This is a further response that began in my previous post:
Re: Mythicism, Minimalism, and its Detractors
I said: This is where I think Acharya/Murdock has one key to understanding a larger perspective. There are only two baaic factors that all humans in all places and time periods have shared: a basic human nature and psychoological functioning; and a common enviornmental experience.
Verenna said: “I don’t accept that all humans have a common environmental experience. We all have “environmental experiences” but they are not common. The degrees by which they vary is why we have jerks and humanitarians and humanitarian jerks.”
I wasn’t talking about common environmental experience as a social factor, but that plays in as well because research shows that social development follows common patterns. Rather, what I was talking about is the physical environment: sun and moon, stars and planets; seasons along with daily and yearly solar cycles; migration and growth patterns; universal scientific laws. Et Cetera. These environmental experiences (including the social aspects as well) are common to “jerks and humanitarians and humanitarian jerks.” There is nothing overly controversial about my claim.
I said: As for the latter, the most universal experience humans share is the observation of the sky.
Verenna said: “I disagree. I think the most universal experience is death. Some cultures looked up and others looked down. Others still looked in the trees, in the water, in the wind… don’t let Acharya S pull the wool over your eyes. Not every culture looked up and saw the same thing. And not every culture looked down and saw the same thing.”
I certainly wasn’t arguing against other universal human experiences. Whichever is the most universal, both death and the sky are themes found in every culture.
Your constant condescension is rude and childish. You’ve already made it clear that you perceive yourself as a scholar whose insight is simply above my head and I’m a mere simpleton who has been duped. It’s good you have such a high appraisal of yourself. Personally, I prefer humility.
As I’ve already said, I read widely beyond Acharya/Murdock: other mythicists, comparative mythologists, psychologists and sociologists, socio-historical commentators, and much else. Not every culture looked up and came up with the exact same myth. However, every culture observerd the same patterns and there are plenty of examples where they interpreted them similarly. For example, cultural transmission can’t explain the similarities between myths in Americas with myths in the rest of the world. Many scholars have noted these types of similarities long before Acharya/Murdock and many scholars still do.
I said: The human mind evolved with people staring at the sky, and it offered a survival advantage.
Verenna said: “No, the human mind evolved when we started eating red meat.”
The human mind had many contributing factors. I said the mind evolved with people staring at the sky. I didn’t say that staring at the sky was the sole factor that caused the humand mind to evolve.
I said: The patterns of animals and plants also follow the patterns of the seasons, and knowing these patterns precisely could mean the difference between life and death for the people of the earliest civilizations.
Verenna said: “You don’t need to look to the sky to interpret seasons. Again, don’t let Acharya S pull the wool over your eyes. Nature has its own inherited mechanisms that function seasonally. Interpreting them was just as much a part of the process. In some cultures, like some Native American cultures, these natural phenomena were more influential than the stars and the skies.”
One doesn’t need to do anything. However, the seasons go hand in hand with the cycles of heavenly bodies. If you don’t realize this, then you can lessen your ignorance in two ways. You could study the appropriate scholars, or you could spend a year outside carefully observing nature and the sky. Are you serious when you say “Nature has its own inherited mechanisms that function seasonally”? Duh! Step outside of your preconceptions for a moment and study some science. The sun and moon directly influence nature and even human biology.
It is true that different cultures emphasized different aspects of the world. As you say, some Native Americans may have focused more on terrestrial phenomena, but they didn’t disregard the stellar phenomena. Other Native Americans, in fact, even worshipped the sun just like other cultures.
I said: As such, Christians didn’t need to borrow mythology from Pagans. The mythology of the heavens was common to the entire ancient world. Any educated person would’ve been familiar with it. Astrotheology was a common framework of knowledge that crossed cultural and linguistic barriers.
Verenna said: “Astrotheology is bs. Sorry to be so blunt about it. It rests on too many assumed variables which are, to be honest, more speculation and wishful thinking than anything else.”
Thanks for further demonstrating your ignorance. No, don’t worry at all. I don’t mind you showing everybody your confusion and misunderstanding. I imagine it must be rather refreshing for you to be so open about your lack of knowledge.
I realize within the field of New Testament studies, the focus of scholarship is generally narrow. However, astrotheology is an academic study But, outside of New Testament studies, academics would refer to it as either Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy.
I said: There is another aspect that most people forget. Ancient people experienced the world differently, and it isn’t helpful to place our standards and assumptions onto their stories and religions. I think it’s essential to understand cultural development on the largescale.
Verenna said: “But that is just as bad because then you end up generalizing.”
Science generalizes. So, I guess it depends if you think science is useful or not. By studying different cultures at different stages of development, theories have been put forth about social development and cultural experience.
Considering all of your comments, I think you need to pull your nose out of your New Testament scholarship books. There is a larger world out there and knowing about it might offer you much needed insight and perspective.
Showing posts with label Mythicism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mythicism. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Re: Helping the Historicists Get it Right: What is Mythicism?
A link to a blog by Thomas Verenna and my discussion with him from the comments section:
Helping the Historicists Get it Right: What is Mythicism?
Benjamin Steele Says:April 6, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“More recent mythicist arguments deal with exegesis, Gospel genre (if the Gospels weren’t written for the purpose of “telling what happened” but rather “telling a good story” there clearly is reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus Christ), intertextuality (the models used by the authors of the Gospels to create narrative—and how much of the Gospel can be traced back to models), Jewish socio-cultural studies in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (did the Jews of the original “Christian” sect expect a historical savior or a spiritual one?), religious-meme change (how quickly did religious trends change and how much could they have changed over that period of time—for example, euhemerizing a legendary figure of Jesus into a historical setting), and proto-Christian origins (was there a “Christianity” before the first-century CE and where did it originate?) . Clearly April would be correct if the mythicist position was reliant only on pagan myth parallels. It’s a good thing then that modern mythicists generally do not rely on pagan parallels whatsoever.”
I agree with you about mythicism not being reliant only on pagan myth parallels. On the other hand, I disagree with how you seem to be rather critical of those who point out those parallels such as Acharya. It isn’t a matter of either/or thinking. I’m not a defender of Acharya, but I am an interested party who seeks out all viewpoints. I’ve read a variety of mythicist theorists and I think all of them have something useful to add.
Anyways, Acharya doesn’t simply rely on pagan parallels. If you dismiss Acharya based on this assumption, then you are falling into the same trap as the historicist scholars. She goes out of her way to consider the subject from multiple perspectives. There is no need to try to smash Acharya’s head down in your attempt to climb the scholarly ladder of peer respectability. In case you didn’t know, both Doherty and Price have given positive reviews of Acharya’s work.
