Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:How is your theory falsifiable Interbane? Let's say that Jesus called Lazarus from the grave historically. On your theory there must be some other unknown naturalistic explanation.
What theory of mine?
I was so pleased to see Flann raise this example of the miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead by Jesus Christ as proof that God exists outside the universe. The Lazarus story has fascinated me for some years as one that provides a compelling support for the astrotheological Gnostic interpretation of the Gospel According to Saint John.
I find especially interesting the comment of John immediately after explaining the miracle, at Chapter 11:53 “from that day forth they [the Jewish authorities] took counsel together for to put him to death.” My view is that this comment reflects the intensely repressive religious atmosphere in which the New Testament was created, and how the real intent of the Christ story was something deeply unacceptable to prevailing prejudice.
Far from being about miracles, as Christians assume, the Lazarus story is about the deep culture clash between the good east and the evil west, presenting in concealed form the immense intellectual debt that Christianity has to the ancient religions of the east, specifically the religion of Egypt.
Interbane wrote:
To be clear about one thing, you're making an initial assumption. Let's go with your example. The claim that we need an explanation for isn't that "Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead". The claim we need an explanation for is that "the bible is a truthful account of an actual event where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead". The difference is that we are removed by a degree. Put another way, the words in the bible are what we are in need of explaining. Not the supposed claim they make. So the question becomes, is there a naturalistic explanation for why the bible claims that Jesus called Lazarus from the dead?
Yes, there is an excellent natural explanation for the Lazarus story, that Lazarus is a parable for the Egyptian God Osiris. The parallels are abundant, clear and meaningful, but clash directly with core literalist prejudices of dominant Christianity. The theory of the Egyptian origins of Christianity was first explained in detail by the nineteenth century English scholar Gerald Massey, who was subjected to intense ridicule, mockery and contempt by the forces of darkness in the church, in a modern version of witch persecution and heresy-hunting. Massey’s work was recognized only among the fringe movement of theosophy, including by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, and by the leading contemporary Canadian religious broadcaster Tom Harpur, whose work continues to fall stillborn from the press, to use Hume’s evocative image for ideas that are ignored. Then, the recently deceased maverick astrotheologist DM Murdock made the revival of Massey a core part of her work, for example in her great book
Christ in Egypt.
Murdock provides a simply compelling explanation of the factual derivation of the Lazarus story from the Osiris myth at
http://freethoughtnation.com/is-lazarus ... of-osiris/ This article includes a table of textual Midrash or copying, which illustrates that the four characters Lazarus, Jesus, Mary and Martha are directly copied from Osiris, Horus, Isis and Nephthys as the core Gods and Goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. These old gods are given new concealed life in the modern evil dispensation, representing the forces of good against the evil of the world. The detailed functional parallels shown by Murdock’s Midrash are further confirmed by the simple etymological connections between Osiris and Lazarus, and between the two Maries and the Egyptian Mertae.
Richard Carrier’s problem in relation to this type of analysis is that even to discuss such ideas is to invite hostile contempt from moronic bigots who will persecute and trash the reputation of anyone with the courage and ability to discuss this material. Carrier therefore beats a tactical retreat in OHJ, failing to even discuss the Egyptian Midrash which explains core themes of political culture in the explanation of how and why Christ was invented. As such, his work is an essential forerunner to the emerging paradigm change in religious studies, but does not deliver that change, which requires analysis of how Christianity evolved from its cultural predecessors.
Interbane wrote:
Are there naturalistic explanations for the words in the bible that claim Jesus called Lazarus from the dead? Yes, including the explanation that this particular part of the story was fabricated. It truly is that simple. In order to appeal to a supernatural explanation, you must not only rule out this explanation, but every other possible naturalistic explanation. After that, you must move on to proving the events as described could not be naturalistic.
The above material shows that further to Interbane’s hypothesis of the fabrication of the Lazarus Rising story, there is a clear direct and simple explanation available of how and why this story was fabricated. John’s purpose was to explain that divine order has always been present within nature, but this manifest reality is invisible due to the weight of delusion in human psychology. The crucial Egypt parable is therefore a stumbling block to Christians and foolishness to scientists. The connection between Lazarus and Osiris both directly disproves the supernatural fantasies of faith and indicates that old pagan myths deserve respect. So modern religion and science both reject this hypothesis a priori without examination, like the Jews and Gentiles assessing the preaching of Christ crucified as Saint Paul describes at I Corinthians 1:23.
Interbane wrote:
When you have a claim like this, you examine the vessel first. Take a court of law. If a video is submitted showing a crime, the integrity must be proven before the jury moves on to examining the contents. No tampering, a rock solid chain of custody, and a clear, concise picture. Even with a video from a CCTV security system, that's a difficult process. But you expect it to be taken for granted for the bible? We can't move on to the supposed events, because the vessel itself is the thing being questioned.
These basic legal/scientific methods of evidence are accepted in all historiography except work based on faith. So the fact that Carrier provides a simple clear explanation that the texts we have are highly probable on the hypothesis of invention but impossible on the hypothesis of existence of Jesus is simply ignored by the faithful, given their assessment of how disruptive it would be to their core paradigm. Christians instead use the method explained by George Orwell in 1984 called ‘crimestop’, the ability to identify a heretical line of thought and nip it in the bud through a cultural practice which Orwell calls ‘protective stupidity’.
Interbane wrote:
Here's a key question you need to answer: Is it impossible for there to be a naturalistic reason that this claim is contained in the bible? This claim being "Jesus called Lazarus from the dead."
The natural reason of Egyptian Midrash is compelling and obvious once it is studied, but first the scales covering your eyes need to fall away so you are not blinded by faith.
Interbane wrote:
Your faith is misplaced Flann. I don't know the right set of words to convince you, but if you could teleport inside my head, you'd see how certain it was. It baffles me that something so simple is rejected time and time again.
The bafflement illustrates some quite deep problems of cultural pathology in religious psychology. Where people have such massive cultural, social, historical and material investment in an institution that provides comfort and meaning, as in the Christian church, any ideas that seem to challenge that sense of comfort and meaning will be viewed with intense hostility, and will be ignored, mocked and attacked before there is any respectful intellectual engagement and courteous dialogue. I certainly have never experienced courteous dialogue from Christians regarding my ideas, with perhaps Flann coming closest, which I appreciate.
Gerald Massey’s table of Egyptian Christian parallels in his book
Ancient Egypt the Light of the World contains about 300 items, of which Murdock's list linked above is an extract. The standard Christian fundamentalist response to such material is to go through it to find the least plausible example and cherry pick that, as a fallacious ad hominem effort to discredit the entire method of Egyptian Midrash. But I would suggest the very length of this table illustrates that if we use the opposite method, and instead focus on those parallels that are the best, it throws the entire question of Christian origins into a new light.
Part of the problem here is that modern rational thinkers also have their own cultural presuppositions about the value of faith, and it is very difficult to identify and articulate these presuppositions on the dissecting table. For the evening to be spread against the sky like a patient etherized on a table, in TS Eliot’s very famous image, illustrates the problem of analysis of faith. Christians perceive that atheism involves a lack of respect and engagement with their core commitments, resulting in a dialogue of the deaf and blind, similar to the problem Jesus Christ was said to identify in his efforts to explain himself to his disciples.
The Egyptian Midrash of Lazarus is the type of story that is ignored and mocked by both sides of the science-religion divide, but its central pivotal place in John’s Gospel illustrates that its role in providing a coherent and compelling natural explanation for the memetic origin of the Jesus story deserves further study.