Last Sunday, my pastor said that as Christians, we should never let the comment "all religions are basically the same" go unchallenged. His point was that all major world religions are the same because the are all performance based. All, that is, except Christianity ~ the only world religion to offer forgiveness & salvation based on grace, not our performance. Since I have come across this "all religions are the same" idea in my own experiences (and it won't be surprising if you do, too), and because this is an important apologetic point, I decided it might be helpful to do a post that will familiarize you with a few of the other major world religions - specifically, what makes them performance based and not grace based.
Islam:
For the Muslim, salvation is a mix of faith and works. They believe that they will be saved on two conditions: their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds and Allah wills it. Their good and bad deeds - including intentions and motives - are recorded, then weighed at death. There is no assurance of salvation for the Muslim since they cannot be sure they have done more good than bad and since they cannot know whether or not Allah wills their salvation. Their salvation is based on their works.
Hinduism:
Salvation for Hindus is a release from the cycle of dieing and being born again - or reincarnation - caused by good and bad deeds - or karma. Once one is released from this cycle, they are in a state of completeness. They cease to be an individual self in any way and become absorbed into the ultimate divine reality. They call this "moksha".
There are three main ways to moksha
1. karma yoga: This is probably the most popular way and emphasizes fulfilling one's duty to family and society so as to outweigh the bad karma that one has collected. There are many rules one must follow and the most important of these are rituals that must be performed at various life stages.
2. jnana yoga: This is the way of knowledge and the idea is that one is stuck in the cycle of reincarnation due to ignorance. This ignorance consists of the mistaken belief that we are individuals instead of realizing that we are one with the ultimite divine reality - or Brahman. This ignorance leads to bad actions and bad karma. Through deep meditation through the discipline of yoga, one achieves a state of consciousness in which one's identity with the Brahman is realized thus leading to salvation.
3. bhakti yoga: the way of devotion - this is a surrender to one of the many Hindu gods. Surrender includes acts of worship to this god at the appropriate temple, in the home, in festivals honoring the appropriate god, and through pilgrimages to holy sites in India. In the right performance of these devotional acts, the devotee hopes to gain Hindu salvation.
Buddhism:
Buddhists don't use the term "salvation." Simply put, their goal is enlightenment which leads to nirvana. To gain enlightenment, Buddhists must acknowledge the 4 noble truths: suffering exists, the cause of suffering is the desire for the pleasures of the senses, you end pain & suffering by extinguishing passions & desires, you extinguish pain & suffering by following the 8 fold path.
The 8 fold path is:
1. right views (accept the 4 noble truths)
2. right resolve: renounce pleasures of the senses, harbor no ill will, harm no living creature
3. right speech: do not lie, slander, or engage in idle talk
4. right behavior: no unlawful acts, for example
5. right occupation: earn your living in a way in which no one is harmed
6. right effort: strive heroically against evil qualities and for the perfection and attainment of good ones
7. right contemplation: be observant, alert, free of desires and sorrow
8. right meditation: abandon evil qualities and joy and sorrow; after abandoning evil and all senses, you must enter the 4 degrees of concentration or meditation.
If you can accomplish all this perfectly, you will reach enlightenment or nirvana. (Of course, the purpose of going through all these steps requires that you desire enlightenment, but you must abandon desire in step one of the 8 fold path and so would have no reason to continue down the path since you would no longer desire enlightenment!)
Christianity and God's gift of grace looks pretty good about now! No performance, no jumping through hoops, no uncertainty. Just Jesus.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Heart & Head In Balance: Living Whole Lives in the Image of God
Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since I last posted. I'm really busy with school right now doing research for a paper on the Crusades and getting ready for upcoming midterms. I'm excited about everything I'm learning! I listened to a lecture recently for one of my classes that I thought was really interesting, so I thought I would share the main points with ya'll.
The lecturer was John Mark Reynolds, Ph.D. He holds an M.A. & Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester in New York; he is the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University; he is also a research fellow at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. He is also an author whose books and articles include Three Views of Creation, When Athens Met Jerusalem, and Afraid of Reason.
