Toto

OK - calling joe blfstk "ignorant" is something of a personal insult.

Commenting on his lack of logic is not. Sometimes that is a valid statement.

It is always better to be specific in your criticisms, but if Acharys S's supporters want to play the game of internet debate, it doesn't do any good to start screaming about personal insults or misogyny every time AS is criticized.

It's important because people like ApostateAbe read her material and think it's great until someone points out an obvious error, at which point they feel BETRAYED and turn to the other side.

By using outdated research uncritically, she casts doubt on the whole idea of mythicism.

And it wouldn't take that much for her to add a few qualifiers and nuances to conform to academic standards. Lots of Christians have learned to play that game.

anethema

Unfortunately you use the term "cast doubt" as an assertion she makes Toto. She cant "cast doubt" and make no sense at the same time logically. Please use logic in your arguments or dont expect agreement.

Zwaarddijk

tanya,
my blog is an ongoing documentation of errors as I check and verify that they actually are errors. guess what I came across today? Yet another claimed Irish word that does not exist.

"In old Irish, the word "budh," as in Buddha, means sun, fire and the universe".
(The Christ Conspiracy, "The Etymology Tells the Story")

I checked Matasovic's dictionary of proto-Celtic as well as Macbain's dictionary of Old Irish for anything along those lines. The only thing even remotely similar was buidhe, meaning "yellow". A word derived out of buidhe also meant "buttercup", so if you want to be really really far-fetched maybe that could be used poetically for "sun".


Macbain's dictionary is even available online: http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/index.html

How many of these do I need to demonstrate for you to accept that the research is shoddy at best?

As for the claim that I am just creating a meaningless array - no, I am creating an array of data points. These data points correspond to records of a coin being flipped. When we see that the coin produces an inordinate amount of heads, we can be fairly sure the coin has been tampered wit. When we see Acharya's claims often come up falsified, we can be sure she doesn't do fact checking, uses terrible sources, or even makes stuff up out of thin air.

Zwaarddijk

Also, your computer science metaphors are dumb as well as irrelevant. Stop doing them, it just reflects very poorly on your rationality.

Toto

My language was too condensed.

She does not make arguments that cast doubt on mythicism.

Others (such as GDon) use her to cast doubt on all of mythicism.

stephan huller

Like AIDS used to be an argument for monogamy.

lpetrich

To add to Zwaarddijk's discussion of why there are twelve notes in an octave, let's consider why there's an octave in the first place. It's for making harmony, and if one does not care about making harmony, one can choose any pitches one wants.

What makes harmony? When some sounds are very close in frequency, their combination can sound very pleasing. If they get different enough, it's not so pleasing.

Most sounds are actually combinations of sounds at different frequencies, and the perceived pitch of a sound is usually due to its lowest or fundamental frequency. One can thus make two sounds harmonize by adjusting their pitches so that one sound's fundamental has the same frequency as one of the higher frequencies, or overtones, of the other sound. Or even so that an overtone of one of them has the same frequency as a different overtone of the other one.

As it happens, most mechanical musical instruments that make sustained or not-too-transient pitched sounds have linear oscillators that make their sounds: strings or columns of air. That gives them overtones with frequencies that are approximately integer multiples of their fundamental frequencies. This is likewise true of human vocal cords.

That's why an octave is a factor of 2 in frequency -- that's what the first overtone is. But as Zwaarddijk had posted on, getting the next overtone to harmonize is more difficult. One can make a sound's third overtone harmonize with another sound's second overtone by making the second sound's fundamental frequency (3/2) * the first one's. That's a "fifth" interval. Going up by 12 fifths and down by 7 octaves yields this multiple of the original frequency:
(3/2)¹²/2⁷ ~ 1.01364

That's close, so that's why octaves are divided in 12. No astrology anywhere in sight.

Zwaarddijk

Harmony can be done without octaves - at least one of the regions of Georgia has old traditional music that divides the fifth in four roughly equal steps, where no "perfect" octaves occur ever. However, huge stacked fifth chords do occur even in parallel on occasion, as if the composers had thought of the fifth as a kind of "pseudooctave". Some modern theorists have also considered whether there could be alternatives to the octave, and the Bohlen-Pierce scale is an attempt to construct harmony in that vein, yet with chords analogous to our minor and major chords (and more). It divides the perfect twelfth (3/1) in 13 steps, which gives even better approximations of 3/3, 5/3, 7/3 and 5/5,7/5,9/5 (and 9/9, 9/7, 9/5, as well as 7/7, 7/5, 7/3) than 12-steps to the octave gives for 4/4, 5/4, 6/4. Alas, the "semitone" is 1.46... times ours, which kind of ends up at the wider end of things. (see e.g. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/l...orol-BF-X.html )

Also, as I said, theorists and even instrument-builders have used other numbers of tones. Apparently, some harmonica builder in England in the 19th century even had 14 keys per octave in a non-equal temperament, such that two major keys were given a perfect major third or something like that (such that the 5th harmonic of a tone perfectly aligns with the 4th of another). (Alas, I never saved the link to the source for that statement. It had pics of the thing.)