Tom Verenna Says:April 6, 2009 at 3:58 pm
"I agree with you about mythicism not being reliant only on pagan myth parallels. On the other hand, I disagree with how you seem to be rather critical of those who point out those parallels such as Acharya. It isn’t a matter of either/or thinking. I’m not a defender of Acharya, but I am an interested party who seeks out all viewpoints. I’ve read a variety of mythicist theorists and I think all of them have something useful to add."
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s a rather naive opinion. Not all scholars have something useful to add. Some have nothing useful. Some have a lot to offer while others have a mix of useful and unhelpful points that, overall, make their contributions mediocre at best. Acharya S does not have anything useful to add (in my opinion–others are welcome to disagree). I’ll give my reasons for thinking this below.
"Anyways, Acharya doesn’t simply rely on pagan parallels. If you dismiss Acharya based on this assumption, then you are falling into the same trap as the historicist scholars. She goes out of her way to consider the subject from multiple perspectives. There is no need to try to smash Acharya’s head down in your attempt to climb the scholarly ladder of peer respectability. In case you didn’t know, both Doherty and Price have given positive reviews of Acharya’s work."
My problem with Acharya S is more than just pagan parallels. She uses grossly outdated source material. Here are a few examples:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/sources.htm
Gerald Massey, John Remsburg, Albert Churchward, Edward Carpenter, Franz Cumont, and so on. None of these individuals lived past the middle of the twentieth century. Their scholarship is so dated that using them can only hurt her points, not help make them. This is the underlying problem with Acharya S; she does not adequately research modern credible sources–only dated sources. If only dated sources can be used to make her points, then she needs to reevaluate her points. To give you an analogy of how horrific it is to use dated sources in academia, it would be akin to using a science book from the nineteenth century to back up a new model for the theory of relativity–without using anything that Albert Einstein, or any contemporary era physicist, had written. Her whole astrotheology perspective which she promotes comes from these sources–comes from parallelism that is dated and useless–and thus her usefulness is nil. That may be a hard criticism, but its one she should take to heart and consider.
Despite what you may have read or think you know, my criticisms of Acharya S have nothing to do with me “climbing the scholarly ladder”. It has everything to do with individuals such as yourself, who are trying to do honest research into the question of mythicism, who get sidetracked by this garbage–passed off as academia (of which it is not). The fact that you think she has something useful to say at all is evidence that you’ve bought into her deception. But how can you know, as a layman, what is credible and what isn’t? You have to have done an extreme amount of research to fact-check her claims to know she is full of it. If you haven’t done the research because you think she is an authority (I’m not claiming I am, either, by the way), then you’re the person I’m trying to reach. It is because serious intellectuals like you want to be educated that I come down hard on her–you need to know that what she has to say is severely flawed.
I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I don’t use sources that are from the 1880’s. Unlike Acharya S, I change my opinions to fit the facts (she is stubborn about changing her opinion and has not retracted anything she has been wrong about, not that I’ve seen or read anyway). I want my readers to be able to fact-check me and be able to raise contentions with what I write if they need to. Acharya S, on the other hand, has a group of fanboy cronies who she sends out from her message board to attack any dissenter. Often times these cronies spam other message boards and blogs with more garbage in a trollish and annoying fashion. I wouldn’t hold Acharya S responsible for her fan base, but she sends them out.
Now I’m not attacking Acharya S personally. I don’t know her personally. I can only judge her material. And I’m not the only one. While Bob Price and Earl Doherty speak of her kindly (which is their right), Richard Carrier and others have been outspoken about her inaccuracy. So just because two scholars speak favorably does not mean the whole community of experts agree. And while I respect Earl Doherty a great deal, I am dismayed that he uses her for source material and, unfortunately, he is also guilty of using dated material as well. (Doherty is far better at using modern sources for his material than Acharya S is, however, and overall Doherty’s work is substantially more credible)
To be clear: I would, in fact, be quite interested if Acharya S dropped her pseudonym (as I did) and start using her real name, started revising her theories to conform to existing, relevant, current data, and published academically or, at least, had a group of scholars review her work and offer suggestions (which she should consider, at least). I would read that book and, if it were credible, I would even promote it. But as of yet, that is a future I do not see her ever attaining. Not because she can’t, but because she has no desire to.
Benjamin Steele Says:April 6, 2009 at 5:11 pm
You can call my opinion naive if it makes you happy. By my comment, I didn’t mean one should be undiscerning about what one reads. I was just implying that all perspectives should be considered in order to grasp a more comprehensive understanding.
If your main source of info about Acharya is from Zeitgeist, then that explains a lot. She only consulted on that project once it had already begun, and she didn’t agree with all of the details.
BTW she wrote a supplement that can be obtained as an e-book that was intended to supply more supporting evidence for the Zeitgeist claims, and she then wrote a nearly 600 page book to flesh it out (Christ In Egypt). Also, she does now go by her real name (D.M. Murdock) which is the name on her recent book.
In Christ In Egypt, she attempted to synthesize all of the scholarly work that has been done so far that relates to the connections between Horus nd Jesus. She references works never published in English before and works never published at all before (such as the academic journals of a German scholar). She probably references Egyptologists more than any other type of scholar, but she does reference other contemporary mythicists (G.A. Wells, Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, and Richard Carrier).
In particular, she has a whole section where she describes a disagreement with Carrier about the Luxor inscriptions. I’m sure Carrier claims she is inaccurate, and Acharya claims he is inaccurate (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.html). If you want to see a neutral viewpoint (by someone they both respect), check out Doherty because he discusses this disagreement on his site. I noticed that Carrier considers Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle to be the best presentation of the mythicist position.
She intentionally uses a wide range of scholars from older to newer, from Christian to non-Christian, from academia to the Catholic Encycopedia, etc. She does this so people like you have no basis to simply dismiss her claims. Anyways, before criticizing older scholarship, I’d recommend you read this article by Robert M. Price:
http://www.atheistalliance.org/jhc/Pricejhc.htm
How can I, as a layman, know what is credible or not? I guess I do it like anybody else who seriously studies a subject. I read a wide variety of authors, and I debate the issues with other informed individuals.
As for her being stubborn about her opinion, I don’t specifically know what your talking about. If you could detail your allegation, I would gladly research it for myself. As for her defenders, I always advise looking at the argument and the evidence rather than the person presenting it. Too often mythicists get dismissed by mainstream scholars who haven’t read their work, but it is even more shameful when other mythicists do this as well.
The last issue you bring up, I can’t speak for her. But, as I said, her theories do take into acount “existing, relevant, current data”. I don’t know if she plans on publishing academically and I don’t know what scholars may or may not have reviewed her work. I do know that Price wrote a foreword to her book Who Was Jesus?, but I can’t say if he reviewed it. One of Acharya’s sources is Massey and he is often dismissed even though his work was reviewed by some of the best scholars of the time (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/who-is-gerald-massey.html).
