*Why Did the Christian Myth Have Such an Impact?*

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The Christian Myth is not a myth at all.

I think to answer that, one ought to go back to Christianity's founding documents and see what they say for themselves. If I remember correctly, the Roman upper classes sneered at Christianity as being a religion of slaves and women. What was it in that message that made it so attractive to those groups? The Sermon on the Mount gives a clue. In the coming Kingdom of God, the social order is to be turned upside down. The haves are to be rejected in favor of the have-nots. If you are a misfit, if you are scorned, take heart, a new world is coming soon. Pie in the sky? Maybe so. But, in Christ there are no divisions, no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, everyone is made new. And everyone, not just the normals or the rich or the powerful or the accepted, EVERYONE is of value in the Kingdom. This was pretty heady stuff in the first century, and it still is today. The Third World, particularly Africa, is one of the fastest-growing Christian regions. It was this message that inspired Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, Jr., two of my heroes, just to name a couple of contemporary examples.

I've seen a lot of Bible-bashing and Christian-bashing on this forum, and while I have no love for some aspects of Christianity as it is displayed today, I think it very interesting and significant that while American slaveowners allowed, even encouraged, religion among their slaves, they most definitely did not want them reading the Bible! That was the real reason slaves were not allowed to read. It was to keep the Bible out of their hands. Likewise, in Ray Bradbury's fictional Fahrenheit 451, religion was allowed, but not books. Bibles were prohibited.

What is it about this collection of documents that arouses such opposition? I myself am agnostic, and I don't believe in forcing religion down people's throats, but when I look at history and see how often those in power have attempted to suppress the Bible and why, then I look around at the world today and see some of the same things going on, I have to ask myself, what really is going on here? Are those who would "liberate" us from the Christian "myth" our saviors or are they our would-be masters?

You never hear about the Myth of Islam on this site, do you?

Or the Myth of Homosexuality?


The moderators display their prejudice again and again ...

OK, for fairness' sake, I'll say it aloud: Islam is a myth.

Now can we please move on?

-_-

Ok, I won't argue without you, it's pointless. I'm really sick of time and time again trying to prove that such acts have nothing to do with Islam, and according to the Qur'an, these people will be the first to go to hell.

Btw, I'm the first here to say that Christianity is not a myth. It's a former version of Islam corrupted with paganism. Like almost every other religion. The level of corruption varies in each, from almost pure paganism to almost-monotheistic, such as the unitarian church, for example.

Christians say Jews and Muslims are heretics.
Muslims say Christians and Jews are infidels.
Jews say Christians and Muslims are gentiles.

Every religion is a myth in each other's eyes.

They're all myths, and in most cases you're just born into Christianity or Islam or Hinduism and never allowed to question it, so you just go with the flow. Very few people are willing to die over religious differences, especially when everyone around you is united in screaming for your head. The really interesting people are the ones like Khan Sama who are sober yet forceful in defending their faith, indicating a fair amount of research. Fanatics don't think, they just scream. Khan here doesn't seem like the screamer type. Except for cults of personality that have some random faith elements that make no sense tacked on, like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and some of the other Christian rooted US cults, every major religion can have a sober case made for it.

Islam has devolved over the centuries, from a religion that welcomed science and made great advances in mathematics and medicine to Taliban Islam where independent thought is scorned and even becomes reason for execution, and religious observance is used to crowd out all thinking. The Taliban remind me of a Montana doomsday cult called Church Universal and Triumphant, where followers are forced to chant for 16 hours a day when they're not supposedly preparing for Armageddon. The point is to crowd out all independent thought so that people never question. In the Taliban's case, it's a degraded form of Islam.

Of note is a Muslim sect here in California calling itself Salam Islam (Salam was originally an acronym: Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims). Salam was founded by a man who as part of his imam training read the original texts and earliest histories in the original 7th century Arabic. What he found was that in his opinion Wahhabi Islam was a corrupt form of Islam, so he founded his own mosque, which strove to treat women as equal to men, among other things. He's actually considered a liberal by other Muslims, while he says that his faith is the true faith of Muhammad, and he should know, since he read the histories. For example, he did away with dividers in the mosque sanctuary, since he couldn't find evidence of divider use in early Islam. In Wahhabi Islam the women are walled off from the men. He did away with the walls. Men in front, women behind them, children at the rear.

