On occasion something happens that really opens your eyes. You might have been aware of it subconsciously, but then all of a sudden the enormity of the situation hits you.
That happened to me this week while reading this blog. Lo and behold I noticed two self proclaimed atheists on. Now I am fully aware of the consequences of posting anything on the internet. But I always thought Being Frank was away by itself in a little corner of the web for Catholic curiosities. Of course it isn’t, and now I’m suddenly aware that all sorts of folk from different backgrounds can be on this site. Because of this, I will endeavour to offer a more polished product every Friday. Maybe starting next year.
So anyway, welcome to you my atheistic brethren and I hope you enjoy your stay. It’s always good to hear a different point of view and I hope we (the royal we) challenge each other with our views. I always wondered if I could make a good atheist… probably not as I lack the belief. I guess because I believe in God, I find it hard to imagine not believing in God. Believing that life is just full of random events, that whatever we do is just driven by sparks in our brain… I’m sure there’s more to it than that.
But maybe by looking to science and nature for answers, we can take away the questions like if there’s a God, why is there suffering. Science is a funny thing. On the one hand, mankind is now almost able to use stem cells to restore sight. On the other, we can’t control the various strains of influenza that are out there.
I call it a tie. I’m sure we can’t do without one or the other. Well I can’t anyway.
I think you are on to something.
We could perhaps ask “If there is science, why do people still suffer?”
Reply: “Because we don’t know everything there is to know about science yet, so don’t lose faith in science.”
And we could add “we don’t know everything there is to know about God yet, so don’t lose faith in God”.
Not knowing stuff doesn’t make the unknown false.
PS: I’m aware also that the issue of suffering is not typically understood or treated in the atheist community in the same way, thinking suffering disproves a loving God. Bigger discussion!
This is something I’ve often wondered about. I have often had it said to me by colleagues or friends who define themselves as atheist, that they refuse to believe in God because there’s no proof He exists.
But isn’t atheism every bit as much a system of belief? I mean, it is just as impossible to prove God doesn’t exist – so it’s quite a leap of faith to declare He doesn’t.
Be careful not to draw up a false dichotomy between belief and non-belief guys. Not believing something is not a belief in and of itself. Lack of something does not essentially infer gain in something else.
And sure eleus, it’s impossible to prove God doesn’t exist…just like it’s impossible to prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist and the Easter Bunny. Although I do have my suspicions about the Easter Bunny.
That’s of course if we’re talking prove beyond the shadow of any sort of doubt…
Beardy,
It’s not a tie. Science can’t create life. It’s takes things already created with complex structures and mechanisms and uses them with it’s limited understanding of those mechanisms. And who created the mechanisms for growth, and mutation so very complex. I’ll call a tie when science takes a lump of coal and makes me a rabbit.
Is that a joke Sam? Since when is this Science some sort of potentially all powerful force!
It’s merely the term used in english to describe a way of investigating the natural world. A way which has been incredibly successful over the millennia.
Please don’t make it out to be any more than that.
And sure eleus, it’s impossible to prove God doesn’t exist…just like it’s impossible to prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist and the Easter Bunny.
And why do you think it appropriate to put God’s existence on the same level as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Is this not similar to making out the God is nothing but a myth (even if you do believe in the Easter Bunny). Surely, you can concede the evidence for God is far more debatable than an established myth?
So what makes Santa Claus an established myth?
I don’t see how that is an answer to my question, given you asserted exactly that earlier.
Santa Claus isn’t actually someone that we really believe exists, which it isn’t equivalent to faith in God. Yes, we have a narrative of Santa that children and adults share in, but no one would expect a 14 year old to still believe in Santa. In fact we would regard that as strange.
So comparing faith in God and the Santa story is apples and oranges.
Zen a very simple answer
1) If you hold the first law of themodynatic which is energy cannot be create nor destroy, where is the energy from the big bang comes from?