Benjamin Steele Says:April 7, 2009 at 1:35 pm
In case that wasn’t adequate, I’ll give a some of the modern Egyptologists she references: Rudolf Anthes, Jan Assman, Hellmut Brunner, Claas J. Bleeker, Bob Brier, Henri Frankfort, Alan H. Gardiner, John Gwyn Griffiths, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp, Barbara Lesko, Bojana Mojsov, Siegfried Morenz, William Murnane, Margaret A. Murray, Donald B. Redford, Herman te Velde, Claude Traunecker, Reginald E. Witt, and Louis V. Zabkar.
I’ve noticed many mythicists use Hornung as a reference. Another interesting scholar (from an earlier time) is Wallis Budge. Acharya/Murdock along with other mythicists reference him. I was having a discussion with an apologetic NT scholar recently, and I noticed in a peer-reviewed article by him that he had also referenced Budge.
Helping the Historicists Get it Right: What is Mythicism?
Benjamin Steele Says:April 6, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“More recent mythicist arguments deal with exegesis, Gospel genre (if the Gospels weren’t written for the purpose of “telling what happened” but rather “telling a good story” there clearly is reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus Christ), intertextuality (the models used by the authors of the Gospels to create narrative—and how much of the Gospel can be traced back to models), Jewish socio-cultural studies in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (did the Jews of the original “Christian” sect expect a historical savior or a spiritual one?), religious-meme change (how quickly did religious trends change and how much could they have changed over that period of time—for example, euhemerizing a legendary figure of Jesus into a historical setting), and proto-Christian origins (was there a “Christianity” before the first-century CE and where did it originate?) . Clearly April would be correct if the mythicist position was reliant only on pagan myth parallels. It’s a good thing then that modern mythicists generally do not rely on pagan parallels whatsoever.”
I agree with you about mythicism not being reliant only on pagan myth parallels. On the other hand, I disagree with how you seem to be rather critical of those who point out those parallels such as Acharya. It isn’t a matter of either/or thinking. I’m not a defender of Acharya, but I am an interested party who seeks out all viewpoints. I’ve read a variety of mythicist theorists and I think all of them have something useful to add.
Anyways, Acharya doesn’t simply rely on pagan parallels. If you dismiss Acharya based on this assumption, then you are falling into the same trap as the historicist scholars. She goes out of her way to consider the subject from multiple perspectives. There is no need to try to smash Acharya’s head down in your attempt to climb the scholarly ladder of peer respectability. In case you didn’t know, both Doherty and Price have given positive reviews of Acharya’s work.
Tom Verenna Says:April 6, 2009 at 3:58 pm
"I agree with you about mythicism not being reliant only on pagan myth parallels. On the other hand, I disagree with how you seem to be rather critical of those who point out those parallels such as Acharya. It isn’t a matter of either/or thinking. I’m not a defender of Acharya, but I am an interested party who seeks out all viewpoints. I’ve read a variety of mythicist theorists and I think all of them have something useful to add."
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s a rather naive opinion. Not all scholars have something useful to add. Some have nothing useful. Some have a lot to offer while others have a mix of useful and unhelpful points that, overall, make their contributions mediocre at best. Acharya S does not have anything useful to add (in my opinion–others are welcome to disagree). I’ll give my reasons for thinking this below.
"Anyways, Acharya doesn’t simply rely on pagan parallels. If you dismiss Acharya based on this assumption, then you are falling into the same trap as the historicist scholars. She goes out of her way to consider the subject from multiple perspectives. There is no need to try to smash Acharya’s head down in your attempt to climb the scholarly ladder of peer respectability. In case you didn’t know, both Doherty and Price have given positive reviews of Acharya’s work."
My problem with Acharya S is more than just pagan parallels. She uses grossly outdated source material. Here are a few examples:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/sources.htm
Gerald Massey, John Remsburg, Albert Churchward, Edward Carpenter, Franz Cumont, and so on. None of these individuals lived past the middle of the twentieth century. Their scholarship is so dated that using them can only hurt her points, not help make them. This is the underlying problem with Acharya S; she does not adequately research modern credible sources–only dated sources. If only dated sources can be used to make her points, then she needs to reevaluate her points. To give you an analogy of how horrific it is to use dated sources in academia, it would be akin to using a science book from the nineteenth century to back up a new model for the theory of relativity–without using anything that Albert Einstein, or any contemporary era physicist, had written. Her whole astrotheology perspective which she promotes comes from these sources–comes from parallelism that is dated and useless–and thus her usefulness is nil. That may be a hard criticism, but its one she should take to heart and consider.
Despite what you may have read or think you know, my criticisms of Acharya S have nothing to do with me “climbing the scholarly ladder”. It has everything to do with individuals such as yourself, who are trying to do honest research into the question of mythicism, who get sidetracked by this garbage–passed off as academia (of which it is not). The fact that you think she has something useful to say at all is evidence that you’ve bought into her deception. But how can you know, as a layman, what is credible and what isn’t? You have to have done an extreme amount of research to fact-check her claims to know she is full of it. If you haven’t done the research because you think she is an authority (I’m not claiming I am, either, by the way), then you’re the person I’m trying to reach. It is because serious intellectuals like you want to be educated that I come down hard on her–you need to know that what she has to say is severely flawed.
I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I don’t use sources that are from the 1880’s. Unlike Acharya S, I change my opinions to fit the facts (she is stubborn about changing her opinion and has not retracted anything she has been wrong about, not that I’ve seen or read anyway). I want my readers to be able to fact-check me and be able to raise contentions with what I write if they need to. Acharya S, on the other hand, has a group of fanboy cronies who she sends out from her message board to attack any dissenter. Often times these cronies spam other message boards and blogs with more garbage in a trollish and annoying fashion. I wouldn’t hold Acharya S responsible for her fan base, but she sends them out.
Now I’m not attacking Acharya S personally. I don’t know her personally. I can only judge her material. And I’m not the only one. While Bob Price and Earl Doherty speak of her kindly (which is their right), Richard Carrier and others have been outspoken about her inaccuracy. So just because two scholars speak favorably does not mean the whole community of experts agree. And while I respect Earl Doherty a great deal, I am dismayed that he uses her for source material and, unfortunately, he is also guilty of using dated material as well. (Doherty is far better at using modern sources for his material than Acharya S is, however, and overall Doherty’s work is substantially more credible)
To be clear: I would, in fact, be quite interested if Acharya S dropped her pseudonym (as I did) and start using her real name, started revising her theories to conform to existing, relevant, current data, and published academically or, at least, had a group of scholars review her work and offer suggestions (which she should consider, at least). I would read that book and, if it were credible, I would even promote it. But as of yet, that is a future I do not see her ever attaining. Not because she can’t, but because she has no desire to.
