Resurrection myths are extremely common in mythology so if that is the primary basis for the comparison, it’s pretty weak.
The few similarities that really do exist are too general to impress me.
And the very, very many false “similarities” endlessly regurgitated by the likes of Bill Maher and the Zeitgeist crowd impress me even less.
I agree that a number of the supposed similarities are not there, like in the Horus story, and I caught Maher on some as well.
That doesn’t mean there are no similarities at all.
It is sometimes claimed that Christianity hasn’t borrowed from other religions and is unique. That its uniqueness is proof that it is not made up.
We should not let the well be poisoned and be able to discuss those similarities that are there, without being labelled Zeitgeist-atheist and handwaved away.
Sure. Feel free to present the clearest similarities you can think of.
The singularity is how much the story of how Horus was conceived, Horus’s conception is said to be conceived without the aid of his father, Osiris is said to do a lot of things and called a lot of things Like what was related about Jesus and was considered to be God and son of God,
Like what?
Having green skin? Wearing a crown with ostrich-feathers sticking out of it? Holding a symbolic crook-and-flail-thingamajig? Having a sister, Isis, a goddess, who put his body back together after it was cut to pieces (except his cock, which was eaten by either a catfish or a crab)? Having a brother, Set, also a god, who once tricked him into a box and shut it close? Having a son, Horus, also a god? Being re-incarnated every morning? Being associated with a ram?
Or are you strictly referring to superficial similarities such as “being called a god” (shocker!) or “the son of a god” (double schocker!)?
This is just weak, and either misleading or flatly untrue. The religion of ancient Egypt wasn’t monotheistic; Osiris wasn’t God, he was a god, his sister and wife Isis was a goddess, so unsurprisingly their son Horus was also a god and the son of a god (and goddess). Using the fact that Horus was known as a god and the son of a god as a parallel between Jesus being the son of God and part of the holy trinity is just silly. Horus was also the god of the sun, war and protection, his mother Isis the goddess of motherhood, magic and fertility, and his father Osiris the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead.
- Dissonance, agnostic.
ETA: The birth of Heracles is closer to that of Jesus, both were the son of a diety and a mortal woman.
Those who seek to establish the uniqueness of Christianity, despite some similarities to other mythologies, have a fair argument: it is a unique faith.
Those who seek to place Christianity on a mythological par with other faiths, and thereby present it as a purely human construct, also have a fair point: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, et al. are also unique, despite their commonalities–and there are plenty of commonalities.
For the former, no degree of similarity to other mythologies is sufficient to override the essential uniqueness of their faith. Similarities are easily explained away, and the Dude abides.
For the latter, no degree of uniqueness is sufficient to accept Christianity as Truth. Beginning from a humanist starting point presupposes mythological similarity. In my case, I assume that all myths, because they are all largely concerned with explanations of the Big Questions, tend to share themes. Sure enough, they do.
But those similarities in theme are sufficient for me; I don’t require perfect similarity of actual events to believe Christianity to be a human construct. More importantly, I’m not so offended by Christian assertion of supremacy that I have to make shit up in order to prove them wrong.
In other words, fuck Zeitgeist and all its ilk. The folks who have to lie in order to discredit Christianity are frankly much more harmful than the blindly faithful, and are certainly as reactionary and fundamentalist as any thumper.
In other, other words, what Dr. F said.
-a-
It’s also an indication of how pernicious appeals to authority still are and how uncritical most people tend to be on any matter that lies outside their common experience. If you know nothing about Egyptian mythology and someone makes a bunch of bogus claims about parallels between it and something else, why the fuck would you ever take what they say at face value? But millions of people listen to Maher or the Zeitgeist bullshit and swallow it whole.
In some cases it’s just a matter of gleefully accepting things that support want you already wanted to believe, but I think it really does go deeper than that for a lot of people. I’ve seem a lot of people who clain that it was the Zeitgeist video that changed their minds on certain things. Why, when it was nothing but a slickly produced youtube video.
Suckers are still being born every minute I suppose.
You are entitled to your beliefs. I don’t care if you believe the moon is made of green cheese.
My point is that every thing written, taught, or thought is the work of another human or humans, there is as much reason to believe any writing as well as the Bible.
My beliefs? What beliefs?
That’s your point? A moment ago, your “point” was “Osiris is said to do a lot of things and called a lot of things Like what was related about Jesus.” Whatever happened to that?
The similarities are all bs cooked up by new agers.
Almost all of Zeitgeist Part 1 can be easily debunked.
Makes me really lose respect for the militant atheist crowd that they would deliberately make up lies to try and destroy Christianity. Refute it on its own grounds if you want to be taken seriously.
(From an agnostic)
In fairness, the number of fundy atheists* who would use such argumentation is pretty small. Most atheists would simply note that there is no god, so regardless of the stories about Jesus, there is no point to worrying about it.
*Not all atheists who might be considered “militant,” (Dawkins?), would be regarded as fundy atheists. That implies a particular mindset that is not particularly prevalent among atheists–although it does exist.
Duly noted, didn’t mean to insult an entire group for a small subset of radicals.
I should mention, I bought the Zeitgeist Part 1 hook, line, and sinker when I first saw it. It’s amazingly convincing the way it is portrayed. To later find out that it was all built on deliberate lies that were so easily proven false…was a major blow to a cause I could have bought into.
I would guess that this is probably true. I know of no studies into the matter, but I do seem to recall a study which showed that atheists tend to know more about religious history than theists. In which case it’d be safe to assume that they’d be less likely to fall for this Massey/Dupuis/Higgins/Volney/Zeitgeist/Maher crap.
According to the book; "Osiris and The Egyptian Resurrection. Lets call it using some of the things others wrote show a lot of the same ideas that were claimed by the Christian writers attributed to Jesus, Some of the believers still have a bread and wine service according to one Egyptologist. A lot is from the book of the dead.
My point is that a lot written about how some of the things said about Osiris is a lot like some of the things attributed to Jesus Your beliefs that there are not similarities to what was written about Jesus and Osiris. etc.
Like what, for example?
Nice try at the Gish Gallop. This is most emphatically not what you said before, as everyone can plainly see. You said:
and
which is unadulterated horseshit. As I said, the ancient Egyptian pantheon had a great many gods; Horus was the son of a god and a goddess and was thus unsurprisingly a god himself. Horus was not considered God and the son of God the way Jesus is in Christianity, and claiming so is utter nonsense. Again, Heracles has a closer, but still weak, parallel in that he was the son of the head of the Greek gods and a mortal woman.