GakuseiDon

Yes, Bill is good. He would have been a better choice than Brian Flemming. I gave up after my favorite bit: Bill gives a long list of similarities between Jesus, Horus, Krishna and Buddha, plus the sixteen virgin-born and crucified gods from Kersey Graves, then he stares into the camera and scowls, "Coincidence? Come on!"

And isn't Maxwell Jordan a hoot. "Argha-noa", the flooding of the Nile, becomes "Ark of Noah"! "Dalai Lama" is "Lamb of God", since "Dalai" shares the same root as "dei" and "lama" is Lamb! RFLMAO!

ApostateAbe

I am up to the end of Part 4. Did you know that Jesus, much like Buddha, when he descended from his heavenly seat and entered the body of his virgin mother, the womb assumed the appearance of a clear transparent crystal, in which Jesus appeared beautiful as a flower?

Yeah, I had no idea of such a thing, either, but that is the fact presented at 9:11 of Part 4 of The Naked Truth (and somewhere in the Gospel of Mark, too, I bet). The claim is quoted from the book, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, it is published on Google Books, and indeed there is actually a footnote with the evidence!

"On a painted glass window of the sixteenth century..."

I think that's all the evidence I need.

In conclusion, Jordan Maxwell makes a very strong case. I am ashamed I didn't know about this video before.

Toto

The "Cooke Cutter Christ" theory is a truly insignficant part of anti-Christian rhetoric, and is not the focus of any atheist or secular group.

Graves was not an atheist. Acharya S has a following, but is not influential in any atheist or civil liberties group. If Loughner liked Zeitgeist, it was probably for the second two thirds.

There are anti-religious or anti-Christian groups who have picked up some misinformation on Mithraism, but this is not the focus of their work, and it does not form the basis of their opposition to Christianity. If FFRF has not bothered to update its pamphlet, that is probably because the issue is trivial, and they are spending their time on real legal issues involving church state separation.

I have never met or heard of anyone who decided to become an atheist because the Mithras story was so close to Jesus' story. If all of the atheists in American became convinced that Jesus was a historical figure, I suspect that none of them would convert to Christianity. Most atheists in fact already do assume that Jesus was a historical figure, or have not taken a position on it.

Your idea that if American atheists became predominant, that they would try to force the cookie cutter Christ theories on American education just like they did in the Soviet Union, shows a complete lack of understanding of American politics and everything else.

mountainman

Parallels between Jesus and Asclepius - (The God of Medicine - Gerald Hart).


CCC - Cookie Cutter Christ

Christ was Cut out of the Greek LXX Cookie.

PhilosopherJay

Hi ApostateAbe,

I like the term "Cookie Cutter Jesus." It gets to the essential truth that elements of ancient mythology were rearranged to create the man-god character of Jesus Christ. As applied in the way you describe, it does bring up false analogies and ignores the specific details of the specific elements that made up Jesus Christ. Jesus was not made on a bakery assembly line for myths because there were no assembly lines for myths in those days. Jesus was handmade using special tools and special ingredients, just like all the myths of the time. However for a fast and dirty explanation, it is not far off and does stimulate the imagination and discussion.

One might compare it to explanations of the American Civil War. According to the Southern apologists, it was a war over States Rights and according to the official line from the North it was a war about keeping the union of the United States from falling apart. A more correct analysis would say that it was a war about the abolition of slavery, but even this is not quite correct, and approaches things from a moral rather than a scientific prospective. Such an analysis ignores the important needs of capitalism for free labor in order to operate profitably. American Capitalism could not expand or react to market conditions without an army of reserve laborers who could be hired when markets expanded and fired immediately when markets contracted. Just as the serfs were freed by Capitalism in Europe to become wage slaves, the black slaves in the United States had to be freed also to become the wage slaves that powered the capitalist economy. The free U.S. population of 28,000,000 had only a minority of workers, with 90% owning or working on farms. The influx of 4 million poor black freed slaves available to be integrated into the labor market fueled the expansion of capitalism in the U.S. so it could compete in international markets. The development of the American West and mass immigration from Europe also fueled the capitalist American economy for the next 65 years after the end of the Civil War until the Great Depression of 1929.

However, an explanation of how the capitalist system historically works is outside the scope of any basic introduction to the Civil War. So the idea that the Civil War was fought over freeing black slaves is probably the best explanation for teachers to give to their young students. It is closest to the truth as far as simple explanations go, even if it does not hit the mark exactly.

In the same way, showing the broad connections of Christianity to Greek and Roman mythology is probably a good introduction for children and those too busy to investigate the issues. Going into each of the complex elements and ingredients that went into early Christianity and their contradictory and difficult to see development may be satisfying for those with the time and energy to investigate the matter in depth, but for those wanting a quick explanation of what happened, the Cookie Cutter Jesus hypothesis seems to work well enough.

In regards to some other issues raised, Jared Loughner seems to have been much more interested in carrying out the commands of Ronald Reagan and making government smaller than he was interested in Jesus theories. He will be put on trial for putting into practice Ronald Reagan's beliefs that government is the problem, not the solution, not any of the beliefs of the Zeitgeis producers.