Benjamin Steele Says:April 6, 2009 at 5:11 pm
You can call my opinion naive if it makes you happy. By my comment, I didn’t mean one should be undiscerning about what one reads. I was just implying that all perspectives should be considered in order to grasp a more comprehensive understanding.
If your main source of info about Acharya is from Zeitgeist, then that explains a lot. She only consulted on that project once it had already begun, and she didn’t agree with all of the details.
BTW she wrote a supplement that can be obtained as an e-book that was intended to supply more supporting evidence for the Zeitgeist claims, and she then wrote a nearly 600 page book to flesh it out (Christ In Egypt). Also, she does now go by her real name (D.M. Murdock) which is the name on her recent book.
In Christ In Egypt, she attempted to synthesize all of the scholarly work that has been done so far that relates to the connections between Horus nd Jesus. She references works never published in English before and works never published at all before (such as the academic journals of a German scholar). She probably references Egyptologists more than any other type of scholar, but she does reference other contemporary mythicists (G.A. Wells, Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, and Richard Carrier).
In particular, she has a whole section where she describes a disagreement with Carrier about the Luxor inscriptions. I’m sure Carrier claims she is inaccurate, and Acharya claims he is inaccurate (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/luxor.html). If you want to see a neutral viewpoint (by someone they both respect), check out Doherty because he discusses this disagreement on his site. I noticed that Carrier considers Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle to be the best presentation of the mythicist position.
She intentionally uses a wide range of scholars from older to newer, from Christian to non-Christian, from academia to the Catholic Encycopedia, etc. She does this so people like you have no basis to simply dismiss her claims. Anyways, before criticizing older scholarship, I’d recommend you read this article by Robert M. Price:
http://www.atheistalliance.org/jhc/Pricejhc.htm
How can I, as a layman, know what is credible or not? I guess I do it like anybody else who seriously studies a subject. I read a wide variety of authors, and I debate the issues with other informed individuals.
As for her being stubborn about her opinion, I don’t specifically know what your talking about. If you could detail your allegation, I would gladly research it for myself. As for her defenders, I always advise looking at the argument and the evidence rather than the person presenting it. Too often mythicists get dismissed by mainstream scholars who haven’t read their work, but it is even more shameful when other mythicists do this as well.
The last issue you bring up, I can’t speak for her. But, as I said, her theories do take into acount “existing, relevant, current data”. I don’t know if she plans on publishing academically and I don’t know what scholars may or may not have reviewed her work. I do know that Price wrote a foreword to her book Who Was Jesus?, but I can’t say if he reviewed it. One of Acharya’s sources is Massey and he is often dismissed even though his work was reviewed by some of the best scholars of the time (http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/who-is-gerald-massey.html).
Benjamin Steele Says:April 7, 2009 at 1:35 pm
In case that wasn’t adequate, I’ll give a some of the modern Egyptologists she references: Rudolf Anthes, Jan Assman, Hellmut Brunner, Claas J. Bleeker, Bob Brier, Henri Frankfort, Alan H. Gardiner, John Gwyn Griffiths, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp, Barbara Lesko, Bojana Mojsov, Siegfried Morenz, William Murnane, Margaret A. Murray, Donald B. Redford, Herman te Velde, Claude Traunecker, Reginald E. Witt, and Louis V. Zabkar.
I’ve noticed many mythicists use Hornung as a reference. Another interesting scholar (from an earlier time) is Wallis Budge. Acharya/Murdock along with other mythicists reference him. I was having a discussion with an apologetic NT scholar recently, and I noticed in a peer-reviewed article by him that he had also referenced Budge.
Re: Mythicism, Minimalism, and its Detractors
Here is a link to a blog by Thomas Verenna with a comment I posted:
Mythicism, Minimalism, and its Detractors
It is quite humorous that I mixed you up with that other blogger. I didn’t get enough sleep last night and my mind was apparently a bit fuzzy.
This blog post has good info. I’ll have to think more about the distinction between legend and mythology. Do you think most religions begin with legends? And do you think legends usually begin in some historical model or inspiration?
There is one place where I see a mixing of myth and legend. Some savior god-men are also identified with the creator god and/or considered to have existed since the beginning. But I don’t know if either the legend or the myth comes first or if they co-evolve.
I can only juggle so many fields as well, but my curiosity is always distracting me. I sometimes wonder why I get obsessed about something like mythicism. I’m more interested in the comparative mythology side of it and how it relates to modern culture as represented in various media (specifically storytelling).
I’m more of an idea person in that I prefer philosophy and psychology over history, but of course it all blends together. My desire to analyze ancient texts is mostly limited to how I perceive the ideas to still be vibrant within contemporary culture. I find it fascinating how certain ideas can act as memes that take hold of the shared experience of a culture for centuries and even millennia.
One of the earliest books I read that started me in the direction of studying all of this was Carl Jung’s Answer to Job. It was his most personal book, but also it was where he most deeply engaged the mythology of Christianity. I tend to lean towards an archetypal view of mythology. Most basically, archetypes are patterns in the psyche, but they’re also patterns in the environment in which the human psyche evolved. It is very strange how different cultures often come to similar meanings and mythologies about the world.
This is where I think Acharya/Murdock has one key to understanding a larger perspective. There are only two baaic factors that all humans in all places and time periods have shared: a basic human nature and psychoological functioning; and a common enviornmental experience.
As for the latter, the most universal experience humans share is the observation of the sky. The human mind evolved with people staring at the sky, and it offered a survival advantage. The patterns of animals and plants also follow the patterns of the seasons, and knowing these patterns precisely could mean the difference between life and death for the people of the earliest civilizations.
As such, Christians didn’t need to borrow mythology from Pagans. The mythology of the heavens was common to the entire ancient world. Any educated person would’ve been familiar with it. Astrotheology was a common framework of knowledge that crossed cultural and linguistic barriers.
Thinking along these lines, I suspect that these patterns (in the sky and in the mind) precede the storytelling. Either legends emerge from this pattern-seeking tendency or legends that arose independently become adapted to the requirements of these patterns.
There is another aspect that most people forget. Ancient people experienced the world differently, and it isn’t helpful to place our standards and assumptions onto their stories and religions. I think it’s essential to understand cultural development on the largescale.
Some examples are ideas such as the Axial Age, Julian Jayne’s view of the pre-literate mind, and the socio-cultural developmental model of spiral dynamics. The clash of ideas beginning in the Hellenistic period was a clash of paridigms of reality. I sense this has something to do with the clash between Gnosticism and Christianity… something about the emerging literalist mind… along the lines of Weber’s rationalization of culture.
