Atheist Debates - Calling Christianity a myth is offensive
Matt Dillahunty, 1 Febr. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueJ0VoAWJyw
3:45 You mean they are Greek pagans, rather than Lithuanian and Nordic?
Or you mean your mythology class covered Norse myth?
4:41 Exactly how often does the Bible or Church Fathers go out of their way to say "myth" is false overall?
Note, in a certain context, probably of Gnostic heresies, St. Paul was comparing that to remote origins myths like Gaia and Ouranos ... and St. Justin martyr had some things to say on Greek myths ending with so and so becoming a god ... (like it was the devil who lied to some to make them believe Perseus and Andromeda were taken up into the sky as stars).
But I don't find any common allegation that all myths and hero legends overall are false. For instance, when Aeneas rescues the statue of Athena in the Aeneid, St. Augustine makes a point about those gods being bad debtors - but doesn't question Aeneas existed. When Paul the Deacon says Gotan did not decide the victory for the Vinniles, he had two arguments:
- it's only the true God who decides victories (bad argument since the situation of the story could be interpreted as Gotan being visibly there and acting as referee - Paul the Deacon meant the providential decisions in real battles)
- and besides, Gotan was really Mercury - a Greek magician who lived 1000 years earlier.
So, they don't even question some people have been wrongfully deified, but otherwise rightly recorded. Saturn was banished to Italy by his son Jove who succeeded him as king on Crete ... Christians have had a tendency to say "OK, no problem" ... and I think Historia Scholastica takes that route.
Obviously I believe the identification of Gotan with Mercury is not a proof that only one such magician lived, and if you analyse similarities between Norse and other myths, I think you might end up concluding "wait, isn't this the Ancient Near East?"
5:24 You say Christians changed how the term was used. What Christians and when?
As you may know, most Evangelical Christian communities are younger in ecclesial communities than the lifespans of Paley and Locke.
In the Renaissance, St. Francis Xaver was asking himself whether the god of the Japanese, Bodda, was a real person or a total figment of the imagination. He concluded for the latter as it was said that he had become wise over 9000 years of reincarnations, and St. Francis Xaver didn't agree (obviously) that a man's soul could have a background of 9000 years of reincarnations.
7:48 Given that the type of intervention you speak of is likely to result in losses of freedom, there certainly is something "negative" (i e bad, in plain language) about what they would be trying to do.
9:05 When it comes to remote origin stories, like earth being a female goddess and the first biologically organised and conscient being or like earth being the carcass of a monster, they clearly contradict what the Bible says.
When it comes to 100 Flood "myths" it's more like independent support. I think Flood stories are also referred to as "origin myths."
Lots of other parts of pagan mythologies could well be historically true, even if seen from a theologically false angle. Greek tragedy taught me, Apollon is not a figment of imagination, as much as a demon. Homer and St. John both called him Apollyon.
9:29 "Christianity is not a religion"
Not said by Roman Catholics.
10:00 Has it occurred to you, that the parts of the Bible that precede the present and the New Covenant, and also are unobserved by any men, like most of Hesiod's Theogony, are about 1 chapter of the Bible? And that the rest is about things observed, if true, or claimed to have been observed, like Homer's epics?
10:41 Islam and Buddhism are more practical philosophies than myths.
The "myth" part of Judaism is compatible with Christianity (except saying Melchizedec was Shem and so a proto-Levite, making Levite ancestry mandatory for priesthood). The myth part of Hinduism can also largely be historic, namely Mahabharata for before the Flood and Ramayana from after it (even if Hindus swapped the chronology to make the Flood more remote and certain glorious Nodian men of renown more close to post-Flood dynasties).
11:07 The line I draw between Christianity and Greek myths is more like this.
Suppose Homer and Greek tragedy and Gospels are both historic truth.
Greek tragedy and Homer can be very easily reinterpreted (as I do) about demons interfering with heathen, who did not have the protection of God, as they had fallen under idolatry.
But the Gospels can't. If you refuse divine intervention, your sole option is, they are false. As history even. That's pretty unique for myths. And if Egyptians tried to make the Exodus story first a story of demonic intervention, then about a remote foreign god, which the Greeks took over, that was hardly fair on Moses.
- Irrelevant Noob
- Why couldn't it have been Loki just messing with desert-dwelling goat-herders for his own entertainment?
Also, what did you mean by that "As history even"?! Because i'm pretty sure the greek myths can be viewed as similarly a chronicle of ancient-er history...
And lastly, what's fairness got to do with any of this?
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @Irrelevant Noob I think I said more than once, Greek myths, excluding most of Hesiod, but including two epics by Homer and Athenian Tragedy is correct or nearly correct history.
It's just that it's better evidence for demons (or Loki) pushing people over the brink than for the God of the Universe making a covenant with a people. I e, it is historic events much easier to divorce from the theologic interpretation.
