In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “Fade,” the artist added a comment in the email notification:
The best argument against either of these two religions is their own holy books.
Sadly, nobody was there when Jesus and Mo’s own books were fabricated.
Somebody was there!
.Religiosity has very little to do with reason and logic and knowledge, and a lot to do with maintaining relationships with friends and family.
This is why change is slow and will require generations.
We have reached one tipping point. It is now possible to come out of the closet on the internet. But it is still not possible for an avowed atheist to run for high political office.
Internet killed the religio star.
I’m feelin’ a Buggles remix.
Well, there is Joseph Atwill’s argument that the Roman Flavian imperials wrote the New Testament and have Jesus’s ministry in the Galilee mirroring Titus’s military campaign crushing the rebellion there. The typological connections that Atwill finds seem every bit as valid as commonly accepted ones such as between Jesus and Moses. It is worth reading his book. It’s certainly a lot more entertaining than reading sophisticated theology could possibly be (although I will never know for certain because I will not torture myself by reading the latter).
The problem with Atwill’s conspiracy theory is that the exact same parallels connect with everything else out there, too.
Richard Carrier’s latest book, On the Historicity of Jesus, lays them all out as well as any. The earliest mention of Jesus actually happens at least half a millennium BCE, in Zechariah 6. Philo confirms that the Jesus in Zechariah 6 was understood to be congruent with the Logos. Paul’s Jesus adds some color but is otherwise indistinguishable from Philo’s Logos seen through the lens of the Jesus from Zechariah 6. Up until at least the fall of Judea in 70 CE, Jesus remains much the same. Sometime after that, “Mark” wrote a classic Euhemeric epic inventing a contemporary biography for Jesus, and all later writing either expanded upon or challenged Mark’s myth. And Mark’s construction of the myth was very transparently crafted for rhetorical effect with lots of references to and parallels with all the popular literature of the day, especially including Homer and the Torah.
Atwill’s conspiracy theory is just more Bible Codes, observing fragments of universal patterns and interpreting more significance into them than is warranted. To be convincing, he’d need some sort of smoking gun outside of just spooky coincidences.
b&
I’m sure many people here have visited this site http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/ but if not, give it a go. It may be less rigorous than Carrier but it’s a whole lot more accessible!
Atwill has a smoking gun. That’s what makes his contentions convincing. The spooky parallels occur in the same order. The ministry of Jesus follows the path that Titus will take 40 years later. The major events of Jesus’s ministry can be readily linked to events of Titus’s campaign, as told by the Flavian propagandist Josephus. When viewed in the light of the events they commemorate, the Gospel stories take on a viciously humorous character. For example, “fishing for men” refers to a sea battle where the Romans speared rebels in the water like fish.
Sorry, but that’s the same sort of selection bias that defines all these Bible Codes. It’d be trivial to find more parallels…but out of order. And to find parallels with other figures, with careful selection of those parallels being in order.
Besides which, once again, it ignores the fact that Jesus had been a Jewish archangel, the architect of YHWH’s true church and its high priest and the prince of peace and al the rest, for nigh on half a millennium already. So what if one particular Euhemerized biography cribbed some bits from Titus? It’s not like that stuff is important — let alone the origins of the thing.
b&
Actually, that’s a useful counterargument next time Ken Hame thumps the Bible’s “inerrant truth”: Were You There?
And for that matter, why do the libraries of the ancient Egyptians (who Were There after all!) seem to make no mention of the Biblical tales of momentous adventures in Egypt? Did they simply not notice because they weren’t “chosen”?
I’ve heard many reports over the years of people who have left a religion specifically because they found out more about it.
A thorough, critical reading of the bible/quran seems to be a pretty good start on the path to unbelief.
It’s no wonder that so many (supposedly) deeply religious people have never read the bible – or have only read it very selectively.
My own favourite version of this type of event is the story of Jenna Miscavige Hill.
She was the niece of the then chairman of Scientology, David Miscavige.
She left the church/cult after learning about the ridiculous story of Xenu from watching the South Park episode “Trapped in the Closet”!
That was enjoyably unexpected. 🙂
I just finished Hill’s book a few days ago. The South Park episode wasn’t the only thing which cracked the lifetime of indoctrination she’d received, but it was a defining moment. Even the realization that people were laughing at L. Ron Hubbard was a shock. Scientologists are taught that he’s universally admired.
One of the things I learned from Beyond Belief was the major distinction between what’s called “public Scientologists” and the individuals and families embedded in Sea Org, the leadership division. The latter are kept so isolated from “mogs” (non-scientologists) and knowledge of the outside world that I was vividly reminded of North Korea.
I think I’d casually assumed that Scientology, despite being a gnostic religion, had long ago given up the fight to keep Xenu and the volcanoes a secret. No. Not with the insiders.
They’re therefore fighting a losing battle. Any time you need to keep believers in the dark in order to keep them in the faith you have to fear — and expect — some light bulb moments.
I’d actually heard of Jenna’s story from another source – but ‘Beyond Belief’ sounds like an interesting read!
The layers of scientology, and the secrets and isolation that go with it, are what make it simultaneously fascinating and disturbing.
To my mind it also pushes it very much towards the cult end of the religion-cult continuum.
One of the unique things about Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape is the detailed look at conditions at the Ranch, a compound in the desert which held the children of high-ranking officials (parenting distracted focus on The Cause.)
Hubbard’s views on child-rearing and education are … horrible. Almost beyond belief. It’s a holy mess of propaganda and obedience training coupled with bizarre fixations on how to learn. For example, one of LRH’s tenets was that every single problem with understanding was due to not knowing the meaning of a word. Find the original misunderstanding and ther4e were no limits. Thus the kids constantly had to undergo a constant mind-numbing process of dictionary work and semantic study. They would spend weeks and even months rote-memorizing all possible details of terms like “it” and “their.” Whoa.
And that’s before you got to the back-breaking labor. According to Scientology children have been adults thousands of times before. No need to slow anything down for them.
I was involved in Scientology for about two months back in 1984 — 2 guys came a-knocking on my door, got me to fill out a questionaire and go in for an evaluation and I wound up signing up for a course and then worked for them for one week as a “Communications Director”. That bit about “knowing the meaning of word” stuck with me. I got out of there when I finally realized the true definition of Scientology is “give the Church all your money and don’t dare think for yourself or ever question the wisdom of L. Ron Hubbard.”
Jenna was in fact one of the three women behind the “Ex-Scientology Kids” website that first started to draw media attention to some of the abuses you describe.
You might be interested to read about a recently announced Kickstarter campaign for a new video series by some of the same kids; the trailer they’ve put together looks like a great start:
http://tonyortega.org/2015/04/14/announcing-a-new-video-series-the-stories-of-young-scientologists-not-told-in-going-clear/
Thanks!