The Complaint Department Is Closed #3

After I had decided to take up the task of answering the objections of godisimaginary.com, I briefly paged through the proofs, and I had seen some which made me say to myself “Ican’t wait to do this one…and this one”.  Proof number three is one such of these proofs.  This is the argument that Jesus is simply a mimic of previous pagan gods, thus proving His unoriginal inception as an invention of human imagination.

 Proof Number 3: Look at Historical gods

The belief in “god” seems to be ubiquitous through the ages.

We know, for example, that the ancient Egyptians believed in their gods so fervently that they built massive structures like the Great Pyramid — still today one of the largest and most enduring human constructions ever created. Despite that fervor, however, we know with complete certainty today that the Egyptian gods were imaginary. We don’t build pyramids anymore and we do not mummify our leaders.

More recently we know that tens of millions of Romans worshiped Jupiter and his friends, and to them they built magnificent temples. The ruins of these temples are popular tourist attractions even today. Yet we know with complete certainty that these gods were imaginary because no one worships Zeus any more.

Much more recently, we know that the Aztec civilization believed in their gods so intensely that they constructed huge temples and pyramids. In addition, Aztecs were so zealous that they were sacrificing hundreds of human beings to their gods as recently as the 16th century. Despite the intensity, however, we know today that these gods were completely imaginary. The Aztecs were insane to be murdering people for their gods. Killing a person has no effect on rainfall or anything else. We all know that. If the Aztec gods were real, we would still be offering sacrifices to them.

Let us start with GII’s understanding of the reasons for the pyramid’s being built.  According to Wikipedia the pyramids purpose is ” generally agreed that pyramids were burial monuments” and though there is disagreement as to their religious or theological purposes their very specific positioning suggests “the pyramids may have been designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased Pharaoh’s soul directly into the abode of the gods”.  While this explanation has religious language, it does not suggest, as GII claims, that the pyramids were built for devotion to the gods they worshipped.  What is puzzling however, how GII concludes from the fact that pyramid construction and mummification are no longer practiced, that the gods the Egyptians worshipped are false.  Now I agree that the Egyptian gods are fictitious, but GII’s conclusion does not follow from that information.  Let us apply GII’s line of reasoning to something more familiar.

1. Long ago Auto Company “A” orders produced car “C” to be manufactured by Auto Company “A’s” employees for a period
2. Car “C” is no longer manufactured by the Auto Company’s employees
3. Therefore, Auto Company “A” never existed in the first place.

This apparently passes for sound reasoning for GII.  We find this same reasoning employed with the Roman gods, that “because no one worships Zeus anymore” we know the Roman gods were false.  Like the Egyptians and Romans, GII claims that because the Aztecs, or anyone else for that matter, makes no sacrifices to the Aztec gods, that they are not real.  As charitable as I try to be when critiquing someone’s beliefs, I cannot help but to re-read this line of vacuous argumentation.  I am not certain that GII realizes the type of rebuttal it has left open for its arguments.  By GII’s own standard of truth verification, any worshipper in any religious system, of any god still building temples in devotion to the god, is evidence the god is real.  Any worshipper in any religious system, of any god still offering sacrifices to their god, is evidence the god is real.  Not a very high bar for determining the truth or falsity of a god.

The “God” and the “Jesus” that Christians worship today are actually amalgams formed out of ancient pagan gods. The idea of a “virgin birth”, “burial in a rock tomb”, “resurrection after 3 days” and “eating of body and drinking of blood” had nothing to do with Jesus. All of the rituals in Christianity are completely man-made. Christianity is a snow ball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions. As the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts.

There is the popular belief among atheists and other antagonists to Christianity, that Jesus is a rehashing of prior pagan myths and their associated gods.  But how closely does the account of Jesus life parallel to that of ancient mythological gods?  And if parallel, what is the significance? 

GII cites a sampling of alleged similarities between the accounts of Jesus and those of pagan gods.  Listed by GII are:

• Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints
• Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus
• Virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual – the miter, the altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of “God-eating” – were taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions
• The pre-Christian God Mithra – called the Son of God and the Light of the World
•  Mithra was born on December 25, died, was buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected in three days
• December 25 is also the birthday or Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus
• The newborn Krishna was presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh
•  Christianity’s weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans

GII concludes:

It is extremely hard for a Christian believer to process this data, but nonetheless it is true. All of the “sacred rituals” of Christianity, and all of Christianity’s core beliefs (virgin birth, resurrection, etc.) come straight from pagan religions that were popular around the time of Jesus….Obviously the pagan believers, from whom Christianity derived its myths, worshipped gods that were imaginary. And thus our “God” today is just an extension of these imaginary forerunners. All human gods are imaginary.

Briefly, the first line of evidence to prove Jesus is a mimic, that Egyptian sun disks were adopted by the Catholic church for use as a halo in depictions of Saints.  Granting this assertion* for the sake of argument, Catholic Saints depiction in artwork has nothing to do with Jesus and is irrelevant to what GII is arguing for.

