Freethought Nation

David, I'm not in this for money as I've said. Whether or not the scholars I provide you with 'work' at a university or not is irrelevant. I'm simply going to go through the list one thing at a time presenting the citations that are given in CiE or elsewhere which support each claim. If you decide that technically you don't have to pay up because not enough of the scholars presented 'work' at universities then so what? The point is not about money or rewards it's about simple truth seeking and deciding whether or not there's anything to the claims on the list you've presented. I will bring CiE to work tomorrow and try to summarize all of the mountain of citations given for each claim.

You don't need to worry about whether or not we'll make it from claim 1 to claim 2, or from 2 to 3, or from 4 to 21. I've already looked at the list and I know that there's citations to post for the entire list. There's no risk of not getting through the entire list by going one claim at a time like we've done with claim number 1.

Claim #1 should be a primary example of how the entire list will unfold as we go along. You were dead certain that you could dismiss claim #1 even when GA presented you with the scholars and citations which came from CiE in the first place. Now what you're telling us is that you didn't bother to check out the scholars backgrounds that you were given over a year ago. And because someone else presented them to you as university level scholars you accepted it. But they were university level scholars all along. This is a good example of why people have had a hard time taking you seriously around here. We've given you the information you request and you've dismissed it out of hand. And that's why you have been called a "liar for the lord." Hopefully this Isis example can help give you a glimpse into how people have been perceiving you from our side of the fence. You were wrong and we knew that you were wrong. You didn't realize that you were wrong until just recently. But that's ok, at least you won some favor in my eyes by standing up and admitting to it.

I'll give you a hint for the evening before taking up a serious look at claim #2 tomorrow. In the Isis mythology she personifies the virgin dawn which gives birth to the sun each morning which is personified by her son Horus who is also the same as Helios. This is essentially why she's considered a virgin goddess, why she is stating such things about herself, why the myths are crafted the way that they are, and why university level scholars would confirm that.

So the next question then comes into view:

How does birth from a cave relate to the daily and yearly activities of the sun?

_________________
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?

I first want to know if you can meet the challenge as it stands, using the criteria I've allowed. If you want to agree that you cannot, then I'll gladly consider using non-university-level scholars, or other types of evidence not stated in my challenge, within reason (we can discuss what 'within reason' means if and when you and FreeThinkaLuva agree that the challenge cannot be met as-is).



Honestly, I believe there is. We already have VoiceOfReason in this forum trying to discourage you and FTL from trying to meet my challenge, and I don't know if he'll end up convincing you. Right now, I'd like to see the evidence for at least half of the claims before we end up debating them. I'm getting the feeling that things are quickly moving towards people refusing to present the evidence, and perhaps even blaming me for their refusal.



No, I was not. I am certain enough that people can't prove HALF of the claims for any one deity that I'm willing to risk $1000, but I am by no means certain that they can't prove a few more than I already know about. Like I said, in that debate with a mythicist a few months ago, the lady gave me two pieces of evidence (one for Horus and one for Buddha) that I didn't already know about, so there's no reason it can't happen again.



No, I assume that those familiar with my challenge, and thus know that I allow university-level scholars, will inform me when the scholars they're using are university-level. Thus I don't do a background check on every source. So when you use a university-level scholar as a source, please inform me that they are. I'll likely double-check that they are, but I'll accept them if it stands up.



So because I didn't realize that those scholars were university-level, I'm a liar? How does that work?



My question is - if GA knew that they were university-level scholars and knew that my challenge accepted university-level scholars, why didn't he say something? It sounds like either he didn't know that they were, or he was unfamiliar with my challenge.



Let's see the evidence for the majority of them first.

I think that the main problem is that none of us have ever taken your challenge and reward scenario seriously. And by university level scholars you mean what, scholars who work at universities or scholars who have degrees from universities? Once again, in order to analyze this I have to literally get out the book, check all or a lot of the scholars all with degrees, for each claim, and determine which of them work at a university. Now of course there's a mix of scholars cited for each claim. And I don't remember off hand how many 'work' at a university for every claim addressed in the entire book. But obviously any scholars presented are peer reviewed serious scholars. Even Massey as an amateur Egyptologist was peer reviewed to some extent and Murdock pulled up a bunch of info about that early on in the book before proceeding to use Massey in some instances. The whole point of the book was to address all of the people out there who had been complaining that no serious scholars confirm these claims. So she selected a bunch of serious scholars from within Egyptology and other fields who are not so easily dismissed just to make a strong point.

That's why we have no problem going through the whole list and citing all of the citations given for each claim. So if you want to hold off on going through each claim one by one until I post the scholars cited for each claim and look into their occupational status, it could take a while. Accepting only scholars, peer reviewed scholars in relevant fields, that also work at a university does seem a little ridiculous though. Shouldn't you be interested in any relevant scholar regardless of where they happen to work? When you said university level scholars I just assumed that you meant people with a degree in Egyptology, for instance, unlike an amateur like Gerald Massey or whomever whom you would reject. And of course CiE was written by hand selecting such people just to drive the point home and show that an amateur like Massey wasn't that far off the mark in the grand scheme of things.