"Why couldn't it have been Loki just messing with desert-dwelling goat-herders for his own entertainment?"
I believe we were created in God's image and therefore refuse to believe we could have an entire people fooled into false memories. You seem to be highly patronising against people living in a desert or holding animals that give wool - by the way, what is your evidence Israelites preferred goats over sheep?
@Irrelevant Noob "And lastly, what's fairness got to do with any of this?"
Demons plotted the deaths of Laios and Hippolytos to humiliate the former's son Oidipous and the latter's father Theseus.
That's a very fair interpretation of what happened in two Greek tragedies.
It's very unfair to compare Moses to that.
- Irrelevant Noob
- @Hans-Georg Lundahl oh so it's the argument from personal incredulity... Quite convincing, then. :p
Why would i need to have such evidence, i never said what they preferred ... they just had herds of goats, like they also had of sheep, pigs, poultry, etc... and i just selected one of them arbitrarily (or maybe my subconscious selected the first one in alphabetical order, idk).
Of course Moses didn't "plot" anything, he was just the messenger of a sadistic and brutal higher power. Still don't see why fairness should come in.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @Irrelevant Noob "oh so it's the argument from personal incredulity"
Over Hebrews preferring and obtaining larger herds of sheep than goats?
"they just had herds of goats, like they also had of sheep, pigs, poultry, etc"
Well, why not name them as herders of the majority livestock, then?
Plus, most books (psalms being a clear exception) did not have shepherds as authors.
"he was just the messenger of a sadistic and brutal higher power."
What's sadistic or brutal about delivering a people from what amounts to slavery?
@Irrelevant Noob Was this the item with "personal incredulity"?
"Why couldn't it have been Loki just messing with desert-dwelling goat-herders for his own entertainment?"
Well, an entire people suffering hallucinations is a very unordinary claim which would require very unusual evidence.
Barring such evidence, it should be excluded, and the claims of an entire people be taken as evidence. - Irrelevant Noob
- @Hans-Georg Lundahl "Over Hebrews preferring and obtaining larger herds of sheep than goats?" -- no it's about "therefore refuse to believe we could have an entire people fooled into false memories"... How would you even detect if "an entire people suffering hallucinations" when it's the result of a deity inducing those experiences? How do you know how such experiences would manifest, and whether there is even anything detectable as "unordinary" that was going on?
"why not name them as herders of the majority livestock, then?" -- because what was the majority livestock isn't really important when it comes to their knowledge and credibility.
"What's sadistic or brutal about delivering a people from what amounts to slavery?" -- the way it was supposedly done, with genocide and mind-control. Guess he didn't practice as much with teleportation (like how the devil took a grown man from wilderness into the holy city) yet... he wasn't able or willing to solve the issue without bloodshed and strife.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @Irrelevant Noob "How would you even detect if "an entire people suffering hallucinations" when it's the result of a deity inducing those experiences?"
The argument "how would you even detect" is overrated.
Suppose the universe were shrinking each day to half its size, everything in it, and the constants were constantly adapting.
I would probably be prepared to say "there is absolutely nothing indicating that" and you could then defend the theory with "how would you even detect it?"
There is no reason to believe entire peoples were suffering hallucinations, even pagans weren't suffering more than distortions of judgement, which is something else, like Oidipous believing it was a good idea to hear the Oracle of Delphi.
And as long as there is no reason to believe in collective hallucinations, there are very good reasons to believe the Exodus happened.
"because what was the majority livestock isn't really important when it comes to their knowledge and credibility."
Oh, you mean you were using goatherders as a slur, about the knowledge and credibility, and don't care five cents whether the slur is accurate or not?
Well, so much for your intellectual honesty!
"the way it was supposedly done, with genocide and mind-control."
The killing of Canaaneans was to rid exactly one country of religions involving child sacrifice. If they were ready to sacrifice one son each (at times at least) to false gods, they can't complain if the true God found them all worthy of death.
"he wasn't able or willing to solve the issue without bloodshed and strife."
He wasn't willing to solve the issue without bloodshed and strife, because strife was already there and bloodshed was already there. He just put the balance in for the right side.
11:26 Ah, yes, your own version of Apollo worship involves incantations that result in oracles about "4.5 billion years" ...
And you obviously call it Science with a capital S - like a proper name.
12:13 Myth could be any unreligious or not so religious story as well (Persian wars being the myth of a play in Greek tragedy).
Superstition is on the other hand definitely a question of trademarking - it's the oracles that aren't (unlike Hagiographers, Church Fathers and Popes) from the one true and omniscient God.
Now, is a story known as history, or by an oracle?
For Gospels or Homer, I say, "as history."
For Genesis 1 or for Hesiod or for Primordial Soup to Man, I say "by an oracle" - and at least two of them can't be true, since all three contradict.
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