Chris Weimer

I didn't say that people who follow Tom Harpur - people can be fooled easily - but that Tom Harpur seems to have an agenda and willfully ignores the evidence against him. Either that or its just plain sloppy scholarship.

Diogenes the Cynic

Count me as someone else who doesn't really grasp the determination of some people to see every aspect of Christian origins as mythical. It's like they think that conceding any possibility of historicity to Jesus is conceding the whole ballgame which it obviously is not. There s no logical reason why HJ can't be accepted (or at least entertained as a possibility) without conceding any of the supernatural claims about him whatsoever. Unfortunately, people like Harpur and Archaya S. actually hurt the public acceptance both of serious JM theories and naturalistic HJ theories by giving Christian defenders easily refutable, crackpot theories to deride and to smear the entire JM movement with. I think some of these people are just as bad as fundie apologists. They become enamored with their own fantasies and imagined connections and defend them in the face of all evidence. If we're going to pride ourselves as rationalists we have to be honest with ourselves about what we can actually prove.

Gamera

Finding similarities in disparate religions is easy if you want to find patterns. Similarly you can find similarities between Heidegger's Being and Time and mechanics handbook for a Chevy Truck. Honestly try it some time.

Humans are pattern finding creatures. That's how our brains work. The issue is not similarities or patterns between religions, but the meaning of those elements in the respective religions. Once you investigate that, you'll find that Christianity is sui generis as to the elements of Jesus's sacrificial death and resurrection, not to mention everything else that is central to the gospel message.