Or so it seems to me. I don’t know how this fits into what you’re talking about, but that is the context I’m considering.
Is your book being published soon? Will it be available on Amazon?
Mythicism, Minimalism, and its Detractors
It is quite humorous that I mixed you up with that other blogger. I didn’t get enough sleep last night and my mind was apparently a bit fuzzy.
This blog post has good info. I’ll have to think more about the distinction between legend and mythology. Do you think most religions begin with legends? And do you think legends usually begin in some historical model or inspiration?
There is one place where I see a mixing of myth and legend. Some savior god-men are also identified with the creator god and/or considered to have existed since the beginning. But I don’t know if either the legend or the myth comes first or if they co-evolve.
I can only juggle so many fields as well, but my curiosity is always distracting me. I sometimes wonder why I get obsessed about something like mythicism. I’m more interested in the comparative mythology side of it and how it relates to modern culture as represented in various media (specifically storytelling).
I’m more of an idea person in that I prefer philosophy and psychology over history, but of course it all blends together. My desire to analyze ancient texts is mostly limited to how I perceive the ideas to still be vibrant within contemporary culture. I find it fascinating how certain ideas can act as memes that take hold of the shared experience of a culture for centuries and even millennia.
One of the earliest books I read that started me in the direction of studying all of this was Carl Jung’s Answer to Job. It was his most personal book, but also it was where he most deeply engaged the mythology of Christianity. I tend to lean towards an archetypal view of mythology. Most basically, archetypes are patterns in the psyche, but they’re also patterns in the environment in which the human psyche evolved. It is very strange how different cultures often come to similar meanings and mythologies about the world.
This is where I think Acharya/Murdock has one key to understanding a larger perspective. There are only two baaic factors that all humans in all places and time periods have shared: a basic human nature and psychoological functioning; and a common enviornmental experience.
As for the latter, the most universal experience humans share is the observation of the sky. The human mind evolved with people staring at the sky, and it offered a survival advantage. The patterns of animals and plants also follow the patterns of the seasons, and knowing these patterns precisely could mean the difference between life and death for the people of the earliest civilizations.
As such, Christians didn’t need to borrow mythology from Pagans. The mythology of the heavens was common to the entire ancient world. Any educated person would’ve been familiar with it. Astrotheology was a common framework of knowledge that crossed cultural and linguistic barriers.
Thinking along these lines, I suspect that these patterns (in the sky and in the mind) precede the storytelling. Either legends emerge from this pattern-seeking tendency or legends that arose independently become adapted to the requirements of these patterns.
There is another aspect that most people forget. Ancient people experienced the world differently, and it isn’t helpful to place our standards and assumptions onto their stories and religions. I think it’s essential to understand cultural development on the largescale.
Some examples are ideas such as the Axial Age, Julian Jayne’s view of the pre-literate mind, and the socio-cultural developmental model of spiral dynamics. The clash of ideas beginning in the Hellenistic period was a clash of paridigms of reality. I sense this has something to do with the clash between Gnosticism and Christianity… something about the emerging literalist mind… along the lines of Weber’s rationalization of culture.
Or so it seems to me. I don’t know how this fits into what you’re talking about, but that is the context I’m considering.
Is your book being published soon? Will it be available on Amazon?
Re: Arguments Jesus Mythicists Should NOT Use
A blog post at the link below and my response below that:
Arguments Jesus Mythicists Should NOT Use
1. Cite the work of Freke and Gandi.
It is a good general rule to be wary of referencing in a scholarly debate any writer who acts as a popularizer of ideas. Popularizers serve a purpose, but they usually do so by simplifying. There are exceptions to this rule as some popularizers are also good scholars, but I agree that Freke and Gandy aren’t exceptions.
2. Cite the work of Achyara S or Zeitgeist the Movie.
Along with the first general rule, I’d add that anyone claiming to be a scholar should be judged by their scholarship (assuming that person making the judgment is claiming to be scholarly). This requires reading the author to a significant extent, but sadly few critics of Acharya/Murdock ever read her work (beyond maybe an online article).
As for Callahan, I assume you realize she wrote a rebuttal (http://stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html). As for her claims about Egyptian connections, she also wrote an almost 600 pg book (Christ In Egypt).
In it, she references the contemporary mythicist scholars Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, G.A. Wells, and she has a large section where she discusses her disagreement with Richard Carrier. Both Price and Doherty praise her work and reference it, and Price wrote a foreword to one of her books (Who Was Jesus?).
Also, here are some of the modern Egyptologists she references: Rudolf Anthes, Jan Assman, Hellmut Brunner, Claas J. Bleeker, Bob Brier, Henri Frankfort, Alan H. Gardiner, John Gwyn Griffiths, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp, Barbara Lesko, Bojana Mojsov, Siegfried Morenz, William Murnane, Margaret A. Murray, Donald B. Redford, Herman te Velde, Claude Traunecker, Reginald E. Witt, and Louis V. Zabkar.
I don’t care if you disagree with her, but just do so based on facts and rational arguments.
3. Cite pagan parallels to Jesus which you have not read about yourself from ancient sources.
This is good advice to strive towards, but isn’t practical for the average person. The scholars have spent their lives reading the originals and the many translations. And scholars are constantly arguing over specific words that can alter the entire meaning of a text. This takes years if not decades of study to comprehend.
Also, translations can be deceiving if you don’t know the original language. You have to read many translations before you can even begin to grasp a particular myth. Plus, many translations and inscriptions aren’t available online.Furthermore, the ancients usually had numerous versions of any given story.
So, yes read what is available to you. But don’t necessarily base your opinion on a single translation of a single version of a single myth. However, when making a specific argument, it is wise to cite specific examples that you are familiar with… which isn’t to say you can’t also cite reputable scholars on examples you’re less familiar with.
Still, it depends on your purpose and your audience. If you’re simply involved in an informal discussion, then primary sources aren’t required.
4. Argue that pagan parallels to Jesus prove he did not exist.
This is very true. A number of mythicist scholars don’t deny a historical Jesus (e.g., Robert M. Price) and some even accept a historical Christ (e.g., G.A. Wells). The two issues are really separate debates even though they’re often covering the same territory.
5. Argue that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
True, but… the absence of evidence where one would expect evidence corroborates an argument of absence and increases its probability. Despite the commonality of prophets and messiahs, the fact that no contemporary of Jesus wrote about him is surprising considering the claims made about him and his followers.
However, (discounting the historical validity of the grandiose claims of the gospels) if we just take Jesus as any other insignificant historical figure, then your point stands.