2) What is the probability of a DNA or RNA or even simplier organic compound like sugar can be produce in a relatively high pressure environment
3) Lets play with stats, are there any evidence to support the fact that God doesn’t exist? (remember the rule of stats that everything exist unless proven not)
This is pure science which you learn from first year university.
typo thermodynamics (is in the middle of the night here…)
As for Santa Claus and Easter bunny… it is a very silly idea which interesting people still believe… more interest I find is they rather believe in Santa than God… o dear…
eleus,
it is not a leap of faith to declare that God doesn’t exist – it is an a priori position (decided in advance)
Faith is something quite specific and involves trusting a witness. There is no witness to trust in the position: God doesn’t exist. I don’t ‘believe’ that, because someone has for example died, seen that there is nothing that follows death, come back and told me, for example. If there was such a character and I claimed atheism based on his testimony, it would be on faith in that person’s witness because of their credibility.
Christ is the witness to the Father and it is He who is believed in supernatural faith – his resurrection is a credential that he should be believed. That was witnessed by the apostles. Then we have human faith in their words – because of their credibility – they died for a very practical claim that they had eaten with him alive, after his crucifixion. So their deaths are part of their credibility – or part of our motives for belief in the witness of the Father, whom we call Christ.
Now, atheism is not a ’system of belief’ – it is a denial of the existence of the one that religious traditions call “God” and effectively of the one that the philosophers call “Pure Act”. It is an a priori position that as you say cannot be proven – and in a way it is a giving up of the search for what is really first in Being. It is a decision that being has no real source, no first, especially at the level of the final cause. There is no good reason to give up this search.
Now, science is a massive distraction in this search because it deals only with the measurable, hence its claim on a type of certainty, and it deals only with what is ultimately linked to quantity.
The issue of God is beyond quantity and so necessarily beyond any competency of science.
Pseudo – scientists pat themselves on the back and say “I am a man of science, I only accept what can be established objectively by science.” That position of course is not at all scientific. It is simply a bad piece of philosophy that sustains itself on some sort of pride in oneself that one is enamored with science.
Interesting link for anyone who has 10 minutes to spare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3q6Cid1po
ZenTiger…I responded to your question with another question which will eventually lead to some sort of proper response, bear with me for a moment.
Just throw down some reasons why you think Santa Claus is an established myth…
Don’t worry, this is not some ingenious trap
To have these types of discussions one needs to try and drop preconceived notions. Think like a child would.
Well good morning everyone (it is in New Zealand anyway) and thank you for the very public welcome
I will do my best to be honest with myself and with everyone else about my position and will not intentionally inflame an argument nor cause distress or hurt by what I say.
From the start, I ought to say that I was a ‘Born Again Christian’ in the Evangelical movement and so had little dealings with Catholics and Catholicism in general. I don’t know much, therefore, about the nitty-gritty of your religion, except perhaps, with regards to the claim of transubstantiation, which I find very difficult to understand as I have never found any claim in the Bible about it (that’s not to say that the Bible doesn’t mention it, of course, just that I haven’t found it). I do believe that I know my bible quite well though, so I’m not approaching the argument from a state of ignorance (I still have all my bibles at home, including a JW and a Mormon bible!)
As for the reason for my becoming an atheist, well that’s a very long story, but in a nutshell, I was struck by the number of different gods that are believed in by world society and by the inconsistencies in what is believed by each of the many hundreds of different strains of Christianity, let alone other religions. I have read hundreds of books on both sides of the god argument and have decided that there is not enough real evidence for me to believe any more.
I could go on until the cows come home, but I’ll spare you
Unlike most religious folk who insist that there is a god, I think that most atheist would argue on the insufficiency of evidence that such a supreme being exists; that’s certainly my view.
Oh, and as for ‘recanting on my deathbed’ – nah, I don’t think so
Hi KiwiAtheist,
Transubstantiation is in the Bible. It’s just not called transubstantiation there, but Jesus does say that He will give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink in John 6. The method of transformation is given in the Last Supper and what makes it all work it the Sacrifice on the Cross, where Jesus becomes the Lamb.
Have a look at this as well: You Tube explanation of Transubstantiation
It’s good to see that the Catholic Church was at the forefront of accepting people’s right to choose (well, on some subjects anyway)
http://www.macmillandictionaries.com/wordoftheweek/archive/090409-debaptism.html
Transubstantiation is a fairly common idea among pre-Christian belief systems if I remember correctly. The whole physical representation of a metaphysical being for sustenance etc. Showing the power of the deity. The general idea is def. in Greek mythology.
