Freethought Nation

Well the first issue I would like to go ahead and state is the obvious one... how is repackaged Anarcho-Communism? I've talked to many Anarcho-Communists about TVP and they say that they like many of the things they see, just core issues such as getting of the state, abolishing money, etc... are things they have problems with. They agree about many of the problems, they just don't think getting rid of the state is a good reason. If you can justify your statement with an interested analysis of the core values shared by both (because in order for any political ideology to fall into the same category as the other, e.g. Anarcho-Socialism = updated Marxist Communism; both must share at least 4-5 things with said political system) I would be willing to entertain it.

As far as getting rid of money, or the state... well that's the problem it seems, you think we will just get rid of it just like that. It will actually require a progressive strategy, by utilizing automation, sustainability, new social and city design structures, etc... over time we will be using less and less money and less and less governmental power, etc... so we will gradually grow out of it. You cannot quite cold turkey any political, social or economic system, it must be done through gradual steps and that is one of the things TZM proposes as well as TVP. We won't wake up one day and see money not being used, that is unrealistic to begin with.

As for the bad egg theory... well this was covered by Brandy Hume:

Hello Voice of Reason, thank you. Anarchism is the theory that the state is not needed. Communism started with the idea from Marx of the withering away of the state, with the goal 'from each according to ability, to each according to need'. These views seem on the face of it to be similar to the ideas of the resource based economy.

The mythicist position is about applying the scientific method to understand religion. There is often an assumption that reason applied to religion leads naturally to an alliance with other left wing views on politics and economics, because traditional conservative religion rejects the use of reason so vigorously. However, the idea of natural alliance in support of mythicism across the left, let alone the extreme left, is undermined by the observation that many on the left, such as in the Zeitgeist Movement, reject the mythicist position. This suggests that applying science to understand religion does not in itself contain inherent obvious implications for politics and economics. In fact, we see that Acharya S and FreeThinkaLuva have emphasised a political critique of Islam including support for the call to ban the burqa. This stance is more allied to the right than the left of western politics, even though Acharya links her views on this topic to other 'progressive' causes.

My views on politics and economics have always focussed on how to reduce poverty. When I was at university I assumed that left wing politics was the only way to achieve progress. However, since then I have come to view the left as strong on posture and weak on reason.

It seems a contradiction to many on the left that strengthening capitalism through private sector development could be good for the poor. This is a big example of an economic debate where people commonly talk past each other rather than looking to the evidence, much as we see with the religious debate around mythicism. Surprisingly, I suspect that mythicism is likely eventually to find more support at the centre and centre-right of politics than on the left, simply because the left has such an ingrained toxic opposition to discussion of religion. If the aim is to base action on evidence rather than ideology, the Venus Project will struggle, since it is so heavily ideological.

Despite all that, I think Fresco's vision of futuristic technology is wonderful, even if his economics stinks. The need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy is an urgent global problem and the Venus Project does a good thing in emphasising that. I have done a lot of research on large scale ocean based algae biofuel production. I think these ideas are more likely to come to fruition through support for the current economic system, with emphasis on stability in a vision of reform, than through idealistic utopias that people will write off as a rebadged version of failed political ideologies.

The idea of the State withering away is not something taught by Marx, his view was that the State would need to interfere only when needed on certain level's, such as food and water shortages, interventions in the market to prevent monopolies, etc... The state still exists and is still necessary, it creates laws, has courts, etc... but it only really intervenes when absolutely necessary. The idea is to reduce dependency on the State, when he says that the State will wither away, that is what Marx means. Many people hear that and seem to misinterpret it outside of its context. But regardless, those were his political views but not what is presented in the Communist manifesto.

Anarchism does state that the best way is to get rid of the monopoly of violence is to get rid of the state, thus allowing people to be free independent. However the issue here is that Anarchy is inherently a contradiction. You cannot be free and independent, the whole reason State's existed in the first place was to protect people. They banded together because of raiders and bands of barbarians in an attempt to protect themselves from outside forces that would threaten their way of life. As a result they also created contracts and laws that would protect those within the State called citizens. Even in Anarchy this would still happen, the only difference is that State's would remain separate and not come together, in other words their attempt would not be to eliminate the need for a state, it would just be reducing how much power the State has onto a local level. Many Anarchists prize private property and the ability to sell goods, that's why the majority of Anarchists are Anarcho-Capitalists. They are also blind followers of Ayn Rand and will act as Fascists to anyone who disagrees with them, in other words make Hitler into a staunch supporter of Capitalism and you get an Anarcho-Capitalists greatest potential.