GakuseiDon

It would be a logical fallacy if I did. That one mythicist might have bizarre theories does not impact mythicists who have different theories.

I'm not anti-mythicist per se. My main interest is in how ancient people thought of their gods and their myths, so most of my focus in the past has been on Acharya S and Doherty, whose theories touch on that. I actually think Wells' theory is the strongest amongst the mythicist ones, but I have never been interested in looking into it, or Atwill's, or MountainMan's, or any of the others.

Which mythicist theory is the best known one, Toto? On this board, I think people like yourself are in denial when it comes to mythicism and Acharya S. The impression given on this board is that there is this serious challenge to historicism called "the mythicist theory", championed by the likes of Doherty, Carrier and Dr Price (never mind that Carrier and Price have never presented a formal case for mythicism AFAIK), while Acharya S and her kooky theories are just a side-show, a fringe element.

But in reality, Acharya S's theories are probably the most popular and well-known out there, through her books and the Zeitgeist movie. Astrotheology is the dog, not the tail. More people have heard of a crucified Horus than sublunar fleshly realms.

And it is important to note that she is supported by other prominent mythicists. AFAIK, Carrier is the only prominent one that has spoken out against her. Here is what others have to say:

From here:
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/...=1073&start=60

Rene Salm:

"Regarding astrotheology, I don't see any problem, Robert. The entire record of Bronze-Iron Age religion is suffused with astrotheology. Who's denying it? Insisting upon empirical evidence in this regard is asking for the obvious. It's in the literary and epigraphic record (especially cuneiform texts and bullae/seal impressions)."

Dr Robert M Price:

"I find it undeniable that many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and constellations."

"I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock"

Frank Zindler (comments reproduced on the page by Acharya S:

Christ at the beginning was a heavenly character and the subject of an astral mystery cult that formed about the same time the Cult of Augustus formed, in response to the movement of the vernal equinox out of Aries into Pisces. As you know, Augustus was the first to use the word euaggelion, and we have much to learn about Christian origins from the study of the Imperial Cults. (Since few biblical scholars have taken on the task of learning about ancient astronomy or astrology, this admittedly will seem quite kooky, and I won't defend the astral idea further in this letter, other than to note that earliest Christian iconography supports it.)
...
You may be amused to learn that Ulansey disagrees strongly with my precession theory. Even though he argues that “later Mithraism” was created in response to the movement of the vernal equinox from Taurus into Aries, he completely rejects my claim that Christianity was the response to precession from Aries into Pisces, despite the fact of the sacrifice of the lamb replacing the sacrifice of the bull and the fishes (plural) being the earliest symbol for Christianity (except possibly for the chi-rho cross of Chronos, or the simple chicross that I think symbolizes the intersection of the celestial equator with the ecliptic).

Earl Doherty, in his review of Acharya S's "The Christ Conspiracy": http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvTCC.htm

The litany of comparisons and parallels that can be made between the Gospel story and elements of ancient world mythology, astronomy/astrology, ritual and scriptural precedent, is astonishing. This book scarcely falls short of documenting them all...

She delves into Egyptian and Indian precedents for the possible derivation of many of the bible's traditions. When she ranges even further afield and notes the surprisingly widespread commonality of certain religious and cultural motifs from one end of the planet to the other, extending back into very ancient times, we are on intriguing if speculative ground, but for the most part the author simply lets the data speak for itself, and readers can draw what conclusions their own adventurous spirits might wish.

From her main page: http://freethoughtnation.com/

"I can recommend your work whole-heartedly!" —Dr. Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code, RobertEisenman.com

"Ms. Murdock is one of only a tiny number of scholars with the richly diverse academic background (and the necessary courage) to adequately address the question of whether Jesus Christ truly existed as a walking-talking figure in first-century Palestine." —David Mills, Atheist Universe

"Acharya S has done a superb job in bringing together the rich panoply of ancient world mythology and culture, and presenting it in a comprehensive and compelling fashion." —Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle

The problem has always been that there has been no standard bearer for mythicism, no-one with the academic credentials to go to the head of the pack. Happily, Carrier will be the first one in modern times to do this, and Acharya S, Doherty and the other mythicists will become irrelevant.

Toto

Speak of the devil . .

No one that I know of speaks of "THE mythicist theory." Carrier's formal case is at the publisher.