Dr. Reynolds titled his lecture "Contending for the Christian Worldview" and what follows is from his material.
In this lecture, he traced the current mindset of Christians and our culture from the 19th Cent. through today and contends that when rationality - Darwinism and scientific naturalism for example - seemed to point away from Christianity, people began to turn to the heart. This split Christianity into two forms: Christian rationalism transformed into atheism while Christian humanitarianism transformed into nineteenth century romanticism. After this split, Christianity no longer appealed to rationalism. Scientists became the beacons of rationality while the cultural emphasis focused on the heart and experiences and emotions.
The constant and overwhelming message of our culture became "stop thinking & just feel." The head was only engaged to accomplish the goals of the heart. Today's Christianity is dominantly heart over head, but religious experience cannot compete with a culture that is also largely experiential. One may have a wonderful "feel-good" experience in church on Sunday morning, but he/she will be able to get that same "feel-good" moment in any number of ways outside of church or Christianity.
However, the answer is not to become overly rationalistic either. Reynolds stresses that a balance between head, heart, and hands is a must! We need reason (rationality), but we also need heart (experience), and hands (service to others.) The heart needs to check the head; the head needs to check the heart - not in opposition of one another but as a whole person living our Christian lives well; living in a way that is winsome to others.
Jesus embodied rationality and experience. He is full of truth and grace. He didn't elevate one over the other and neither should we.
Dr. Reynolds gave some practical suggestions to help us build God's Kingdom on earth, creating culture, customs, laws, and art, and building a Christian culture that is artistic and intellectual and which has a visible reality in personal lives and in churches. We need to celebrate and support the Christian artists, scientists, writers, lawmakers, athletes...whoever they may be.
Here are a few of his suggestions:
1. We live in an anti-intellectual culture. We need to engage in stimulating dialogue and learn to think.
2. We are people of the Book and Christianity is a literate religion which has invented literacy wherever it has gone in this world. We need to become readers.
3. TV does not promote thoughtful reflection. Turn it off! (This is a hard one, I know!!) Instead, write, direct, produce, act in a quality Christian production that people will want to watch! (e.g. The Chronicles of Narnia, Shakespeare, The Lord of the Rings).
4. Create culture - don't just consume it! take music lessons; listen to great music; write songs the next generation will sing.
5. Stop imitating secular education. Stop doing education "factory" style with the stress on providing information and start emphasizing mentoring.
6. Become people of "nomos" (the Greek word for "law" or "custom" which includes the way that people live) who hold reason and feeling together as a whole people of culture.
7. If we each become transformed by Christ, we will change the culture.
To sum up, we should live rationally, emotionally, and intellectually. We should not rely on reason alone, or on heart alone, but should allow Jesus Christ to transform us - head, heart, and hands - to live as whole souls in the image of God in this life and in the life to come.
Imagine what our culture would look like if we actively pursued these things!
The lecturer was John Mark Reynolds, Ph.D. He holds an M.A. & Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester in New York; he is the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University; he is also a research fellow at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. He is also an author whose books and articles include Three Views of Creation, When Athens Met Jerusalem, and Afraid of Reason.
Dr. Reynolds titled his lecture "Contending for the Christian Worldview" and what follows is from his material.
In this lecture, he traced the current mindset of Christians and our culture from the 19th Cent. through today and contends that when rationality - Darwinism and scientific naturalism for example - seemed to point away from Christianity, people began to turn to the heart. This split Christianity into two forms: Christian rationalism transformed into atheism while Christian humanitarianism transformed into nineteenth century romanticism. After this split, Christianity no longer appealed to rationalism. Scientists became the beacons of rationality while the cultural emphasis focused on the heart and experiences and emotions.
