Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by MrMacSon »

Robert Tulip wrote: ... the reality is [early christinaity is] more like the Cambrian Explosion, where the time became ripe for simultaneous emergence of the same idea in many places. Yes, my point of view is that early Christianity (ie first century and before) was Docetic and Gnostic, understanding Jesus Christ as a cosmic myth, not as a real person. As the church evolved into catholic belief, in the context of the use of Christ as a political weapon against Rome after the 70 AD destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, this cosmic mystery lacked the power to impel church growth, and had to be replaced by the simple literal story of orthodox faith.
or church growth was impelled by flesh being added to the story ie. it may not have been a concerted thing.
Robert Tulip wrote:The myth of Jesus Christ was seen by the early church as a high moral vision, grounded in solar cosmology. However, as Stephan has pointed out, Orthodox Judaism was hostile to nature worship, having smashed the groves of Yahweh’s wife Asherah to obliterate its own origins. Following military defeat of the Jews by Rome, Christ as cosmic myth could not inspire a feasible political organising strategy. The church, centred on Hellenizing Jews and their allies, needed plausible deniability regarding sedition, while still being able to secretly teach seditious messages. This stratagem produced the Nazarene/Nazareth distinction, with the invented place of Nazareth used to deny that Christianity represented the seditious Nazarene sect, in line with the Romans 13 injunction of surface loyalty to the Empire. The strategic objective for the church was to generate a doctrine of moral legitimacy, and thereby deny legitimacy to the Empire. That attitude goes back to Daniel and the vision of the four successive empires buffeting Israel.

With estimated 3% literacy in the community of the time, the Christ story had to be simplified in order to provide a framework for popular belief. So when Mark came up with the beautiful story of the crucified saviour of Galilee, making real the cosmic myth, it appears to have struck such a deep popular nerve in popular culture that many could not imagine it was anything other than historical fact.
I like this -
Robert Tulip wrote:God is a meme with strong durability, fecundity and stability. In looking at how religious belief evolves, one way in which the meme differs from the gene is in the stability of the transmission. Genes have strong copy fidelity, only mutating very rarely, with most mutations causing death. By contrast, the mutation of memes is far faster and more various. To stabilise the God meme, preventing unwanted diversity, the church had to anathematise contrary views.

...

The Christian meme became that belief in the story of the incarnation was a test of faith, a shibboleth. Pagans such as Celsus regarded this Christian method with contempt, as there was no historical evidence that Jesus lived, and abundant evidence of invention. However, history shows that this meme of the Word made Flesh proved more powerful than pagan logic, and produced the Dark Ages. This meme of blind faith is only now unravelling at the popular level.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by arnoldo »

Robert Tulip wrote:
arnoldo wrote:According to Hans Urs von Balthasar, the perception of "atheism" and orthodox christianity have become reversed between the second and 21st century.
von Balthasar wrote:Today Christianity is regarded as an “otherworldly” religion, whereas pagan atheism claims to be an affirmation of life in this world. In the second century, Gnosticism, the anti-christian experiment, was seen to be a flight from the world and the body, a pale and arid spiritualism. It replaced the real world-violent, indeed sinful, yet redeemable by God, and actually redeemed through the Incarnation of the Word—with an imaginary world, thus splitting the one nature of man in two. Christianity, by contrast, proved its plausibility not least because it wholeheartedly acknowledged the goodness of creation, and gladly and bravely affirmed man, man threatened by destiny, sin, and death as well as God.
Arnoldo, von Balthasar’s comment illustrates the difficulty of dialogue with faith, as his comments are a superb example of what Orwell called protective stupidity in the text you requoted. Neil Godfrey may tut-tut at my lack of respect for a champion of faith and leading light of the curia, but the agenda here is analysis, not deference.

Apart from his first correct description of the current view of the relation between atheism and Christianity, every sentence in Balthasar's paragraph is wrong, based on massive long standing false Catholic assumptions.

He asserts that Christianity has “actually redeemed the real world through the incarnation”. This is a statement of pure faith, a belief grounded in acceptance of the historicity of the Gospels and the theology constructed upon them by dogma. This entire dogmatic framework is imaginary, deriving its social power from its impudent assertion of historical accuracy.

