Malachi151

It is really quite bizarre. All over the Internet I notice that there are these rabid followers of Acharya S who simply cannot tolerate one ounce of criticism of her work. She seems to have a slavishly devoted cult following, but I don't notice this about any of the other JM advocates or critics of Christianity, such as Ken Humphreys, Robert M. Price, Bart Ehrman, Early Doherty, etc.

It seems like Acharya S groupies are kind of like Ron Paul groupies or something.

Even when presented with direct evidence that claims of hers are clearly false they just ignore it, attack the individual, rant and rave, etc.

I really don't understand what in particular it is about her works that inspires such cult like behavior. Is it the conspiracy theory elements that she panders to?

It is quite interesting, and it would also be interesting to put together an exhaustive criticism of Acharya S and her works.

xaxxat

Maybe it's just sex appeal...

Pseudo-Deity

I'd certainly appreciate that. The only critique I was able to find of Acharya's work from a skeptic was Price's, but it seems he has taken it down off of his website. I would like to know what differentiates Acharya's work from the rest of the Christ-Mythicists that seems to warrant such vocal criticism.

Malachi151

Reluctantly, I may do this. I have been interested in getting something like this done for a while now, and even in broader scope, as indicated in the following thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=194229

It seems that no-one else is doing it, so maybe I will, though I hate to actually have to acquire her books and read them and waste time addressing them, but perhaps it must be done.

I have a threads on the subject on the Richard Dawkins forum:

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/view...301487#p301487

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...=18865&start=0

But these aren't full and well documented criticisms, just minor and general ones.

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?

Malachi151

Oh I won't buy them, I'll check them out from a library. Its no different from the disdained of having to read through Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" in order to write up a refutation of ID.

butswana

I bought and read 'Christ Conspiracy' about 5 years ago. Her claims seemed a bit outlandish to me because it would require a conspiracy that would encompass the entire population of the ancient world. Like everyone knew it was made up bullshit but they played along any way. It would dwarf what would be required to fake the moon landings.
I'm reading this book thinking that there is no fucking way that so many people would willing fabricate and perpetuate this Christ fraud. No way. There is enough evidence to support the Mythicist position any way. Why bother going over the top to look like a fucking kook?

Doug Shaver

That is probably the primary thing. It can feel mighty good to think you've seen through a ruse that fooled just about everybody else in the world. Plus, she's going against the conventional wisdom, and so if you're with her, you're with the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Columbus, etc. And, I take it the book has plenty of citations, so she must be a Real Scholar -- "having done all that research, she's surely on to something."

Roger Pearse

Flattery of the readership probably is an important element, I agree.

jjramsey

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

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