Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

As you said it Dean, any mother nursing a baby can be compared with the Virgin nursing Jesus.

 

That's not a connection.

 

Iván

 

You said:

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: There also Mike ignored reality, he compared the myth of Horus with the Virgin Mar, when both myths have nothing in common, ...

There are several things that both myths do have in common. Neither are natural conceptions, even if the methods are different. Both relate to the birth of a son of a god; both children are declared to be a god; both mothers are venerated and called "mother of god"; The mother and child image is a powerful icon in both religions; Osiris and Jesus are both life-death-rebirth deities; Horus and Jesus are both referred to as "Savior". The numbers 12 and 13 figure in both Osiris and Jesus stories, these are common numbers in many religions because they relate to the number of months in a year (lunar and solar). The Osiris/Isis/Horus myth was known to the early christians and pagan converts to christianity - it was popular in Greece during the Hellenic era - christian scholars accept that Hellenic philosophy was readily adopted by the early christian church (the nature of god as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and benevolent is based on Hellenic-Platonic philosophy) - it is not inconceivable that a pagan myth was adapted to suit a pre-existing early christian story.

 

Of course you can shoot each of those down systematically since they are not exactly the same in every respect. But that not how myths jump from one culture to another - the adopting culture always modifies the myth to suit their own beliefs.

 

Dean, you are guessing, there's no basis for that idea.

 

Isis took semen from her death husband Osiris, this sounds more like necrophilia.

 

On another version less accepted, Osiris was able to recover life except his penis and Isis created a golden penis.

 

And Osiris (the father) is the one who resurrects, not Horus.

 

Iván

I see the interpretation but you have to agree for a non believer it looks like quite a stretch to go from " I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven"  to having a Pope elected whenever the last one dies by the school of cardinals, head of a state and of a very wealthy church, an institution with an structure that many nations would envy. But I see where you com from... 

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Dean wrote: I don't agree with Mike on this point because it allows for a nice convenient escape route for theists who don't want to answer the basic question, not because it shows bias in what Mike says.     What basic questions do we ignore  Dean?   I believe we answered each and every question that was made, as a fact Mike chosed what replies to mention and which to ignore, his route of scape is always   I don't believe Youi have to convince ME So itr's false, bogus, fairytales, etc FOR EVERYBODY

Not questions I only referred to one question and it was mentioned in my post, attacking Mike here is what I would call deflection since you have diverted me from persuing a response to (my) basic question. You have taken the escape route to avoid the question.

You don't have to get it - I'll take whatever scraps you throw my way and your post-edit footnote is enough for now

 

Many of the mythological gods revealed themselves to mankind either by manifestations, deeds or through an agent, so there is still nothing to differentiate those extinct gods from any surviving ones, all gods have traits of being products of the imagination, especially those who have no corporeal form and only work through the imagination of their followers. (I am slightly curious as to why you said that most mythological gods are products of imagination and not all of them - what is the origin of those gods that are not?)

 

If all those mythological gods formed part of the search of mankind for its creator, then the surviving gods, (Yahweh, Indra, Varuna, Surya, Agni, Soma, Rudra, Yama, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva etc) could be just more stepping stones along the way and not necessarily the end point - at each stage in that search the people who believed in and worshipped those gods believed they had found what they were looking for.

 

There must be a point where a god becomes mythological - the obvious answer is when people stop believing - but belief in the Greek pantheon (for example) continued well into the early christian era until it was outlawed along with all the European 'pagan' gods (inferring that people stopped believing in those gods because they were made to, not because of a direct revelation by another god). This suggests that those gods only become mythological when they are declared to be mythological by believers in a different god. (that's not a criticism - I like that idea and employ it myself).

 

What you have described is the post-theist view of those gods - that they belong to a stage of human development now past, thus are obsolete - except that a theist would never declare a god to be obsolete because of the logical conclusion of that line of thought.

 

 

 

Just wanting it said out loud.

 

They are both valid but separate in my opinion.