Spam and troll forum.

I'm a bit late, but the meaning of Easter is rebirth. Although touted as a Christian holiday, the name "Easter" comes from the Celtic goddess of spring, Ostara or Eostre. Some say it comes from the Babylonian Ishtar, but that's stretching time a bit.

It is celebrated with eggs because eggs are ancient symbols of fertility; in some creation myths, there is a cosmic egg which "births" the universe. Bunnies? No need to speak of why these represent fertility.

Jesus died and was reborn in spring like many other dying/resurrected deities including Persephone (who technically didn't die), Adonis, Dumuzi/Tammuz and Dionysus. The difference is that the others traditionally died in fall to be reborn in spring.

But hey, that Jesus--always bucking tradition!

Christianity is a mish-mash of religions preceding it. Like those religions, it evolved and changed over the centuries. Humans make gods and make rules to fit their own needs and desires--this is reflected in the evolution of deities since recorded history.

The savior Jesus reflected the wants of downtrodden people who sought a way to escape the tribulations of their lives. It wasn't going to be accomplished on this world, so the focus was on the next. It beat out Mithraism (yet took many aspects from that religion) because Mithraism excluded women; it beat out many pagan faiths not because the pagan faiths were inadequate to meet human needs, but because Christians soon lost their meek and mild stance and achieved conversion by force.

So, has Christianity become corroded? Do you mean Pauline Christianity or the Christianity of the gnostics who looked to Peter as their founder? Do you mean the Christianity as practiced by Constantine? How about the inquisitors?

Was Christianity truly ever practiced as laid forth by Jesus?

I usually only make comments about the phrasing if the intent is unclear, and your intent was unclear. While I understand that people who post on forums are not scions of grammatical perfection, it is still important to make points that are understandable. If I can't understand the intent, then the point is moot, eh?



Hail and well met. I am largely a pagan atheist.

People who take forum posts personally shouldn't post on forums.

The debate on semantics wouldn't arise if everyone wrote clearly enough to be understood!

I am not going off the point and I also notice that you do not address some of my comments and points.

The Jewish god and the trappings of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are based on older gods and older myths--myths from Egypt, Sumeria, and Semitic tribes--including the Semitic "El."

And not only that, to which "version" of god in the Hebrew Scriptures do you refer? Are you talking about Elohim? Are you talking about Yahweh? Are you talking about the Jewish god from a Jewish perspective or from a Christian perspective?

The "Old Testament" is a Jewish book! The concept of god in the Jewish faith is not the concept of the "same" god in Christianity.

Perhaps you should be more exact in delineating your discussion points.

Your point about knowledge being evil is not supported by the Hebrew Scripture that you brought up in the original post, but beyond that, if you examine both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, they are highly contradictory.

You are taking this myth MUCH too seriously! IF you take that it has realistic validity, which it doesn't, then Adam and Eve would have known because they had received "knowledge" of what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing.

In this case, it was that they "should" be wearing clothes.

Myth has symbolism, yes, but in this case, the lesson to be learned is that disobedience has consequences. Compare this to the Greek myth of Pandora and you will see the same symbolism. In this case, it was an urn or chest; Pandora was told NOT to open the chest, but she did. Because she was disobedient, she let escape all the ills that plague humanity.

If you want to tilt, you should be jousting with religious orders that interpreted and still interpret myth in order to justify their own gains.

Knowledge was not "evil" because of Adam and Eve, but because church hierarchies were established to put some people in power and to keep others powerless. The best way to keep people powerless is to keep them ignorant.

However, in the nonexistent days of Adam and Eve, the only hierarchy that existed was that of god--and by YOUR definition of god, "he" wants naught; ergo, he was all powerful.

Examine the inconsistencies of Genesis overall: the two creation versions, the disparities between Yahweh and Elohim, the two versions of Noah's ark. You are trying to reconcile a MYTH with reality to support your thesis, but myth doesn't play according to the standards of reality.

Your real beef is with religious orders and your argument would be better served by asking how and why Christianity used the myth of Adam and Eve to further their own gain of power.

The hymn "Trust and Obey" sums it up: blindly trust god, and god is served by the pope, the preacher, the elder, the deacons. Don't ask, just do.

I can't tell you who the giants in the earth were; I can't tell you how the sons of god intermarried the daughters of men; again, applying standards of reality to the origins of myth lost in time is often a useless tasks. While the origins of many mythoi can be explained, others can't.

Syntactically speaking, the way you phrased your statement included both you and me in the realm of Christianity.

