Why are you Christians atheist to Thor, Zeus, Wotan, Osiris etc but not to Yahweh.

Given the vast number of religions we have, means 99.99 percent if not all are wrong.
Doesn't common sense suggest they are all therefore probably wrong.

I just posted this in the "evidence" thread, seems fitting here.

If by "Yahweh" you envision something like how (apparently) some ancient Hebrews conceived of their tribal God, then I think I don't really believe in that God any more than Zeus or Odin.

I don't think traditional Christian theology bears much resemblance either to that "Yahweh" (even though Christian belief inherits from Hebrew tradition) or the other mythologies mentioned. On the other hand, there are plenty of comparisons between Christian theology and the Neo-Platonic "One" or the Hindu Brahman, even allowing for the real differences. And I feel like in a certain sense I do believe in "Brahman", even though I am not Hindu.

I think the question and the attached probabilities (as though each understanding of God was independent) misunderstands a lot of theology and isn't really that useful, and the specific comparison between the Christian understanding of God and Zeus, Odin, and the like misunderstands Christian theology specifically. There might be some more reasonable comparisons to Egyptian belief and Osiris but I know less about it.

I think an analogy would be the electron. There have been many models of what an electron is over time, the Rutherford model, the Bohr model, etc. The fact that there are different models and descriptions of the electron has no bearing on whether the electron exists or not.

That is how I view the concept of God. The fact that humans have had different descriptions of God has nothing to do with the question of whether God exists. In fact, given human imperfection it would be amazing if those differences did not exist.

Simply put, I am not an atheist towards the concept of Zeus, etc. I simply do not believe that it is the best description of God. That is not the same as saying that a perfect description of God does exist or must exist.

You forgot Odin,Zeus & Loki.

i watched Zeigeist lately where the claim was made that the the story of Jesus was copied almost directly from the stories of Horus, Mithras, Krishna, Dionysus, and other Gods where he claims they were born of virgins, on the 25th december and crucified and he goes on. I was intrigued until i did a little research and found his claims to be totally unjustified.

CS Lewis

"I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic-there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others."



Wonder what the hint of truth is with Huitzilopochtli.


I like that better then the elephant one.

I admit I had to google this one, I don't know how you guys know all these to whip out at your convenience.

no

Peter Joseph made these low budget youtube segments called "culture in decline", some of which where particularly interesting, especially the economics one. While I disagreed (and disagree) with this view on religion, (which actually reminds me of points MB has articulated) he is an interesting character. He does redeem himself here if he lost you with Zeitgeist, but he is almost tinfoily at times. Nonetheless, I enjoyed some of his work.

I agree, he's a highly intelligent, articulate dude in interviews.
I think he maybe underestimated the success his first project would get causing him to be a little careless of the true facts and his sources. Just a guess. It's etertaining though at least. Ill give his next two videos a shot.

What?

It's obvious that he has a disdain for religion, I just think that he picked a poor example to make his case, he obviously has other examples, I believe he has spoken about the crusades to also make this point.

It's also that people decided to study Horus in some detail after this came out, so there is likely more information debunking his claim than there were prior to ZG.

after Jesus, these gods are no longer believed in fot the most part. dont know if that is relavent, but it sounds good.

"hEY everyone else is wrong, so i probably am too"

so nobody can be right?

that's why people are atheist?

awful logic

Consider this example: A teacher has 100 math tests to mark, for the first question everyone seems to be getting the answer wrong. After the first fifty tests are marked everyone has a wrong and also different answer for question 1. Does this dictate the next fifty papers will also all have the wrong answers for question 1? The only way for the teacher to know for sure is to take the time to mark each remaining paper.

Also in regards to religion It is worth noting that many religions make mutually exclusive truth claims. On the other hand in some cases there are overlapping truth claims made. All that is just to say that it is a complicated endeavor to winnow truth from falsehood.

It is poor logic to assume that because we agree all greek gods do not exist, therefore no gods exist period.