The constant and overwhelming message of our culture became "stop thinking & just feel." The head was only engaged to accomplish the goals of the heart. Today's Christianity is dominantly heart over head, but religious experience cannot compete with a culture that is also largely experiential. One may have a wonderful "feel-good" experience in church on Sunday morning, but he/she will be able to get that same "feel-good" moment in any number of ways outside of church or Christianity.
However, the answer is not to become overly rationalistic either. Reynolds stresses that a balance between head, heart, and hands is a must! We need reason (rationality), but we also need heart (experience), and hands (service to others.) The heart needs to check the head; the head needs to check the heart - not in opposition of one another but as a whole person living our Christian lives well; living in a way that is winsome to others.
Jesus embodied rationality and experience. He is full of truth and grace. He didn't elevate one over the other and neither should we.
Dr. Reynolds gave some practical suggestions to help us build God's Kingdom on earth, creating culture, customs, laws, and art, and building a Christian culture that is artistic and intellectual and which has a visible reality in personal lives and in churches. We need to celebrate and support the Christian artists, scientists, writers, lawmakers, athletes...whoever they may be.
Here are a few of his suggestions:
1. We live in an anti-intellectual culture. We need to engage in stimulating dialogue and learn to think.
2. We are people of the Book and Christianity is a literate religion which has invented literacy wherever it has gone in this world. We need to become readers.
3. TV does not promote thoughtful reflection. Turn it off! (This is a hard one, I know!!) Instead, write, direct, produce, act in a quality Christian production that people will want to watch! (e.g. The Chronicles of Narnia, Shakespeare, The Lord of the Rings).
4. Create culture - don't just consume it! take music lessons; listen to great music; write songs the next generation will sing.
5. Stop imitating secular education. Stop doing education "factory" style with the stress on providing information and start emphasizing mentoring.
6. Become people of "nomos" (the Greek word for "law" or "custom" which includes the way that people live) who hold reason and feeling together as a whole people of culture.
7. If we each become transformed by Christ, we will change the culture.
To sum up, we should live rationally, emotionally, and intellectually. We should not rely on reason alone, or on heart alone, but should allow Jesus Christ to transform us - head, heart, and hands - to live as whole souls in the image of God in this life and in the life to come.
Imagine what our culture would look like if we actively pursued these things!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
In Response - part 2
What follows are the next set of comments from Bino and my replies to them. The dialogue between Bino and me begins in the comment section of the post titled "Miracles", and continues in the post titled "In Response." It might be helpful to read those first if you haven't already to get the flow of the dialogues.
Greta: I was not attempting to explain, or deny, the similarity between Jesus’ divine birth and the other ancient divine births. My point was that similarities with other stories which are false does not necessarily make all such stories false.
Again, Jesus’ story (and every other one for that matter) deserves to be judged by its own merits, not judged based on the falsehood of others.
Bino: Yes, but the question wasn't "Which of these impossible stories do you think are true," the question was "Which do you think are myths."
The question recognized that ancient cultures shared ideas about how the world worked, and told its histories in accordance to those shared ideas. Ancients believed great men were qualitatively different from other people, and the stories about great men having divine births were a reflection of that. A way to show where the great man's greatness came from. The repeated pattern reflects a purpose.
Do you not recognize that?
Do you really think the story of Alexander's divine birth was invented all on it's own, without reference to or consciousness of all the other stories of all the other divine births?
And Romulus' divine birth?
And Augustus' divine birth?
And Scipio' divine birth?
Do you really think everybody came up with the same lie, each of them all on their own? Or are all the stories connected be the underlying ancient idea?
And if so, on what ground is Jesus' story not also connected?
Greta: What would have made Jesus a great man? What was it about him that would have made his contemporaries ascribe divine birth to him? He wasn’t a ruler; he didn’t lead a revolution as his Jewish contemporaries had hoped he would; at most, (if not divine) he was a great teacher and speaker and an exemplary man on how we should aim to live our lives – loving our neighbor and all that. Is that enough to have made others ascribe a divine birth to Him? Was this enough to make him qualitatively different from all the other Jewish rabbis of his time? There must have been something else – His own claims of deity and His resurrection to back up his claims? That would do it. The divine births attributed to Augustus, Romulus, and Scipio were political expressions of emperor worship…no similarity to Jesus there. I have not said anywhere that these ideas were invented in a vacuum. I have only insisted that the similarity does not make Jesus’ story false. It does not follow that because a lot of people claimed to be divine, no one could be divine. In addition to this, Jewish people were definitely not in the habit of ascribing divinity to any human, no matter how great they were!