Then, Balthasar’s depiction of Gnosticism is empty heresiology. Calling Gnosticism an “anti-christian experiment” and implying that it arose in the second century, simply accepts the fraudulent framework built by the church to justify its historicist fiction. The far more plausible evolution is from Gnosticism to Christianity, gradually developed over centuries beforehand by mystery schools, with the original ladder kicked away after the emotionally comforting and popular incarnational myth had finally been developed by Mark. The weight of messianic expectation built up by Gnostic theology was so great that Mark was the spark to convert fantasy to imagined fact.

Next, Balthasar disparages the demiurge idea of an evil subordinate maker of the cosmos by his claim that Gnosticism failed to “acknowledge the goodness of creation.” This is more empty gonging. The meaning of the Gnostic doctrine of the demiurge is highly complex. Its coherence rests in a vision that is compatible with the Judeo-Christian idea of the fall from grace. Cosmos means world. World is not simply the physical planet, but as Heidegger argued, our constructed framework of meaning, interpreting nature and truth through language. So Gnosticism can be read as holding that our constructed framework of meaning is degraded and false, even though an eternal natural truth exists behind the appearance.

Gnosticism is not a “flight from the world and the body” any more than Pauline Christianity is. Paul taught to follow the path of spirit and spurn the path of the flesh. This was not an assertion that material reality is evil, but rather that ethics requires a vision of what is enduring, a sense of the eternal ideal values of faith that give purpose and direction to material life through language.

Thanks arnoldo for providing this clear example from von Balthasar of a conventional theological perspective on Gnosticism. I just don't think we will get any reliable views out of the Curia, even with the reforms of Francis. The entire institution of the Roman Catholic Church is too corrupted by power and dogmatic inertia, by centuries of only listening to what they want to hear, and by constructing an imaginary fantasy to serve their temporal interests. They are built on sand, not rock.

Noting that von Balthasar died in 1988, your suggestion that he presents a 21st century inversion seems more relevant to the last century. What is happening now in this new century is a paradigm shift, an effort for dialogue between faith and reason, from a view that faith needs to humble itself, recognising the primacy of reason as regards facts, to provide a framework for faith to assert values.
Another interesting reversal between the second and twenty first century involves the term atheism. In second century Roman culture allegedly one group of people who were charged with being atheists were Christians.


The Cambridge Companion to Atheism

While gnostic christians could've possibly been charged with atheism my guess is that proto-orthodox christians were mostly accused of atheism. Either way, it's interesting to note how concepts can become reversed by the passage of time and culture.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

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Robert Tulip wrote: Thanks Arnoldo. I see the point you have raised here as central. Rather than the Big Bang Theory of Christianity exploding from an individual founder as point source, the reality is more like the Cambrian Explosion, where the time became ripe for simultaneous emergence of the same idea in many places. Yes, my point of view is that early Christianity (ie first century and before) was Docetic and Gnostic, understanding Jesus Christ as a cosmic myth, not as a real person. As the church evolved into catholic belief, in the context of the use of Christ as a political weapon against Rome after the 70 AD destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, this cosmic mystery lacked the power to impel church growth, and had to be replaced by the simple literal story of orthodox faith.
I don't think the evolution was that simple. The cosmic mystery figure became transformed into a recently-existing man on earth after 70 so that one faction of the evangelists could 'prove' their authority and wisdom, by showing that the Christ figure had alluded to the fall of the temple in historic time. This move went over well with the common people, but was extremely risky among the church intelligentsia, causing ruptures, with the original groups soon forced to define themselves against the Catholics: either more authentic, e.g. the Ebionites and Nazareans, or more philosophical, e.g. the Sethians and Valentinians. The Catholics won by an aggressive propaganda and disinformation campaign whereby everyone outside their circle became smeared as lunatics or worse.

