Freethought Nation

I see. So when you said the majority of my website was centered around criticism of her work, you meant the majority of the TRAFFIC to my website had to do with mythicism? Or that the majority of stuff I've posted RECENTLY is about mythicism? Why not just admit you were wrong (and either lied about saying it was the majority of the site, or lied about saying you carefully examined it)?

And keep in mind that the claims, and mythicism in general, neither begin nor end with Acharya. Unless you're saying she came up with the claims herself. She may have organized the claims into lists which other people have then posted on their websites, but to criticize or question the lists isn't the same as criticizing or questioning Acharya, or her books. And, again, if you want to show that I'm wrong in what I say, then feel free to present the evidence for the claims, and I'll post them to my website for all to see.



So you responded to my response to your misinformation, with more misinformation? You claimed that an article from 2002 is one of the oldest pages on my site? No, that would be one of the newer pages, actually. I originally created my site back around 1995 at hometown.aol.com/KingDavid10, and then moved it to the KingDavid8.com address about ten years ago. Most of the pages on my current site were part of the original AOL site. About the only thing I've added since is the mythicism section, most of the letters, and a few of the FAQ's. The majority of my site indeed was created before I'd ever heard of Acharya S or Zeitgeist. That's a fact, despite your claims to the contrary.



Exactly which "falsehoods" do you think I knew weren't true? And what's your evidence that I knew they weren't true?



If it's missing evidence for the claims, that's only because mythicists have spent years avoiding having to present evidence for the claims, often after promising to do exactly that (I even had one guy try to extort money from me, saying that if I didn't give him $550 up front, he'd present the evidence for the entire Mithra list and take me for the full $1000. I called his bluff, obviously, and he never presented any of the evidence). The few times mythicists have actually presented evidence, I've posted it to my website, and, as you can see, it hasn't been much. If you're willing to present the evidence now, I'll gladly make changes to my website and to future editions of the book. I would have no problem admitting I'm wrong, but first I need someone to show me I'm wrong instead of just telling me that I am.



The so-called "error" is that Joseph and Mary weren't married when Jesus was born? Matthew 1:24-25 is clear that they had married before Jesus was born, and just refrained from consummating it until after Jesus' birth. "Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS." I pointed that out to the lady who wrote the review, and pointed out that responding to mythicism doesn't equal responding to Acharya. She's neither the first nor the last mythicist.



I'd like a clear answer to my question. Suppose I actually wrote a negative review of "Christ In Egypt" without having actually read it? What would you think of that? Would you want me to take it down? In general, what do you think of people who write negative reviews for books they haven't even read? If someone did so, would you be okay with that?

If someone says Osiris was crucified, then, yes, I expect them to show that Osiris was crucified. I can't see what's unreasonable about that.

KD8, I guess you'd prefer to argue over your blatantly obvious lies. You really are pathetic KD8, are you seriously attempting to argue that you haven't been posting your $1,000 challenge all over the net over the last 8 years AND that it's not a significant part of your website even though it's advertized at the top during that 8 years? That's just idiotic and dumb - nobody would believe that, except you, of course, which are prone to delusion.

The fact remains as I've made categorically clear all along that ALL of the lists that you've been criticizing on your website for 8 years now are from Acharya S's book Christ Conspiracy. It's also a fact that you've REFUSED to read her book for 8 years. So, now here you are attempting to distract away from the facts. Just get over it and move on as you've already lost this one big time.


Oh pleez, just shut up. That's just another fallacy as nobody made any such claim. The fact remains that ALL of the lists you've been criticizing for on your website come from Christ Conspiracy, a book you've refused to read for 8 years. How much more hypocritical can you get?

OMG, just shut up. You're pathetic and have no clue what you're talking about because you've refused to read the book for 8 years. Her book, Christ Conspiracy is a 430 page book ALL ABOUT THOSE LISTS. She's not talking about baseball and then dropped in those lists. How dumb or dishonest can you be? Well, we have a pretty good idea don't we.


LOL, your lies are exposed in the links to the archives, which I provided HERE.


Another distraction fallacy to distract away from the issue at hand. I made no mention of your other older website that no longer exists and hasn't existed since you created the newer one to replace it. The fact remains that ALL of the lists you've been criticizing for on your website come from Christ Conspiracy, a book you've refused to read for 8 years.


People can find Christians proselytizing anywhere still, nobody went to your website much until you created your disingenuous $1,000 challenge and began advertizing it everywhere. Zeitgeist didn't even exist until June of 07 but, you've had that $1,000 Christ-Myther challenge for at least 8 years and all of those lists are from Acharya's book, which you've refused to read for 8 years. The fact is, you never even knew they came from Acharya's book until someone else explained it to you and you STILL refused to read the book. It demonstrates the extreme level of utter dishonesty on your part.