(And yes, I believe the other stories are myths and I’ve explained why in previous posts, so I’ll ask you again to speak to the important differences between Jesus and these other stories.)
You place a great deal of emphasis on the similarities with other ancient pagan stories. However, this idea that Jesus and the Gospels can be judged through the framework of ancient pagan myths is hundreds of years out of date. It shows how out of touch “popular” ideas are with today’s scholarship. According to William Lane Craig, there are precious few scholars “who think of myth as an important interpretive category for the Gospels…Scholars came to realize that pagan mythology is simply the wrong interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth.” And this from Craig, “Contemporary scholars may be no more prepared to believe in the supernatural character of Jesus' miracles and exorcisms than were scholars of previous generations. But they are no longer willing to ascribe such stories to the influence of Hellenistic divine man (theios aner) myths. Rather Jesus' miracles and exorcisms are to be interpreted in the context of first century Jewish beliefs and practices.” So it seems that your insistence that Jesus is connected to other pagan myths is out of line with today’s scholarship.
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Greta: How do I know that people who knew the stories going around about Jesus weren’t true didn’t call the apostles liars and show that their stories weren’t true? Because Christianity – or “The Way” as it was called in its earliest stages – started and spread in the very city that was filled with people who knew Jesus and were aware of his ministry. If you’re going to spread a lie, do you start where everyone knows it isn’t true? And would it catch on like the Christian message did in a city filled with people who could prove it false?
Bino: So,
a) The truth is, you have no direct evidence that people didn't disagree with and attack proto-orthodoxy. You base your claim on speculation about motives.
b) The truth is, you have no direct evidence that success and survival of a religion indicated it began without opposition. You merely speculate that this is so. This speculation is contradicted by the history of Islam and Mormonism.
Greta: a) No, I didn’t say it wasn’t attacked. There were people who were very interested in stopping the spread of the belief that Jesus was divine, had been crucified, and had been resurrected. I said those attacks weren’t successful. I find it very unlikely that those attacks wouldn’t have been successful if the things that were being preached about Jesus were lies given that those supposed lies would have been preached in the very city where they could have been most easily refuted. A claim of physical resurrection is not a difficult thing to disprove if it is indeed false. Given that Christian beliefs did spread rapidly in Jerusalem where it would have been easiest to disprove, you need to explain how Christianity could have gotten off the ground under those conditions because your position is much more unlikely.
b) Again, I never indicated it wasn’t without opposition. I said the opposition wasn’t successful, and for good reason. Islam and Mormonism do not contradict this because neither of these religions provide a way of being proven false. Mohammed received his revelations, which his religion is based on, alone in a cave. No one could say whether it was true or not (whether or not he believed his own claims); nor did he offer a way to verify that God had given him this authority as Jesus did through His resurrection. Mormonism is much the same. An angel delivers golden tablets to Joseph Smith. The tablets are written in an unrecognizable script that God then translates to him; only he is allowed to see these tablets. Again, no way to tell whether his story is true or not; and no verification of Joseph’s authority.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greta: Yes, these were historical men. I was comparing the historicalness of Jesus to the mythological figures you mentioned in your post.
Bino: Since non-historical seems to be important to you, let me I ask you about some further examples.
Would you agree then that the non-historical stories about Noah are myths?
And the non-historical stories about Adam and Eve and the talking snake – that's a myth too, according to your methods?
And the giants?
And Leviathan?
And Solomon?
And David?
And Samson?
All non-historical, and therefore myths.
