My guest today is Chris Summerfield. Chris works for Drug Arm WA, writes an intelligent blog called “A Churchless Faith” and recently took me up on my challenge to Christians to answer the question “What would it take for you to become an atheist?”. We talk a little about the striking similarities between the key points in the Jesus myth and the mythologies of other saviour gods such as Horus (3000 BCE), Mithra, etc. We also examine the troubling lack of first-hand eye-witness reports of Jesus (surely someone walking around raising people from the dead would have caused some interest from contemporary scholars) and the fact that the Jesus Seminar concluded that only 18% of the supposed saying of Jesus in the New Testament have any chance of being authentic or original.
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Hey cam, just watched something quite disturbing last night on Compass (ABC) about the new wave of religion called INTERFAITH.
Basically it is about all the 6-7 main religions coming together to make one whole religion encompassing all faiths and beliefs.
Some catholic, bhuddist, pentecostal and muslim preachers were starting to learn about each others religions and trying to bring together all faiths so as to stop hatred and segregation in the world.
To me personally it looked like an attempt to empower religion as a whole because as separated entities they were starting to lose some power.
The scary thing is the first INTERFAITH church has been founded in Australia as it is seen as a new country whose religious ties are not as historically strong as other nations. Also Australian seem to be more open to new ideas and less rigid.
On face value it seems like a good idea, promoting understading and ending religious hatred but i always seem to be a bit sceptical when it comes to religion. Here are some links to the INTERFAITH sites.
http://www.interfaithalliance.org/site/pp.asp?c=8dJIIWMCE&b=447561
http://www.nif.org.au/home.htm
Great job Cameron, you do the world a great service, listening to your Napoleon podcasts right now. On this topic, the movie “The God Who Wasn’t There” is a great introduction to the Jesus questions raised in this podcast, available for rental on Netflix.com or purchase on Amazon.com. Thanks again. John.
THanks John. I agree, THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE is a great film. I actually had the director, Brian Flemming, on the show a few months ago.
http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/03/08/gday-world-210-brian-flemming-atheist-filmmaker/
The parents of Horus were certainly not called Mary and Joseph, am I missing something?
And do you really think Zeitgeist is a reliable source? It’s been panned by almost everyone in the skeptic community.
David, no I don’t consider Zeitgeist a reliable source of historical information, but it’s been useful to get people thinking about the historicity of Jesus. I think it’s about as reliable as the NT.
I’m a rock solid antitheist, I think getting people to think about the historicity of Jesus is a great thing, but why not do it with facts and not fiction?
Your ‘list of Horus/Jesus similarities’ is a total joke. Most of it doesn’t even apply to what is actually written about Jesus in the bible, never mind the pair of them.