TZM proposes getting rid of the need for these things by progressing society to a point where these things will wither away over time to almost non-existence. Now I won't claim that the State will eventually not exist, maybe it still will in an RBE and be relegated to the same task that Marx describes, maybe it won't. I would assume that some form of council of decision making would still be there, but it will be based on engineering, resources and utilizing scientific processes. This is actually the difference between an RBE though, I can agree that it is very much like Anarcho-Communism in that light, but what are the other differences though to it that are also on the core?

All good points Robert. TZGM is fun and the idealism sounds cool, but as VOR already said it's going to have to be a very gradual process even in the best case scenario - no outlook for an over night change to a RBE. And the fact that we find the ideas strong in ways and weak in others, really goes back to Fresco's eccentric genius status as I mentioned earlier. Getting the MP into mainstream scholarship will be a gradual process as well, but I do tend to think that it will eventually rise to mainstream status. Several generations down the road things should be quite different.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Well it took a long time for Higher Criticism of Biblical Scholarship to take root in the mainstream. Hell even the ideas of the Dutch Radicals (which espouse the notion that there never was an historical Jesus) took about 120 years in order for it to get to the state that it is now. I would say its going to take awhile with the Mythacist Position to begin with, I fully support it in some cases but not in others. For example, I have yet to be convinced that Jesus is purely mythical (meaning there was never an historical Jesus) because there has yet to be a credible answer to how Christianity began without an historical Jesus that gives more of a ready explanation of all the evidence that we do have about first century Palestine. But that may change later as time goes on

I suspect that any "credible" and convincing answer will be related to gnosticism and not explained entirely by archeological or historical evidence. There is however overwhelming credible evidence that the origins of Imperial Christianity began with literary fabrications. Fast forward to the exposure of modern fabrications of myths and imperial realities, and you'd expect some constructive organized response to it all, but you'd be wrong.

You have seen "Zeitgeist, Part 1," right?

That sounds like a major disconnect and Christian apologist argument to me. It has been addressed throughout Acharya's work, for sure - even on the back cover of her first published book The Christ Conspiracy:


Practically every book of Acharya's and a lot of her articles show the hows and whys of the creation of Jesus. The same argument could be made for all the other gods and goddesses - why did the priests make up all of them?

They are personifications of celestial bodies and natural elements created in order to pass along information concerning their characteristics and movements. As Acharya and others show over and over again through thousands of pages, Christ's major characteristics and many minors ones are parts of this ancient astrotheology and solar mythology. Why were the ancient Egyptian sun gods Ra, Osiris and Horus created? What about the ancient Babylonian god Tammuz? How about the Indian elephant-headed god Ganesha? The Greek gods Apollo and Zeus and goddesses Athena and Demeter? I could go on and on.

If one can't understand why all these gods and goddesses were created, does that make them all historical people? With not a shred of credible evidence for that claim?

As Horus and Osiris are the Egyptian versions of the sun god, Apollo is the Greek version, while Amaterasu is the Japanese version, and Jesus is the Jewish version. It's not hard to understand.

Why did they make a Jewish rendition of the solar hero at that time? Acharya shows that in her books as well. She's got long chapters in the backs of her books The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God and Christ in Egypt showing the whos and hows of the creation of Jesus Christ. She's shown how the Christ-myth creators took ancient texts and used them as "blueprints" to create him. There are hundreds of pages showing why and how Jesus Christ was created.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Well to me there is a huge difference between saying the narrations of of those being put forth about Jesus were borrowed and/or influenced by solar/lunar mythology or that they were based on the concept of Astrotheology; and the idea that Jesus never existed as an historical character and the Christian movement started without an historical person that light the fire on top of the powder keg. Those are two completely separate claims and I would like to state to everyone that even though the former of said hypothesis might be correct, the logic does not follow that Jesus was not an historical character. For example, recently AronRa has found out that he actually has an "Odin" in his family tree dating back to the bronze ages, and that this be the historical person that the myth is founded upon. In fact I ended up PMing him one time and said he found out that there is quite a lot of evidence to support that it might very well be just that. Another example would be, Apollonius of Tyana, we all know about the many myths that circulate about him, we do have coins and letters from his hands but we know that the myths are not originally his.

