I meant, of course aliteral pantheist. However, I don’t regret the unintentional phonetic Freudian slip.
That’s ok. I’ve concluded from reading GD that most atheists can’t spell. Do a forum search on “athiest” and see how many hits you get. 
Including this thread (see my post #18) 
At least that misspelling sounds the same as the original. Calling myself a “panty-ist” is sure to raise an eyebrow (and yet not be wholly inaccurate).
On rethinking, I must admit a bi-religiosity here: After MEBuckner’s post I am fully comfortable in atheist-wear too. My pantheistic tendencies derive only from a “cool idea” point of view. So either I swing both ways or I’m an aliteral pan/atheist. Yeah, I’ll whip that one out at parties.
- smiles *
Hope you had an enjoyable holiday season, and that you don’t seriously feel that your views warrant incarceration in a psychiatric institution - I certainly don’t think they do.
I’d only make a couple of relatively trivial points. On the matter of credibility, I would agree that the sort of personal epiphany that your Bill has is the only type of experience that can be believed, and it’s only the recipient of such an experience who can believe it. If you regard the belief that Bill has as having the same sort of tentative character as your own belief in pantheism, then there’s nothing that I would want to say to change your mind; I’m sure I don’t need to ask you to accept that his path (and mine) is no less valid than yours.
On Harpur, although I’m not familiar with his work, I think he’s confusing two seperate issues; the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth, and the claims that Christians make about Christ. Obviously, if the historical Jesus didn’t exist, then the Gospel accounts of His life, ministry, and ressurection are untrue. However, somebody - or some group of people - undeniably did found the institution that we now call “the Christian Church”, approximately 2000 years ago; I would argue that, even if the founder was someone other than Jesus of Nazareth, the teachings and beliefs of the Church can be accepted or rejected on their abstract merits. Does the fact that there may not have been an historical Homer invalidate the Iliad as a work of literature? Does the fact that the historical Socrates may not have said everything Plato attributes to him make those dialogues invalid as philosophy?
It’s been a while since I’ve read “The Pagan Christ” I’ve lent my copy out so it’s not at hand for me to refresh my memory. I stand to be corrected…
In essence he’s saying everything that modern day Christians attribute to Christ is actually (to put it simply) stolen from other traditions. He focuses on Egyptian tradition, drawing similarity between stories/attributes of Osiris/Horus and Christ. He quotes an early European’s report from an expedition to the Far East where he first encounters Buddhism - that report, if you hide the title, sounds like a report on many aspects of the Christ story.
In short, he says that the early Christians did not “found” Christianity based on any new history or revelation of Christ. Rather, they adopted these ancient-even-to-them stories as metaphors or mystical representations of truth. Generations later, in an attempt to spread the word to the masses, a literal representation of these stories was made to hoi polloi - either with good intentions or more likely as a power play. Once the idea of a literecal/historical Jesus got some traction, there was no going back.
Now, I am highly skeptical about many of Harpur’s claims. That aside - he is convinced that the true meaning of Christ is not that a literal God became man and sacrificed himself for our salvation and literal heavenly afterlife. Rather we should consider the birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection story of Christ as a metaphor for your life and mine as individuals (details elided).
Inasmuch as Harpur learns about himself by applying the metaphors contained in that story, he calls himself a Christian. This, to my mind, makes the phrase “ask Jesus into your heart” a lot more meaningful, i.e. internalize the truths encoded in the Jesus metaphor. A far, far different definition than I was taught back in my Penecostal days
I raise this book as an unorthodox meaning of “believing in Christ.” This guy unequivocally, unashamedly says “I believe in Christ” but what he means by that phrase is far different than widely understood. Is this a form of dishonesty or hypocricy? In my opinion he’s on to something. If we can all abandon literalism, then we could truly all worship at each other’s alters without contradiction. Once can dream, no?