What's your Religion?

I watched a video on Netflix comparing Christianity to all the other religions and showing how similar the stories were....I can't recall the name of it now .

Regardless, I found it pretty interesting.

 

I never saw that!!! I need to stream it asap, I heard it was pretty good.

 

If you read the article, you'll see that it was a response to a book written that stated that Jesus did not exist in history but was a metaphorical figure. He was responding to show that Jesus did in fact exist. Though that was not brought up in the video, I included the link for completeness (part 1 of a 3-part article).

As the author stated, you would expect some similarities as an agrarian society would develop a religion based upon what they observe (crop cycle of death and rebirth). Just because there are some similarities, that doesn't mean one is derived from the other. He also makes a good point that as Christians and Jews despised pagan Rome and Egypt, it would be very unlikely that they would derive their beliefs from those hated sources.

I could state the same about the video. It's an attempt to make the Eqyptian religion appear like Christianity. And it fails. It makes a bunch of assertions that have no merit.

 

It is. I fully agree that the Catholic church under Constantine did that, after he outlawed the pagan religions and made Christianity the state religion, to bring the pagans into the church.

Easter is a derivitive of Aesteroth, a fertility goddess (which is why the rabbits and eggs are associated with Easter). And Christ's birth was moved to December 25th, the Winter Solstice.

 

I did read the articles, my comment still holds, the evidence for the existance of a jesus doesn't mean he was the son of a god.

If only there were only some similarities, but it's many many similarities and it was more than just the egyptian religion, it's also rooted in astrology as well. And this is not just one guys opinion.

 

Never said it did.

 

Respect for admitting this. Thank you.

 

Best movie ever.

 

Lol, 666 people voted they are christians..

 

But you brought it up for completeness of what?

 

I haven't read through all the links yet but the thing that strikes me as funny so early on is that the writer uses writings from historians as "evidence" that Jesus existed. Only problem is he can't find a single historian that was actually alive during the time Jesus supposedly lived. Find someone that wrote about Jesus before 32 CE. You can't. Doesn't matter that Jesus was going around performing miracles, walking on water, claiming to be the son of god. Apparently none of this interested the known scholars and historians around at the time, because they never uttered a word about it. Everyone waited 50-100 years after his death to remember all the cool shit he did.

 

Because it was part one of a three part article.

 

So true. Sounds good. Love your pic btw. Huge Star Wars fan

 

As I've argued many times in this thread before, I'm no religion supporter, but there is kind of a case to be made against this.

Unfortunately, there was a whole heaping shit-ton of persecution in those 50-100 years following the "emergence" of "Christ." So it is extremely plausible that nobody kept very detailed records -- you know, the whole torture and death thing being a strong deterrent. Not to mention, those who were brave enough to carry the "Word" probably didn't have the best methods of record preservation in the desert and on the run. Then there's the whole 95% illiteracy thing. So it's extremely possible that IF there were written records, they were very few, and very easy to destroy if discovered.

Christianity itself didn't REALLY take of until the invention of the printing press.

That being said, it's really stupid to base your arguments as fact around the writings of historians -- historians who themselves probably allow that the existence of Jesus may not have actually occurred. It's that kind of blatant baseless pandering that turn people looking for answers off of the religious crowd because they look at their arguments and see obvious assumptions and in some cases downright lies. It's hard to convince people that what you're saying is right when it's based on nothing concrete.

 

You didn't watch the video or you would have seen he did bring up Tacitus, and Josephus in video 3 at 5:38-43 and concluded like most others not predisposed that the Josephus account is a fraud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Your links barely even touch on most of the 3 part video.

The video relates to astrology, the concept of ages, and solar events that corrolate to symbolism in a long progression of beliefs.

I could well say "The videos never said it did" to your links, they focus on something only touched on.

 

Only touched on? It's the thesis of the entire video. The Horus and Mithra examples shows the twists and errors the video uses to make it seem more like Christianity.

The fish emblem in Christianity is the Ichthys. It doesn't come from pisces. During it's persecution the church used it to identify other Christians. It's an acronym for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior". The first letter from each word forms the Greek word "Fish" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys

The astrology assertion is easily refuted with the Bible itself, which disdains it:
http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/astrology.html

As I stated above, much of the imagery and Catholic traditions were due to adopting pagan symbolism to Christianity during Constantine's reign (e.g. Christmas, Easter, the Wafer sacrament) to make it more attractive to them. So it would be no surprise that it matched some of ancient religions. A good source is Alexander Hislop's "Two Babylons".
http://www.biblebelievers.com/babylon/

 

That's not very convincing.

Kinda like evangelist Ted Haggard disdaining homosexuality and gay marriage and drugs doesn't prove he couldn't have been doing speed and having gay sex.