Robert Tulip wrote: The Christian meme became that belief in the story of the incarnation was a test of faith, a shibboleth. Pagans such as Celsus regarded this Christian method with contempt, as there was no historical evidence that Jesus lived, and abundant evidence of invention. However, history shows that this meme of the Word made Flesh proved more powerful than pagan logic, and produced the Dark Ages. This meme of blind faith is only now unravelling at the popular level.
The Catholics developed the ability to appeal to both intellectuals and the common people, who otherwise had little in common. The other groups either would not or could not do that and therefore went extinct.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by Robert Tulip »

neilgodfrey wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:The allegory between Christ and the Sun as the light of the world makes complete sense in terms of the natural observational cosmology available to the ancient world….we would expect that ancient knowledge of the apparent movement of the sun would form the framework for John's doctrine of cosmic reason, the word made flesh.
Robert, are you saying that the only prediction you can make is that you will identify a few other references in the Gospel that can similarly be interpreted with the same cosmology allegory?
The prediction is that the New Testament can accurately be understood against the hypothesis that its original unifying authorial intent was to describe nature through allegory. This method of scientific interpretation applies comprehensively to the parable of Christ as the Sun, from birth to miracles, mission, cross, resurrection and return.
neilgodfrey wrote: How is such a prediction worth anything? I think I could make up just about any hypothesis and predict I can find "a range of" images or terms throughout the Gospel that could be interpreted in its terms.
This is not making stuff up. It is seeing our common reality, and exploring how the Bible conveys universal truth. We live in a real universe, with a real description. The sun and moon are objectively real, as the two brightest lights in the sky. The moon goes round the earth twelve times every year, forming the natural foundation of all traditional understanding of time. "Incarnation" means that reality is manifest. The Biblical doctrine of Christ and the twelve manifests the real presence of what we can see with our eyes in the main cycles of nature, on earth as in heaven.

That is why Christ says at Mark 8:18 that the meaning of the parable of the loaves and fishes is βλέπετε ‘Can’t you see?’ At Mark 6:38, He said to them, "How many loaves do you have? Go see." When they knew, they said, "Five, and two fish." Greek scholars could help us explain why this text uses γνόντες, cognate to gnosis, in such a contrived way. And ἴδετε, see. To my reading these terms are obvious gnostic reference to vision and knowledge of the visible cosmos.
neilgodfrey wrote: Compare the prediction that my literary-theological hypothesis made on the miracle of the loaves. Your prediction is vague and patchy and no different from the potential ability of almost any other hypothesis one could think of.
Thanks Neil for offering such a vigorous skeptical contest. But your argument is a bit like saying modern astronomy is vague and patchy. My hypothesis says the Bible is based on actual reality. Any other hypothesis would differ from what we can actually see and know, to use the terms Christ employs to explain this miracle of the loaves and fishes.
neilgodfrey wrote: The point of prediction is to explain something otherwise not understood very well at all. On that basis your hypothesis has no predictive value at all. It is unfalsifiable.
With abundant respect, that is a remarkable comment. Of course the Gospel miracles are not well understood. A large number of Christians think they are evidence that God breaks the laws of physics. Atheists think they are evidence the Bible is talking through its butt. I say they encode accurate visions of reality. The test of falsification in this case is coherence. Against both the modern posterior derivation theory of Biblical meaning and the traditional Bullwinkle's hat version, the power, durability and stability of Biblical influence are far better explained by exploring for a concealed natural meaning that accords with scientific knowledge.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

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Robert Tulip wrote:. . A large number of Christians think they are evidence that God breaks the laws of physics. Atheists think they are evidence the Bible is talking through its butt. I say they encode accurate visions of reality. The test of falsification in this case is coherence. Against both the modern posterior derivation theory of Biblical meaning and the traditional Bullwinkle's hat version, the power, durability and stability of Biblical influence are far better explained by exploring for a concealed natural meaning that accords with scientific knowledge.

William Henry believes that the miracles attributed to Jesus are according to the laws of physics. . . perhaps just not those from our plane of existence. The quote below is from THE SECRET OF SION: Jesus’s Stargate, the Beaming Garment and the Galactic Core in Ascension Art.
Modern particle physics provides a mechanism for dematerialization: conversion of the matter of an object into neutrinos, which are high energy elementary particles that interact very weakly with normal matter and thus would be invisible. The image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin has certain features scientists would expect to arise in the neutrino dematerialization process. . . I explored the ancient Egyptian imagery of the star gate of eternity as found in the story of Osiris. First, Osiris transforms into his bright white “karast” garment. Then, he climbs aboard the “Ship of Eternity” or “Ark of the Millions of Years” as a light being and travels for eternity upon this ship. I was the first to note that the shape and function of his ship perfectly matches the modern wormhole. I propose that Osiris was the way shower of the Egyptian belief that humans could become celestial beings and travel through wormholes.
http://www.williamhenry.net/sion_book.html
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by Robert Tulip »

