Biff the unclean

What reason do you have to disbelieve in Maui? Why believe someone from Israel but not someone from Hawaii when they tell such similar stories?

If you are going to style yourself as an Apologist you should read up on comparative mythology as one of the main gripes about Christianity is that none of it's component stories are original.

The Polynesian stories are independent of the Bible but you'll find that primitive myths speak of the human condition and often resemble each other even though independently conceived.

I spend part of each year working on Maui. The stories I related are basic folktales that no tourist can escape as part of the Hawaiian Cultural Revival. Especially if you drive to the top of Mount Haleakala and visit the national park in the crater you can't miss this story being told. There's even a dinner show in Lahaina called Úlalena (www.mauitheatre.com) about it.

If you are interested in such things the best book out is Myths and Legends of the Polynesians by Johannes C. Andersen. He centers on the Samoan and Rarotongan versions rather than the Hawaiian, but they are still the same basic stories.

Amie

Hi Keith
I think everyone is biased to some extent. I liked your short honest post here...

Biff the unclean

But, of course, Keith isn't biased. He uses exactly the same standards when judging both sets of stories.
How about you Amie, care to take a swing at the OP?

Amie

Hi Biff
I think that many people have a tendency to believe with what they are familiar with based on familial teachings, culture, societal upbringing and what not. I don't think it is easy to reject something when that something is all you have known your entire life. So to you both stories sound rather odd, but to many they do not. The only time I think being biased is negative is when one person tells another they are "wrong" for not agreeing or sharing a belief in some way. Have any questions for me Biff? I will be more than happy to enlighten you in any way I can. Free of charge.

Biff the unclean

I'm confused.
First Xians are calling we Atheists "biased" repeatedly because we don't believe their stories.
Now it's alright to be biased. Unless it isn't.
Then you are telling Atheists, the overwhelming majority of whom were raised as Christians, and live in a very, very Christian nation that we are from some other culture so we wouldn't understand. As though Christianity were foregin to us.
Then you tell us you are opposed to people who 'tells another they are "wrong" for not agreeing or sharing a belief in some way'
But we are talking about the religion of Polynesia. Almost no one believes in Maui now because Christians told them that they would burn in Hell if they did.

HUH???!!!

My question is do you accept these stories of Pagan Gods as fact. If you do not, what, in your opinion, makes them different from similar Jewish stories? Is there something in the story itself that shows it to be fiction?

Amie

well I think everyone is biased in some way to some degree. I was just in a thread in secular support where someone asked what college someone should attend: a catholic one or a jewish one. I said "catholic but then again I am biased because I am a catholic"
I never said that Biff.
I am opposed because i do not think anyone has a right to tell anyone else what to believe in. Just as I have my beliefs I do not think its right for someone to say mine are "wrong" I would not tell Philosoft (just using you as an example Philosoft you are the first person who came to mind) that his beliefs are "wrong" in any way because they are right for him and if he's happy, good for him.
Well nobody can make anyone *not* hold a belief. Christians can share what they believe in but ultimately it was their choice to abandon a belief or maintain it.
The only difference would be in the mind of the person having a particular belief. Objectively I do not think the story sounds any more fictional than the God story I believe in.

Mad Kally

Amie,
God is the only childhood myth carried over into adulthood. They don't confess to the god one like they do to Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. We live in a culture that pressures us into hanging onto that one mythological story. It works very well, especially here in the good ole USA..

I didn't want to use the word brainwashing.

Amie

yeah indoctrinated just sounds better Kally


I understand you believe it is a myth though.

B. H. Manners

Amen and Amen!:notworthy

Biff the unclean

I take it then that you have never read Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Theodosius the Great who reigned from 379-395 CE passed an edict that made it a capital offence not to be a Christian. You didn't think that all those Hellenists just gave up the religions their families had belonged to for thousands of years because they thought Christianity was better, did you?
It was quite legal, and common practice in Europe (and later the Americas) to put Freethinkers to death from then up until the seventeenth century. The "Age of Reason" put an end to those shenanigans.
If you will take a look at the missionary movement in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries you will find that you are mistaken about not being able to force people to abandon their belief and take up another.
Their cultures are destroyed when this happens of course. But then so was the culture of classical Europe.

I agree, both sets of stories are very close. Admittedly that's why I picked them.
But since we are being objective, the Sun is ninety-three million miles away from Earth. It is an on going nuclear fusion reaction, which is many times the size of our planet. Our planet orbits it and not the other way around. Can either set of stories possibly be non-fiction? (Although the RCC threatened Galileo with torture over this same question, and kept him under house arrest for the rest of his life even after he told them what they wanted to hear…you have nothing to fear from Atheists, answer however you like)