To make it mean what you wanted it to mean, the phrasing would have to be different, i.e. "Anything that you and I do not see eye-to-eye with other people, especially some Christians."

The "other" here indicates a commonality with people; when it was used in conjunction with "Christians," it also indicated a commonality. I teach writing;; trust me on this one;

You miss the point of the "lesson" to be learned from the myth. Adam and Eve were able to understand language, and Yahweh told them not to eat the fruit; he also told them the reasoning behind not eating it. They DISOBEYED him. The lesson is more about blind obedience than it is the acquirement of knowledge. It wasn't a matter of good vs. evil prior to the eating, but about doing as they were told.

They knew that they were naked--they just didn't realize that they "shouldn't" be naked.



Define what is "not" god.


My point is the subjectivity of god--to a pantheist, everything is god. To most, the rock laying in the road is not god.



I was not asking for a dictionary definition but trying to make the point that "god" differs from person to person, religion to religion, and culture to culture.

You defined god as you perceive Christians perceiving god--or your personal perception, but in the scope of history, your reply is inadequate. In Egypt, Sumeria, and Norse myth, gods were subject to death, hunger, and pain as were non-gods. Instead of needing "naught," they needed a lot. The Greek gods were immortal, but were still subject to pain and were not omniscient--they, too, had needs.

Some gods embody evil: Set kills Osiris out of jealousy. Loki brings about Ragnarok, the destruction of the gods. Gods consistently committed acts of adultery, rape, even bestiality. They killed unfairly out of rage.

You made my point.

You made an assumption: you say with "other" Christians, assuming that I am a Christian.

I am not.

And even if I were, that is not a definition of "god."

um...no i didnt make an assumption...read the line a little close...niether am i a christian....my point was that anything "christians" see as contrary to thier belief is considered ..pagan, evil, satans work..etc...hence anything we dont see eye to eye with christians


By your phrasing and the inclusion of the word "other," it indicated collusion. :)

The "support" that you offer is not support at all.

The "Testimonium Flavcianum" is an apocryphal writing, left out of canonized versions of the Bible because its accuracy and veracity is in question. I find it interesting that many Christians are not aware of either the Apochrypha or the Pseudographia and when they hear about the works in those collections, assume that they are historically correct.

Per wikipedia, Lucian "wrote a satire called The Passing of Peregrinus,[9] in which the lead character, Peregrinus Proteus, takes advantage of the generosity and gullibility of Christians. This is one of the earliest surviving pagan perceptions of Christianity." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian

Lucian was not "proving" the existence of Jesus, but satirizing Christians. His work was not intended to prove anything but the gullibillity of early Christians.

Outside of the Christian Scriptures, there are NO concurrent historical accounts of Jesus, and even the scriptures were written after his death. To liken the writings mentioned above to "proof" is simply erroneous; it would be as if I took a fictional character and wrote about him/her or exaggerated the acounts of an actual person, i.e. if I claimed that George Washington was actually an alien.

The Christian Scriptures alone cannot be considered proof of the existence of a historical Christ. If they can, then Gilgamesh must have had the fantastic adventures that are attributed to him! There must have also been a Hercules, a Perseus, and a Theseus who also had fantastic adventures (and those people could have existed, but they didn't perform 12 labors, didn't kill Medusa, and didn't kill the Minotaur).

The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures do contain historical figures and historical events that are supported by archaeology, but if finding ruins mentioned in the Bible proves the existence of the Judeo/Christian god, then the Greek gods must also exist because Schliemann found the ruins of Troy!

You made an assumption: you say with "other" Christians, assuming that I am a Christian.

I am not.

And even if I were, that is not a definition of "god."

While it is a lovely sentiment that some wars might have never happened if people weren't so religiously divided, it is a logical fallacy.

Ultimately, wars are fought over land and power. Religion is an excuse that gives validity to domination. It sounds SO much better to say, "Hey, god told me that land is mine" instead of "Hey, I want your land and I'm gonna take it."

Humans are driven by the basic instincts that helped us evolve, and humans are biologically programmed to take what they need in order to survive. Yes, we are also programmed with empathy, sympathy and the desire to help and succor, but those "good" qualities were not extended to those outside the clan or tribe.

Today, cultural evolution tells us that we shouldn't fight and that humanity is one huge clan; our logic tells us that war is not beneficial, but the other programming still exists. But for thousands of years, we have merely tried to salve our consciences by claiming deity tells us what to do.

Actually, if you study the Hebrew Scriptures, you would know that there are TWO versions of the creation. Which is the correct version? In one, the animals were created first. In the other, Adam.

Genesis 1:20-26
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. [. . .]

