Ye olde Yuletide Mithras roast

By Anonymous -
It's just about Christmas time again, which means that 'skeptics' will be trotting out the old hoary 'Christ=Mithras' chestnuts again, while Christian apologists will be having oodles of fun poking holes in the theory. The latter get an early present this year: an excellent demolition job by Chris Romer. Enjoy!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks :) Ironically the problem with so called 'skeptics' is they are very rarely sceptical - because skepticism means conducting an inquiry, actually looking in to the claims - well it should do. If any skeptics dedicated even a few hours to these claims they would find out they were nonsense.

To be fair Timothy O Neill a historian, atheist and sceptic over on Richarddawkins.net forum is one of the fiercest and most intelligent critics of this and the Jesus-Never-Existed nonsense I have ever known, and the JREF James Randi's sceptical forum is a place where such nonsense is often exposed. www.skepticwiki contains a number of excellent well written arguments too denouncing this nonsense about Mithras.

In the sincere search for truth Christians and skeptics can often find themselves in agrement. It's the fake 'skeptics' who get my goat - or bull :)
cj x
12/22/2009 04:42:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Yeah, even as an atheist, I don't get the whole "Jesus never even EXISTED!" strategy.

As an atheist or skeptic, if you want to call into question the strength of the evidence that Jesus did exist and simply call it into (mere) doubt, I suppose I can at least respect the effort even if I do think Jesus probably existed.

Ditto if you want to call into question the historicity of miracles and some of the saying attributed to Jesus.

All fair game.

But the whole idea of definitively stating "Jesus DID NOT exist" strikes me like declaring checkmate on move one, tossing up a Hail Mary on every play, or swinging for the fences on every pitch-- more than a little wishful thinking in each case.

In any event...
12/22/2009 05:36:00 PM
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said…
they could never come up with anything as appealing and tinsel and colored lights.
12/22/2009 06:20:00 PM
Jason Pratt said…
{{All fair game.}}

Agreed. (Nice ironic use of "tossing up a Hail Mary" there, btw. {g!})

I'm even prepared in principle to respect the "Jesus did not even exist" attempt! It's just that the methods often used in that attempt end up having so many problems (despite some initial surface plausibility here and there). It becomes a theory of desperation after a while.

Which I like to think testifies, in a backhanded sort of way, to an acknowledgment of... other problems (let us say {g})... that can begin to crop up if Jesus did historically exist.

At the very least, it's an intriguing historical puzzle! {s!}

JRP
12/23/2009 06:30:00 AM
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