I agree with Zeitgeist 1 so far as the part about pagan parallels is concerned that they do exist. My point however, is that proving a pagan parallel is not the same as proving the non-existence of Jesus. Was the literary figure of Jesus created by the Gospel writers in order to appeal to different pagan groups and to gain converts among the mystery religion followers? Yah, quite possibly so. In fact I very well agree that this is the case, however assuming that to be the case, it does not justify one going from point 1-5 and skipping points 6-7 and jumping to the conclusion.

Edit: In fact this is kind of off topic from the original thread so I post another on how people here account for the nonexistence of Jesus as the origins of Christianity. I will post it up to have a set of parameters that are reasonable to meet and that can be demonstrated along with the current popular majority methods used to see if anyone here can demonstrate it's unreliable tenacity and see what kind of method they can propose that both meets the existing evidence we have for the origins of Christianity and to see what kind of results other academics have had with this very same method as well. You can use the Dutch Radicals method (as I have no studied their methodology at length to be honest) and we will see what other academics outside their school has been able to get similar results.

What you are relating here is called "evemerism," and Acharya has addressed that throughout her books too. It was also mentioned in the mythicist position video at around the 5 minute mark. It's also brought up in the Evemerist vs. Mythicist Position thread at the top. We've discussed it in depth all over this forum. Where is this mysterious "historical" Jesus in the core of the onion, after its mythological layers have been peeled? What is the evidence of this "historical" figure - THAT'S exactly the issue here, and mythicists have been dealing with it in detail for hundreds of years now. Acharya's book "The Christ Conspiracy" picks apart practically all of the elements of Christ's life, showing where there IS no core to the onion. As Gerald Massey said, "A composite of 20 people is no one."

Evemerism is not a new thing that hasn't been addressed repeatedly for centuries by many mythicists. There's a huge body of literature - it even has a name "the Mythicist School," and it's thesis is the "mythicist position."

What is a Mythicist?

The History of Mythicism

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

That's the thing about ZG part 1, unless someone actually goes and reads up on the books that went into it then they won't actually know or understand the depth behind such claims. But even then, the only claims actually made in the movie is that when all of the evidence is weighed, Jesus 'probably' never existed in the first place. That's how PJ presents it. And he's right, considering the evidence Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary as presented in the mythos probably never existed in the first place. Once the mythology is peeled away there's nothing left at the core.

And the best evermist position I've ever seen to date is GodAlmighty's youtube series that touches on what Massey covered in The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ lecture. We're all familiar with the Yeshua Ben Pantera / Sedata (rendered Pandira by Massey) possibility. But even then, GodAlmighty openly admits that the historicity of Pantera / Sedata is difficult to establish concretely to begin with. So that doesn't do too much for the best evermerist position that I've seen in my life.

The problem is simply due to the fact that there's no credible evidence to say that any of these Sun God personifications of mythology ever had any historical core to begin with. Some people feel that Osiris and Horus had an historical core, evemerists. But the concrete proof is where? The burden of proof lies on those making the positive claim. And it's a strawman fallacy to try and place the mythicists into the category of having to provide evidence for Jesus' non-historicity simply because we're skeptical about the positive claims made by believers and evemerists!!! Where exactly has anyone from Acharya to the rest of us ever made the positive claim that Jesus did not exist absolutely, concretely? I've never heard such a claim aside from straw man attempts made by apologists and antagonists of whatever variety. As far as I know the MP has to do with demanding credible evidence before believing that Jesus or any other God-Man was in fact historical.

So if TZGM is shying away from the MP because of things like the above stated, then it's creating distance between us over a strawman argument to begin with. That isn't right and I know that you know that that isn't right VOR, because you're the first to call a strawman when you see one. I'm simply returning the favor here so that you don't get too caught up on the wrong side of a strawman fallacy against us, the mythicists.

Pay close attention around 1:45 and beyond to JF talking about Jesus as if he existed historically as a teacher, an evermist position to be precise:

The Venus Project on Religion


It's bloody obvious at this point as to why JF would have a bias in favor of the evemerist position and therefore dislike our MP. We stand to demand that he provide the credible evidence for such a belief. Obviously that puts him and people like him in the hot seat and they don't like it! Then their first reaction is to take off throwing strawman fallacies at us in an attempt to defend themselves from the burden of proof that we are demanding of them to carry. Are you starting to see how this goes now?