Greta: You simply assert that these are all non-historical. I don’t agree, so please provide evidence for your assertion that isn’t just supernatural or biblical bias.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bino: I have. I can't. Please help me see the differences:
Greta: Again, I am referring to the mythological tales. Here is part of the myth of Osiris…[snip for length]
I’m sure I don’t have to help you see the difference in this story and Jesus’ story.
Bino: Osiris was an ancient middle eastern son of god on Earth, who died, came back to life, and lives in heaven where he judges the dead and gives his believers a better deal in the afterlife.
"I approached the frontiers of death and, having walked on the threshold of Proserpine [the home of the dead], I returned."
[Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 23],
"The keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the initiation ceremony itself to the form of a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."
[Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21]
"Be of good cheer, O initiates, for the god is saved, and we shall have salvation for our woes."
[Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 22.1]
Osiris is completely different from Jesus, who was another ancient middle eastern son of god on Earth, who died, came back to life, and lives in heaven where he judges the dead and gives his believers a better deal in the afterlife.
Right. Osiris and Jesus are completely different.
Greta: Once again, their similarities don’t prove anything. And the differences are important. Osiris’ story, which I quoted part of in the last post, is not the same sort of story you read in the Gospels. Jesus’ is set in a specific time and place, and even though his resurrection is definitely a spectacular miracle, it is not told in a way that is filled with fantasy and legendary qualities. There is also no evidence that the ancients believed Osiris physically and bodily rose from the dead as Jesus did. Orisis’ death and “resurrection” were tied to agricultural seasons and his resurrection was only spiritual. He became a god of the netherworlds. Jesus’ resurrection was physical and had a completely different purpose.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greta: Jesus’ miracles were most often set in historical contexts making it at least possible that they could be verified.
Bino: I don't know how miracles are verified. How do you imagine it can be done?
Greta: Jesus’ miracles are verified in the sense that they were performed publicly with many eyewitnesses to verify what they saw, many of whom willingly suffered and even went to their deaths because of what they believed about Jesus. How many reliable eyewitnesses to a miracle would it take for you to believe it, or do you have a bias against miracles that makes you dismiss them out of hand?
As I have answered all your questions, whether you agree with my answers or not, I would appreciate your answering the questions I have posed to you throughout these posts.
1) What is your basis for believing miracles are impossible? Is it a bias against the supernatural or do you have evidence?
2) Can you see and account for the significant differences between Jesus’ story and the pagan ones you find similar?
a) the death and resurrection as atonement for sins
b) the bodily – not just spiritual – resurrection of Jesus
c) the fact that Jews did not deify their leaders
d) what would have made Jesus worthy of deification, given that you believe the fact that the ancients deified those who were qualitatively greater than other men explains Jesus’ deification?
3) How would you explain the rapid acceptance and spread of Christian beliefs after Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem where it would have been most unlikely to successfully spread lies?
4) Can you allow that the falsity of many stories does not necessarily make all such stories false?
I will be happy to continue this conversation when you’ve answered the questions I’ve put out there and given a basis for your beliefs that Jesus’ claims were not true. As I said before, skepticism is not without responsibility. You need to give an account for why you believe as you do and provide supporting evidence.
Greta: I was not attempting to explain, or deny, the similarity between Jesus’ divine birth and the other ancient divine births. My point was that similarities with other stories which are false does not necessarily make all such stories false.
Again, Jesus’ story (and every other one for that matter) deserves to be judged by its own merits, not judged based on the falsehood of others.
Bino: Yes, but the question wasn't "Which of these impossible stories do you think are true," the question was "Which do you think are myths."
The question recognized that ancient cultures shared ideas about how the world worked, and told its histories in accordance to those shared ideas. Ancients believed great men were qualitatively different from other people, and the stories about great men having divine births were a reflection of that. A way to show where the great man's greatness came from. The repeated pattern reflects a purpose.
Do you not recognize that?
Do you really think the story of Alexander's divine birth was invented all on it's own, without reference to or consciousness of all the other stories of all the other divine births?
