Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Memetic evolution is a good answer to the question of how Christianity emerged. Memetics answers the process question, setting the cultural evolution within a natural scientific framework and excluding all traditional supernatural magic. Which memetic factors were decisive for Christian success is then the ‘what’ question we should ask once we accept the ‘how’ question of natural evolutionary causality.

Memetics applies the scientific model of material causality to the study of cultural change. This is challenging in principle because it asserts that complex phenomena such as cultural ideas must in principle have material causes, with no point at which the idea separates itself from the material to introduce a non-evolutionary causal process.

Memetics recognises that the genetic process of cumulative adaptation should in principle also govern the causal process of other complex living systems such as human culture. And this is quite plausible. A society contains people who are continually trying out new things. Some innovations succeed and some fail. The basic criterion of whether a given innovation succeeds or fails is exactly the same in genetics and culture – whether it is more adaptive to its environment and hence is able to replicate in a way that is more fecund, durable and stable than other innovations. The fact that memetic change is faster and more complex than genetic change does not in any way indicate how memetic change might bring in non-evolutionary factors.

Regarding the content of the Christian meme, selective pressures included:
- the emotional attraction of a story whose core Easter ritual was modelled on the natural annual cycle of death and rebirth,
- the need to syncretise a range of older myths into a new story for a common era,
- the geopolitics of the Roman-Jewish wars,
- the way Jewish Davidic monotheism picked up the messianic ethical message of ‘the least shall be first’ as a compelling cultural framework for the Christ Myth
- and importantly, the neglected topic of how the Jesus story explains universal history in a way that maps directly to the cosmology understood by ancient seers, with the spring point of the sky precessing from Aries into Pisces at the purported time of Christ as symbolising a New Age.

Originally Posted by aa5974

Again, this is not really about the human brain and its capacity to produce visions

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Oh but it is, that's part of the background evidence one has to bring to the table.

Originally Posted by aa5874

but that your claim is errroneous that without visions there would be no religion.

Please, show that the Greeks and Romans had visions of their Gods before their religion started.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Those cults are obviously far too old and evidence of their origins far too scant, to say anything definite about (other than that they probably started in a shamanistic fashion); my evidence is based on what we do have evidence for, which is for contemporary and near-contemporary religions, and some ancient religions, from everything from Shamanism to the origins of several large-scale religions (Islam, some forms of Daoism, Hinduism, etc., even Buddhism with the vision of "Mara") But for the Greeks and Romans there are scattered fragments here and there (like the Parmenides/Empedocles fragments I mentioned) which talk about encounters with deity. There are also some visions recounted in the "Orphic" gold leaf evidence, which is very, very old.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

For a general overview, cf. William James'
The Varieties of Religious Experience. Absolutely necessary reading, IMHO, for anyone who wants to get a feel for what religion actually is and was, so their textual analysis can be more informed. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that you do.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

He THOUGHT that he had gotten the word from a resurrected character. Obviously there was no resurrected character, the vision wasn't real. Visions don't represent real entities. But they can seem real to those who have them.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

You seem to have difficulty grasping this: IN REALITY, no resurrected entity, but a visionary experience is precisely the experience of something that isn't real, but SEEMS REAL to the person having the vision.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

So when we see in an ancient text that someone "spoke to God", and if we have no reason to think they are lying or perpetrating fraud, the obvious interpretation, given the known capacity of the human brain to produce visions and auditory hallucinations under certain conditions, is that they had that type of experience. They really, really thought they were speaking to God, he was there, palpable to them. But we know it was just a trick of the brain, and whatever the God "said" to them was produced by their own brain.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

The evidence we have suggests "epopthe", self-revelation of the divine, to those in Jerusalem whom Paul says preceded him. This has been read by Christians as pertaining to the post-resurrection appearance of someone they had previously known in the flesh, but we are under no obligation to read the text that way. The text can easily be read as visionary experience of an entity they didn't know previously in the flesh, but who (they thought, as people who have visions tend to think) was revealing Himself to them for the first time.

