Freethought Nation

Who is Acharya S? That is what I wanted to know when I stumbled upon her official web site. On her "Who is Acharya S?" and "Credentials" pages she goes in length talking about herself and her credentials. Immediately I had to call many of these into question, and I will discuss them here. In short she is a mystic and conspiracy theorist with no professional training what so ever. She goes on and on about how she traveled in Europe and has read works of various philosophers such as Cicero and Chaucer, and she actually claims that she has "sat down with the Bible - in English, as well as in the original Hebrew and Greek - long enough to understand it more than most clergy."[1] She claims to also be a "member" of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. A thorough staff and directory search turned up nothing. I emailed various people on the web site, and yet nobody has ever heard of her[2].

It really strikes me, someone who considers herself to be more knowledgeable about Christianity than any other person, is never quoted by anyone other than herself or Zeitgeist, the movie. Not only that but in her various works, even this youtube video, she repeatedly claims or illudes to "Sun" and "Son" being the same word and thus of the same origin, while this is only true in English not in any other language (I discussed this in Part I). I would think that someone who is well versed in many languages, especially Hebrew and Greek, would realize that you cannot make connections this way.

"...my name is Edward L Winston, I am a 20-something software engineer with an affinity for astronomy, history, politics, and crazy theories. While I do have a college education, it was not at Yale or anything like that, just some community college."

"I saw a post in which Acharya "admitted" that it the son-sun bit was meant as a play on words, so that's not anything I'm putting up for debate - though I do wonder, why make such a play on words when people like this are destined to tear it to pieces?"

"member" of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. A thorough staff and directory search turned up nothing."

Acharya shouldn't have to give minute details of her entire life to prove her general background, but there ought to be something she could show, be it as simple as a photograph of her at the school in Athens/America and/or with her fellows there. Just something that could shut people up.

Nothing will stop the vicious detractors from smears and lies.

Edwards scientific and objective review of Acharya's Companion Guide can be summarized:

"Reading her work makes me want to stab out my eyes."

"she blatantly lies"

"Essentially she's a liar and fraud"

In conclusion:

"She's a liar, and of story."

conspiracyscience. com /articles/zeitgeist/companion-guide/

1) The book starts with taking two quotes out of context

"For what is now called the Christian religion existed of old and was never absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh. Then true religion which already existed began to be called Christian."
- Saint Augustine, Retractiones (I, xiii)

"The Religion proclaimed by him to All Nations was neither New nor Strange."
- Bishop Eusebius, The History of the Church (II, iv)

"There can be no doubt that the oldest Egyptian writings contain some vestiges of primeval faith. Egyptians in very remote areas believed in the immortality of man, with reward or punishment in the future state. They believed in the existence of good and evil powers in this life, and were not without a sense of personal responsibility..."
- Rev. Dr. W.H. Rule, The Horus Myth and Its Relation to Christianity (66)

the author says that Greek writing is "word-based", implying to me that Egyptian writing was not, that it was simply pictograms. This is a common misconception, in fact the symbols used were consonants much like Arabic or Hebrew, followed by symbols showing the action of the word written, its function, and many other things.

Edward "Essentially she's a liar and fraud, who claims to have superior knowledge of language (Greek, Hebrew, English, for starters), when in reality her knowledge of language seems to be child-like at best -- making comparisons to the words "Sun" and "Son" meaning the same thing and being the same words in other languages."

6) The "Sun of God" thing does not make sense. I would like to remind you that Acharya S considers herself to be very knowledgeable in at least Hebrew and Greek, so how could she connect "Son" and "Sun", when they are not linguistically similar, and in English they just sound similar, but are not related.

2) She claims to be a "member" of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

4) Massey is really no one of consequence outside of the circles of Christian conspiracies. He is not considered an Egyptologist, or someone knowledgeable of ancient texts by anyone but himself and Christian conspiracists.

7) It even alludes to a fact that "horizon" has something to do with "Horus", when in fact horizon originates from Old French orizon, originally from Greek horos meaning "boundry".

No where in this chapter [17] does it describe Set as "that god who steals souls, who laps up corruption, who lives on what is putrid, who is in charge of darkness, who is immersed in gloom, of whom those who are among the languid ones are afraid.", or anything even close

8 ) Set was not evil until nearly 100 AD when the Romans turned him into a demonic figure.

9) The worst part is she blatantly lies about "birthdays" of deities to make different dates important, when most of them never had birth dates.

11) Horus' birthday was on the 5th day of the Epagomenal Days, which takes place in late August or sometimes in late July.

14) In Buddhism there is no enemy, except potentially yourself, but short of declaring everyone Satan, the concept does not exist

15) Her web site is geared more towards selling books that question religions ideologies, rather than actually investigating them. You can take a look and find her making various claims about Islam (same kind she did about Christianity and others). It even brings up how "Allah" is actually the moon goddess. I'll save refuting this some other time, because it requires some in-depth explanation of history and language. Her web site also goes on about how Junk food (such as candy bars and hamburgers) are essentially drugs and there are roaming gangs involved in "bloody orgies of criminality and depravity".