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." [ . . .]

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

In this version (not translation, mind you), it is clear that Adam was not the first being created.


Second, PLEASE support your statement that Yahweh/Elohim created other people? There is NO mention of it in Genesis. Even when Cain went into the Land of Nod to find a wife, it doesn't give a timeline nor does it say that god had created the people in Nod.

Stick with what is written, not supposition.

Eden is not on the heavenly plane--again, give proof from the scriptures to prove your point. If it were on a heavenly plane, why would it have been necessary to post "cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24)? The guard was to keep out Adam and Eve--if Eden had been in heaven and the pair were expelled to Earth, no guard would have been needed.

Adam and Eve were not in godlike form--how do you substantiate this? In fact, after they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were banished from Eden so that they wouldn't eat from the tree that would make them immortal: Genesis 3:21, "And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." NIV.

It's a myth. There was no Adam, no Eve, and the fruit wasn't an apple.

Define what is "not" god.

Sigh.

Stick to the details of the myth if you are going to debate it. WHERE does it say that the pair lacked general knowledge? They lacked knowledge of GOOD AND EVIL.

And if you knew your Hebrew Scriptures better, you would know that they weren't tilling the soil in the garden. Adam's punishment after the "Fall" was tilling the soil.

"God tells them not to eat of the tree of life. Satan temps them with the fruit. They eat of the fruit and gain knowledge of lustful/sinful things. As in they got knowledge of lieing, they then now know they can lie to manipulate the other to gain something for themselves. And so on, many different examples like this."

Again, the point of the story is not lust: it is disobedience and hubris.

Funches wrote: "isn't knowledge simply information and information is neither good nor evil ..it's the actions that may come from applying one's "Will" to that knowledge which may determine what good or evil may be

in the garden of eden God gave Adam and Eve all the knowledge that he deem they should know and this is why all knowledge beyond that would be considered to be evil because it was not granted by God but by Satan"

You are committing a logical fallacy. You are taking a myth--a story that illustrates a point or explains the "why" of something--and explaining it using other types of reasoning. Interpreting the myth by extraneous information requires other examples of such myths. Pandora is such a myth, but it has different ramifications.

Knowledge is inherently neither "good" nor "evil," which are subjective according to cultures.

Again, the myth of Adam and Eve isn't about the acquisition of general knowledge; in fact, the myth of Adam and Eve isn't really about the "knowledge" aspect and the gaining of the knowledge isn't really why they were punished.

They were punished for being disobedient and they were told the consequences for being disobedient.

Eve ate the fruit because the serpent told her she would become like god, so she is also guilty of hubris.

There are implications, of course, about blind obedience, but that is not the topic at hand and I won't throw in a red herring.

Speaking strictly of the Hebrew Scriptures and not later interpretations of them, on what do you base that ALL knowledge is sin? In order to validate your claim, you would have to give specifics from those scriptures, and they would have to be more than the tale of Eve and Adam.

Actually, the myth of Adam and Eve do not say that they ate from the Tree of (simply) Knowledge, but the Tree of the Knowledge of GOOD and EVIL.

If that is read literally, they ate the fruit and became aware of sin, not mathematics, not philosophy, not grammar, not knowledge in general. To seek knowledge is not a sin. Going to school didn't come about because the pair ate from the tree.

Keep in mind, in bare substance living, book learning usually takes a backseat, but that doesn't mean that people are not learning. Learning takes many forms, and finding out that this wild wheat grows better than that wild wheat which leads to the practice of agriculture IS learning.

Also, the "Bible" did NOT exist in the mythical days of Adam and Eve or for centuries afterward, so it wasn't the basis of the knowledge that humans should have. A codex supposedly was not handed down until Moses got the Ten Commandments. Even within that scenario, the Hebrews weren't denied the acquisition of knowledge.

The denial of knowledge came about when religion became codified and used as a tool to control people. I am not too familiar with how the Jewish religion was used as a tool in BCE, but I think it had gotten there with the Herods (anyone who knows, feel free to enlighten me). While certainly religious rules were used to control people--read Deuteronomy--when the Jews supposedly came out of Egypt, their faith was not widespread and affected only the Jews.

However, with the advancement of Christianity, people were not encouraged to interpret the canonized Bible for themselves. Indeed, most were not able to read. Ignorant people are very often pliable people, especially when the learned people are the mouthpieces of a god.

Speaking from a mythic view, Satan didn't instill in humans the desire to learn; it was already there. Satan couldn't have capitalized on Eve unless she already had curiosity, and curiosity is the stepping stone to learning and knowledge.