So yeah, another one of those ideas that found its way into Christianity.
@fishe: Yes, the Christian tradition is founded on so many ancient myths that I’ve lost count; the virgin birth and the flood to name but two. Many Christians nowadays find it hard to reconcile the revelations of modern science with biblical myth. They say that most people are atheists with respect to 99.9% of the gods, we atheists just take it that probable and rational step further and believe in none of them:-)
I tend to think that searching for truth philosophically is a good starting point. It worked for me, at least. One has to be able to first wonder at the world, and I think the artificial belief systems and environment of the contemporary world tends to make this harder, since we’re less exposed to what is truly real. It’s almost as if we’ve constructed for ourselves a highly comfortable and even more effective versions of Plato’s cave, and think ourselves more enlightened for it.
There is a co-requisite to this, though. Christ said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt 5:8). One must be willing to renounce the ways of the flesh, and persevere in the way of sanctity. Before seeking to judge reality, we must first seek to renounce any material attachments and self-centred pride – then, we may be free of the distorting scales from our inner eye. How else would we be able to be objective and open to reality that may prove to be bigger and more sovereign than we might like? I know just someone who has been unable to make that step to faith, because of his worldly attachments that would have to have been renounced, and admitted as much (in passing).
“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt 7:14). One has to seek the truth with a heart that is ready to accept the demands of the one who extends to us this invitation and challenge: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25).
Accepting this renunciation can be done in the natural framework without necessarily having accepted revelation; it’s consistent with reason and common sense (which is why we see such practices in natural religions such as Buddhism). One would find, though, that this brings about freedom, peace, joy and love, when, through this, we discover and experience that we are so much more than our material desires. In lifting our eyes from the sludge of the ground to the open expanse of the horizon and the heavens, we begin to see, even in a purely natural state, the sheer mystery of existence and the world in which we live.
So, then
, let us pluck up our courage, and venture into the search for truth (& transcendence!).
Hi fishe, re: #19 and transubstantiation, I don’t think you’re remembering correctly – or you may be remembering correctly someone who hasn’t done their research properly (e.g. Alexander Hislop’s ill-fated attempt to prove the pagan origins of Catholicism in The Two Babylons).
kiwiatheist, the ancient-myths-as-foundation-of-Christianity idea was popular over a hundred years ago but it has been pretty thoroughly debunked. I thought people had mostly given up making that argument now?
Re: the reconciliation of modern science with Christianity / the Bible, there’s been a *lot* of work done on that throughout Christian history, but perhaps even more so in recent years as we have become more aware of the fine-tuning of the universe and what that implies for the existence of God. One website (among many) that has quite a bit of material on this sort of thing is Reasons to Believe. Or if you want some book recommendations, just ask.
Another good website is William Lane Craig’s Reasonablefaith.org.
I tend to agree with poorclear with regards the area of science being restricted to the quantifiable. I do believe that science can help one’s belief in a transcendent reality or being of some kind, but one has to wake up to reality that’s beyond the quantifiable, in a common-sensical manner that we experience every day (without being consciously present to it). Realist philosophy of Aristotle (with background in Socrates and Plato) can help up in jogging us to being awake to the reality that’s been in front of us all this time (say, does anyone know of any good popular and readily available introduction to this, in written, video, or otherwise some digital form [even a flash presentation]?).
@Dean: Hi Dean, I would be interested to know just where the debunking of ‘ancient-myths-as-foundation-of-Christianity’ has taken place. Everything I’ve read points to the base beliefs of Christianity being founded on some ancient myth or practice.
Yes Dean, I too would really like to learn more about any recent thinking/evidence on the debunking of ancient myths as a foundation for Christianity. It seems like it would be incredibly hard to debunk, without the discovery of a significant body of new historic material relating to early Christianity which has no previous connections.
From what I’ve read/heard, the views on the issue seem to be spread across a spectrum of strongly fundamentalist christians who flat out deny any connections on one end, to overly-biased sceptics who make ridiculous claims not supported by evidence on the other end. As with most things like this, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
This wikipedia page is a good general overview of the ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_and_comparative_mythology
It is of course a very hard area to study, with the small amount of primary sources and the contradictory secondary sources – it’s like studying any text from that long ago, e.g. the bible: relatively open to interpretation.