Who Was Jesus? is a fine work, characterized by your unique ability to spot neglected implications and aspects of debates... --Robert M. Price, Ph.D, The Pre-Nicene New Testament

D.M. Murdock, aka "Acharya S," has written a really fine introduction to the problem of the Historical Jesus. She couches everything in the most basic terms, comprehensible to the layman, and lays out the problem and all the issues in a both really readable and digestible form. Her charts are insightful and extremely useful and presented in such a way as to make things immediately plausible to the general reader. I can recommend her work whole-heartedly for anyone on a world-wide basis who really wants to know what is at stake in approaching and coming to terms with the real person behind the literary image provided by those who created the story of "Jesus." --Robert H. Eisenman, Ph.D, The New Testament Code

I loved this book. It is absolutely superb in every way, from the eloquence of the writing to the integrity of the scholarship. This book should be required reading in every American classroom.... Ms. Murdock is one of only a tiny number of scholars with the richly diverse academic background (and the necessary courage) to adequately address the question of whether Jesus Christ truly existed as a walking-talking figure in first-century Palestine. This question, and many others related to New Testament reliability, are directly confronted and satisfyingly answered in Who Was Jesus? My personal recommendation is that Who Was Jesus? should be the first book purchased and studied by anyone, atheist or true believer, who wants to debate Jesus' existence and the Bible's veracity.... You should therefore make this book priority reading even over The God Delusion, God is Not Great and other excellent but, in my opinion, less important books than Murdock's! .... --David Mills, Atheist Universe

I've known people with triple Ph.D's who haven't come close to the scholarship here. I think I've read every popular alternative theory about Jesus that has come down the pike--with Who Was Jesus? I was very impressed. --Pastor David Bruce, M.Div Pastor David Bruce, M.Div Pastor David Bruce, M.Div, HollywoodJesus.com

Thirty years ago, when in divinity school, I might have had second thoughts about becoming an Episcopal priest if a book like D. M. Murdock's Who Was Jesus? had been available to me. Murdock's book, probably the best of this genre - written with clarity, precision, and conviction - unpacks most of the nonsense and mythology surrounding the ancient Hebrew figure called Jesus and presents a compelling picture of a mythological amalgam to counter most of the misinformation and wishful-thinking that passes for Christian apologetics today. -- Bob Semes, Retired Professor of History and Religion

I read a post on her forum saying that she Carrier had given praise to her book Who is Jesus? and I'm trying to find that now.

Hey Kris, did you ever find this? I couldn't find it but I did find this interesting comment on Richard Carrier's blog:

GWWT suffers from the unavoidable problem of all entertaining documentaries: it oversimplifies things. But it's nowhere near as egregiously full of sh*t as Zeitgeist: The Movie, which has been thoroughly debunked as absolute garbage by several knowledgeable commentators (the best critiques are catalogued by Jim Lippard at the end of his own blog post on that awful doco). I wouldn't recommend Zeitgeist at all.



"the best critiques are catalogued by Jim Lippard at the end of his own blog post". Hey look, Mr. Lippard linked to conspiracyscience.com



Oh and Dr. Carrier also had this to say:

AIGBusted said... Have you seen Tim Callahan's article which debunks the Zeitgeist movie's attempt to link Jesus with earlier Sun Gods?

No, but I'm so glad he did. Thanks for the link. Until now I had to rely on fundamentalist rebuttals, which weren't terrible but not entirely recommendable. That crap movie has done more damage to serious Jesus myth scholarship than any fundamentalist treatise ever could. I'd like to kick the director in the crotch. That's right. Square in the crotch.

[in the comments]

hahaha!

"...in "skimming" Brunner's text, as he puts it, Carrier has mistakenly dealt with the substantially different Hatshepsut text (Brunner's "IV D"), demonstrating an egregious error in garbling the cycles, when in fact we are specifically interested in the Luxor narrative (IV L)."

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.html

Consp-Science.com: A Case Study in Intellectual Inhibition

"There are three points I would like to make in this regard:

1)The first we will call “Ideological Bigotry”- thus loosely defined as the dismissal/denouncing of a person, based on the mere presentation of conclusions which are outside of the other person's preferred reality.

In regard to Edward L Winston and many of the people participating in his community, a very common use of the derogatory term “Conspiracy Theorist” serves as a mantra of 'presupposed rejection' regarding certain forms of information. In other words, anyone who brings up a certain 'type' of information which might be susceptible to this “taboo” category, is often reduced to a “Conspiracy Theorist”.

What this really is, again, is Ideological Bigotry – a form of “opinion racism” if you will. Suddenly anyone who has questions about an historical act, which is contrary to the prevailing view, and beyond some biased, subjective threshold deemed “rational”- is likely just an nutty “Conspiracy Theorist”.

