31 thoughts on “Merry”

  2. chemicalscum

    Vince – I said there is no reliable historical evidence Jesus existed. Historians like scientists have criteria for the establishment of facts. Normally this requires two or more independent contemporary accounts. Other than the gospels which are themselves not contemporary accounts being written down about century or more later, there is I think only the two references to Jesus in Josephus which he wrote over a century later than the alleged events in the gospels. Christian apologists use the Josephus reference as a an argument for historical evidence of the this existence of Jesus. Josephus however cites no sources for his reference to Jesus and from the context he is probably repeating what he was told by Christian Jews.

    Given the remarkable events described in the gospels it is surprising that there are no independent contemporary accounts that refer to them in surviving historical sources in aramaic, greek or latin.

    Jesus may or may not have existed, or been a confabulation relating to several Jewish religious teachers, we just don’t know – ignoramus. However in the form he is described in the new testament he appears to acquire the attributes of the ancient Egyptian god Osiris. So to the critical he is just another version of the ancient resurrected gods like Osiris, Dionysus and Baldur.

    A merry Pagan Christmas I say as I watch the embers of my burning Yule log fade and look at my Christmas tree filled with Pagan significance and kiss my wife under the mistletoe considered holy by the ancient Druids.

  3. Kaleberg

    Is Christmas still celebrated as a Christian holiday? How many people still attend mass, or an alternative Christian service, on Christmas? In old New England, going to church was the only legal way to celebrate, but attendance at church has fallen dramatically since the 1950s when electrical power dispatchers could watch America come home from church on Sunday and turn on its ovens for Sunday dinner.

    Of course Christianity adapted Christmas from other religions. The solstice holiday is very old, and every religion borrows and makes things up as it goes along. The very idea of a messiah is pre-Judaic, though messiah is just an adaption of the name Moses, or Moshiach in Hebrew. But where did Jews come up with the Feast of Lights, aka Hannukah? A Feast of Lights is a pretty obvious idea for a solstice holiday.

    Every religion borrows and adapts. Why do Jews celebrate the solstice by eating pancakes made from an Incan tuber? Is this Atahualpa’s revenge? Why did Martin Luther encourage Protestants to celebrate the season by incorporating elements of Germanic tree worship? Why was the York cathedral only cathedral in England to allow missletoe in its solstice decorations? Was it because York was an old Druid center?

    Our love of the spiritual is much like our love of music. Every human society has some form of spirituality in which the individual senses themselves as part of something greater, just as every human society has some form of musical expression. We are clearly equipped with certain organs of perception and enjoyment. What better time to experience that sense of a greater power than when the sun turns its path in the sky, whether we attribute this to the gods, one god or as a simple consequence of general relativity.

  4. Elliot

    Of course it is entirely possible that Jesus was a “code name” for a psychedelic mushroom cult see: John Allegro “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” 1970.

    Certainly as plausible as the virgin birth business, and the even more thermodynamically challenging… rising from the dead.

    In any case I hope the holidays and the spirit of the season brings peace to all of you and peace throughout the world.

    Elliot

  5. Chinmaya Sheth

    I would like to back-up some of the stuff I said about some people having a better opinion about one God religions (even though whether someone follows a one God or a many God religion or no religion (like myself) is a matter of complete indifference to me):

    There are many websites where one can find this opinion but I went to one of my favorites:

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/09/15/no-true-believer/#comments

    Comment #19 says

    “…Qur’an also says- ‘Whoever believes in One God, does righteous deeds and is just and reasonable, whatever he may call himself, a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim, he will be forgiven.'”

    I won’t comment on and on this any further.

  6. John Sidles

    To continue the cheerful universalist theme of the preceding posts, here is the concluding paragraph of Jonathan Israel’s newly released opus, Enlightment Contested:

    What is conceivably `worst of all,’ as some alert observers have warned, is that ‘the fashionable despair about the prospects for humankind fostered by Postmodernism could easily prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ Yes, indeed. The democratic, egalitarian, and libertarian quest of the Radical Enlightenment might very well fail in the end—or rather be defeated and overwhelmed. But if so, this will be at least partly due to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century failure not just of philosophy on all continents but more broadly of the humanities, and the world’s universities, both in general terms and, more specifically, their failure to teach humanity about the historical origins and true character of the `modern’ ideas of democracy, equality, individual freedom, full toleration, liberty of expression, anti-colonialism, and our universalist secular morality based on equity.

    Prof. Israel’s account of the Enlightenment includes illuminating portrayals of numerous scientists and mathematicians & are particularly recommended to young people who cherish—as they did—the hope and expectation that their work will make an enduring difference to a troubled world.

    It’s admittedly true that parsing Prof. Israel’s lengthy sentences can be pretty challenging! But one gets used to it, and their content amply rewards the effort.

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