The idea that the major themes and stories of Christianity are based on prior belief systems and mythology does make a large amount of sense though, given the evidence that does exist and that most literature/stories/ideas in human history seem to build on and modify existing ideas.
The key question seems to be: does this issue damage the authenticity of Christianity?
@fishe: I believe that the issue does damage the authenticity and credibility of Christianity. The Bible is meant to be the inerrant work of God and if, as seems likely, some of it is false, its inerrancy claims cannot be upheld. The fact that the gospels were not written by the supposed authors, the ‘additional’ verses of Mark and the fact that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses are among the many, many inconsistencies in the bible and point to a lack of credibility of the book upon which the faith is founded.
I would be interested to know just where the debunking of ‘ancient-myths-as-foundation-of-Christianity’ has taken place.
Universities. Very few serious scholars would today try to pin Christian beliefs onto other pagan practices. The obvious influence is Judaism, not the surrounding Greek or Roman beliefs.
kiwiatheist, those are some pretty disputable “facts” in your #26 posts about the Bible. Have you seriously studied the textual issues you bring up there (especially about Biblical authorship?) I am *far* from being an expert on those issues (I’ve done lots of reading, but most of it only at a popular level, and only one Masters-level paper on the subject) but I know enough that those assertions are pretty debatable, and need a lot more nuancing than you have given them. But that’s a whole ‘nother topic, and I’ve been thinking more about the ‘ancient-myths-as-foundation-of-Christianity’ thing…
You’re probably going to have to link to some sources at least on the Internet muerk. I can’t find any significant new research on this. Or at least a book about it maybe. Something.
It would be an extraordinary claim that all the stories and events in the bible are original to Christianity. And we know what those claims require…
My background on the ancient myths / foundation of Christianity thing has mainly come from researching the claims, not of atheists or agnostics, but of some strains of fundamentalist Christianity, and of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses).
In the case of the WBTS, who are not, strictly speaking, Christian (although they are definitely theist), one of their distinctive features is strict monotheism, i.e. a denial of the Trinity. And they have tried quite hard to demonstrate that Trinitarianism was a pagan corruption adopted by the Catholic Church which drew from the myths and traditions of Egyptian, Babylonian and other religions, and which wasn’t believed by the earliest Christians. The best example of this is their pamphlet, Should You Believe in the Trinity?
It turns out that their research was extremely shoddy: they misquoted early Christian writers, misunderstood the alleged connections between pagan religious ceremonies and Christian belief (and in doing so misrepresented those pagan elements to artificially make them look closer than they really were), and basically made stuff up.
It used to be really hard to check the sources the WBTS used because they don’t give the citations in their publication, but eventually they came to light. It turns out that, where they’ve used modern, reputable scholars, they are almost without fail really dodgy in their use of ellipses (making their citations say the opposite of the original authors’ intents), or they rely on discredited scholars (many of them Unitarian) from the late 1800s and early 1900s. I put a fair bit of effort into looking into this stuff a few years ago when I was really interested in the history and beliefs of the JWs, so if anyone wants further resources just let me know.
In the case of some fundamentalists, the claim is not that key elements of Christianity are pagan, but that key elements of Catholicism are, thereby justifying the rejection of Catholic distinctives. The mother-lode for these claims is Alexander Hislop’s 1858 book The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife whose central thesis is that Catholicism is derived from Babylonian mystery religions. The book is a crock; reviewers have called it, among other things, a “tribute to historical inaccuracy and know-nothing religious bigotry” with “shoddy scholarship, blatant dishonesty” and a “nonsensical thesis”.
An interesting illustration is evangelical Christian author Ralph Woodrow, who published a book called Babylon Mystery Religion which drew heavily on Hislop’s work. Woodrow subsequently found that most of it was bogus and published a follow-up book, The Babylon Connection? admitting as much and attempting to undo the damage by debunking Hislop’s imaginative speculation. I’ve done some work on Hislop myself, but also see for example The Two Babylons: A Case Study in Poor Methodology; or Tracking the First Pagans.
