Oh sorry, Ive been calling it "The Jesus that wasnt there." I thought it was about Jesus specificallly.

From the trailer it looks like it is about Jesus specifically. It looks really good.

Yeah I am going to rent it.

Why anyone should need evidence that the Bible is just a myth is beyond me.

The fact that so many people actually believe it only goes to show that we still haven't truly evolved beyond the Dark Ages yet.

Yeh basically it has all the well known information about previous saviors who were born of a virgin, some facts about the origins of Christianity, and stuff that I've read in my two books here "The Christ Conspiracy, The Greatest Story ever Sold" and "The Book your Church does not want you to read."

It also has some things to say about Mel Gibson's movie "The passion" that he tried to sue them over. That should be interesting. LOL

Its the end of an age folks. The truth shall be known.

I am not watching it because I need evidence of anything. It's just a subject matter that I enjoy learning about.

I know what you mean there. I think I'll watch it myself just to see what they have to say.

My only point is that the biblical story is so absurd I wouldn't believe it if they have live videos of the actual historical events.

The bottom line is that if it's true, that would only mean that God is truly insane.

It would be an extreme disapointment to discover that the creator of this universe is as lame as the Bible claims.

It would be like waking up to discover that life is a Freddy's nightmare.

There is nothing righteous about the Biblical picture of God. It's truly a sick demented picture IMHO.

Especially the Christian idea that only those who believe in Jesus would be "Saved" that's the sickest thing I can imagine.

That would imply that God truly has not moral values at all, whatsoever.

A God who places the fate of the souls that he creates entirely on the idea that they are willing to believe an insanely absurd story is nothing short of insane itself.

Such a God would truly belong in an insane asylum.

There's nothing 'loving' about that picture. It's nothing more than a crap shoot, and has absolutely nothing to do with morals, compassion, love, or anything like that.

You can't have a God condemning people to hell just because they don't believe that God is insane.

That's ridiculous.

Well, Pagan gods have a pretty horrific, sick past as well. but, pagans don't generally believe all the stories to be true. For whatever reason Christians have bought the story of Christ as true as written in the Bible. I don't know why they do it.

Well, that's certainly true too.

I guess I'm so totally acceptant of the abstract nature of the pantheistic view that I don't concern myself with the literal accuracy of the folklore so much. I understand all of it as being myth. And that doesn't make it meaningless.

In fact, I'm learning now to understand much of folklore as having been the shamanic journeys of spiritual leaders.

Although, I see much of the Bible as more of an actual historical account of a culture that used God as an excuse to murder their enemies and belittle their women.

I'm sure the pagans have done that to some degree too, but the Bible was almost entirely used as an excuse for poor behavior.

I think the pagans were generally more interested in getting along with nature and learning how to communicate with spirit.

None of it is perfect, that's for sure. But the biblical picture seemed to be totally absorbed in ego and has almost no affinity for the natural aspect of spirit.

They focused all of the spirit into a single egotistical God.

The pagans always had the spirit spread out in all facets of nature. So there wasn't any tendency to focus on the ego.

The Christian view of the biblical story is the epitome of ego. It culminated into nothing but ego. Either accept a particular God is the Kind of Kings and Lord of Lords, bow down and kiss his feet, or GO TO HELL!

They totally rejected all of nature and focused entirely on the EGO.

The make God into nothing but PURE EGO.

It's truly sick.

It's the exact antithesis of pantheism.

Pantheism says that the ego is illusion.

The Mediterranean picture says ego is God.

Well, I see where you are coming from. From I tend to disagree. I think you may be romanticizing paganism a bit. Many pagan cultures were very violent and engaged in a lot of human and animal sacrifice. I think humans have always used religion to hurt and supress others.

I also think people turn to religion to quell their fears about things they cannot control in their lives. This is a bad idea and causes people to believe weird things they think they have to do to survive. Like human and animal sacrifice.

I’ve actually looked on the internet to try to find some details about pagan sacrifice and how much of that went on exactly. I know for certain the pagans were not all peace and brown rice and some wickedness did in fact go down in conjunction with the worship of their various gods/goddesses. Also a lot of fornication and wild sex.

I was able to locate animal sacrifice but human sacrifice was MUCH more difficult. It seems there are conflicting accounts. A lot of it was sort of blown out of proportion by Christians so it’s hard to know for certain to what extent human sacrifice went on. Like for instance the Spanish Catholics exaggerated the Aztec ritual sacrifice to the sun god. They thought if they didn’t do it, the sun would not rise and set and more people would be killed.

They killed a lot of animals also but very often they feasted on them which isn’t so bad. Christians did that also and they called it "burnt offerings."

I have not researched it so I'll take your word for it Krimsa. Human sacrifice probably is exaggerated by Christians....that sounds entirely possible.

I only bring this stuff up because I have spoken to many pagans who also exaggerate the other side of the coin making paganism sound like it was always a peaceful religion. These people will also say that 9 million witches were killed during the burning times. Which is just not true.

Well, I'm sure that there were many very violent pagan cultures.

But let's face it, the biblical picture is entirely based on a jealous egotistical God who demands that there be no other Gods before him. It's also written in his dogma that he commands people to murder heathens in his name.

I'm not sure how many "pagan" cultures could do that since they seldom had dogma that claimed to be the word of their God.

It think that also depends on what you mean by "Pagan".

I'm thinking more along the lines of those cultures that had pantheisic views.

I'm not even sure if Celtic witchcraft would count as being pantheistic because in response to the Mediterranean picture they turned the Earth Goddess, into a Moon Goddess. Probably as a reaction to the notion of a "Sky God".