arnoldo wrote:William Henry believes that the miracles attributed to Jesus are according to the laws of physics. . . perhaps just not those from our plane of existence.
The scientific principle known as parsimony, or elegance, teaches that when we have two rival explanations, the simpler and more predictive is to be preferred. Miracles were decisively analysed against this principle of parsimony, known as Ockham’s Razor, by the 18th century philosopher David Hume, who argued it is more likely that people were wrong or deceptive than that an event occurred that conflicts with all other known events. Expanding on Hume’s analysis, it is more likely that miracle stories began as fictional allegory aimed at conveying a religious parable, and the assertion of their literal occurrence was a political response by the church which found the claim of a magical messiah to be doctrinally convenient.

My view is that an astrotheological reading of the Bible stands up strongly against the scientific principle of parsimony, whereas imaginative speculation such as Henry's theories about wormholes do not. The difference is that precessional cosmology existed in ancient times, whereas there is no evidence for wormholes, or for pretty well anything conflicting with current scientific knowledge.

I will now gradually go through the detailed comments from Neil Godfrey in this thread that contest my claim of the scientific elegance of astrotheology.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

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The fact that Mark used midrash as his method, inventing the Jesus story on the basis of Old Testament texts, tells us nothing of his motive. The midrash data, as Price cogently argues, creates extreme suspicion regarding traditional assumptions that the Gospels reflect an oral tradition from Jesus. The extensive use of midrash indicates that the real oral tradition must have been extremely different. For example, the loaves and fishes is not a distorted recollection of an actual event performed by Jesus, but it must reflect some sort of oral tradition within proto-Christianity, in view of its central role in all the Gospels. My view is that this oral tradition reflects a Gnostic agenda with a motive to construct a new religion suitable for the emerging political circumstances of the common era.

Evidentiary analysis of historical events looks to means, motive and opportunity in disputed cases, on the basis of their use to assess the facts in criminal law. Astrotheology, with its focus on Jesus as the Sun, primarily focusses on the motive of the founders of Christianity.
The suggested intent is to provide a plausible new religious explanation of how the temporal events of the world can be explained against a high knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, to the extent that such knowledge was available in ancient times. Jesus Christ, as imagined mediator, appears as the point of connection between the uncertain world of appearance and the certain reality of eternal truth, typified most clearly in the orderly motion of the cosmos.

Cosmology is therefore central to motive, whereas midrash can be understood primarily as a contribution to the method or means used to write the Gospels.

This adds to comments I made here.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by Robert Tulip »

neilgodfrey wrote:You have no evidence that the evangelists were mindful of some "star clock of history" and your interpretation fails to account for most of the details of the miracle. My explanation accounts for most of the miracle's details therefore my explanation is to be preferred.
As I have already noted, the midrash reading of the loaves and fishes accounts only for the method, not the motive. It was convenient for Mark to draw from Jewish heritage in constructing the Christ myth. This tells us nothing of why he used the Gnostic themes of knowledge and vision in his text, as I explained above, or why he has Christ chuck such a tanty about the failure of his disciples to comprehend the real meaning of the miracle (ie its astrotheological content). It is essential in analysis of religious texts to explain why the author considered something to be important. Unfortunately the midrash method fails utterly on that score.

There is abundant evidence that the evangelists were aware of precession, which is not just “some” star clock of history but is the actual long term structure of time, correctly defined by Copernicus as the third motion of the earth, visible in various ancient uses of the precessional number 4320, and known explicitly in Greek astronomy more than a century before Christ.

Norman Lockyer, discoverer of helium and founder of the journal Nature, intensively studied Egyptian astronomy and concluded that “the effects of precession were familiar to the Egyptians.” For the evangelists, we find the star clock of precession appearing in the 'first and last' archetype of Christ, the law-grace covenant motif, the fish symbolism, the man with the water jug showing the way to the upper room, the loaves and fishes, and the concept of the age as the basis of eschatology.