You're so delusional that it's a waste of time to try to explain it to you but, we exposed many of your lies right here throughout this thread.


Thanks for that inadvertent example of another blatantly obvious LIE. The ONLY way you can make that claim is by REFUSING to read the books by mythicists. You're expecting authors who've written several books with hundreds of pages of material, and readers of the books, to cater to your every demand by telling them that they need to re-do all that work and condense it down to bite size portions so that it can be SPOON-FEED to you because you're sooo juvenile that you've been refusing to read the book for at least 8 years now. So, for the umpteenth time, the evidence has been presented before you ever created your challenge. You are merely making everybody else perform a huge amount of work to "present it to you" because you're too damn lazy to read the books for yourself. And you hold that stupid carrot in front them i.e. your $1,000 challenge for which you have zero intention of ever paying up, which is why you created that fallacious criteria. So, it's YOU who has spent the last 8 years avoiding the books that you and your website criticize.

Now, just stop trying to argue. You've already lost.

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

Okay, moving on. So, the Isis virginity is already covered. I'm sure we have more already covered in this thread too.

Hey, are we working as a team here, Tat, GA, VOR etc? Are the winnings going to be donated to FTN i.e. Acharya? That's the impression I was getting.

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

First, to clarify, “crucified” is used colloquially to describe primitive motifs that latter became apart of Christianity. Obviously crucifixion didn’t exist at the time the Osiris legend was at it’s peek in Egypt, but that doesn’t detract from the claim that the Egyptians had similar ideas of the fate of their god as Christians would in latter millenniums.

For example, the djed pillar (variously translated as tet/tat) is a type of proto-cross. The djed was carved from the tree that Osiris became entombed in. It was predominant at Abydos, the gods main city of worship, where it was raised annually to signify the resurrection of Osiris. And Osiris is imaged as the djed itself.

Abydos was said to have been the burial mound for the head of Osiris; and it isn’t a stretch to compare the raising of the djed at Abydos to the raising of the cross at Golgotha, the place the skull.

Of course Osiris is also entombed in the tamarisk tree at Byblos, and both he and Sokar are imaged in the tree.

Arguing that since it’s not a crucifixion because he wasn’t nailed to a cross is only splitting hairs. The baker in Joseph’s story in Genesis isn’t crucified by today's understanding but Josephus calls it a crucifixion nonetheless.

Moving through history we come across the Greek Osiris: Dionysus.

During Dionysian festivals an effigy of the god would be hung on a tree. Plutarch even calls him a tree god. In fact another type of cross was used for his rites -- a fetish in the shape of a cross that was carried around the city in precession.

And Dionysus eventually became Attis, whom Ovid tells us was placed in a tree during his celebrations. Ovid also mentions that the legendary Phoenix bird would make a nest in a [palm] tree, where it would die and rise again. (The Phoenix was used by Clement of Rome as an allusion to the resurrection of Christ.)

All of these instances; all of these motifs; are pre-Christian accounts of a god having a connection to a tree or cross-like object. And it should be remember that the tree and cross is often used interchangeably when referring the crucifixion of Jesus.

So there you go. You would know this if you read anything from S. Acharya.

_________________
Y GWIR YN ERBYN BYD

If it's not really a crucifixion but something else altogether, then mythicists shouldn't say the gods were "crucified". Basically, mythicists are expanding the definition of "crucifixion" until it can cover whatever they need it to cover. But, of course, if the mythicists just told people that the deities had a death that involved a tree, or got entombed in a pillar, no one would find that particularly convincing as an influence for Jesus' crucifixion, since it's not. That's why they say "crucified" instead, even if the phrase is inaccurate. They need it to be convincing, not accurate.

Crucifixion as a practice had been around in the Roman Empire for about six centuries prior to Jesus' time. Even if, hypothetically, the Gospel authors fabricated the crucifixion of Jesus, wouldn't it be more likely to have been based on the story of someone who was actually crucified in the Roman Empire within the preceding few centuries (as undoubtedly happened to thousands of people) than someone who got entombed in a pillar in a story a few thousand years earlier in a different part of the world?

Actually, it was Christians who changed the definition:

severe and unjust punishment or suffering; persecution


The cross was not very significant in Christianity until after the 5th century, which is when Jesus first appears on a cross in art.



See how much you could be learning by actually reading the books you and your website criticize, KD8?

"[Horus] is pictured as spanning the dome of heaven, his arms stretched out in a cruciform pattern."
- Dr. Robert Price, biblical scholar with two Ph.D's

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

No, I agree it's a significant part of my website. But your claim that the majority of my website is centered around Acharya and Zeitgeist, or even mythicism in general, is completely inaccurate, which you would have known had you "carefully examined" it, as you claim.



But, again, those claims neither began nor ended with her. She didn't invent them (unless you're saying she did, of course), so questioning or debunking the claims isn't an attack on her or her books. They're not the source of the claims. All she did was put them into a list.