No, it's because we started posting valid evidence that does confirm various claims and you just brushed it all off and proceeded to write a book full of straw man arguments. I think the way I started out with you this time around is the best way to go about addressing the Horus list, which is to stay focused on each claim one at a time right down the list. In doing so we can evaluate the scholars who are cited, whether they are relevant or not, and what they have to say about each claim. That's what CiE is designed for. It's suppose to basically spoon fed everyone relevant information via the citations found at the bottom of each page. It's for the layman and scholar alike. But it's written in such a way that it's perfectly presentable to serious scholars to use for, say, university level research.

_________________
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?

The latter. I was unfamiliar with the challenge. In fact, I wasn't even concerned with the challenge per se, I was more focused on resolving the issue on the virginity of Isis.

However, the thing is, you know what your challenge requires, and given this post of yours, it seems you might have been under the impression that I was trying to meet it, no? If so, then since...

you wanted a university level scholar as evidence for your challenge,

you thought(I assume) I was trying to meet your challenge,

and I was in fact presenting university-level scholars,

I have to wonder why you wouldn't think that I was giving you university-level scholars?

Afterall, I imagine that your challenge requires that if one presents primary sources, that they be pre-xian, no?

Well, I presented things such as the wall at Abydos, but never gave you the date, and yet you never disputed with me about the date.

I simply took it for granted that you granted that it was indeed pre-xian. (Which it is, btw, 13th century BCE.)

But whatever. Really this is all water under the bridge and moot now as far as I'm concerned. Since we've come to an agreement on that particular issue of Isis, I'm good, and feel surprisingly content.

I'm fine just cheering from the stands from here on out.

Work at universities in a scholarly manner.



Take your time, then. Surely you can't expect me to take the word of anyone who makes the claim, right?



Google them, then.



Obviously? How so?



But exactly which of his claims passed peer-review?



The problem is that her definition of "serious scholars" and mine may differ. As far as I'm concerned, if they're university-level, I have to take them seriously. If they're less than that, whether they're "serious" or not is an entirely subjective matter. If they were serious, you'd think that the university-level ones would be swayed by their arguments, or that they would end up getting published in peer-reviewed journals.



That's fine. And if you want to throw out a few names to me, I'll gladly do some of the checking for you (since you know I'll be checking on the back-end, anyways).



The problem is that I clearly have to have some kind of standards. Anyone can call themselves a "scholar", but that doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. Do you have a suggestion on how else I can separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?


No, it's because we started posting valid evidence that does confirm various claims and you just brushed it all off and proceeded to write a book full of straw man arguments.[/quote]

I didn't "brush off" anything. In my book, I go on for pages addressing the "Horus virgin-born" argument, addressing the claims that were made in this forum. Also, since the lady I talked to pointed out that university-level scholars agree that Isis was a virgin, I've added it to the book so that it will appear in future editions of "Myth?" (though it's not in the first edition, since I got the evidence too late, but I did add it to my website).



Isn't that what we tried the first time, though?



And if there are university-level scholars who have been swayed by CiE and have found the evidence for the claims convincing, then you're free to use them as sources. But if university-level scholars don't find the claims convincing, why do you think that is?

I didn't know that. However, FreeThinkaLuva was familiar with my challenge, and when you used them, it would have been nice if he'd pointed out that they were university-level. It would have cleared things up right then and there (though it's possible he didn't know, also).



Because I find it very rare for mythicists to use university-level scholars, since university-level scholars tend not to buy into the mythicist stuff.



That's correct, and I do expect people who are using them to point out that the source is pre-Christian when doing so, unless I already happen to know that it is.



Because I already know that the wall at Abydos is pre-Christian, as are all ancient Egyptian heiroglyphs.



Correct. I'd discussed the Abydos inscription with other people before.

This an absolutely absurd requirement to begin with. I mean their are academics that have never worked in universities but sit on the editing board of peer reviewed papers and have published many papers themselves. Would you reject evidence from these scholars just because they have never worked in a university but are very established in their academic community?

Yeah David, I understand that you have to use some type of valid method. No worries. But in the case of Horus we have professional Egyptologists commenting on parallels who may or may not work or have worked at a university. There are even Christian Egyptologists among the ranks of the citations for Egyptian and Christian parallels.

We have professional Egyptologists who raise these parallels but are not necessarily into mythicism per se. There are evemerist and believer professional scholars who point out these parallels but don't think that the parallels necessarily mean that Jesus never existed. They may think that the Egyptian religion influenced Christianity with an historical Jesus at the core of the myths, or in the case of Budge and others they may assume that the Egyptian religion sort of foretold and foreshadowed what would come later in Christianity. The implications of the parallels are quite secondary to the fact that many of them do exist and are known in scholarly circles.

