Reply #88: My thoughts exactly [View All]

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on the mythology score. As a matter of fact, there have also been many similarities between Mary and several of the "old time" goddesses, like Isis, Freya, even Hera/Juno. Just another place, a different day.

While reading this thread, it also occurred to me that historically, there are other "heroes" who have been elevated to cult status along the way, King Arthur among them. Rumor has it that there WAS some guy named Arthur, or Arturo, since England was under Roman rule around that same time, who helped to organize a lot of the local tribes and help them win scuffles. From the reality of a grim, bellicose local tribesman to the mythological Arthur is a great leap of faith as well. Yet the Christian mythology has been supported for two millennia because some people, especially those who are rich, powerful and male, want to continue to line their pockets with gold, silver and jewels, as well as keep their power and domains.

I'm not saying some guy named Jesus (Hay-sus) didn't live around 1 BCE, because frankly I don't care if he actually lived. But it's amazing what people will do to elevate someone to god status in order to have something to believe in, if that's their gig. If Jesus were alive today, he would have been declared insane as a schizophrenic, and sent to an asylum where his daily clothing would have included a straitjacket. And if he had people who believed in him, he would have been derogated as a cult leader like Jim Jones or Rev Moon, and brought up on criminal charges. Different times, different approaches to what he/she represented. It's pretty much why no real "Christ" figure has managed to come forward in today's world--we would not recognize him with all the wannabees who seem to have a market on god-given importance.

Faith is taking assumptions to the next level. People want to have faith because it absolves them of failures in their own lives. It also hides a lot of "badness" in people, who insist that the "bible" condemns homosexuality and other intolerances. But people forget that the version of the bible most people read nowadays is hardly the text written two millenia ago. It's been abridged, annotated, translated, re-translated, copied incorrectly and incompletely, tainted by personal prejudice, rewritten by dictators and their servants, and essentially been turned for the most part into a work of fiction no more true than the Iliad, the Odyssey, the stories of Mu and Atlantis, Camelot and King Arthur, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Robin Hood, and almost anything written prior to the introduction of bulk printing.