Anyway, all that is just background summarising the direction that I’ve come into this topic from.
When it comes to the atheist assertions about Christianity as myth, I haven’t read any really scholarly stuff, just popular-level summaries. On the atheist side I’ve seen a lot of stuff linking Christianity most directly to Mithraism (a pagan mystery religion that was in some respects contemporary with Christianity), with alleged secondary derivations from any number of other religions.
Fishe, I think when you referred to transubstantiation (saying “The general idea is def. in Greek mythology”) you may actually be thinking of Mithraism, as I have definitely seen people try to make that link, but I’ve never heard of it in relation to Greek stuff. For example there’s an allegation that Mithra said “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved”, but it turns out that this quote is first found in medieval literature and is most likely a borrowing from Christianity retrospectively injected into Mithraism.
Anyway, although elements of Mithraism pre-date Christianity, it’s not as a continuous religion: there was an Iranian version which emerged, greatly changed, in the Roman Empire and didn’t become prominent until after Christianity was established. It seems in fact that Mithraism borrowed stuff from Christianity, not the other way round. A lot of the assertions that I have seen from atheists and others about Mithraic influences on Christianity is based on scholarship from the mid-1950s or earlier, but the recent trend is that the alleged borrowing by Christianity didn’t really happen (and may have instead gone the other way), and whatever parallels there may be are due to the two religions growing up in the same cultural environment and that *any* two religions are bound to have similarities of some sort.
A good example of such an alleged borrowing (and one that commonly comes up) is the date of Christmas, which a lot of people think came from paganism, but was really developed as a Christian hypothesis based on the date of Jesus’ death and of his conception, and on some strange ideas that early Christians had about the relation between the two. The Roman Empire then tried to co-opt the same date to popularise a pagan alternative (see William Tighe’s Calculating Christmas for more on this).
The best summary I’ve seen dealing with Mithraism in particular is this: Was the story of Jesus stolen from that of the Persian deity Mithra?. If you want to read a series of *long* articles addressing the general “myths copycat” issue in more detail, you could start here: Was Jesus Christ just a CopyCat Savior Myth?. This is the most thorough treatment I’ve found online.
But to step back a bit, I think that the Wikipedia article that you linked to Fishe is a really good one, because it addresses the different categories of parallels / borrowings that might be out there.
I quite like C.S. Lewis’ idea, addressed in that article, of Christianity as “true myth”. If it really is true, then it should come as no surprise that human cultures from across the spectrum should have picked up elements of it. By coincidence, my reading of Anthony Flew’s recent book got interrupted a couple of weekends ago when my wife gave me a library book, Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (I’m a big Tolkien fan), in which he has a lot to say about the same sort of idea, and the influence that this idea had on the development of Middle-Earth and its massive backstory.
Besides the general themes that might emerge across different cultures as a result of this idea, here are some potential concrete examples: if there really was some sort of cataclysmic flood early in human cultural history, of course we’d expect to see that reflected in the early stories of many cultures – which is exactly what we do see. If there really was some sort of prophecy early in human cultural history about a coming saviour figure (a la Genesis 3:15), then we’d expect to see some sort of saviour figure appearing in various religious traditions.
And of course, if humanity is what Christianity says it is, i.e. we are designed by a loving Creator with a universal longing for something more (what C.S. Lewis called Sehnsucht, then we’d expect to see religions arise across the world with similar themes.
Some atheists (Frank Zindler for example, who BTW was in the first formal atheist/Christian debate I ever saw or listened to) have asserted that Jesus is *entirely* myth and never even existed. That thesis is so far out there that I don’t think many people follow him on that, and there are tons of apologetics books that give the basic historical background, but the one that I have found most useful in terms of scholarship is Wilkins’ and Moreland’s Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus.
Fishe your observation that “The idea that the major themes and stories of Christianity are based on prior belief systems” is absolutely true, in the sense that Christianity is derived from Judaism, and Judaism is derived from earlier revelation prior to Abraham. But where you have in mind specific borrowings from non-Judaeo/Christian belief systems, they’d have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis (and the links I have given above address most of them).