If I know Hinduism and Sikhism are false is it safe to assume then that Buddhism is also false?

If you want to discern the truth value of a religion then weigh the specific claims being made by that religion.

EDIT: great example by RLK as well

What is the reasoning of Christians believing Jesus is the messiah and not Muhammad.?

Thor? Wotan? Zeus? Isis? Osiris? Loki? Odin? Mithra? Lolth? Aphrodite? Poseidon? Cronos? Horus? Beddru? Krishna? Zarathustra? Baal? Dagon? Dionysus? Enki? Gaia? Helios? Hermes? Marduk? Ra? Seti? Vishnu? Shiva? Xenu? Akuma? Raiden? Gekka? Bumba? Eshu? Jupiter? Romulus? Ilia? Venus? Abaangui? Ewah? Imhotep? Periboriwa? Dagda? Ishtar? Baldur? Tyr? Quetzalcoatl? Ixchel? Qi-Lin? Dievas? Adonis? Xanthus? Kali? Akka? Anubis? Sif? Mercury? Juno? Brahma? Frith?

What all these show is that we have good imaginations and are capable of inventing and believing in imaginary
people in the sky.

Depending on when and where you were born dictates which religion is predominant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country

If you were born in Libya you'd be sunni muslim, Iran a shiite, the US a Christian very likely if your parents were. Doesn't that tell you something is a little fishy? Lack of scientific evidence aside.

So no discussion then. This is actually a rhetorical question?

I forgot about this but I meant to have a go at some point :P

It seems to require some unpacking though. It's obvious that Muhammad (nor any other example given) can't make sense as the Jewish "messiah" simply as a matter of what "messiah" meant in Jewish culture. You might ask about Simon Bar Kokhba instead.

But the more general question seems to be fashionable of late: How do you explain the cultural relativity of religion, as evidenced by the geographical distributions, the multitude of competing claims, etc etc.

The conclusion that religious belief in the sense of doctrinal or dogmatic statements seems to be on shaky ground as a matter of knowledge is true, I think. Traditional religion tends to admit this of course, relying on faith and revelation "from above", so to speak, not rational evidence.

But I think it misses a somewhat bigger picture in that it's part of human nature to experience and try to grapple with ultimate questions about reality and what it means to be human. People are "capable of imagining people in the sky" but that capacity and its expressions is also evidence of some deeper touch with reality, despite all the imperfections in the various religious expressions of that impulse and that experience.

I think this doesn't really address the challenge here. Yes, traditional religion does admit this in a sense. This is why early religion was often syncretistic and not expansionary. However, it is actually one of the changes of the rise of Christianity to replace this understanding of religion with theological dogmas understood as true in a more absolute sense. Thus, the grounding of those dogmas in faith and revelation wasn't meant to lessen their status as knowledge, but rather to ground it in something secure (a universal and single God over all humanity).

The problem for the modern Christian is that this ground no longer really suffices. For better or worse, Western thought is guided by Enlightenment standards of knowledge as being based in reason and science. There is no special place here for revelation as a way of knowledge.

This, to me, has basically been the primary problem of Christian theology for the last two centuries. You see on the one hand desperate and unsuccessful attempts by Christian philosophers and apologists to show that in fact Christian theology can be justified even on modern standards of evidence (e.g. William Lane Craig). You see theologians who argue that we should reject the Enlightenment standards of knowledge (e.g. postmodern theology). And finally you see theologians who attempt to revise the meaning of Christian dogmas so that they are no longer meant to be truth-claims and so are not subject to these standards (liberal theology).

I agree.

My personal opinion is not so much that enlightenment standards of knowledge should be rejected but that they are insufficient. At the same time I think the drive of Christendom to "ground dogma in something secure" was misguided.

In any case I agree that my response doesn't answer the challenge to the extent that the challenge is to justify Christian belief to enlightenment standards of evidence. My response is to question the standard, although I think without rejecting it entirely.