The Apocalypse is the abundantly precessional text of the Bible, for example with the alpha-omega motif, the moon at the foot of the woman, the holy city, the king of the ages, and the bear-lion-leopard as marking precession of the North Celestial Pole.

I understand that scientifically ignorant people can easily ignore these facts, but that does not detract from the reality.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by Robert Tulip »

neilgodfrey wrote: the method used to argue astrotheology is fallacious. That's why I dismiss it. It is not because I have some bias against astrotheology at all. I would be very willing to embrace such an explanation if it could be established by valid methods.
Fundamentalist Christians cannot see scientific evidence, but rational critical people should be able to see the abundant solar imagery for Christ indicated in the core meaning of the loaves and fishes parable as explained by Jesus at Mark 8:18, “Having eyes, don't you see?”
neilgodfrey wrote: Jungian archetypes etc are a hypothesis that cannot be imputed into the evidence without some valid testing.
I haven’t really seen where Carl Jung ever explained his archetype theory very clearly, but I still consider it a central idea, with the ideas of Christ, cross and heaven functioning as archetypes or core universal symbols. These concepts have such strong mass emotional resonance that we should be impelled to explore what natural cause generates the popular interest. As I see it, the ground of these ideas is in natural theology, in the way the Gospel story reflects accurate observation of the cosmos.
neilgodfrey wrote: Are you prepared to listen to other explanations that explain that distant origins or associations of customs do not necessarily mean those explanations are still valid or that some other interest has taken over in time?
Yes, I am prepared to listen to other explanations. I think that such explanations should be the subject of courteous dialogue. As to the general phrase “some other interest”, I am all ears as to what that might mean.
neilgodfrey wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:To illustrate the centrality of sun worship in Ancient Israel, see this article about the book Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel by Biblical Scholar Rev. Dr. J. Glen Taylor.
How much of this book have you actually read and how carefully? Can you point to anything in Taylor's work that supports your or Murdock's argument for astrotheology?
The first article explains that Asherah was Yahweh's wife, contrary to the Josiahite misogyny. The broad point is that Taylor, a Christian scholar, demonstrates that prevailing opinion about universal hostility to sun worship in Judaism reflects propaganda, not facts.

Here is Murdock’s comment on Taylor in her e-book Jesus as the Sun:
The exploration of Christ as a solar figure includes a study of ancient sun worship not only in the Pagan world but also in Israel, as exhibited by the solar nature of Jesus’s purported Father, the Israelite god Yahweh. Demonstrating the copious substantiation for Israelite sun worship, especially as concerns the main Jewish god, in Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel, Rev. Dr. J. Glen Taylor, a theologian and professor of Old Testament and Biblical Proclamation at Wycliffe College, remarks:
This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation entitled “Solar Worship in the Biblical World” which was submitted to the Graduate School of Yale University in the Spring of 1989. As may be judged from the title of that work, I had at one time planned to cover more territory than sun worship in ancient Israel, but found the material pertaining to ancient Israel so vast that I never got beyond it.1
The description of Yahweh and the Sun states,
“This challenging provocative book argues that there was in ancient Israel a considerable degree of overlap between the worship of the sun and of Yahweh—even that Yahweh was worshipped as the sun in some contexts.” 2
As Rev. Dr. Taylor further says:
Probably the most provocative issue related to the nature of sun worship in ancient Israel...is the specific claim that Yahweh was identified with the sun.3
Taylor discusses Yahweh as a sun god—terming this adulation “solar Yahwism”—as reflected in the sun worship by Israelites described in the biblical texts of Deuteronomy, the Prophets, Job and the Psalms. He also addresses linguistic evidence as well as various archaeological finds that reveal Israelite sun worship, including artifacts such as sun disks and temple/shrine alignments.

