of the Creative Life Force that permeates the cosmos?

Also:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Christ...y/message/3106

I've said this before, but it bears repeating, I think. I like to describe Christianity as a Trojan Horse: Park Christianity at the gate of the nations, and out pop a bunch of "Chosen People." As far as I'm concerned, and as I think I make clear in my books, Christianity is a deliberately contrived ideology (not that religions in general aren't), designed to perpetuate the established domination (not hegemony, since "the nations" are not allies) of the Old Testament supremacists. (I hope you get my drift. I need no smearing with fallacious terms such as "anti-Semitic.")

Dave31, do you think Christianity was contrived to perpetuate the domination of the Old Testament supremacists?

Also:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/aliens.htm

Keith recounts Vallee's work:

[Keith writes in his book:] "A remarkable UFO group was contacted by Jacques Vallee in Paris, France. The group is called the Order of Melchizedek, and it uses the Star of David for its emblem, and for its program espouses a one world government and the doing away with money and religion - except for the UFO-oriented sort of religion, I would imagine. The Order is cabalistic in its mystical practices, the Qabalah being an ancient form of Jewish mystical cosmology, a philosophy also employed by other occult groups such as the OTO and the Freemasons. Vallee notes the curious number of organizations that the head of the French Order of Melchizedek fronts, including the Front for Christian Liberation, Jesus People Europe, Jesus Revolution, the Charismatic Christian, the Christian Socialist Party, and Jew and Arab movements. Here revelant cross-currents include cabalism, the Order of Melchizedek, and the Star of David."
In this case, it is obvious that the same old terrestrial powerbrokers are up to their old tricks. The Order of Melchizedek, in fact, is named in the Bible as the highest priesthood, of which Abraham and Jesus are made priests under Melchizedek.

Dave31, can you tell us some more about the "same old terrestrial powerbrokers" and the "Order of Melchizedek"? Are they still active today? How is Acharya S going in her fight against them?

It might be worth splitting these posts about Acharya S's New Agey views into their own thread here, e.g. "Acharya S, the New Age and Biblical Conspiracies".

Toto · 09-07-2012, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

...
It might be worth splitting these posts about Acharya S's New Agey views into their own thread here, e.g. "Acharya S, the New Age and Biblical Conspiracies".

Is there anyone here who actually wants to discuss them? You like to bring them up, Dave31 won't answer. No one else thinks there is anything of interest here.

I might go to see the Caesar's Messiah movie, in which I think Acharya S is interviewed, and if I learn anything new, I'll let you know.

Steven Carr · 09-07-2012, 09:41 PM

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Originally Posted by metacristi

Attacking some minor, secondary, aspects does not invalidate the major conclusion, namely that a historical Jesus did in fact exist.

Gosh, Ehrman's claim that Jesus must have existed because there are Aramaic words in a story about Jesus raising a child from the dead really struck home with you didn't it?

andrewcriddle · 09-08-2012, 01:50 AM

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Originally Posted by Ratel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plutarch

In this way we shall undertake to deal with the numerous and tiresome people, whether they be such as take pleasure in associating theological problems with the seasonal changes in the surrounding atmosphere, or with the growth of the crops and seedtimes and ploughing ; and also those who say that Osiris is being buried at the time when the grain is sown and covered in the earth and that he comes to life and reappears when plants begin to sprout.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D65

Read in context, (see sections 66 and 67 of Isis and Osiris with their complaints about the atheistic tendency of this type of explanation), this is not IMO talking about popular understanding of the Osiris myth. Rather it is criticizing the Stoic attempt to explain (or explain away) myths by relating them to natural phenomena. IE the story of Osiris is really (according to the Stoics) a metaphor for the planting and growth of crops.

Andrew Criddle

Ratel · 09-08-2012, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ratel

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D65

Read in context, (see sections 66 and 67 of Isis and Osiris with their complaints about the atheistic tendency of this type of explanation), this is not IMO talking about popular understanding of the Osiris myth. Rather it is criticizing the Stoic attempt to explain (or explain away) myths by relating them to natural phenomena. IE the story of Osiris is really (according to the Stoics) a metaphor for the planting and growth of crops.

Andrew Criddle

Would this view be that which Cicero expresses in his "The Nature of the Gods" in your opinion?

metacristi · 09-09-2012, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by metacristi

Well I don't think that Bart Ehrman's arguments can be so easily demolished.

I infer that you have not in fact read the numerous rebuttals.

Would you care to state in your own words what the basis for that conclusion is?

Here is an indication that you have not read enough. Only a few mythicists base their arguments on the parallels with Osiris, and citing the Encyclopedia Britannica is not enough to show that Egyptians did not think that Osiris rose from the dead.

Are you sure? What did Paul think?

Such as?

Quote:

Instead of investing so much effort in an obviously lost case as this (only to discredit religion with all costs) I prefer Rationality. Honestly I never understood why some atheists chose this extreme path, some claim for example that evolutionary psychology shows without doubt that a sort of teleology is impossible to be at work and so on, when in fact there are much more reasonable approaches, based on Rationality not on hating religion and religionists.

Then please demonstrate some rationality, rather that sparring with straw men.