Buddhism is personally my favorite, although IMHO it's been heavily paganized and corrupted in its spread. I took the essential elements and made my own faith. I'll put up a website someday. Christianity's paganization was actually deliberate, something few people realize. In the church's early years, it was heavily persecuted off and on by the Roman authorities. This created a need to "blend in". Therefore, the celebrations of spring became the Resurrection of Christ, with even a pagan name ("Eostre" being a pagan god) and pagan themes such as eggs and rabbits for maximum effect. The Birthday of the Sun God, December 25, became the Birthday of the Son of God, Christ's Mass. Other lesser festivals were also adapted from paganism. The North American tradition of Thanksgiving came from old pagan traditions of harvest festivals that survived.

Islam never had this problem, controlling an empire practically from day one, so it could simply squash Arab Pagan observances unilaterally, without having to adapt. Hinduism has been always limited geographically, so it never absorbed any other faiths. Christianity is heavily paganized because it had to be to survive. Barring any new discoveries, we really don't know what the Jerusalem Church taught, because the evidence was wiped out by the Pauline Faith. So all we have to go on is a heavily purged official history and the Nag Hammadi books.

We have the Secret Canon too-the gospel of Thomas sounds so distinctly Buddhist with some elements of Hinduism and Chinese paganism mixed in that many have asked if Jesus visited the Far East at one point. There are traditions of a Christ figure in Kashmir and Japan. Japan even claims to be the burial place of this person. Hello Kitty, the white cat cartoon, has been linked with this figure too. I have a white cat Chinese idol here on my desk that is said to bring wealth that I bought years ago in San Francisco. It's similar to Hello Kitty in general look and pose, and wealth is traditionally associated with Jews. If you ever visit San Francisco's two Chinatowns (the traditional one on Grant Street and the new one in the Lower Richmond along Clement Street) you'll see this idol displayed in every business. There are deeper connections between faiths than history records.

Judaism and Islam are the worlds Only truly monotheistic religions. Christianity is not true montheism because christians believe God is a Trinity; and lest ye forget-a trinity is a THREESOME. The Tanakh(which includes the Torah)specifically forbids ANY and EVERY attempt to personify God in the form of graven images, idols, or people. That is why the Jews would not accept Christ as the messiah, because he claimed he was God and the jewish holy scriptures insist that God CANNOT and is not human! From what I see, Christians really have more in common with Hindu's than they do with Jews or Muslims. If you go into a Synagogue or a Mosque the one thing you will Never see is an image depicting the devine.

The Torah includes references to other gods in a language that suggests the early Hebrews were polytheists who merely picked Yahweh as boss, then slowly dismissed his competitors and finally made it illegal to honor them.

^^;

You're quite right. Personally, I searched Islam for flaws before reverting, hence, I use these arguments.



Yes, I couldn't agree with you more.



Thanks for informing me of this. I shall research Salam Islam.



I'd like you read your essential elements someday.



Actually, Islam had a lot of heavy persecution by the pagans until the treaty of Hubayyida. Conversion by the Arab pagans was not forced. Hinduism has a monotheistic core like Christianity. If you study the ancient Vedic religion, you will notice the absence of the monotheistic core. Monotheism was preached by prophets such as Krishna, Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, etc, however, just like Christianity, their teachings were eventually corrupted as a compromise. Hinduism is not a single religion, it's an umbrella term for many faiths, which are divided by ideology (Vaishnuvaism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Shrautha, and lesser ones), which have the common belief in a single God (Brahman) and his incarnation in the form of 330 million deities.



The death (crucifixion was the common version in Europe), 3 day death, and resurrection was a common concept throughout the pagan world. True, the Ahmadiyas believe that Jesus went to Kashmir after his apparent crucifixion.



I personally consider it as yet another compromise, however, minor in detail.

This is what I'm working with:

1) Life is made to be suffering by The Two Evils: Fear and Greed. The root of Fear is the Fear of Death. The root of Greed is the Love of Materialism (Buddha called this "desire"). These flaws are an inherent part of the "reptilian nature" of man, and the point of the First Level of Existence (there are eight, the eighth is what Buddhism calls "nirvana" or nonexistence) is to overcome these faults and thus obtain enlightenment. This takes many many lifetimes (yes, I do believe in reincarnation), and to do this in one lifetime is literally impossible and trying it is likely to drive you crazy, ie deeper into the reptilian brain, which is why suicide and murder so often result from such endeavors.

2) Part of how this can be done is by following Personal Marxism, in which Marx's mantra "give according to your ability, take according to your need" is adopted to be a spiritual quest of the individual, rather than the mandate of a government.

3) The "soul" as most religions think of it is way off. Instead, each lifeform has a qi, pronounced "key", that is reincarnated, but is not a separate being but which relies on the physical world to exist. There is a codependence. This is why people do not "remember" past lives, since qi does not contain memory, the physical brain does. The universe has a qi too, Great Qi, which is not the highly pagan Zeus-deity on a golden throne in the clouds but something less tangible. Great Qi is primarily a traffic cop that determines where other qis will spend their next lives.