And finally, borrowing from pre-Judaeo/Christian practices is not necessarily a bad thing *anyway*, in Catholic thought. God can purify and make more meaningful a practice from another religion: examples would include circumcision (people in the ancient Near East were doing that before God told Abraham to use it as a sign of the special relationship between God and his people); wedding rings (pre-Christian, not Jewish in origin, but a great symbol of oneness and continuity); baptism (washing with water is a pretty universal symbol of being purified, so no surprise that Jesus adopted it), and so on.
Embracing something non-Christian, removing of its pagan connotations and adapting it for Christianity is quite within God’s power, and in fact is exactly what would happen if any atheist were to become Christian.
I would find it unimaginably impossible to rest any faith on the legitimacy of a set of writings which has suffered so much by human hands – the multiple authors, translations, the selections for inclusion…even just the sheer time period past.
The only way it seems this would be possible is if one had accepted it a priori as legitimate. And this is it seems what people do.
Of course, with this logic, anything could be legitimate/justified so the content of the actual writings are irrelevant.
Wow Dean, huge post! Interesting stuff about the WBTS. It certainly looks like, as I said before, some groups with clear biases have gone to town with the skant evidence available and come to ridiculous conclusions. Always happens, especially when there is little source evidence to go on – it’s highly interpretive stuff.
I am far from a scholar in this type of thing, but I don’t think one has to be to draw some intelligent summary conclusions…
1. it seems that there is at least some reputable evidence of connections beyond coincidence with non-Judaeo/Abrahamic/Christian belief systems. For example, check out this extensive page covering the connections with Buddhism, a pre-Christian belief system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Christianity
2. if one drops for a minute the preconceived idea that the bible is ‘Godly legitimate’, it seems completely sensible that all the stories have prior history, possibly a very long one. We are a species of story tellers, and stories were used extensively in biblical times and earlier to explain and communicate ideas. For a whole bunch of new stories to come into existence within a few hundred years, 2000 years ago, just isn’t realistic.
So, if we roughly accept these, we come back to the question: does this damage Christianity?
Dean, you seem to be taking the POV that it doesn’t as God obviously has the power to take any pre-Christian thing and make it a Christian one. And this isn’t a problem. God just decided to do this 2000 years ago, as opposed to 3000 or 4500, or 9000 years ago. Who are we to judge/care?
…it seems completely sensible that all the stories have prior history, possibly a very long one.
You’re seeing the Bible too homogeneously. So for example, some books of the Bible are historical, for example the two books of Kings. Others are poetry, eg. the Psalms. Some are books of law, Leviticus.
There are narratives that are directly traceable. So for example the Noah flood comes from an older Mesopotamian narrative about a man named “Atrahasis”. Below is the translation that I have and it’s very inexpensive if you wish to purchase it and read it.
http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780192835895
Certainly it is postulated that the Israelite dichotomy between good and evil came from Zorastrianism and was a later movement.
If you want a nice introduction into this kind of stuff, I use Lawrence Boadt’s “Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction”. FYI, Boadt is a Catholic priest and an associate professor of Sacred Scripture at the Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C., so it is from a Catholic theological perspective.
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Old-Testament-Lawrence-Boadt/dp/0809126311
Fishe, normally I try to be more succinct, but it’s a big subject, and it’s an example of how an objection can be easy to state and time-consuming to adequately answer. Plus I’m between papers at the moment, but that changes tomorrow when I start my next one, so further replies, if any, might get a bit shorter…
That Buddhism stuff from Wikipedia is interesting (thanks for the link), and some aspects of the parallels seem plausible to me, especially in the ethical domain, although like I said earlier that’s not entirely unexpected. Even the late Pope John Paul II, in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, said “it is necessary to pay special attention to Buddhism, which from a certain point of view, like Christianity is a religion of salvation” (although he then went on to enumerate a number of crucial differences).
I’m a bit more skeptical of the amount of pre-Christian cultural exchange that happened been India and the Near East. For background on this, see the links I posted earlier (the long series I referred to addresses potential Buddhist / Far East influences here). But even if there were some cross-cultural interaction, I don’t see how that affects the credibility of the Christian message. It still comes back to the reliability of the New Testament authors in what they reported about Jesus, which is pretty solid.
