lpetrich

That's a very good point about religious experiences. I think that they are dream states and hallucinations and the like. I'm not saying this to put down anyone who has them; I don't want to imply that anyone who has such experiences is somehow evil.

I myself have had many conscious dreams as I come awake, and they are often of me having various adventures, like being pursued. I don't think that it's really surprising that some people would conclude that they are visiting some spirit world in such dreams.

J-D

If that's what you mean, I agree with you. No arguments there.

It's just, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that sometimes I get confused about what people are saying on this point.

If I had to guess, I would guess that the people you're talking about are reflexively attacking whatever arguments they encounter from their opponents. Also, if you can get people to abandon the position to which they are committed, then they will be mentally more open to changing their position further. I think this is psychologically valid even if it is not logically valid. Of course, it loses a lot of its psychological force once it's identified as a tactic.

J-D

I don't know what you mean by a 'big bang', nor am I clear on what you are suggesting the alternative possible explanation is.

J-D

Saying that Jesus started Christianity does not commit me to supposing that the whole content of Christianity derives from Jesus. The latter is obviously false.

In your alternative explanation you obscure the issue of human agency. You say Christianity 'grew out ... deviated ... reached out ... imported ...'. But everything 'Christianity' does must in fact be done by some person or persons. Christianity does nothing that cannot also be described as a human action. For your account to be plausible, it must be capable of being rephrased as a sequence of human actions, and once that is done I think the most plausible version involves a founding leader at the human agent at the beginning of that sequence (although not throughout it).

Something like this: Jesus preached and gathered a following around him. Later, some adherents of the movement he had started developed various new doctrines. In particular, Paul succeeded in having his doctrines accepted throughout most of the movement. Later Christians believed in doctrines deriving mainly from Pauline and other sources grafted onto and largely replacing the original teachings of Jesus.

That's compatible with what you were saying, but it still involves a role for Jesus.

J-D

Of course the poll couldn't tell us what the true answer is. But some people, even if not you, still might be interested in seeing the results.

J-D

I don't want to argue about whether it ever happens that such experiences occur, but what's your evidence that they are important to the origin of religions? Is there evidence, for example, that the people who believed Joseph Smith, or the Bab, or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, did so because they had had such experiences?

Amaleq13

"Big Bang" is intended to describe the essentially orthodox notion that Christianity began with a single individual and that any variations are from that singularity.

An alternative is that there existed multiple variations on a Descending Redeemer theme that were eventually coalesced into "Christianity".

J-D

And can you illustrate this possibility by any examples of historically recorded religious origins following this pattern?

Alf

Which "him"? The historical or mythical Roland?

Unlike Jesus where virtually everyone who talk about him talk about the mythical Jesus as depicted in the gospels and which never existed, this Roland is not as clear cut. You ought to qualify which one you are talking about.

Alf

Alf

Unfortunately that is not the Jesus of the gospels. It is some long forgotten Jesus who nobody today seem to care much about. The christians only put him forth in a play where they on one hand want to assert that a "historical Jesus really existed" and once you accept that they jump to "The gospel Jesus really existed" as they confuse the two.

Alf