Taylor concludes:
“in at least the vast majority of cases, biblical passages which refer to sun worship in Israel do not refer to a foreign phenomenon borrowed by idolatrous Israelites, but to a Yahwistic phenomenon which Deuteronomistic theology came to look upon as idolatrous.... an association between Yahweh and the sun was not limited to one or two obscure contexts, but was remarkably well integrated into the religion of ancient Israel.
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Re: Acharya S and the real Christ Conspiracy

Post by Robert Tulip »

neilgodfrey wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: And how interesting that a google search for solar worship in ancient Israel primarily turns up material discussed by Murdock.
Which is why a google search is not necessarily the best form of scholarly inquiry. Search the same terms on Google Scholar and compare your results.
Thanks, that is interesting. Here is the Google scholar result for solar worship in ancient Israel. The value of Murdock’s work is that she is pioneering new innovative approaches, whereas some scholarly inquiry in these topics is corrupted by theistic belief. It is fair to approach Murdock’s claims with caution in view of the lack of peer review and institutional framework, but small irrelevant mistakes should not be used as grounds for disparaging the core theses of astrotheology.
neilgodfrey wrote: There is a huge difference between physics and the humanities and social sciences. The comparison is invalid.
The subject matters differ, but that does not at all mean they entirely lack similar methods. Social sciences are entirely able to uncover facts about reality. When social science uses a premise that has been rejected by physical science, such as young earth creationism, it destroys the credibility of all claims resting on the false premise.

My point was that belief in the historical Jesus Christ is just as false as belief in Young Earth Creationism, so Christian liberal theology faces the same scientific problem regarding faulty foundations.
neilgodfrey wrote: It's a shame you dismiss the bulk of biblical scholarshp (it nearly all, at least in NT/Christian origins studies) assumes the historical existence of Jesus. It's a shame because you have missed so much. I have learned much about "Jewish social traditions", literary critical analysis, etc etc etc through the scholarship you dismiss.
I like theology, and have enjoyed reading writers such as Brunner, Borg, Bonhoeffer, Boff and Barth. But they routinely mix in accurate philosophical and historical reflection together with speculation that is based on tradition rather than on evidence. Sorting the wheat from the weeds, extracting evidence from within tradition, is helped by discounting claims that rest on the pervasive historical assumption that Jesus actually lived. There is still a lot to learn while applying this skeptical rule.
neilgodfrey wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Ulansey rejects Frank Zindler’s argument that Christ is Avatar of the Age of Pisces, so it is clear that Ulansey has a superficial understanding of precession in religion. This illustrates that scholarly debate on these topics is in its infancy.
Do the actual arguments count for anything or does the fact that he disagrees tell you all you need to know?
Your quoting is selective. Before the sentence you cite, I said “As I have noted in this thread, Ulansey presents an implausible precession theory, linking Mithras to the star group Perseus where a precessional view would have to link him to Aries.” That directly answered your question already, if you understood it, illustrating that your barb missed its target.
neilgodfrey wrote: A hypothesis can suggest much, but only what is testable, provable, should be presented as what has been tested and proved. That is where you and Murdock jump the rails.
Before making such criticisms, it would help to find specific examples. The standards of proof in Biblical Studies are controversial. Murdock and I have both presented hypotheses about the real origins of Christian ideas. What would be ‘jumping the rails’ to use your image, would be to claim that these hypotheses are more widely understood and accepted than is in fact the case.

Again, we see here an imputation of deception where the reality is more just a difference of opinion. Murdock argues that claims are coherent and sensible within a broader understanding of religious evolution. That is different from providing detailed empirical proof, especially regarding topics where much evidence was deliberately destroyed because it conflicted with dogma.
neilgodfrey wrote: Newton, Kepler and co all believed heaps of rubbish at the same time they were making brilliant insights. Just because they still were products in so many ways of the remnants of dark ages does not mean we should return to those remnants too.
That comment reminds me of Freud’s fear that Jung represented a black tide of mud. Kepler was in fact the first recorded user of the phrase ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’. Separating the rubbish from the valuable work in early astronomy and physics is by no means as easy as you suggest.