And Romulus' divine birth?
And Augustus' divine birth?
And Scipio' divine birth?
Do you really think everybody came up with the same lie, each of them all on their own? Or are all the stories connected be the underlying ancient idea?
And if so, on what ground is Jesus' story not also connected?
Greta: What would have made Jesus a great man? What was it about him that would have made his contemporaries ascribe divine birth to him? He wasn’t a ruler; he didn’t lead a revolution as his Jewish contemporaries had hoped he would; at most, (if not divine) he was a great teacher and speaker and an exemplary man on how we should aim to live our lives – loving our neighbor and all that. Is that enough to have made others ascribe a divine birth to Him? Was this enough to make him qualitatively different from all the other Jewish rabbis of his time? There must have been something else – His own claims of deity and His resurrection to back up his claims? That would do it. The divine births attributed to Augustus, Romulus, and Scipio were political expressions of emperor worship…no similarity to Jesus there. I have not said anywhere that these ideas were invented in a vacuum. I have only insisted that the similarity does not make Jesus’ story false. It does not follow that because a lot of people claimed to be divine, no one could be divine. In addition to this, Jewish people were definitely not in the habit of ascribing divinity to any human, no matter how great they were!
(And yes, I believe the other stories are myths and I’ve explained why in previous posts, so I’ll ask you again to speak to the important differences between Jesus and these other stories.)
You place a great deal of emphasis on the similarities with other ancient pagan stories. However, this idea that Jesus and the Gospels can be judged through the framework of ancient pagan myths is hundreds of years out of date. It shows how out of touch “popular” ideas are with today’s scholarship. According to William Lane Craig, there are precious few scholars “who think of myth as an important interpretive category for the Gospels…Scholars came to realize that pagan mythology is simply the wrong interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth.” And this from Craig, “Contemporary scholars may be no more prepared to believe in the supernatural character of Jesus' miracles and exorcisms than were scholars of previous generations. But they are no longer willing to ascribe such stories to the influence of Hellenistic divine man (theios aner) myths. Rather Jesus' miracles and exorcisms are to be interpreted in the context of first century Jewish beliefs and practices.” So it seems that your insistence that Jesus is connected to other pagan myths is out of line with today’s scholarship.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greta: How do I know that people who knew the stories going around about Jesus weren’t true didn’t call the apostles liars and show that their stories weren’t true? Because Christianity – or “The Way” as it was called in its earliest stages – started and spread in the very city that was filled with people who knew Jesus and were aware of his ministry. If you’re going to spread a lie, do you start where everyone knows it isn’t true? And would it catch on like the Christian message did in a city filled with people who could prove it false?
Bino: So,
a) The truth is, you have no direct evidence that people didn't disagree with and attack proto-orthodoxy. You base your claim on speculation about motives.
b) The truth is, you have no direct evidence that success and survival of a religion indicated it began without opposition. You merely speculate that this is so. This speculation is contradicted by the history of Islam and Mormonism.
Greta: a) No, I didn’t say it wasn’t attacked. There were people who were very interested in stopping the spread of the belief that Jesus was divine, had been crucified, and had been resurrected. I said those attacks weren’t successful. I find it very unlikely that those attacks wouldn’t have been successful if the things that were being preached about Jesus were lies given that those supposed lies would have been preached in the very city where they could have been most easily refuted. A claim of physical resurrection is not a difficult thing to disprove if it is indeed false. Given that Christian beliefs did spread rapidly in Jerusalem where it would have been easiest to disprove, you need to explain how Christianity could have gotten off the ground under those conditions because your position is much more unlikely.
b) Again, I never indicated it wasn’t without opposition. I said the opposition wasn’t successful, and for good reason. Islam and Mormonism do not contradict this because neither of these religions provide a way of being proven false. Mohammed received his revelations, which his religion is based on, alone in a cave. No one could say whether it was true or not (whether or not he believed his own claims); nor did he offer a way to verify that God had given him this authority as Jesus did through His resurrection. Mormonism is much the same. An angel delivers golden tablets to Joseph Smith. The tablets are written in an unrecognizable script that God then translates to him; only he is allowed to see these tablets. Again, no way to tell whether his story is true or not; and no verification of Joseph’s authority.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greta: Yes, these were historical men. I was comparing the historicalness of Jesus to the mythological figures you mentioned in your post.