I’ve seen lists of the alleged parallels between Jesus and Buddha, most of which are pretty far-fetched (some analysis is here). I think you’d have to give specific examples to take this much further.
A book I have (J. Isamu Yamamoto, Buddhism, Taoism & Other Far Eastern Religions) has a handy chart at the back that goes through several key topics (including Human Suffering, The Human Soul, Salvation, God) summarising key Buddhist beliefs and the Christian counterparts. It’s too big to reproduce here, but needless to say there are major differences in all areas (and even within Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana and Amida Buddhism have some significant differences, which look to me to be more significant than the differences within the various branches of Christianity, but I’m not familiar enough with Buddhism to say that for sure).
Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher, sums it up nicely in his chapter on Buddhism in his book Fundamentals of the Faith, where he captures both some of the similarities and some of the differences:
_________
The great German Catholic theologian, Romano Guardini, wrote a profoundly insightful and orthodox meditation on the life of Christ entitled The Lord.
In it, he noted that no man in history ever came closer to rivaling the enormity of Christ’s claim to transform human nature itself, at its roots, than did Buddha (though in a radically different way).
Huston Smith says in The Religions of Man that there have been only two people in history about whom others asked not “Who are you?” but “What are you: a man or a god?” They were Jesus and Buddha.
Buddha’s clear answer was: I am a man, not a god; Christ’s clear answer was: I am both “Son of Man” and “Son of God.”
Buddha said, “Look not to me, look to my dharma (doctrine)”; Christ said, “Come unto me.” Buddha said, “Be ye lamps unto yourselves”; Christ said, “I am the light of the world.”
Yet contrary to the original intentions of both men, some later Buddhists (the Pure Land sect) divinized Buddha. And some later Christians (Arians and Modernists) de-divinized Christ.
The claims of Buddha and Christ are in fact so different that we may wonder whether Buddhism can be called a “religion” at all. It does not speak of God, or Brahman, as does Hinduism from which it emerged. Nor does it speak of Atman, or soul. In fact, it teaches the doctrine of an-atta, “no soul”-that we are made of “strands” (skandhas) of impersonal consciousness woven together by causal necessity without any underlying substance, self or soul.
Buddhism does not deny God. It is silent about God. It is agnostic, not atheistic. But it is not silent about soul. Its denial of soul has practical import: It teaches us not to be “attached,” not to send our soul out in desire, not to love. Instead of personal, individual, free-willed agape (active love), Buddhism teaches an impersonal, universal feeling of compassion (karuna)…
Like Jesus, Buddha taught a very shocking message. And, like Jesus, Buddha was believed only because of his personality. “Holy to his fingertips” is how he is described. If you or I said what Buddha or Jesus said, we would be laughed at. There was something deep and moving there that made the incredible credible.
The events of Buddha’s life are dramatic and offer a clue to this “something.” It is not, however, Buddha’s life or his personality that are central to Buddhism; there could be a Buddhism without Buddha. There could not, of course, be a Christianity without Christ.
_________
The chapter is actually online here and is worth reading for some more insight into commonalities and differences between the two religions.
Edwin Yamauchi (a reasonably well-known Evangelical scholar) has a useful article comparing Jesus with some other important historical figures: Jesus, Zoraster, Buddha, Socrates & Muhammad: The Life, Death and Teaching of Jesus Compared with Other Great Religious Figures. While there are some similarities, he concludes with a list of very significant dissimilarities.
Again, I think in the ethical arena especially there are lots of similarities between Christianity and Buddhism, but like I was getting at before, that is consistent with the Christian idea about God giving us all a conscience that works in the same sort of way no matter who we are (Catholics call it “natural law”; i.e. what can be known about right and wrong simply through the light of natural reason). That’s why Confucius’ statement in his Analects “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others” sounds so similar to what Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount.
Fishe, you also said:
“For a whole bunch of new stories to come into existence within a few hundred years, 2000 years ago, just isn’t realistic.”