Your claim is false that the Hermetic ideas informing Kepler and Newton were “remnants of the dark ages”. In fact, these ideas were at the core of the renaissance, the rediscovery of classical science, and had been lost through the dark ages of Christendom. Hermetic ideas provided the framework upon which modern science was built, the shoulders of giants who were ignored after the modern mechanistic consensus had been developed.
neilgodfrey wrote: we understand by now that you do not practice or view astrology in the same way as it is understood in popular culture; yes, we understand you do not believe your are trying to disguise astrology as science because in your view science means something different from what it means to most of us here and in your mind the question of "disguising as science" does not arise.
I remind readers that my “something different” regarding the meaning of science is that I think scientific claims are true, whereas contributors such as Roger Pearse have argued in this thread that I am wrong to say science is correct. Roger also said, surprisingly, that scientists have no opinion on whether anything is impossible. But Neil sees fit to make some vague criticism about my philosophy of science just because I say I believe in science. I am perfectly happy to defend my approach to science as a key source of objective truth. If others have a lower regard for what science can accomplish that is their error.
neilgodfrey wrote: I do not believe that many of the philosophers or scientists you have referred to would think you have properly interpreted or understood them. You mentioned Dawkins recently in the context of a need for reverence for the natural world. Do you really believe he means that in the same sense, with all the same connotations, as you are using it?
Yes, I do have the same sense of reverence for the natural world as Richard Dawkins in terms of wonder at the awesome grandeur of the complexity of evolution. As to connotations, my view is that the ancient Gnostics also shared this same sense of natural wonder and awe, but I suspect that Dawkins has less respect for early thought.
neilgodfrey wrote: science is value based. But to suggest that it is a guide for ethics or is an ideology is mistaken. Values create and guide the scientific method, not the other way around.
That is an epistemological and ethical error. Modern thought is grounded on the primacy of objective discovery of facts. To suggest that this empirical ground for thinking never functions as an ideology or guide for ethics is ridiculous. We constantly see politicians lambasted over their ethical refusal to give primacy to facts. Science discovers evidence. People routinely assume that it is good to act in accordance with what evidence shows, and bad to ignore or deny evidence. The scientific method of seeking truth from facts is a key guide for values. The honest disputes are about the content of evidence, not whether people should follow the principle of using evidence to guide their decisions and opinions.
neilgodfrey wrote: How can one know "intent", the mind, of an author apart from a discussion that is limited to structure and comparison with similar or other literary structures -- that is, by means of literary criticism? Your scenario bounces way beyond the evidence.
In the specific example we are discussing, the loaves and fishes miracle, Jesus explains his intent in Mark 8 by noting that the disciples fail to see, hear, understand or remember what he means, and by placing the miracle in the Gnostic context of knowledge and vision. In the parable of the sower, Jesus explains his intent by saying the seed on the path and among thorns and rocks is true teaching that fails to find a receptive hearing and bear fruit, whereas seed in rich soil is allegory for fecund teaching. The intent is explained, and not just by means of structural criticism. With the loaves and fishes, we get a lot more meaning from the text directly than from comparison to its midrashic structural sources.
neilgodfrey wrote: You are presuming the answer is in your analysis of the evidence. What this is communicating to me is that any explanation that does not mesh with cosmology is wrong or inadequate. That's confirmation bias for starters.
Just quoting this text again, in the context of Neil’s subsequent plea to “please read what I say. I nowhere said “any explanation that does not mesh with cosmology is wrong or inadequate” is confirmation bias. Again, you seem to only read every second word of any criticism of your approach.” Neil made that request in direct response to my statement “What I was getting at what that you characterised my view that “any explanation that does not mesh with cosmology is wrong or inadequate” as confirmation bias.” I agree this shows it is valuable to read carefully.
neilgodfrey wrote: Your use of "meme" also worries me. Why not just use "concept", "idea", image? Or mytheme -- something that is part of the acknowledged literature on the way myths are transmitted?
’Meme’ is an important philosophical concept, capturing the evolutionary idea that everything in a growing living system builds on the precedent of what went before. Darwin’s theory of cumulative adaptation applies to ideas as much as to organisms. The idea of Jesus Christ evolved from earlier ideas about salvation and anointing. The point of the theory of memes is to define a temporal logic, a theory of change, explaining the causal path of the emergence of the idea.

For example, the tendency of the Gods of conquered people to return in a subordinate position in a new pantheon illustrates a memetic evolutionary structure in the history of ideas. We are seeing that evolutionary process work its way through now as the obsolete Gods of religion look for a position within the rational scientific pantheon.
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