Originally Posted by aa5874

There is no background evidence that you can produce to show that the Pauline writers did actually have visions and there is no actual corroborative evidence for visions.





Well, let us go back to the Stone Gods. Tell us who had visions stones were Gods.

And again, you are arguing that visions start religions but cannot show how or who had visions of any religion in antiquity.

The Pauline writers were seen of Jesus AFTER the Jesus cult had already started and after he persecuted the cult.




You appear not to have read the Pauline Corpus.

See 1 Cor. 15--Over 500 person was seen of Jesus before Paul.

By the way, I am really interested in the evidence from antiquity --Not hopelessly flawed opinion.

The Pauline writers could not have obtained any historical data from visions.

The Pauline writers relied heavily on the Septuagint and the story of Jesus found in the Scriptures of the Jesus cult.

Effectively, the Pauline Corpus is a product of gLuke, gJohn and Acts.



Why has it not dawned upon you that the Pauline writers knew that there was no resurrection and no revelation?

You seem to have faith in Paul. All of sudden you know what Paul thought without a shred of corroborative evidence.



Again, what visionary experience are you talking about? It is virtually impossible for you to even attempt to verify that "Paul" had visions when even in the Canon it is claimed Paul heard a voice.

People who hear voices are not relied upon for historical accounts.



You appear to be naïve. The very easiest way to deceive is to claim to have heard from God.


The evidence we have from antiquity for the Pauline Corpus suggest no such thing as visions.

The Pauline writers openly used the Septuagint and the stories of Jesus cult.

Church writers admitted that the Pauline writer was aware of gLuke and that he wrote after Revelation by John.

By the way, do you notice that John's "Revelation" is considered AFTER the Jesus story was known. The very same applies to the Pauline Corpus.

John's Revelation is also based on the Septuagint and the story of Jesus.

Stories of Jesus first--then Revelations Later.

Originally Posted by Grog

What are the origins of "Paul?"

Originally Posted by Grog

Why did the author(s) of Acts introduce a new apostle "Paul?"

Why were later writings attributed to this new apostle?

Originally Posted by Grog

....The Gospel writers leave anachronistic fingerprints as to their dating (such as the Olivet Discourse, but it seems that the writers of the Paulina were more careful when it came to leaving such anachronisms in their writings. Not proof of anything, but it is interesting to note.

Do you know of any such anachronisms? Your posts have indicated that there is a relationship between the Gospels, Acts and the Pauline writings. I am less convinced of your temporal relationship argument and I don't find the argument that some early Christians placed Paul after the Gospels, which would only make sense. The acts and works of Jesus of Nazareth preceded the career of Paul. Later Christians would assume that Paul's writings followed the Gospels.

Originally Posted by aa5874

Again, which "Paul" are you talking about? There were multiple authors under the name of Paul.

The Pauline Corpus is the Flagship of Forgery or false attribution.

Originally Posted by Grog

....The Gospel writers leave anachronistic fingerprints as to their dating (such as the Olivet Discourse, but it seems that the writers of the Paulina were more careful when it came to leaving such anachronisms in their writings. Not proof of anything, but it is interesting to note.

Do you know of any such anachronisms? Your posts have indicated that there is a relationship between the Gospels, Acts and the Pauline writings. I am less convinced of your temporal relationship argument and I don't find the argument that some early Christians placed Paul after the Gospels, which would only make sense. The acts and works of Jesus of Nazareth preceded the career of Paul. Later Christians would assume that Paul's writings followed the Gospels.

Originally Posted by Grog

.....You are missing the point of my question. I understand your position that all the Pauline writings are fabrications. My question is why fabricate a character named Paul and then appeal to this character? Why is the name Paul? I am not asking this to say that therefore there must have been a real Paul. I am interested in what your thoughts could be. Why does the name "Paul" have any authority at all?

Originally Posted by Grog

You are moving the posts here. I am not arguing that individuals do not innovate. I believe that the concept of Jesus Christ was the ultimate product of many such individual innovations. Yes, somewhere, sometime an individual made a connection between the name 'Jesus the Christ' and the idea of the messiah. Whoever that person was has been lost. We will never know who that was. Indeed, that's the whole idea behind evolving memes. Ideas are permeable, changeable, and ideas that serve a purpose or address a need survive and spread, and change and adapt.