And around 2:00 they're talking about Jesus saying "thy will on earth as it is in heaven" while the back ground images are of this pagan sun wheel city design of JF's which basically takes what is above in the sky and puts it down below on the earth - the heaven's down to society just as is illustrated in the astrotheology of Revelation with the New Jerusalem motif of the celestial city coming down to the earth. The same is true of the Giza Necropolis. Pay close attention to what's going on here. There is much more at play than you realize at present and I only mean to pull it all up to the surface in this discussion for closer consideration.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Re the story of "Yeshua ben Pantera," who supposedly lived around 100 BC, even IF there was a real person there and his tale was integrated into the gospel story, it would be a tiny percentage of the New Testament figure. The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament would still therefore be a composite character made up of several figures, some possibly historical but most mythical - that's STILL a fictional character. As Massey said, "A composite of 20 people is no one."

But I think Acharya's brought up some good issues regarding "Jesus ben Pantera/Pandira" when she notes that Dionysus, whose epithet was "IES" was called the "son of the panther," which is what "ben Pantera" means. That would make Dionysus "Yeshua ben Pantera."

Sounds like just more mythmaking to me. But, again, even if this short tale were used in the creation of the gospel story, it's still only a small percentage of a composite and therefore FICTIONAL character.

Also, remember all the information Acharya's provided about gods supposedly walking the earth, like Osiris and Dionysus, that it's not THEM but their priests and representatives or their cults who migrate around. And artifacts like a god's birth or death place are parts of priestcraft going back thousands of years. Of course, everybody wanted this god or that to have lived among them, proving how "chosen" they were. There's a birth and death cave of Zeus on the Greek island of Crete - does that mean Zeus was a real person?

It seems that TZGM has decided to do the same as so many others by claiming Jesus as their own. It is a monumental disappointment to watch TZGM take the 'go along to get along' approach, rather than have the courage of their convictions to ZG1. It's in diametric opposition to Zeitgeist part 1 and therefore, completely inconsistent and counter productive. I cannot respect that.

They can't find a way to mention the mythicist position but, they can talk about Jesus as if he was a historical character? Why are we doing this then? Why are we wasting our time defending and continuing to further substantiate ZG1 when TZGM refuses to support us? In my view, Acharya is being used and taken for granted. We are expected to defend and substantiate ZG1 but the favor is not being returned at all and I'm not asking for much - just the bare minimum.

So, I get the sense that TZGM is funded by Fresco, which may explain why ZG1 has essentially been sabotaged and kicked to the curb - all due to one mans religious beliefs. I suppose it's safe to say that TZGM has been hi-jacked. Like I said earlier, there's something really weird about this and it makes me think of the malicious move by Matt Dillahunty to get Acharya removed from CSER. If that's the case and Fresco wanted the elimination of ZG1 because of his distaste for Acharya or her views, then TZGM just needs to be honest about it and admit it. That way Acharya can stop wasting her time defending ZG1 if she's not going to be appreciated for it and if it's never going to go anywhere with TZGM. However, Peter himself asked Acharya to write the Sourcebook so, this apparent elimination of Acharya S doesn't seem to be coming from him.

We are not the only ones to notice:

Let me try to explain this one last time. If they didn't want the Zeitgeist movement (which is really the Venus Project) to be connected to the Zeitgeist movies then they should never have named it 'The Zeitgeist Movement.' It's just basic common sense. They concede that they wanted to piggy-back on the popularity of the movies, which is fine until they try to claim that the Zeitgeist movement has nothing to do with the movies. That just seems schizophrenic ("a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements") to most people and there's no way around that. They ruin their own credibility by doing that. I've read TZGM explanations for that but they just don't work. There simply will never be an explanation that can successfully put that to rest and they brought it all on themselves totally unnecessarily. It's an unfortunate strategic error. It would be in their own best interest to change the name asap. Or, one thing they could do as an option is consider the Venus Project (VP) one arm of TZGM. That way they could actually have more than one arm of TZGM at a time. Hypothetically, they could easily have a Mythicist Position Project (MPP) arm of TZGM too but, I won't hold my breathe.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

HA! I gotta get that quote because that sums up my current position on the matter perfectly! As Tat has pointed out and as has been revealed from my many posts on the subject, I originally came here an evemerist and after our discussion I now find myself teeter-tottering back and forth about making up my mind on the evemerist vs. mythicist dilemma. But yeah, that quote there from Massey sums up exactly what I was trying to communicate at the very end of my series there in video 25. Yeah, when you peel away the layers of the onion, there is nothing left, but I do still tend to think that Ben Pathera/Stada was one of the layers. Perhaps my own unwillingness to let go, I admit, but the way things fit together as presented in my vids makes a lot of sense to me.
But indeed, at the end of the day, whether a real person or contrived, Ben Stada is no more THE historical Jesus Christ than Julius Caesar is. My point being, is that Julius Caesar was a historical person, and yet we know that many details of his profile fit the crucified/resurrected god profile, and so he was another possible source for the making of the Jesus myth. Just because Caesar was historical, doesn't mean Jesus Christ was. And I think the same is the case with Ben Stada.



