Questions to think about as you read POCM > Pagan Ideas

POCM's basic question is, Where did Christianity get it's ideas? Lets start with slavery. Pagans believed in slavery first. The first Christians grew up knowing about Pagan slavery. Christians had slavery second. Will you agree with me that the first Christians did not reinvent slavery on their own? Of course you will. We agree Christians borrowed slavery from Pagans (and Judaism).

Have you spotted the trajectory here? I mean the trajectory of the facts, and POCM's reasoning. See how it progresses from something Christianity certainly borrowed, slavery, through strange (to us) stuff Christianity must also have borrowed—magic dreams, demons—to not-strange (to us) stuff at the core of our faith.

As you read POCM > Pagan Ideas the questions to ask yourself are,

	What reasoning supports our conclusion that Christianity borrowed slavery?
	And when we apply that same reasoning to dreams, demons, miracles, God and the eternal life of the human soul, don't we get the same answer: Christianity borrowed?
	If not, why not?

We'll chat more about POCM's reasoning at POCM > Borrowing

At POCM > The End, I'll tell you what I think. For completeness. I know you don't care what I think. I don't want you to care what I think. I want you to learn the facts, think about the reasons, and decide for yourself.

Isis and Child	Mary and Child

Did the fellows who wrote our Christian New Testament sit down with the Revised Standard Version of the Gospel of Mithras open on their desk, so they could sneak in the best stuff, point by point? No they didn't. Don't be silly.

Christianity doesn't have Pagan origins in the sense that early Christians copied legends and myths. Christianity has Pagan origins in the sense that the religious ideas around which Christianity was built are exactly the religious ideas common at the time Christianity began. Core Christian theologies are core Pagan theologies; early Christians simply adopted the religious preconceptions of their culture. Did they rearrange some things, innovate even? Sure. Everyone who ever started a religion did. But Christianity's most basic ideas—God, the Son of God, miracles as a sign of divinity, salvation, baptism, eucharist, souls, morality, Heaven, Hell, and many many more—are all Pagan ideas.

Christianity is an ancient Pagan religion.

Interesting website and well done. I do however completely disagree with you. Thanks for the challenge.

You don't charge anyone for the stuff you borrow

Every time you borrow, you tell folks it came from POCM and
link back to the page you got it from, or just to:  www.pocm.info

You really really promise to live with goodness and goodwill in your heart.

My name is Wade Duroe and I like to think about stuff.

For some people the story of Jesus is nothing more than myths and tales borrowed from other cultures and religions and adapted to a Jewish-Christian world view.

But just because a story is repeated from one time to another, or from one culture to another, or from one religion to another, does not determine whether any specific example of the story is true or not. Each story, as told or retold, must stand on its own merits

Wade's analysis misses POCM's point.
1. Christianity did not copy myths. Christianity copied the ancient western conceptual model of the universe, including the religious ideas around which each ancient religion built it's own myths.

2. POCM asserts more than repetition. POCM asserts direct copying.

3. POCM does not address whether the myths are true or not, only whether they are copied.

It’s possible that the very frequency of repetition, from one time, culture and religion to another, lends credibility to a core of truth within the story line.

Christians do not deny that elements from Jesus Christ’s birth and life have appeared in the stories and tales of other religions and cultures. We do not argue that everything that occurred in Jesus’ life was unique.

But we do argue that the repetition of these stories and tales adds substance and credibility to a core of truth, which we find fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

We argue that the other stories, tales and myths from other cultures and religions were only hinting at the revelation made in Jesus Christ.

We argue that the sheer volume of these stories all told within the life of Christ add credibility to His story. He was born to a virgin as the special creative act of God the Father. His forerunner, John the Baptist, shared a similarly miraculous birth announcement and birth. A star marked Jesus’ birth. He was hailed by foreign wise men as well as the angels of heaven. He healed the sick. He raised the dead. He cast out demons. He made the lame to walk and the blind to see. He walked upon the water. He fed 5000 with a few loaves and fish. He claimed authority to forgive sins. He called Himself the Lord of the Sabbath. He predicted His own suffering and death. He was crucified, dead and buried. He was raised from the dead. He appeared to His followers. He ascended into heaven. He predicted that He would return someday.

I accept Wade's admission that the Christian myths are essentially the same as the earlier Pagan myths.

Wade and I basically agree. POCM's point is there is no consistent, reasoned analysis of the evidence that can pick out Christianity as fundamentally different from other ancient Pagan religions. Christianity is an ancient Pagan religion.

Wade agrees. He is unable to give a rational, cause and effect, actually-possible explanation of the facts that preserves the truth of his myths. His solution is to explain the facts with God's magic. Wade says the similarities happened on account of some sort of magical pre-revelation revelation.

I do not know if Wade is correct or not. Magical solutions like his can not be analyzed rationally. "God is omnipotent." God can do anything. God's magic can overcome any set of contrary facts.

By the way, Wade's analysis dates back to Justin Martyr, in the second century AD. Like Wade, Justin saw the deep similarities between Christianity and Paganism, and like Wade Justin saw that a rational analysis demanded the conclusion that Christianity borrowed. Like Wade, Justin and other early fathers found their way around that inevitable conclusion by dreaming up a magical solution, in their case "Demonic imitation."

From the gods and men of other times, cultures and religions you can find isolated examples of many of these events. But you do not find them altogether in the story of one Man. In the life of Jesus Christ, the stories and myths that appeared in part in other cultures and religions have been fulfilled.

Wade repeats his magical analysis, but offers no evidence or rational analysis to support it. Because there is none.

The stories about Jesus Christ have been grounded in history by the gospel writers, predicted in the Old Testament by the prophets and supported by the findings of archaeology.

Truth is stranger than fiction. The old tales and mythological stories that were told at various times and places pointed to something far greater than anyone could imagine: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, our Savior.

Wade repeats his magical analysis, in support of which he asserts the gospels are history, and the magic stories in them are true. Wade can offer no evidence, or facts, or analysis in support of the claims

Wade's analysis is a striking example of Christianity's decline. 170 years of critical scholarship, dating back at least to J. Strauss' Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835), have demolished any possible rational defense of the gospels as history. Conservative believers are unable to refute Strauss' analysis, but they are able to ignore it. And they do.

Conservative scholarship generally begins with the axiom that the bible stories are true, and "reasons" from there. Fine. We can all be friends. But the result is

1. Conservative believers—Wade is an example—are unaware of the most basic facts and reasons supporting the conclusions of critical scholarship. It's not that they don't believe the reasoning; it's that they don't even know what it is.

2. Conservative "scholarship" fails to address critical facts and reasons, making conservative "scholarship" an in-house exercise, persuasive only to the already persuaded.

3. Conservative apologetics often, as in Wade's case, boils down simply to pep-rally boosterism, repeating what you believe, over and over, as if really really meaning what you say will make it true.

Stubborn insistence on the truth of the ancient myths is, in my opinion, is a recipe for the decline and fall of the religion. Makes you look silly. The greater culture laughs at you. The crappy thing is that as they ride their myths into irrelevance, conservative believers are taking with them the values—the morality, the belief in right and wrong and goodness and evil—that have been at the center of our culture and success.

That's a bad thing.