Arguments Jesus Mythicists Should NOT Use
1. Cite the work of Freke and Gandi.
It is a good general rule to be wary of referencing in a scholarly debate any writer who acts as a popularizer of ideas. Popularizers serve a purpose, but they usually do so by simplifying. There are exceptions to this rule as some popularizers are also good scholars, but I agree that Freke and Gandy aren’t exceptions.
2. Cite the work of Achyara S or Zeitgeist the Movie.
Along with the first general rule, I’d add that anyone claiming to be a scholar should be judged by their scholarship (assuming that person making the judgment is claiming to be scholarly). This requires reading the author to a significant extent, but sadly few critics of Acharya/Murdock ever read her work (beyond maybe an online article).
As for Callahan, I assume you realize she wrote a rebuttal (http://stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html). As for her claims about Egyptian connections, she also wrote an almost 600 pg book (Christ In Egypt).
In it, she references the contemporary mythicist scholars Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, G.A. Wells, and she has a large section where she discusses her disagreement with Richard Carrier. Both Price and Doherty praise her work and reference it, and Price wrote a foreword to one of her books (Who Was Jesus?).
Also, here are some of the modern Egyptologists she references: Rudolf Anthes, Jan Assman, Hellmut Brunner, Claas J. Bleeker, Bob Brier, Henri Frankfort, Alan H. Gardiner, John Gwyn Griffiths, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp, Barbara Lesko, Bojana Mojsov, Siegfried Morenz, William Murnane, Margaret A. Murray, Donald B. Redford, Herman te Velde, Claude Traunecker, Reginald E. Witt, and Louis V. Zabkar.
I don’t care if you disagree with her, but just do so based on facts and rational arguments.
3. Cite pagan parallels to Jesus which you have not read about yourself from ancient sources.
This is good advice to strive towards, but isn’t practical for the average person. The scholars have spent their lives reading the originals and the many translations. And scholars are constantly arguing over specific words that can alter the entire meaning of a text. This takes years if not decades of study to comprehend.
Also, translations can be deceiving if you don’t know the original language. You have to read many translations before you can even begin to grasp a particular myth. Plus, many translations and inscriptions aren’t available online.Furthermore, the ancients usually had numerous versions of any given story.
So, yes read what is available to you. But don’t necessarily base your opinion on a single translation of a single version of a single myth. However, when making a specific argument, it is wise to cite specific examples that you are familiar with… which isn’t to say you can’t also cite reputable scholars on examples you’re less familiar with.
Still, it depends on your purpose and your audience. If you’re simply involved in an informal discussion, then primary sources aren’t required.
4. Argue that pagan parallels to Jesus prove he did not exist.
This is very true. A number of mythicist scholars don’t deny a historical Jesus (e.g., Robert M. Price) and some even accept a historical Christ (e.g., G.A. Wells). The two issues are really separate debates even though they’re often covering the same territory.
5. Argue that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
True, but… the absence of evidence where one would expect evidence corroborates an argument of absence and increases its probability. Despite the commonality of prophets and messiahs, the fact that no contemporary of Jesus wrote about him is surprising considering the claims made about him and his followers.
However, (discounting the historical validity of the grandiose claims of the gospels) if we just take Jesus as any other insignificant historical figure, then your point stands.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Fundies vs Atheists, Agnostics, and Mythicists
I had an interesting discussion about the messianic concept in Judaism and Christianity. It was interesting partly because I was talking to a Jew who was fairly knowledgeable about Judaism. I gained some new understandings or maybe just some new info.
The problem was that he was a convert from Christianity and converts are often a bit on the zealous side (btw this can include converts to atheism as well). He seemed fairly open-minded, but there was this aspect of him that was as annoying as a Christian Fundamentalist… defensive and righteous, a very bad combination especially when you throw in a slight victim complex. He quite likely used to be a Christian Fundamentalist and seems to have this distorted view of what all Christianity is. I’m sorry he had such a bad experience with Christianity, but I have no desire to help him work through his issues.
This guy seems to think of himself as a representative of Judaism… which, I must say, is unfortunate for Judaism. The Jews should be more careful about who they convert.
The discussion mostly went well, but after a while it felt like walking across a minefield as he was so touchy about so many things. He had a lot of emotional baggage. The issue for me isn’t the emotional baggage. Rather, the issue is that a person like him who is always projecting their problems onto others. I have a lot of psychological problems of my own, but I try my best and (hopefully) am somewhat succesful at separating my problems from my interactions.
Anyways, that discussion put the nail in the coffin for that particular forum. I give up on trying to have intelligent discussions with people in online forums. Why are there so many mentally disturbed people online? I’ll save that question for another day.
Well… water under the bridge. All of that isn’t what I wanted to talk about, not exactly at least. The topic of this blog post is religion. I’m attracted to religion and I enjoy discussing it, but religion can be such a depressing subject. When I study some aspects of religious history, I start thinking that religion itself can even be the problem. Religion can inspire people to do great and wonderful things, but it also can justify the psychotic (if not homicidal) delusions of various kinds of nutjobs. The history of Christianity can particularly depress me. The first thousand years of Christianity was almost and endless spree of destruction.
And then there are people who leave Christianity because of its history of bigotry and hatred only to join another religion that isn’t any better. To pick a random example (wink wink), Judaism is in some ways worse than Christianity. At least, Christians were going against their own scripture when persecuting and killing various peoples. The Jewish history as recorded in their scriptures is utterly horrific. The Jewish God even commands the Jews to commit genocide, rape, and enslavement.
Talk about depressing. And this whole Judeo-Christian tradition is the foundation of Western civilization. It about makes me want to kill myself to consider that this is my cultural heritage.
This is a major issue that religious people never consider seriously. Some religious people would respond that athiests commit horrible things as well. Yes, this is true to an extent. Humans in general have great capacity for cruelty. However, the point of religion is supposed to be to help humanity strive towards higher ideals. The evidence, unfortunately, is to the contrary.
I’m not dismissing religion. As I see it, religion is something like the scientific knowledge of the atom. Scientists can make atomic energy and scientists can make an atomic bomb. Now consider what happens if some religious nut gets hold of an atomic bomb. Forget about 9/11. The real fun has yet to start.
I should point out that that Fundamentalism as we know it is actually a modern invention. Fundamentalism is a response to modernity. For instance, the extreme forms of literalism came into existence in response to modern understanding of objective reality. In the past, people had less sense of distinction between subjective and objective realities, between myth and history. It wasn’t even that imporant for ancient people to make such distinctions. Literalism is the attempt of religion to retain its authority in the face of science and the secular academia in general.
So, Fundamentalism isn’t fundamental, ie., isn’t original to religion. However, the awareness of literalism as opposed to allegorical thinking did start to develop thousands of years ago. This was a distinction that Greek philosophers were starting to consider. Even though literalism didn’t clearly and fully manifest until modernity, its been there from the beginning of religions such as Christianity and Islam.