VERY interesting, because in much of the Roman artwork of Dionysus/Bacchus as either a child or very young man, he is quite often depicted with various panthers and big cats(which are ALL panthers in the latin classification). I've seen him riding on panthers across the night sky, or riding in a chariot pulled by two lions and two tigers, etc., etc.

So this opens up a new connection that I must investigate. Thanks, Frank!

Hey GodAlmighty, thanks for chiming in on this one. You do fit the pieces together quite nicely in your series concerning Pantera / Stada. The main point being that the rabbi's Massey consulted on the issue conflated Ben Stada with the Notzri, which then caused Massey to place Ben Stada around a hundred years BCE instead of during the first century CE. Until I watched your series I was unaware of that. And in the above post even FTL is referring to Massey's timeline which involves the Notzri conflation. I went and checked some of your sources and saw that yes, Pantera is placed in the first century after all. That's why you took me a bit by surprise with this evemerist proposal. It's a good investigation. But here we are now afterward having to look at the big picture and we're still left with a largely mythical Jesus and Pantera, if even historical himself, as but one of the many layers. That's the thing with a guy like Fresco. I can't really fault him for taking an evemerist position but the bottom line is that the evemerist carries the burden of proof no different than the believer, even though they don't believe Jesus was God on earth. Here we are searching high and low and the closest possible thing we find is Pantera / Stada who doesn't settle the issue at all. That's it. That's pretty much the hub of the evermerist position and we are familiar with it's foundation. It isn't a very strong one. This is what I mean to point out to VOR and that is what FTL has been trying to get across as well.

I hope that we haven't offended anyone in the process because we both enjoy all of the regular posters around here regardless of TZGM or evemerism or whatever. We just like to clarify why we feel the way that we do about these issues. Robert was much like you Godalmighty. He was an evemerist all the way and in the last few years he's really stepped back and reconsidered the whole thing. It's possible sure, but where is the strong evidence to support the claim? No one can seem to find it. I was a believer and then I became an evemerist because I thought there was a ton of evidence from the contemporary period about Jesus. I never even knew that there wasn't. When I left behind the SDA faith and ventured out in comparative mythology research via Campbell I just accepted Campbell's evemerist veiws. It wasn't until I came across the mythicist writers that I began to realize just how sparse the evidence actually is. And for crying out loud it was ZG part 1 that got my attention and then turned me onto Acharya's works. Until then I didn't really know too much about them. I read some posts at jcf about Acharya before I watched ZG, but I didn't really understand too much about mythicism. So it's laughable to me when hearing all of these disassociation attempts. ZG part 1 introduces people to mythicism and that's a big part of the aura that comes with labeling anything "Zeitgeist" these days...

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Yep, I remember you mentioning this before Tat and it makes sense what GodAlmighty has found there. I keep meaning to watch that but I haven't gotten there yet. Which specific video and time frame do I need be aware of to get to that part again? I need to be able to share it with Acharya and go straight to it to save time.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

It's mixed into the series but you can start around video 22 on ward to catch the concluding summaries:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3356

And GodAlmighty goes on to discuss how this relates to Massey's lecture on Pandira at the bottom of the thread. I quoted the whole lecture on Pandira just to contrast between the two. In the end I suggested that GodAlmighty redo Massey's lecture with the updated information because it seems well in order. It wasn't even really Massey's fault because he was going on what his Jewish sources were telling him about Pantera, and the rabbi's themselves must have done the conflating between the Notzri and Ben Stada. But once again, this only goes to provide one possible layer to the Jesus myth and is in no way the core of the onion as GodAlmighty admits. It's a good series though. The folks at BT loved it. But in the end everyone pretty much agreed that we still have no credible evidence for the historical gospel Jesus even with this updated Pantera connection.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?