And watered Jesus down from an anti-Roman revolutionary into the slightly more palatable “do unto others” of the Gospels. 
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For those of you that haven’t read it, Frazer’s Golden Bough is a vast tome listing the beliefs and practices of hundreds of cultures and religions. It exhaustively demonstrates that there are patterns of spiritual belief that transcend culture and time and language - humans who had zero contact with other humans developed the same typical legends and myths surrounding religious prophets and heroes, for example.
This phenomena is variously explained by various groups. For example many anthropologists and philosophers say that religion partakes of emergent properties of human consciousness, so that the standard mythic apparatus (virgin birth, prophetic animals, etc.) will accumulate over time around any religious archetype. For another example, many Christians believe that the life of the White Christ was the most profound series of events in the universe, and the echoes of those events have propagated both forward and backwards in time (remember, the Xian deity is both omnipotent and omniscient, and therefore transcends time utterly) so that all religious archetypes are necessarily somewhat encumbered by these echoes even if they preceded Jesus’s birth. There are dozens of other explanations; all that I am aware of are completely unfalsible.
Seriously, claiming some religious icon is derived from some other icon simply because both have the standard mythopoeic trappings is not a valid argument. We know that these trappings occur in isolation; they do not reliably indicate relationship.
It’s likely that there is some evolutionary benefit to belief in certain systems. I will stay out of that tarpit and bid you all a good night!
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This.
I tried to like your post seven times, but it only counted as one. That’s a really important point, lots of these concepts (holidays involving the sun around the winter solstice, death around harvest time, rebirth in spring, and so on) aren’t exclusive to one tiny part of the world.
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As-salamu alaykum.
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How long have you been loafing in this thread to fish for that setup?
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I am a patient, patient man.
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Yes, because only christians have ever been nice. Try reading a history book or something. Christians have no lock on either good or evil, kindness or meanness. Christians are just like everyone else - attempting to be better and often fucking it up. We’re all here together. Maybe try and see your fellow human beings as being imperfect but striving for something better.
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Is it:
Every time I look at you I don’t understand
Why you let the things you do get so out of hand
You’d have managed better if you had it planned
Why’d you choose such a backwards time in such a strange land?
If you’d come today, you would have picked up the nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication
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Christian values are what “you” want–which you have a right to.
1st Amendment to the U.S Constitution
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
If you need to believe in a mythical god in order to feel a sense of peace, find love, acquire forgiveness and salvation, that is great for you. As long as you do not attempt to impose your religious beliefs and requirements (based on your Christian definition for salvation) onto others.
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Right on!
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Is it:
At first I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
Without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights
Thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
And so you’re back
From outer space
I just walked in to find you here
With that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one second
You’d be back to bother me
Go on now go walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you’re not welcome anymore
Weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye
Did you think I’d crumble
Did you think I’d lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to love
I know I’ll stay alive
I’ve got all my life to live
I’ve got all my love to give
And I’ll survive
I will survive (hey-hey)
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Have you actually read the works of Sir. James George Frazier?-- I have.
Many Afrocentric and fair minded and unbiased European scholars are aware of his varied works and writings.
His works and writings specifically on Isis, Horus and Osiris do not substantiate your claim that:
“humans who had zero contact with other humans developed the same typical legends and myths surrounding religious prophets and heroes, for example.”
Excerpt from: Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922–About the African-Kemetic (Egyptian) goddess Isis
"…Thus chastened and transfigured she won many hearts far beyond the boundaries of her native land. In that welter of religions which accompanied the decline of national life in antiquity her worship was one of the most popular at Rome and throughout the empire.
Some of the Roman emperors themselves were openly addicted to it. And however the religion of Isis may, like any other, have been often worn as a cloak by men and women of loose life, her rites appear on the whole to have been honourably distinguished by a dignity and composure, a solemnity and decorum, well fitted to soothe the troubled mind, to ease the burdened heart. They appealed therefore to gentle spirits, and above all to women, whom the bloody and licentious rites of other Oriental goddesses only shocked and repelled.
We need not wonder, then, that in a period of decadence, when traditional faiths were shaken, when systems clashed, when men’s minds were disquieted, when the fabric of empire itself, once deemed eternal, began to show ominous rents and fissures, the serene figure of Isis with her spiritual calm, her gracious promise of immortality, should have appeared to many like a star in a stormy sky, and should have roused in their breasts a rapture of devotion not unlike that which was paid in the Middle Ages to the Virgin Mary…"
More from: Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough. 1922–On the African-Kemetic (Egyptian) goddess Isis.
" Indeed her stately ritual, with its shaven and tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music, its baptism and aspersions of holy water, its solemn processions, its jewelled images of the Mother of God, presented many points of similarity to the pomps and ceremonies of Catholicism.
The resemblance need not be purely accidental. Ancient Egypt may have contributed its share to the gorgeous symbolism of the Catholic Church as well as to the pale abstractions of her theology.
Certainly in art the figure of Isis suckling the infant Horus is so like that of the Madonna and child that it has sometimes received the adoration of ignorant Christians.
And to Isis in her later character of patroness of mariners the Virgin Mary perhaps owes her beautiful epithet of Stella Maris, “Star of the Sea,” under which she is adored by tempest-tossed sailors.
The attributes of a marine deity may have been bestowed on Isis by the sea-faring Greeks of Alexandria. They are quite foreign to her original character and to the habits of the Egyptians, who had no love of the sea.
On this hypothesis Sirius, the bright star of Isis, which on July mornings rises from the glassy waves of the eastern Mediterranean, a harbinger of halcyon weather to mariners, was the true Stella Maris, “the Star of the Sea.”
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Christianity contains some values (as you mentioned) that are part of goodness, yes, but also has been used by many to rationalize horrible, horrible things.
You don’t need some deity in the sky to be a delightful, kind person.
Great point!
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I think it’s fine for people to think their faith/way of life/ etc is best for them. It’s not fine for people to be dicks. As Wil Wheaton says, “don’t be a dick”.
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Yep, got the Gramercy unexpurgated edition here on the trophy shelf right next to Israel Regardie and Jean Raspail.
The trophy shelf is where I keep books that were so painful to read that I feel like I deserve a visible award for struggling through them. 
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Do you do children’s parties?
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I didn’t expect such an enlightened idea from you.
Yes, let’s.
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Love this loop spoofing the mythical character Jesus.
Feeding a flock of meek sheep. No savior could perform miracles like the Christian “Shepard” Jesus.
Turning one fish into two, now that’s some straight-up David Copperfield sheep ****.
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