Read Ehrman's book first. And after that read Ehrman's response to Carrier's allegedly 'devastating' review (the hero of many atheists as I see, a jerk in my view). Anyone rational can easily see where the truth is. Note I do not claim that a question like 'Did Jesus exist?' is illegitimate (it is not, exactly like 'Did Muhammad exist?' for example) but it is an enormous mistake to conclude that the mythicist arguments have the edge. For they don't have this edge, they are not even on equal foot in fact, at the moment at least. The debate can go endlessly (as some never see that the epistemological claims they make are hollow, personally I would avoid to present mythicism as more than an interesting alternative, this even if I believed in it) but this change little: the historical Jesus hypothesis fully deserve the current, first choice, status in science.

Toto · 09-09-2012, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metacristi

...
Read Ehrman's book first. And after that read Ehrman's response to Carrier's allegedly 'devastating' review (the hero of many atheists as I see, a jerk in my view). Anyone rational can easily see where the truth is....

I've read parts of Ehrman's book and that response. I disagree with you about the availability of "truth" and about where rationality leads.

It does not do your cause any good when you engage in name calling, any more that when you just claim to be rational without laying out a rational argument.

Can you state in your own words why you find Ehrman's argument persuasive?

tanya · 09-09-2012, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bart Ehrman

But Carrier’s objection to my view did take me a bit off guard and make me wonder whether I was missing something, whether there were in fact scholars of Tacitus who continue to think the reference to Jesus was an interpolation in his writings. I am a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, not of Tacitus! And so I asked one of the prominent scholars of the Roman world, James Rives, who happens now to teach at UNC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by James Rives

I’ve never come across any dispute about the authenticity of Ann. 15.44; as far as I’m aware, it’s always been accepted as genuine, although of course there are plenty of disputes over Tacitus’ precise meaning, the source of his information, and the nature of the historical events that lie behind it. There are some minor textual issues (the spelling ‘Chrestianos’ vs. ‘Christianos’, e.g.), but there’s not much to be done with them since we here, as everywhere in Tacitus’ major works, effectively depend on a single manuscript.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perseus extract of English translation of Tacitus 15:44

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, .... (emphasis by tanya)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Zara, 2009

ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis
poenis adfecit quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat.
Auctor nominis eius Christus … (emphasis by tanya)
...
I consider it now totally safe to say, in accordance with the examinations made by Andresen, Lodi and Rao, that the fourth letter in “Christianos” indeed has been changed from an “e” to an “i”. Accordingly, the scribe originally wrote Chrestiani, “Chrestians”, which might be what the Romans called the Christians, according to some scholars.

I am not a scholar. I am not an instructor at UNC. My point is very simple: Our sole extant manuscript of Annals 15:44, dates from twelfth century, from an Italian monastery, using an unknown source, containing acknowledged forgery, the deliberate modification of the text. If we know of one alteration, based upon ultraviolet scrutiny, why should we suppose that the entire paragraph has not been forged? It is as if someone has forged a counterfeit currency note, and someone came along and modified one letter on the fake plate. It is not just that one letter is fake. The whole plate is corrupt, but we only recognize that one tiny change, because of the ineptitude of the forger.

Did Tacitus write in Latin, not Greek? That would be most amazing, in my opinion. Where was Tacitus living, when he wrote Annals? Where had he lived his whole life? Where had he been educated? What was his native language?

In my opinion, Ehrman has swept this issue under the rug. It is not at all obvious, that Tacitus is a reliable source for the existence of "Christus", (nota bene, NOT IESOUS, but Christus), any more than Philo is a reliable source for the historical existence of Herakles.

andrewcriddle · 09-09-2012, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tanya

Did Tacitus write in Latin, not Greek? That would be most amazing, in my opinion. Where was Tacitus living, when he wrote Annals? Where had he lived his whole life? Where had he been educated? What was his native language?

See Tacitus Tacitus was a Roman politician and author from North Italy or possibly France. Latin was his normal language.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle · 09-09-2012, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ratel

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Read in context, (see sections 66 and 67 of Isis and Osiris with their complaints about the atheistic tendency of this type of explanation), this is not IMO talking about popular understanding of the Osiris myth. Rather it is criticizing the Stoic attempt to explain (or explain away) myths by relating them to natural phenomena. IE the story of Osiris is really (according to the Stoics) a metaphor for the planting and growth of crops.

Andrew Criddle

Would this view be that which Cicero expresses in his "The Nature of the Gods" in your opinion?

It is one of the views expressed in that Dialogue. In Nature of the Gods book 2 after Balbus has described the true heavenly Gods he goes on to say

Quote:

There is another reason, too, and that founded on natural philosophy, which has greatly contributed to the number of Deities; namely, the custom of representing in human form a crowd of Gods who have supplied the poets with fables, and filled mankind with all sorts of superstition. Zeno has treated of this subject, but it has been discussed more at length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus...

For example

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The air, according to the Stoics, which is between the sea and the heaven, is consecrated by the name of Juno, and is called the sister and wife of Jove, because it resembles the sky, and is in close conjunction with it. They have made it feminine, because there is nothing softer. But I believe it is called Juno, a juvando (from helping).

Therefore

Quote:

Do you not see, therefore, how, from the productions of nature and the useful inventions of men, have arisen fictitious and imaginary Deities, which have been the foundation of false opinions, pernicious errors, and wretched superstitions?

Andrew Criddle

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