So I think Celtic Witchcraft was largly affected by teh Mediterranean picture.

In fact, as the more I read about Shamanism from all over the globe, it does seem that the Celtics were far more concerned with protecting agains "evil spirit" than many of the shamans from other cultures.

This was probably a nature response to the Christian influence of constantly being told they were going to hell.

The Christians are truly the ones who emphasised the evil aspect of spirituality.

Most of the pantheistic religions saw good and evil as being simply different facets of God.

It was the Mediterranean picture that truly seperated these concepts into being absolute evil (Satan) and absolute good (God).

I think the Celtic traditions couldn't help but be influenced by that.

But that's not truly the way of pantheism. So I guess I'm more of a pantheist, than a 'pagan'.

I suppose that Greek Mythology would be considered to be 'pagan' to many. But as far as I'm concerned it's truly the foundation of the Mediteranean picture. It had the male Sky Gods who were appeased by blood sacrifices. The Biblical story isn't all that much different from Greek Mythology. On the contrary, it's probably either the foundation of it, or a parallel of it.

The God of Abraham and Zeus are probably one in the same myth that just got distorted in different ways.

They're too close geographically not to have been connected.


They're also too closely realted in the type of stories and the persona of the God. It's the same myth.

Abra, it sounds like you are describing more of a Native American spirituality than paganism.

Well that's why I ask what you mean by "paganism".

It depends who's defining the word.

Here are some different defintions that I found on Google.

Def #1: Paganism - any of various religions other than Christianity or Judaism or Islamism.


By the above definition any religion other than the religions listed above is a pagan religion. That would even include Greek Mythology.


Def #2: Paganism - an Earth-based Religion; from the Latin paganus, a country dweller.

By that definition the North American Indians would be pagans. As would the Celtic Witches. Although the Celtic Witches also worship a Moon Goddess so is that Earth-based?

Def #3: Paganism - a nature-based religion. It is important to remember that all wiccans are pagan, but not all pagans are wiccan. There is a very wide variety of pagan religions, wicca is just one of them.

The above definition came from a Wiccan site that claims that Wicca is a nature-based religion. But they still worship a Moon Goddess. Wouldn't that make it a 'deity-based' religion?

I suppose that all depends on how they view the Moon Goddess. I personally view the Moon Goddess as an abstract concept rather than as an actual personified deity. So for me it qualifies as pantheism. It's just an abstract view, not really the worship of a deity.

From what I can tell from both Cunningham, and Penczak, pantheism is a valid Wicca view.

I'm not sure where Buddhism would fall in all of this.

I'm not sure if I'm a 'Pagan'. I guess that all depends on who's defining the term.

I guess the label fits me by all three of the above definitions.

Ironically it could also fit an atheist. By the above definitions even an atheist would be a 'pagan'.

Do you have other definitions to offer?

I'm not sure what you mean when you say, 'pagan'. And I'm not even sure if I am a pagan.

This is why I prefer to use the label "Pantheism" because it means "All is God".

That's my fundamental view. Witchcraft are just techniques I use.

Like Jess Lee I prefer to go labeless. But I don't want to get arrested for indecency.

Are you using "Paganism" to refer to Celtic Traditions? I'm sure they would qualify as pagan by at least some, if not all, of the above definitions, but they certainly wouldn't be the only religions that those definitions would cover.

Yeah that’s not true at all on both accounts. I think Pagans did perform human sacrifice and probably for the exact same reasons that Christians did. To appease gods and probably even female deities. Christians by and large are responsible for more deaths over the centuries because they came into conflicts with these pre-existent religions. But just look at the Romans. They were killing people left and right and not just Christians. Jesus would have been another prisoner to them. It was the orthodox Jews that felt that Jesus was an actual threat.

When I said "thats not true at all" I was agreeing with you on both of those accounts. Sorry I didnt want you to think I was arguing.

I’m not exactly certain on how many people (both male and female) were killed as being Witches. You hear all different numbers. 9 million is too high. It didn’t exceed the Holocaust. It’s often times referred to as "the women's holocaust" however. I think Hitler was supposed to have been responsible for the death of over 11 million people but about 8 million were Jews.

And then as far as the human sacrificial rites, I looked up the Druids especially because the Celtics always come to mind whenever Pagan Human Sacrifice is mentioned. At least in Europe.

Here's the short answer: yes, the Celts do appear to have performed human sacrifice as part of their religious rituals. And, since the Druids were the religious/scholar/priestly social class, they almost certainly would have participated in human sacrifices, and probably officiated at them.

We have three sorts of data regarding Celtic human sacrifices. We have the words of Classical Greek and Roman writers, usually with a political agenda, and often reporting hearsay (Strabo for instance, was repeating the observations of the earlier no longer extant author Poseidonius), we have a few references in medieval Irish texts, primarily in the mythological tales, and we have archaeological data that is increasingly important.

I think if current religions don't satisfy your spiritual needs a good idea might be to withdraw your attention from them and place it on the true nature of self.

Focus on the present moment of existence and the reality you have manifested around you, and your own body which is a universe itself.

Anyway I have decided to tend to my own universe and focus on inner worlds and the infinite being that I am. Infinity goes in both directions, infinitely small (inner) and infinitely large (outer.)

Goodmorning!

I understood what you meant.

The number of women killed was very likely in the hundreds of thousands. And, really, even if it was only 500 hundred women....isn't that bad enough? I've never understood the need to inflate the numbers. It was horrific no matter what.