Which I will respond to in detail on my original response page, showing that none of what you have called "lies" are lies at all.



It's the same website, just moved to a new address. You were trying to prove that this article from 2002 was an early addition to my website, created before most of the rest of my pages, in order to convince people that I lied when I said that most of my website was created before I'd even heard of Acharya or Zeitgeist. Now, I'm not saying you were lying, because you couldn't have known that my website existed prior to when it moved to kingdavid8.com. It was an honest mistake on your part, but the fact remains that the majority of my website was created before I'd even heard of Acharya or Zeitgeist, exactly as I'd said in the first place. Your accusation of me lying about that was incorrect.



You have a strange definition of "dishonesty". Yes, I was responding to the list which I'd gotten from a website, not knowing the source. But those claims didn't begin or end with Acharya, so my responding to them is not an attack on Acharya. It would only be an attack on Acharya if the claims originated with her, which (as far as I know) they did not.



No, I can also make that claim by pointing out that the people who have read their books, and even promised to provide the evidence and win the $1000 (as over a dozen people have) have been unable to do so. Now, if you can do it, I'll stand corrected. But people's refusals to present the evidence for only 11 claims, which wouldn't take that much time, tells me they know the evidence isn't very convincing.



Presenting the evidence for only 11 claims isn't a huge amount of work. It would have taken you less time to present that evidence than all of the time you've spent responding to me in this thread.

And I'd still like to know what you think of people who write negative reviews of books they haven't read. But if you'd rather not, I think we all know why.

How about you, Tat? What do you think of people who write negative reviews of books they haven't read?

Okay, so now you're saying that anyone who has ever had a severe and unjust punishment or suffering, or was ever persecuted, can be said to have been "crucified"? If so, you're casting so big a net that millions, probably billions, of people throughout history can be said to have been "crucified" in this sense. You do see the problem here, right? To my complaint of mythicists expanding the meaning of "crucifixion" until it loses its significance, your response was to expand it even further so that it loses even more significance.



So there was no significance back in the first century, when the NT authors wrote about Jesus being crucified? That was an insignificant thing to them? Seriously?



So sticking your arms out to your sides now equals being crucified? Yes, I'm learning a lot, indeed.

You prove you're utter ignorance, biases and Christian bigotry with every post KD8.

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

You are a lying sack of shit. So, you're claiming that her 430 page book Christ Conspiracy is all about baseball and then she just drops in that list for no reason? How would you know since you've never read the book? You are the most dishonest person I've ever seen. The FACT remains that ALL of the lists on your website are from Acharya's book, which you've refused to read for 8 years. PERIOD.

More mindless red herrings. Those ARE Acharya's lists. She created them from scratch, using her own language and putting them into their order. The lists were originated by Acharya S, in her own words, and where she's quoting or paraphrasing others, she cites her source, but those are HER lists, as much as anyone else's writing is THEIR writing. Did you publish those lists in your book without proper citation = Acharya S - if not, you've just plagiarized Acharya S - expect a call from her AUP publisher.

And, if they weren't her lists then why did an American Atheist Board Member have his article taken down from the American Atheist website after it was found out that he had inadvertently plagiarized them?

Nice try but, just another epic fail. Again, you need to just shut up and let it go because you've already lost this one too. But, since you have a very bad habit of criticizing books you've never read you aren't aware of what a complete fool you're making of yourself.

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

Ummm...no. What is that supposed to mean?



But since she didn't originate the claims, responding to them isn't an attack on Acharya herself or the book she compiled the list in.



She compiled already-existing claims into lists. Doing so doesn't make the claims belong to her. If I compiled a list of what I felt were George Carlin's best jokes, that doesn't mean I wrote the jokes myself. They wouldn't belong to me. Just as the Horus claims don't belong to Acharya just because she compiled them into a list.



I'm not sure what that has to do with the issue at hand. I'm not criticizing the way she compiled them, but the claims themselves, which did not originate with her. If you'd like me to reword them or put them in a different order, I'll be glad to do so.

Did you include those lists in your book? If so, what citation did you provide?

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

I did not include those lists in the book. I phrased each claim as a question, bringing up further sub-questions in response. For example, I follow "Wasn't Horus virgin-born?" with "But aren't there multiple versions of his birth story?", etc. I don't pose the claims as a list, except in the "Copycat Challenge" section, in which I break each claim down into its various parts. For example, where Acharya says "born of the virgin Isis-Merion December 25 in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men.", I say "1) Born of a virgin 2) Born in a cave/manger 3) Birth announced by a star in the east 4) Birth attended by three wise men", exactly as I do on my Copycat Challenge page.

I'm out of here for the night, so let's stop this bickering and just focus on having you and the others respond to my Zeitgeist Challenge. Again, I'd love to do the debate in a new thread, if that's okay with everyone else.