For example, some early Christians were aware of and even open to the allegorical interpretation of scripture. Christianity, in fact, developed out of the milieu that included a growing trend of allegorical thinking. But this was still a very new way of thinking for the human species. The new mentality arose all of a sudden during the Axial Age; and then, within the centuries after Christianity began, the new mentality was disappearing again. The former Roman Empire was lost in the Dark Ages.
It took Europe another thousand years or so to remember these ancient ideas. The re-introduction of Greek thought (strangely enough, from Islamic culture) helped to jumpstart the Renaissance, but to balance out the Renaissance was the Reformation. The Reformation set the groundwork for modern Fundamentalism.
Okay, all of that is basic enough. Here we all are in the wake of modernity. The Fundamentalists are on the defense and they become ever more dangerous as they become cornered into their own dogmatic righteousness. In the US, we shouldn’t worry about the Islamic Fundamentalists from the Middle East. We should be worrying about our homegrown Christian Fundamentalists. Right now, our Fundamentalists are fat and contented by American wealth and power. But throw in enough dissatisfaction (such as if this economic downturn lasts long enough), and we’ll start to see a new breed of American Fundamentalists.
The Fundamentalists, in the past, at least had control of the Biblical studies in academia. However, they’re losing their grip and their apologetics is becoming obvious for what it is. A battle is going on right now even though many people are unaware of it and of it’s greater significance. The battle is occurring on multiple fronts. The Fundamentalists have three mortal enemies.
Christian theologians/apologists essentially created the Atheist movement (by creating the term) as a way of containing secularism. They defined the terms of battle and many Atheists have been happy to play their pre-designed part. This battle gets a lot of public attention, but its just a front for a more complex battle.
Agnostics are even more dangerous to the Fundamentalists. Agnostics refuse to play by the rules that the apologists are familiar with. Many Agnostics are even Christian. Fundamentalists simply don’t understand this opponent even if they happen to notice him. Agnosticism is more like a cancer than an enemy that can be fought. The Agnostics are the Aikido masters. And, to mix in another metaphor, they fly below the radar… which is to say they don’t get much publicity. Being an Agnostic just isn’t sexy. To think of it another way, Agnostics are like Martin Luther King Jr during the race riots. King once said that the only reason white people listened to him was because there was an angry young black man behind him with a molotov cocktail. In this manner, the Agnostic slips in and seems quite moderate in comparison to the raving Atheists.
Related to the Agnostics, is a new faction of Christians. The Agnostics have been an agitating force within Christianity. Many believers have felt a need to resolve this unsettling sense that something isn’t quite right within Christianity. The seeds of doubt have were planted and a call of a renewal of faith has been sent out: Spong, Harpur, etc. Christianity is not only being forced to take academia seriously, but also other religions as well. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to live in isolation from the larger world.
So, the first two groups (Atheists and Agnostics) are the one-two punch, and the latter group (the new Christians) are the knock out. Christianity won’t be left behind in the cultural transformation going on… even though that is what many Atheists would like. What is happening is that Christianity (along with all the other religions) is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
This is what I’m actually interested in. There is change in the air, but its hard to know what exactly it is or where it’s heading. Starting with the Theosophists, there has been a lineage of proponents of allegorical thinking: Theosophists to Jung to Campbell to the present Mythicists (G.A. Wells, D.M. Murdock, Tom Harpur, Freke and Gandy). What recently brought this to the greater public attention is the movie Zeitgeist (the first part to be specific). Many great thinkers had pointed out these mythical parallels to Christianity long before, but nobody was listening. Zeitgeist had the advantage of being able to bypass the media censors and went straight to the internet where it went, as they say, viral.
The Fundamnetalists thought they had forced the mythicist movement permanently underground back in the 1800s. The Apologists gained control of Biblical studies (especially in the US) and held that control for the last hundred years or so. The internet has turned out to be the Apologists undoing despite their heavy use of it in their proseletyzing. The Tektonics website is no match for the Mythicists.
Part of the reason is that mythology is now cool. Movies such as Star Wars and the Matrix have given a foothold for comparative mythology to break into mainstream culture. The imagination of Western Culture has been awoken. Even Apologists have been forced to use these movies to reach a younger generation, but in doing so they’ve created a foothold for comparative mythology to enter Christianity. They can’t win for losing because they chose the wrong battle in the first place.
Movies have had this power because special effects have improved vastly in recent decades (and, of course, technology will continue to improve). As a culture, we can create (in fiction) anything we can imagine. This is more profound than many people realize. And the internet has brought to the masses this ability to imaginatively create. The collective imagination has been democratized. Our society isn’t prepared for what will be the results of this. A generation is being raised with all of this and they’re going to utterly transform society. The generation growing up right now is bigger than the Baby Boomers. The Boomers are retiring, and (because Gen X is a small generation) the Millennials will flood the job market.
I have no idea what this will mean, but it’s going to big. To put it into the terms of Strauss and Howe, we are in the Fourth Turning.
The problem was that he was a convert from Christianity and converts are often a bit on the zealous side (btw this can include converts to atheism as well). He seemed fairly open-minded, but there was this aspect of him that was as annoying as a Christian Fundamentalist… defensive and righteous, a very bad combination especially when you throw in a slight victim complex. He quite likely used to be a Christian Fundamentalist and seems to have this distorted view of what all Christianity is. I’m sorry he had such a bad experience with Christianity, but I have no desire to help him work through his issues.
This guy seems to think of himself as a representative of Judaism… which, I must say, is unfortunate for Judaism. The Jews should be more careful about who they convert.
The discussion mostly went well, but after a while it felt like walking across a minefield as he was so touchy about so many things. He had a lot of emotional baggage. The issue for me isn’t the emotional baggage. Rather, the issue is that a person like him who is always projecting their problems onto others. I have a lot of psychological problems of my own, but I try my best and (hopefully) am somewhat succesful at separating my problems from my interactions.
Anyways, that discussion put the nail in the coffin for that particular forum. I give up on trying to have intelligent discussions with people in online forums. Why are there so many mentally disturbed people online? I’ll save that question for another day.
Well… water under the bridge. All of that isn’t what I wanted to talk about, not exactly at least. The topic of this blog post is religion. I’m attracted to religion and I enjoy discussing it, but religion can be such a depressing subject. When I study some aspects of religious history, I start thinking that religion itself can even be the problem. Religion can inspire people to do great and wonderful things, but it also can justify the psychotic (if not homicidal) delusions of various kinds of nutjobs. The history of Christianity can particularly depress me. The first thousand years of Christianity was almost and endless spree of destruction.