Bino: Since non-historical seems to be important to you, let me I ask you about some further examples.
Would you agree then that the non-historical stories about Noah are myths?
And the non-historical stories about Adam and Eve and the talking snake – that's a myth too, according to your methods?
And the giants?
And Leviathan?
And Solomon?
And David?
And Samson?
All non-historical, and therefore myths.
Greta: You simply assert that these are all non-historical. I don’t agree, so please provide evidence for your assertion that isn’t just supernatural or biblical bias.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bino: I have. I can't. Please help me see the differences:
Greta: Again, I am referring to the mythological tales. Here is part of the myth of Osiris…[snip for length]
I’m sure I don’t have to help you see the difference in this story and Jesus’ story.
Bino: Osiris was an ancient middle eastern son of god on Earth, who died, came back to life, and lives in heaven where he judges the dead and gives his believers a better deal in the afterlife.
"I approached the frontiers of death and, having walked on the threshold of Proserpine [the home of the dead], I returned."
[Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 23],
"The keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation were in the hands of the goddess, and the initiation ceremony itself to the form of a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."
[Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21]
"Be of good cheer, O initiates, for the god is saved, and we shall have salvation for our woes."
[Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 22.1]
Osiris is completely different from Jesus, who was another ancient middle eastern son of god on Earth, who died, came back to life, and lives in heaven where he judges the dead and gives his believers a better deal in the afterlife.
Right. Osiris and Jesus are completely different.
Greta: Once again, their similarities don’t prove anything. And the differences are important. Osiris’ story, which I quoted part of in the last post, is not the same sort of story you read in the Gospels. Jesus’ is set in a specific time and place, and even though his resurrection is definitely a spectacular miracle, it is not told in a way that is filled with fantasy and legendary qualities. There is also no evidence that the ancients believed Osiris physically and bodily rose from the dead as Jesus did. Orisis’ death and “resurrection” were tied to agricultural seasons and his resurrection was only spiritual. He became a god of the netherworlds. Jesus’ resurrection was physical and had a completely different purpose.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greta: Jesus’ miracles were most often set in historical contexts making it at least possible that they could be verified.
Bino: I don't know how miracles are verified. How do you imagine it can be done?
Greta: Jesus’ miracles are verified in the sense that they were performed publicly with many eyewitnesses to verify what they saw, many of whom willingly suffered and even went to their deaths because of what they believed about Jesus. How many reliable eyewitnesses to a miracle would it take for you to believe it, or do you have a bias against miracles that makes you dismiss them out of hand?
As I have answered all your questions, whether you agree with my answers or not, I would appreciate your answering the questions I have posed to you throughout these posts.
1) What is your basis for believing miracles are impossible? Is it a bias against the supernatural or do you have evidence?
2) Can you see and account for the significant differences between Jesus’ story and the pagan ones you find similar?
a) the death and resurrection as atonement for sins
b) the bodily – not just spiritual – resurrection of Jesus
c) the fact that Jews did not deify their leaders
d) what would have made Jesus worthy of deification, given that you believe the fact that the ancients deified those who were qualitatively greater than other men explains Jesus’ deification?
3) How would you explain the rapid acceptance and spread of Christian beliefs after Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem where it would have been most unlikely to successfully spread lies?
4) Can you allow that the falsity of many stories does not necessarily make all such stories false?
I will be happy to continue this conversation when you’ve answered the questions I’ve put out there and given a basis for your beliefs that Jesus’ claims were not true. As I said before, skepticism is not without responsibility. You need to give an account for why you believe as you do and provide supporting evidence.
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