Your position was that all religions begin with an individual who preaches a message that is accepted by followers.

Originally Posted by Grog

My position is that religious beliefs come about in a variety of way and one is that they emerge through a process of evolution.

Such a development can lead to a plethora of beliefs rather than a tightly controlled set of dogma. I believe that the record shows an early diversity existing in "Christian" and "proto-" Christian beliefs that you don't find in more cases where a religion is essentially founded like Mormonism or Scientology. In fact, unlike those cases where the words and teachings of the Founder (Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard) are authoritative and referred to constantly in order to establish credibility.

In the case of our earliest source of Christianity (Paul's writings), we do not find that appeal to authority that one would expect. HJers have to make ad hoc explanations, actually special pleading, for why Paul acts in a way other than what we would expect.

In fact, if we accept that Paul is writing at a stage in the evolution of Christianity, then the "teachings" of Jesus of Nazareth do not yet exist. What Paul knows is revelations from the Risen Jesus who was crucified in a timeless space (Carrier says "outer space," Doherty says "sub-Lunar") by elemental powers (this is what Paul says, after all, in 1 Cor 2:8), discovered through reading of scripture.

Originally Posted by Grog

An evolving, emerging view of "Jesus Christ" fits the evidence better, in my opinion, than any of the other possibilities such as a fabricated Jesus or a fictional Jesus.

Originally Posted by Grog

Advancing the idea that Paul knows of a historical Jesus executed by Pilate a few years before Paul's own conversion to the cult depends on too much special pleading, in my mind.

Originally Posted by Grog

Special pleading regarding Paul's lack of appeal to authority, Paul's own statement that he knows of Jesus through scripture and revelation, Paul's lack of references to details about Jesus' life that relate to Paul's own teaching, Paul's baffling extolling of the civil authorities (Romans 13), and I am sure there are many others, all add up to an argument that is fatally flawed. And without Paul, there is no link to a historical Jesus.

If Paul does not know of a historical Jesus, then it is fundamentally weaker to claim that Jesus was a historical person. Our earliest and best reference fails to support the theory of origins advocated by historical Jesus advocates.

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Memetic evolution is a good answer to the question of how Christianity emerged. Memetics answers the process question, setting the cultural evolution within a natural scientific framework and excluding all traditional supernatural magic. Which memetic factors were decisive for Christian success is then the ‘what’ question we should ask once we accept the ‘how’ question of natural evolutionary causality.

Memetics applies the scientific model of material causality to the study of cultural change. This is challenging in principle because it asserts that complex phenomena such as cultural ideas must in principle have material causes, with no point at which the idea separates itself from the material to introduce a non-evolutionary causal process.

Memetics recognises that the genetic process of cumulative adaptation should in principle also govern the causal process of other complex living systems such as human culture. And this is quite plausible. A society contains people who are continually trying out new things. Some innovations succeed and some fail. The basic criterion of whether a given innovation succeeds or fails is exactly the same in genetics and culture – whether it is more adaptive to its environment and hence is able to replicate in a way that is more fecund, durable and stable than other innovations. The fact that memetic change is faster and more complex than genetic change does not in any way indicate how memetic change might bring in non-evolutionary factors.

Regarding the content of the Christian meme, selective pressures included:
- the emotional attraction of a story whose core Easter ritual was modelled on the natural annual cycle of death and rebirth,
- the need to syncretise a range of older myths into a new story for a common era,
- the geopolitics of the Roman-Jewish wars,
- the way Jewish Davidic monotheism picked up the messianic ethical message of ‘the least shall be first’ as a compelling cultural framework for the Christ Myth
- and importantly, the neglected topic of how the Jesus story explains universal history in a way that maps directly to the cosmology understood by ancient seers, with the spring point of the sky precessing from Aries into Pisces at the purported time of Christ as symbolising a New Age.

Originally Posted by J-D

Your truncated quoting of my post misrepresents it.