But it is realistic if they are stories about a certain person who did memorable stuff. It is realistic to think that the stories about the Buddha (e.g. as captured in the Pali canon which I think was written within a century or so of Buddha’s life), could have emerged relatively quickly. Same thing with Jesus.
Perhaps you are thinking about the Old Testament stuff? Again we’d have to consider specific examples to go further. But I don’t fundamentally disagree about the existence of parallels – for example I recently had to research the story of Noah’s flood as compared to the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic. Similarities in theme, disparities in detail when you get right down to it, but I think they share the same source event – and if events like that story actually happened, it’s no surprise to find such a major motif echoed in other religions.
So to your question, does this damage Christianity? As you guessed, nope.
If you *really* want to get deep into the details, not of Buddhism/Christianity, but of the allegation of Old Testament borrowings from other sources, the best single resource I know of (bringing together heaps of secondary sources) is Miller’s series on whether Genesis etc is really a ripoff of other Ancient Near East literature. Here’s how it opens:
“This allegation — that the the bible authors appropriated large (or ‘controlling’) amounts of material from Mesopotamian sources — comes up with surprising frequency in the popular exchanges of the chat-argument rooms, apparently. This is surprising, since this position hasn’t been the ‘consensus’ position of mainstream Assyriologist scholars in the field–regardless of ‘confessional stance!–for over thirty years. Your objector/skeptic friend has just taken some older (but still held by a few contemporary Assyriologists) data, mixed it with a little bit of ‘regular level’ chatroom hyperbole, and turned it into an ‘objection’.”
It gives more detail on what I was getting at earlier, about the shift in recent scholarship away from acceptance of the idea of borrowings, and goes through Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian and Canaanite creation myths, and the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh flood accounts, comparing them with the Bible. Not especially light reading, but it deals with the borrowing allegations as thoroughly as anything I’ve come across. Hope that helps.
Fishe, been there done that. Thinking like a child doesn’t always mean you come to the right conclusion. Looking for similarities between Santa and God is not as helpful as noticing the differences. Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited, so I don’t have time to follow your yellow brick road one child-like question at a time (no offense intended). Make your argument or don’t.
And for others: The scientific method (a very useful thing it has been too) can be inappropriate for a whole bunch of other things, from quantifying happiness to disproving the existence of God. Although many scientists are doing their best to prove that maybe this Universe isn’t the sum total of the total sum.
I think there is possibly a danger of seeing science as the only way to encounter the concrete reality and relegating philosophy to a real of abstract speculations that have nothing to do with our concrete experiences.
I think it’s quite helpful to realise that, in a sense, the experiences that are most “concretely” real to us are not experiences of the scientific sort at all, but experiences of the everyday reality; the sort that we end up expressing in the grammar and ways of talking about things. We never say, “a previously encountered carbon-based biped produced high-frequency aural outbursts toward this set of aural receptors at 1132 hours GMT” – we say, “my annoying little sister was screaming at me this morning” (well, some of us might
). The qualitative and holistic ways of looking at things is the most real to us – the quantitative is real, yes, but only secondary. A person is seen as a whole person that is living (life being the source of that wholeness) and does meaningful things, not as a mere collection of bits of flesh and chemicals operating as a clever but lifeless (because lack of life means lack of any real unity and wholeness) machine that only does mechanical (and hence meaningless) movements and actions in space and time.
We don’t wonder enough at the mysterious reality present in plants, animals and human persons, and in the fact that they exist as unities (an animal is one real thing, which also contains within itself many bits). The difference is apparent in the change when a thing comes to be, or dies. In coming to be, they are things which start almost from a point, and expands out of itself, actually accumulating more matter into itself (and so transcending the parts it’s made of). When it dies, there’s no longer that unity, but only a collection of bits (which is seen more readily as it scatters as dust). This is why when a person dies, we know (even when we’re looking at the body) that he or she is no longer there.
Hey everyone,
I’d like to take a break from our scheduled programming to invite you to vote for Being Frank (and the 15th Station too if you like) in the Catholic New Media Awards 2009. Getting nominated is the first step to winning which gets us more publicity and brings more new readers into interesting discussions like these.
So, if you don’t mind, head on over to http://www.catholicnewmediaawards.com/nominate and nominate away!
Now, back to the show.