Here's a list of a few of the sources used in CiE from the bibliography preview on google many from peer reviewed journals:

Karl Anderson
William Anderson
Rudolph Anthes - University of Chicago Press.
Robert Amour - American University in Cairo Press.
A.H., ed. Armstrong - Cambridge University Press.
Dieter Arnold
Jan Assman - Cornell University Press.
Joseph Atwill - Ulysses Press, Berkeley.

_________________
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?

Again, if people here want to give up on meeting my challenge as-is, I'll gladly consider other types of evidence. But let's just wait until they either meet the challenge as-is, or announce that they cannot, before we discuss altering it.

How many times do we have to hint at it? It's not the types of evidence you wont accept, it's how your challenge is oriented regarded the conditions of the evidence you will accept.. You're asking for primary sources such as texts, iconography, coinage and so forth, this is acceptable of course. It's the dating range that is not, and something you do not understand. As I said before, if the standard of the dating evidence is before 1AD, then about half of what we would use in some cases (that being the evidence for Krishna) will not be used because it comes after 1AD, but hundreds of years before Christians even set foot in India or the Eastern World. Another point is that you will accept evidence from academics, this is fine. The problem is that you will only accept them if they work at universities, this is an absurd request as I've demonstrated before. It's not the evidence your demanding that's the problem, it's the conditions by which you will accept the evidence as valid being the problem. So I hope you finally understand this, but I thought it would be readily apparent since I was attacking the conditions by which you would accept the evidence, rather than the types you would accept as valid.

It's not the challenge itself that's the problem. Your challenge was met long before you ever created it. The problem is with the criteria that you've created to be impossible for anyone to meet on anything and you already know that. You used to dismiss any "Christ-Myther" sources as non-credible, which means that we can't cite any scholar who's an actual expert on mythicism. Are you still using that non-sense in your criteria or have you realized just how absurd that is?

Acharya's standards for scholarly sources in her book Christ in Egypt are higher than yours and still more realistic. Acharya utilizes scholarly sources who possess credentials from respected institutes of higher learning, and their publishers are some of the most scholarly in English (and other languages), such as:

Academic Publishers

E.J. Brill
Peeters
Kegan Paul
Oxford University/Clarendon Press
Princeton University Press
Cambridge University Press
Cornell University Press
Yale University Press
University of Chicago Press
University of Pennsylvania Press
University of Wisconsin Press
Johns Hopkins Press
Harcourt, Brace & Co.
Macmillan & Co., etc.

Those who really know what academia is will recognize the list above as the best of the most respected institutes of higher learning. The publications by these institutions are very highly peer reviewed by some of the best of the best scholars in the world and these are the scholars Acharya cites and utilizes. It just doesn't get any better.

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

1 AD? Why 1 AD? That would actually still be pre-christian, since Christianity had yet to be founded, and Jesus would have only been an infant, allegedly.

Even by the 30s AD, when he was allegedly doing his thing, we don't have any extant record of anyone writing anything about it until the epistles of Paul, which are typically dated to the mid-1st century.

So it seems to me mid-1st century would be more fair.

For instance, Ovid wrote about Sol dying and being reborn on the winter solstice. But Ovid's works are typically dated anywhere from the last decade BC to around 8 CE.

Since Jesus's return from death is not recorded prior to Paul, I would consider Ovid a pre-christian source on this particular point.

And since the observance of the winter solstice, or rather December 25th, is not attested to in Christianity until the late 2nd century at earliest, I would also consider Ovid pre-christian on that point as well.

So it all seems to be a bit relative to the particular point being raised.

If it's a source for the virgin birth, I'd say it only needs to predate Matthew and Luke, the only two books in the Bible that unambiguously attest to the virgin birth. And they are typically dated post 70 AD.

So, you know, that sort of thing.

But I also get what VOR is driving at too. For example, parallels are alleged of Quetzalqoatl. Now, I know almost nothing about the myths of Quetz, so I'm not defending that position, but my point is that even if the sources for his parallels were post-Christian, if they are still pre-Columbian, then they should be acceptable to prove the point, no?

Once again David, I don't think that you even realized that CiE is designed for the specific purpose of using top level scholarship to drive home the point that these Egyptian and Christian parallels are real, not made up or imagined. I've been trying to find a way to copy & paste the bibliography. Here's some more:



There are over 900 sources in the bibliography!!!

_________________
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?

Regarding the common phrase "pre-Christian"

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

What you need to be asking yourself is why university-level scholars don't agree with it, then.

And, once again, if the people who have claimed they can meet the challenge as-is want to admit that they can't, I'll consider loosening the standards. Until then, let's hold off on doing so.