Again, granting for sake of argument that pictograms of Isis nursing Horus is a blueprint for images of Mary nursing Jesus.  It also must be the blueprint for every mother ever depicted nursing a baby.  The fact of the matter is, mothers nursing their infants is a natural occurrence.  Mary nursing Jesus is something she and every mother in the first century would have done.

Elements of Catholic ritual being adopted from earlier pagan mystery religions is an undocumented assertion.  This may or may not be true.  GII never identifies the “earlier pagan mystery religion” to which it is referring.  This is symptomatic of evidences such as this.  The mystery religion remains unidentified usually because those who offer the proof, GII included, has not actually researched the claims which they are making.  It has been passed along from atheist to atheist and taken as true without a second thought.  It goes unchecked due to the a priori acceptance of religion in general as myths and fairy tales, and as such is usually a drastic misrepresentation or extrapolation.

Here is where GII exposes itself as tragically misinformed.  Starting with Mithra being born on December 25th, the references to Mithra’s birth on December 25th comes from documentation no earlier than 2nd century AD.  What this means is, if there is borrowing, it is more likely that it was Mithra from Christianity and not the other way around.  Second, the Bible makes no mention of the date of Jesus’ birth, and it is universally known it was not December 25th, but rather that is when it is celebrated.  The early church had adopted the date in order to replace the pagan meaning of the winter celebration, with that of celebrating the Messiah.  Next, there is not a single reference to Mithra ever dying in any Mithraic literature, though it is alluded to in outside sources.  Not only is there no reference in the Mithraic literature to the death, the idea Mithra was ever resurrected is never mentioned, nor hinted to.  Unfortunately, as misinformed as this story is, it gets worse, the associated details about Mithra, the cave, where GII associates it with Mithra’s death, is usually associated with his birth (since his death is never mentioned), although Mithra was not born in a cave, he was formed out of a solid mountain which left a hole from where he dug himself out.  So even the traditional misrepresentation is false.  GII could not even accurately transmit the usual misinformed story.

The common dates of birth to multiple other pagan gods was addressed above and holds no weight as an argument since Jesus was not born on December 25th.

As much as I tried I could not substantiate even a claim that Krishna was offered gold, frankincense, and myrrh, or for that matter any spices at all.  This site written by a follower of Krishna recounts the legend of Krishna’s birth, and of the parallels of Jesus offered, does not mention any spices given as an offering.  I gather a follower of Krishna would be in a position to know, but here makes no mention.  I find the omission telling since the legend is recounted for the purpose of relating the similarities of Krishna to Jesus.

Christianity’s practice of a holy day weekly worship being a practice stolen from pagans is however true.  But only if by pagans you mean Jews.  The Jews had been practicing Sabbath worship of God since the time of Moses.  It was commanded by God through Moses, and is recorded in the Ten Commandments as a requirement under the covenant God made with him.  Weekly worship of Jesus was a natural transition to Christians since the very first Christians were Jews.  Biblically speaking, Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, and so it is natural some practices carry over.  I find it hard to believe a weekly worship by Christians of Jesus as God being adopted as a continued practice by the first believers was not obvious. 

I can only assume that since GII had not done any research into these spurious claims that the details of Jesus are mere adaptations from ancient mythology, GII assumed its readers would not either.  The information related to the commonly attributed myths of Mithra, Horus, Krishna, Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, as well as others not mentioned by GII, is desperately misrepresented.  I have to wonder if any research was done by GII on this issue, since usually when the parallels argument is made there are dozens of similarities offered, whereas GII offered a disorganized few, kingdavid8.com presents a well researched treatment of alleged parallels between Jesus and various ancient gods, but GII was satisfied with offering sparse comparisons, and even the misrepresented details were wrong.  This is the worst treatment of this argument I have ever come across.  In addition to kingdavid8.com, PleaseConvinceme.com and Stand to Reason’s bi-monthly newsletter Solid Ground, are among the online resources which deal with this issue.

What is the significance if the alleged parallels were accurate in representation? The story of the Titan is a testament to dismissing an event based solely on prior similar fictitious accounts.  In 1898 Morgan Robertson wrote a novella about a great ship called the Titan. 

The Titan:

• Was the largest ship afloat, 800 ft. and considered unsinkable
• Carried too few life boats for the number of passengers,  24 lifeboats, less than half needed for her 3000 capacity
• In April struck an iceberg during a voyage in the North Atlantic
• Titan sank, more than half of its 2500 passengers perished

The Titanic:

• World’s largest luxury liner, 882 ft. and considered unsinkable
• Carried too few life boats for the number of passengers, 20 life boats, less than half needed for her 3500 capacity
• On April 14, 1912 struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic
• Titanic sank, more than half of its 2207 passengers perished

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*I would like to point out, it seems to be common place for GII to simply assert its position with little to no citation.  This is not unusual among websites such as GII.  Most proofs against theism generally, and Christianity specifically, is the recitation of slogans.  Rarely is any of the information offered as evidence investigated for accuracy.