Comments on: Religulous and Horus

By: Horus, Mithras and Religulous at Zoomtard

Horus, Mithras and Religulous at Zoomtard — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:30:19 +0000

[...] the comments to my post on the Bill Maher docucomedy “Religulous”, a Zoomtard reader called Johnny Rico writes, You condemn Maher’s documentary for not having [...]

By: Johnny Rico

Johnny Rico — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:50:31 +0000

Zoom,
I have to admit I’m skeptical both ways. Seeing the movie left quite an impression, particularly when you look at other things that have been ‘borrowed’ by religions. (as you mentioned in your post, Saturnalia, etc.) You condemn Maher’s documentary for not having footnotes, yet I see none in your reply to him.

Not meaning to sound pugnacious or confrontational (which is tough over the web) Do you have any?

By: zoomtard

zoomtard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:50:58 +0000

Respect “In comparison” in this instance is a meaningless term.

By: QMonkey

QMonkey — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:49:42 +0000

Maher is one of those guys makes me want to slap him. I find my self wanting to take the contrary view to him as much as possible.
When i watch the clips of this movie i’m on the side of the religious idiots wanting them to stump the smug git with one moment of genius argument. I like to think they did, but he edited it out. He does at least show how much respect the dawkins/dennents etc do show for religious types in comparison.

By: Moonsray

Moonsray — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:58:24 +0000

En garde!

By: zoomtard

zoomtard — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:52:54 +0000

Tricky Moonsray, trying to conciliate and then bam! You hit me with your Christianity-as-paganism spiel again.

I think you can get a lot more pagan than the deeply Jewish tale of Yeshua. But I’ll get round to that next week and you can tear those posts apart too.

By: Moonsray

Moonsray — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:49:05 +0000

We agree. Maher misstates his case.

And we agree Christianity started as a Jewish sect. A syncretic polytheistic Jewish splinter sect that worshiped a come to earth miracle working godman, son of a mortal woman and the great god in the sky. Can’t get more pagan than that.

Which, again, is why most monotheistic Jews then and now didn’t and don’t convert.

By: zoomtard

zoomtard — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:20:57 +0000

Well he might be the most pleasant man a guy could ever meet but his movie persona lacks a certain humility he demands from “religious people”. But I think he mis-states that Christianity is syncretistic. When it is isn’t. It’s a Jewish sect that grew globally.

By: Moonsray

Moonsray — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:57:00 +0000

Bill Maher is an unpleasant man who misstates the case for Christian syncretism.

By: zoomtard

zoomtard — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:55:37 +0000

Philo is a remarkable case of a man who is uniquely able to take disparate, even contradictory sources and meld them together. I seem to remember having to defend even citing Philo recently on this blog because he was so “biased”.

In the other cases Moonsray, I think it is fair to see that the Maccabean revolt that followed the slip into syncretism kind of serves as strict and defined underlining of the passionate monotheism of Judaism.

I also strongly contest your suggestion that Paul or the early Christians (all Jewish) engaged in Pagan syncretism. I’ll write something on that next week and we might have a chat about it in more detail.

All this is to re-iterate, in the comedy documentary Religulous, Bill Maher fails to make a strong argument against Christianity for a number of reasons, one of which is his mis-representation of Horus and Mithras as influences in the formation of Christian narrative and doctrine.

His argument against Christians however is damning and at times damn funny.