Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thank You Atheism Subreddit!
Yesterday over 40,000 people visited this blog to see my suggested Atheist billboards, more than the traffic on all previous days combined. I enjoyed reading the lively debate in the comments, and learned a few things myself. Apparently the facts surrounding the cult of Mithras are a bit murky, so my first billboard may be in error. I guess I'll have to choose another "born of a virgin" religious figure next time. Maybe Horus? For the record, I don't hate Christians and I don't hate Christmas. These billboards were intended to be entertaining to an Atheist audience in a "I'll really give you something to be outraged about" sort of way, and I can't imagine that any of them would ever be posted. Thank you again, and have a merry xmas!
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I've written a bit about the paganism/christianity similarities. Take a look if you're interested here. Mithras' disciples "formed an organized church, with a developed hierarchy. They possessed the ideas of Mediation, Atonement, and a Savior, who is human and yet divine, and not only the idea, but a doctrine of the future life. They had a Eucharist, and a Baptism, and other curious analogies might be pointed out between their system and the church of Christ" (The Christian Platonists, p. 240).
Cumont's "The Mysteries of Mithras" here
Tertullian, a church father, wrote "The Devil, whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimicks the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments, in the Mysteries of idols. He himself baptises some that is to say, his believers and followers; he promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras: thus he marks on the forehead his own soldiers: there he celebrates the oblation of bread: he brings in the symbol of the Resurrection, and wins the crown with the sword."
Tertullian and the early Christians, then, were so painfully aware that their beliefs were so similar to those of the Dionysus/Bacchus/Mithras followers that they came up with an explanation - Satan himself created these stories before Jesus was born in order to confuse those who might otherwise become Christians.
Another such Christianized site is St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Church. There are many tombs under the Basilica. These were discovered during a 1939 excavation. Some of the tombs found were non-Christian, and others were Pagan, but one bit of imagery found on one of the Christian tombs is interesting. This image depicts Jesus, but he is depicted as a sun god or "Sol Invictus," a later form of Mithras.
This one is perhaps the most strikingly Jesus-like, and depicts the infant Dionysus. This is from the 4th century B.C. . Also, From the Roman catacombs - Mother Isis with infant Horus
Far more prevalent than any other symbol in Christianity is the cross or crucifix. This is said to represent the cross on which Jesus was crucified before rising from the grave 3 days later. However, in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says Jesus was "hung on a tree." St. Paul's letter to the Galatians says the same. The god-man Attis was also hung, on a pine tree (remember the pine cone imagery). The cross, according to Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy of The Jesus Mysteries was an important symbol in the ancient world. The four arms represented the four elements.
(The Jesus Mysteries, 50-52).
From The Jesus Mysteries: Dionysus as a child is given a cross as an omen of his fate - to be crucified.
Another symbol often used in Christianity is the Ichthys, or "Jesus Fish." The symbol was used by Christians to mark their secret meeting places or was used as a "secret handshake," or perhaps both. Christian reasons for the history of this symbol are that it represents Jesus' miracle of feeding 5,000 people with fish or that Jesus called his disciples "fishers of men." However, the symbol's history is much older and more complicated than that.
When Jesus helps catch a large number of fish in the Gospel of John, the gospel mentions that it was 153 fish. Pagan priest and mathematician Pythagoras and his followers regarded 153 as a sacred number, and the ratio of height to length of the shape is 153:265, which Archimedes called "the measure of the fish. When two circles of the same circumference are combined such that the edge of one touches the center of the other, we see the fish take form:
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