And then there are people who leave Christianity because of its history of bigotry and hatred only to join another religion that isn’t any better. To pick a random example (wink wink), Judaism is in some ways worse than Christianity. At least, Christians were going against their own scripture when persecuting and killing various peoples. The Jewish history as recorded in their scriptures is utterly horrific. The Jewish God even commands the Jews to commit genocide, rape, and enslavement.
Talk about depressing. And this whole Judeo-Christian tradition is the foundation of Western civilization. It about makes me want to kill myself to consider that this is my cultural heritage.
This is a major issue that religious people never consider seriously. Some religious people would respond that athiests commit horrible things as well. Yes, this is true to an extent. Humans in general have great capacity for cruelty. However, the point of religion is supposed to be to help humanity strive towards higher ideals. The evidence, unfortunately, is to the contrary.
I’m not dismissing religion. As I see it, religion is something like the scientific knowledge of the atom. Scientists can make atomic energy and scientists can make an atomic bomb. Now consider what happens if some religious nut gets hold of an atomic bomb. Forget about 9/11. The real fun has yet to start.
I should point out that that Fundamentalism as we know it is actually a modern invention. Fundamentalism is a response to modernity. For instance, the extreme forms of literalism came into existence in response to modern understanding of objective reality. In the past, people had less sense of distinction between subjective and objective realities, between myth and history. It wasn’t even that imporant for ancient people to make such distinctions. Literalism is the attempt of religion to retain its authority in the face of science and the secular academia in general.
So, Fundamentalism isn’t fundamental, ie., isn’t original to religion. However, the awareness of literalism as opposed to allegorical thinking did start to develop thousands of years ago. This was a distinction that Greek philosophers were starting to consider. Even though literalism didn’t clearly and fully manifest until modernity, its been there from the beginning of religions such as Christianity and Islam.
For example, some early Christians were aware of and even open to the allegorical interpretation of scripture. Christianity, in fact, developed out of the milieu that included a growing trend of allegorical thinking. But this was still a very new way of thinking for the human species. The new mentality arose all of a sudden during the Axial Age; and then, within the centuries after Christianity began, the new mentality was disappearing again. The former Roman Empire was lost in the Dark Ages.
It took Europe another thousand years or so to remember these ancient ideas. The re-introduction of Greek thought (strangely enough, from Islamic culture) helped to jumpstart the Renaissance, but to balance out the Renaissance was the Reformation. The Reformation set the groundwork for modern Fundamentalism.
Okay, all of that is basic enough. Here we all are in the wake of modernity. The Fundamentalists are on the defense and they become ever more dangerous as they become cornered into their own dogmatic righteousness. In the US, we shouldn’t worry about the Islamic Fundamentalists from the Middle East. We should be worrying about our homegrown Christian Fundamentalists. Right now, our Fundamentalists are fat and contented by American wealth and power. But throw in enough dissatisfaction (such as if this economic downturn lasts long enough), and we’ll start to see a new breed of American Fundamentalists.
The Fundamentalists, in the past, at least had control of the Biblical studies in academia. However, they’re losing their grip and their apologetics is becoming obvious for what it is. A battle is going on right now even though many people are unaware of it and of it’s greater significance. The battle is occurring on multiple fronts. The Fundamentalists have three mortal enemies.
Christian theologians/apologists essentially created the Atheist movement (by creating the term) as a way of containing secularism. They defined the terms of battle and many Atheists have been happy to play their pre-designed part. This battle gets a lot of public attention, but its just a front for a more complex battle.
Agnostics are even more dangerous to the Fundamentalists. Agnostics refuse to play by the rules that the apologists are familiar with. Many Agnostics are even Christian. Fundamentalists simply don’t understand this opponent even if they happen to notice him. Agnosticism is more like a cancer than an enemy that can be fought. The Agnostics are the Aikido masters. And, to mix in another metaphor, they fly below the radar… which is to say they don’t get much publicity. Being an Agnostic just isn’t sexy. To think of it another way, Agnostics are like Martin Luther King Jr during the race riots. King once said that the only reason white people listened to him was because there was an angry young black man behind him with a molotov cocktail. In this manner, the Agnostic slips in and seems quite moderate in comparison to the raving Atheists.
Related to the Agnostics, is a new faction of Christians. The Agnostics have been an agitating force within Christianity. Many believers have felt a need to resolve this unsettling sense that something isn’t quite right within Christianity. The seeds of doubt have were planted and a call of a renewal of faith has been sent out: Spong, Harpur, etc. Christianity is not only being forced to take academia seriously, but also other religions as well. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to live in isolation from the larger world.
So, the first two groups (Atheists and Agnostics) are the one-two punch, and the latter group (the new Christians) are the knock out. Christianity won’t be left behind in the cultural transformation going on… even though that is what many Atheists would like. What is happening is that Christianity (along with all the other religions) is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
This is what I’m actually interested in. There is change in the air, but its hard to know what exactly it is or where it’s heading. Starting with the Theosophists, there has been a lineage of proponents of allegorical thinking: Theosophists to Jung to Campbell to the present Mythicists (G.A. Wells, D.M. Murdock, Tom Harpur, Freke and Gandy). What recently brought this to the greater public attention is the movie Zeitgeist (the first part to be specific). Many great thinkers had pointed out these mythical parallels to Christianity long before, but nobody was listening. Zeitgeist had the advantage of being able to bypass the media censors and went straight to the internet where it went, as they say, viral.
The Fundamnetalists thought they had forced the mythicist movement permanently underground back in the 1800s. The Apologists gained control of Biblical studies (especially in the US) and held that control for the last hundred years or so. The internet has turned out to be the Apologists undoing despite their heavy use of it in their proseletyzing. The Tektonics website is no match for the Mythicists.
Part of the reason is that mythology is now cool. Movies such as Star Wars and the Matrix have given a foothold for comparative mythology to break into mainstream culture. The imagination of Western Culture has been awoken. Even Apologists have been forced to use these movies to reach a younger generation, but in doing so they’ve created a foothold for comparative mythology to enter Christianity. They can’t win for losing because they chose the wrong battle in the first place.
Movies have had this power because special effects have improved vastly in recent decades (and, of course, technology will continue to improve). As a culture, we can create (in fiction) anything we can imagine. This is more profound than many people realize. And the internet has brought to the masses this ability to imaginatively create. The collective imagination has been democratized. Our society isn’t prepared for what will be the results of this. A generation is being raised with all of this and they’re going to utterly transform society. The generation growing up right now is bigger than the Baby Boomers. The Boomers are retiring, and (because Gen X is a small generation) the Millennials will flood the job market.
I have no idea what this will mean, but it’s going to big. To put it into the terms of Strauss and Howe, we are in the Fourth Turning.
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