Christmas = paganism

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fixed!

There is no evidence for anything in our discussion. There is only ancient artifacts, paintings, myths, and the human ability to logically conclude. You seem to lack the last of these and can only conclude something from the bible which shows itself to be unreliable on the very first page.

No I am not trying to be like a nutty conspiracy theorist. I have been exploring the origins of religious belief, belief in god, and social anthropology. Speculation is all anyone can do when it comes to these things. If you can only take the stance that everything needs documental evidence, then if I were you I would not get involved in arguments concerning religion, pre history, or the origins of anything that dates back more than a few hundred years. Otherwise your input is simply unhelpful.

No my argument cannot be falsified or supported by documental evidence, but neither can any argument concerning this topic. You really need to stay out of speculative debate and stick to something like hard scientific debate which has endless documents, experiments etc that can be tested over and over. I have given you some historical evidence for the relevance of christmas day to the ancients, I have also given you solid evidence for the solstice phenomenon, I am sure you have heard of stonehenge and other stone circles that were very popular around 5000 years ago, I have directed you to our earliest known civilisation, I have pointed out the origins of astrology, but still you cannot get over this need for a written document.

Please stick to recent history if that is what you want and steer well away from ancient history.

Actually, mine can. As soon as I see evidence that contradicts my view, I'll no longer adhere to it. That's a promise.

But so far, you've only shown that you have a human brain that sees interesting patterns, nothing more.



The Solstice isn't enough to support your "thesis". Neither is the Stonehenge and all that. Because you still fail to provide evidence for a link between the Solstice, the Stonehenge, the cave paintings, and whatever historical evidence you have in mind, to the supposed "Jesus Sun God story" and the supposedly previous "Sun God stories" before it.

We have documents and hieroglyph drawings depicting myths of mythical characters like Osiris, Horus, Heracles, Zeus, Dionysus, and so on. And not one of these stories contain what you say.

If that's not evidence for your "Jesus copycat" claim being wrong, then I don't know what is.

By the way, you're not the authority on ancient history. If it were so, we couldn't be sure that Alexander the Great or any historical figure at the time ever existed. And we couldn't be sure whether Jesus was Chinese or Australian or American Indian or simply a Palestinian Jew.

Admittedly I need to spend more time reading all that, but this part of your response caught my attention.

I happen to believe that Christianity is the only true religion as kxmode claims, although we disagree as to what being a Christian really is.

My thoughts on this whole thing is that IF the Bible is true, then all religions really did descend from a common source--that being proper worship of Yahweh. Not all nations/peoples had the "privilege" of understanding God the way the Israelites did. But, again, if the Bible is true, this is not an excuse since Melchizedek wasn't a relative of Abraham and somehow knew to worship God. The Canaanite peoples who were supposed to be supplanted by the Israelites apparently enjoyed several hundred years of God's patience before conquest. So the best scriptural indications there seem to point to a common understanding of Yahweh as Lord.

Given time, separation, and language barriers, not to mention the Bible indicates the inherent human nature leaning towards evil, it's not surprising that proper understanding of Yahweh would diverge to favor changing cultural interests and mistakes in transmitting the correct religion from generation to generation.

What I fail to understand is why do we have such a legalistic fascination to condemnation of holy days observed by Christians intended to celebrate our God and the sufficiency of Jesus' atonement? I don't personally care whether you celebrate Christmas or not. If you feel so strongly and you're just that immature or insecure in your faith that you need to avoid Christmas in order to feel confident that you've avoided potentially worshipping idols, I don't begrudge you that. All sorts of holidays are celebrated, including a number of additional sabbaths even in the Israelite religion. There is nothing wrong with having a party on the equinox or solstice. After all, if you are a believer, then you accept that Yahweh created those days. So...big deal, you worship Yahweh on the solstice instead of Saturn (or whoever). And you appoint that day to celebrate the birth of Christ. So what? There is no sin in a society establishing its own holy days of reverence for the events of God and His Son. There is no sin in adapting a good understanding of one's relationship with God to the culture one is born into.

Like I said, if someone feels that doing this is improper or blasphemous, then I won't condemn someone if they need to distance themselves from these things. But the condemnation of others just because they choose to celebrate certain events on certain days seems out of place and out of character next to the worship of a loving God.

You are being selective. There are plenty of myths of sun gods dating back to the first known civilisation. Shamash of Mesopotamia, The young horus of Egypt, Ra of Egypt, Atum of Egypt to name just a few. From reading mythology it appears that people changed their attitude to their gods as the years went by, but the further back you go the more these gods relate to the sun.

Stonehenge - the main festival, or the time the ancient britons attended the circle was at the winter solstice. Most of the evidence points to that. So the ancient britons who existed long before the romans turned up and introduced jesus, celebrated the death and rebirth of the sun

You are not making any specific claim, other than that I am wrong to be entertaining the idea that jesus was embellished with previous sun god aspects. Yet even after so many posts you have failed to make me think again.

As I have said, I am not aware of any particular claim you are making other than that I am wrong to have my views. In fact it appears to me that you simply want me to stop talking about my views.

Here we are, a tenth of the way through the 21 st century and you still regard the Scriptures as a source of fact? That is positively amazing (to me anyway). While the scriptures every so often get a geographical or a historical fact right, the book is primarily a book of Stories written by late bronze age dudes who did not know that things were made of atoms. It is a book composed by pre-scientific minds.

ruveyn

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Last edited by nat4200 on 19 Apr 2012, 5:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

And how can you know that that is a real $20 bill? your analogy begs the question. Because the solution is missing.

You are practically concluding that that wether the $20 is fake or not is up to each person, who doesn't have the means and doesn't have the knowledge on how to spot a fake $20 bill, to decide, after "studying it".
Well, that if a fake $20 bill would be so hard to spot as the authencity of the Bible, but it isn't.

Also, wether a $20 bill is fake or not, that is about authenticity, so comparing to the Bible, it makes sense that the Bible's authencity would be into question rather than what is written in it.

Now you're playing dumber than I imagined you could.

You know very well I wasn't contesting that there are myths pertaining to sun gods.

What I'm contesting is your specific claim that there were a series of certain "Sun God" myths that inspired the supposed "Jesus Sun God story". It's this we have no evidence whatsoever.

Stop playing dumb and have some intellectual integrity for once. You're not fooling anyone but yourself.

Does anyone seriously believe that the Christians who celebrate Christmas give a darn about any pagan idols or any of that crap? None that I know of even care. Their celebration of Christmas is about Christ and giving presents to loved ones. With so many invented religions and deities made out of metals, stone, wood, and whatever else craft materials that so many people have had available throughout the entirety of history, one could pick any day of the year and find some way to also call it evil. Why bother caring, except that Christmas has the word Christ in it?

Some do.

Last edited by blunnet on 15 Dec 2011, 5:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

In this area we are all playing dumb, even your so called experts. We have no evidence of how the story of jesus came about. All we can do is speculate. My speculation is no worse than anyone elses, and at least mine has a rational and non supernatural source.