While it is true, perhaps, that some Christian literature was removed from Public libraries during the early Soviet era, one should remember that communist and atheist literature was forbidden in most public libraries in the United States at the time. I remember going into local libraries in New York in the 1970's and finding no books on communism except for Karl Marx's communist manifesto, with an anti-communist prologue and several dozen books on the subject written by anti-communists.

I would question if Arthur Drew's hypothesis was presented as an historical fact, as opposed to the best hypothesis available at the time.

We should remember that vigorous anti-Christian propaganda was only done in the early years of the Soviet Union from 1922 to around 1935. By 1935, Stalin was actively courting the support of religious elements in his popular front against fascism. The Nazis reopened all the closed churches when they swept in 1940 and 1941. When the Red Army swept them out, the churches remained opened, although many of the Christian Nazi collaborators were sent to prison camps (Gulags) for re-education.

I assume and have faith that the latest scholarly developments in early Christian history will be synthesized into a theory that will naturally replace the general Cookie Cutter Jesus hypothesis in popularity.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

ApostateAbe

Atheists are one group of people, anti-religious activists are another group of people, and I tried to maintain that distinction. It is true that most atheists don't know or even care so much about the historical issues. But, the anti-religious activists are the ones who make their views known, influence the society and represent all atheists. The silent atheists do not matter as much, concerning the future, as the people who are actively influencing society--you, me and all of those who speak out.

To illustrate, I did another informal survey on Google.

I did a Google search for Christ myth. I got 15 results (including 2 YouTube videos and 3 Google Books).

Neutral on CCC:

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_myth_theory
• http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...cus/jesus.html

Explicitly in favor of CCC:

• www.pocm.info/
• www.thechristmyth.com/
• www.truthbeknown.com/kimball.htm
• Amazon.com: The Christ Myth
• www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/christmyth.html
• YouTube video: Christ Myth pt. one
• Google Books: The Truth Behind the Christ Myth: The Redemption of the Peacock Angel
• Google Books: The Christ Myth (by Elizabeth Edson and Gibson Evans)

Explicitly against CCC:

• The Christ myth - Did the historical Jesus exist? Did Christ rise
• www.awitness.org/essays/bkup/christmyth.html
• YouTube video: Shattering the Christ Myth
• Google Books: Shattering the Christ Myth

So, when anyone does a Google search for Christ myth, they will be overwhelmed with arguments that Jesus was a copy of Mithras and Horus. It is not as bad when doing a search for Jesus myth, fortunately. Only six results deal with CCC.

These people are not the normal atheists who keep to themselves. They are the atheists who are changing society. I'll tell you how I know this.

Yeah, if they never made a difference, then I probably would not care. You never heard of anyone who was persuaded by CCC which contributed to deconversion. I have known two such people online. One of them was a moderator of the Apologetics section of ChristianForums.com. She was a pastor's wife. She engaged in the debates with atheists, continually lost of course, and she read the book, The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, strong on CCC. Then she became an anti-religious activist. The deconversion was like an atomic bomb. It was big.
Well, I made my case, and you are free to make your counter-arguments, or you can just insult me and leave it at that. I would love it if we could talk in real time and you could quiz me about American politics. I don't think I have ever been accused of possessing a "complete lack" of understanding about American politics, nor even a moderate lack.

Perspicuo

... of course, based on empirical grounds, only as the simplest and most powerfully explanatory conceptual structure of the available evidence, and predicting a good part of subsequently discovered evidence. If not, it's not worth keeping alive and should be discarded in favor of a better explanation, eventually.



Elegant, good-looking theories are all very nice, but don't forget empeiria.

ApostateAbe

OK, if you have a more developed and nuanced theory of CCC that has at least some evidence to back it up, then I don't have nearly as much disdain for it as the claims associated with CCC that I see regularly on the web, though I would still disagree with it. There really are a lot of false specific claims that are almost always used to prop up CCC. I don't know the specifics and the evidence of your theory so well.
Well, some variation of that hypothesis will certainly be promoted by the political left. The political right will accuse the fringe left, and they will have evidence that Loughner was deeply absorbed in conspiracy theory media most popular in the fringe left, not the fringe right. Zeitgeist was one of them. Right or left, Loughner is the face of atheism that will be presented to the world when lawyers bring it up at the trial. Loughner's dedication to Zeitgeist happened about two years ago, but he did not drop those ideas, neither the conspiracy theorism nor the atheism, because the evidence for such ideas of his were put on the web.
You point out that the Jesus-myther doctrine of the USSR was temporary and it ended to appease the Christians. Yeah, likewise, it really would be democratically difficult for atheists as the majority of voters to try to rewrite history to claim that Jesus was copied from other religion, even if Christians are a slim minority. The votes of a minority still count significantly.

I was led to such fears by what Solo said a while ago, recounting his experiences in communist Czechoslovakia. Here it is:
He followed up:

mountainman

But do you have any historical evidence to support your arguments?
Rhetoric is cheap and ugly. Evidence is valuable and most charming.
So far all I have seen it an incoherent torrent of the former.





ALERT ALERT ...... HJ ... :hobbyhorse: ... HJ

ApostateAbe

OK, this thread is not about the evidence for a historical human Jesus, but I am here to help. I'll direct you to my thread that summarizes the best evidence for my model of a historical Jesus. Here it is:

Abe’s Summary of the Slam-Dunk Evidence for the Historical Jesus

You are free to bump that thread if you wish.