4) There are three levels of Law. Human Law is what is passed by politicians and kings. Natural Law is such things as scientific theorems. Karmic Law is the basic law of the universe, things like love your neighbor, the law of reciprocity, do not kill or steal, etc. Islamic Sharia in my view is sort of a mishmash of all three forms of law. It tries to be all things at once. I prefer to draw distinctions.

So that is basically what I've got going right now. Note that "worship" is not an integral part of my religion. Worship is a pagan artifact. Buddhism originally did away with worship of deities and/or manmade stand ins, but men reinserted it, since if people see a mere man as a god, they are more likely to give him their money. Most American cults can be boiled down to the following statement: "I am the Messiah and/or God; therefore, give me your money and property and life". Dig deep enough and you'll find that everything else is just window dressing, the people at the top want your money and your undying, unthinking devotion.

I don't know if you're familiar with the American cult Scientology, but it is a fake religion invented by a schizophrenic sociopath who believed he was Satan in order to get people to give him their money, since his previous employment as a writer of cheap novels didn't pay much. A good place to research this all-American pseudo-faith is http://www.xenu.net/ . Some of the "scriptures" this dork wrote are quite amusing, especially the part where Xenu the evil alien transported 75 billion souls to earth and blew them up with atomic bombs in such a manner that they all stuck together and formed life on earth. Yes, it's a bad science fiction novel, from the king of bad science fiction novels. He was a secondary figure in the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1930s. But it only paid a penny a word, and he had to sell personal possessions to eat, until he invented a way to make normal people into psychopaths who would give him their money. It worked too-he had a $400 million fortune when he died in 1986.

Then there's Joseph Smith, who in the 1830s mashed together a degraded self-taught form of Islam with a big helping of Freemasonry, a bunch of 18th century American folk religion, and a cult of personality to make Mormonism. Smith's life is a bizarre saga of fortune telling, bank scams, and trying to topple the US government so he could rule over a theocratic state. Ultimately, his absolute lack of morals got him killed by a mob. Then his faith fell into the hands of Brigham Young, who was even more evil. Young led the devout to a desert where they dug in their heels and waited for slavery to do in the government. When it didn't, they got screwed, and they decided to send missionaries out across the globe to try and gain power THAT way. The only time it worked was during times of famine or war in the unwilling host. And missionaries lived with the people, so they preached while starving and dodging bullets! Most of the followers were eventually ordered to Utah aka "Deseret", where they were rolled into the existing population. http://www.josephlied.com/ and http://www.exmormon.org/ for all the sordid details here.

The scams Americans have come up with in the name of religion are really quite extraordinary. The messiahs tend to be somewhat "off" mentally, so they create some real stinkeroos. http://www.rickross.com/ has old news articles on zillions of American cults, including wealth worship cults like Herbalife and various wacko anointed ones.

Buddhism is fairly unique among major religions. In fact, its really not an actual *religion* but is more of a philosophy.
Deities from other religions are incorporated into it, many of them are of Hindu origin.

Yes, and some go so far as to say that every religion outside their own is satanic.

I don't know, I think that Christianity is really just a natural evolution of Roman paganism into a monotheistic form. I've noticed that people's religious beliefs tend to reflect the material conditions they live. In this case it was just the transiton of the Roman Empire from a republic to a monarchy.

True, the first idol of Buddha, however, was Greco-Bactrian in origin. The faiths common in Bactria (mordern day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and parts of Iran) at that time were Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Paganism (which was similar to the Indo-Aryan Vedic religion, and was heavily influenced by the Greek religion due to some intermarriage with the Greeks, the Dards of Nuristan and the Kalash of Chitral have the most unique genes discovered till date, isolated mainly from the rest of the world, with a high rate of Greek genes). When Buddhism was adopted by the Greeks, the Greek style of art was used to create the first idols of Buddha, which later became Indianised after Ashoka adopted Buddhism as his state religion. Prior to this, the Buddhists would either pray towards the Bodhi tree or any peepal tree. It was after Ashoka adopted Buddhism that more Dharmaic elements and Hindu polytheistic elements were adopted into the faith, during councils similar to those of Nicaea.

Prior to Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism, the philosopy/faith was was not considered a threat to Hinduism.

I believe that the original message that was derived from christianity was that "We are all god". If I were to tell you right now that you are god, I am god, we are all god, and you believed this to be true, I imagine it would have quite an impact. To be aware that you can modify, change, construct, the world around you. The conceptualized Jesus supposedly posessed this ability and may have tried to teach that we all have access to this power. Over time, I believe, this belief was constrained to the few rather than the many.