This is a powerful tool, which has been used by political propagandists since the dawn of time. The easiest way to stop people from investigating certain subject matters is to create fear. In a world driven by public image, many people today will not even consider alternative theories to certain events, such as 911 and like, because they simply don't want to be debased as a “Conspiracy Theorist.” This is a perfect tactic of social influence. As far as Edward L Winston, I don't feel he even understands what he is doing. It is a conditioned response. I think he is genuine in his disposition. It is, again, a form of mental illness, just like a racist feels when encountering what they might consider an “inferior” race.

So, if a prominent physicist stands up and claims contrary evidence to the current accepted reality of a certain phenomenon in this context, they are no longer a physicist- they are just a “Conspiracy Theorist”. This is similar to people who question the value of the Capitalist System who are thus denounced as “communists” in a artificial duality... or those who do not believe in god, who must then be “Satanists”, etc. If people are mere “Conspiracy Theorists” since they have different conclusions than the prevailing order in regard to some events, then it is only logical that all those who denounce such ideas be labeled “Coincidence Theorists”! Obviously, that is a joke, but I hope the point is clear.

Again, the best way to control people is to control thought through making “taboos” which, if explored, will demean the person's status. These social memes permeate peoples identity and, just like a racist, they project their biases into their environment, devoid of objective inquiry.

For more on this subject, in part, please see: #6 Does The Zeitgeist Movement support "Conspiracy Theories"?

2) Point two worthy of noting, has to do with a very common phenomenon of “Attacking the Messenger”, which is really just a variation of the aforementioned issue. Only this time it is more personal and based on finding some type of association which would serve to discredit a particular person directly. For example, I often hear: “Peter Joseph is just a a “college dropout” with “no credentials” – therefore there is no need to even regard his research in a serious way”.

As far as Con Sci, there is a whole article called “Cost of Movie”, dedicated to convincing the reader that I make tons of money off of the films I made and sell for 5$, as yet another attempt to discredit, this time by way a “red herring” that has nothing to do with anything related to the content of the works in question, or the self-proclaimed purpose of the website. The attack implies that I have stated that I make 'no money' off the films, when, in fact I have publicly talked about the money made and how it is used. To defend myself here for the sake of clarification, I have to survive in the financial system as well and must sell my work to do so. Given I allow my film to be downloaded for free, copied and given away... I have free internet streams of them, and I only charge a fraction of the commercial rate for a dvd, evidently I am still somehow the bad guy. Edward L Winston, choosing to lower himself to such irrational personal attacks, which have nothing to do with the debunking of the content of my film, further shows his presupposed biases and the mental limitation of his ability to be objective. “Attacking the Messenger” is always a dead give away when it comes to a compromised, biased disposition.

Other symptoms of what appear to be a pathological mental illness in this regard, is by creating a means which avoids having to research anything thoroughly. A statement such as 'Acharya S has been discredited by the academic community, therefore we don't have to followup on her sources.' is another variation.

As a case in point, Edward L Winston, in regard to his supposed refutation of the “Companion Guide” for Part 1 of Z1, states two things which reveal his bias:

He states:
“I have been getting many complaints from people who claim that I did not read the Companion Guide, so therefore I cannot debate the movie. My first argument against that is I was debating the facts in the movie, which does not include whatever is written in an e-book by another author.”

What is really being stated here is: “I refuse to research anything in regard to the sources of this information.”

You cannot debunk anything without reviewing the foundational info it was derived from, especially if it is a film which presents nothing more than a surface summery. Also, Acharya was the consultant for the first part and therefore a partial author.

Beyond the admission of an inherent dis-interest to 'get to the bottom' of the source for the work in question, the “refutation” he then does proceed with, which is based on a document that is 48 pages, with dozens of independent sources he would be inclined to review if there was any trace of scholarly vigor, ends up consisting of about 1 page, with only about 15, 7-10 line paragraphs with virtually no critical examination, only surface statements and dismissal. Since this document was created explicitly to support the quick general statements in Z1 Part 1, this laziness by way of a “denial of relevance” is profound.

He 'justifies' by stating:
“The problem is that she overloads readers with so much information, that it is hard to weed out what to believe and what not to believe, so naturally some people would just assume she knows what she's talking about. She's a liar, end of story.”

Too much information? This is an even more profound form of mental blocking, where the task of review is not met with the initiative, so the act is outright dismissed by way of excuse. In this case, there is “too much” to review. Too much what... EVIDENCE? As far as “She's a liar, end of story” it once again proves the presupposed, highly biased disposition - hence mental illness - and thus rationalized refusal to follow up and evaluate the dozens of independent sources presented within the text's documentation.

3) Now, Edward L Winston aside, the final point to be made, which has been brought to my attention too many times at this stage, is the “Red Herring Angle” used by many of the members of his forum, which transfers their biases in regard to the sections on “Conspiracy” in my early film, to The Zeitgeist Movement itself, often saying something like “they are all just a bunch of conspiracy theorists at the TZM”. There is no critical examination of any of my lectures, no critical examination of our 90 page Orientation Guide, etc. Nothing. It is dismissal by association in a profoundly biased way... which is yet another form of psychological denial...."