Old Time Religion...

[Bigmack]

There's been a lot of discussion about religion lately on this forum.

I say religion, but of course I mean the Occult. God, Jesus, Satan, Angels, demons, saints, ... they're all part of an unseen world.

How about Mithraism?

It features virgin birth, 12 disciples, death and resurrection, miracles, and baptism.

The deity was born on December 25th, was Savior to all mankind, and was known as the Light of the World.

All the fun of Christianity, only hundreds of years earlier.

How do Christians deal with Mithra?

While we're at it... How come the days of the week are named after pagan deities? Why haven't the fundies gone ape-shit about that?

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http://www.meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Ancient_religions/Mesopotamia/Mithraism/mithraism_and_christianity_i.htm

"The faithful referred to Mithra as "the Light of the World", symbol of truth, justice, and loyalty. He was mediator between heaven and earth and was a member of a Holy Trinity. According to Persian mythology, Mithras was born of a virgin given the title 'Mother of God'. The god remained celibate throughout his life, and valued self-control, renunciation and resistance to sensuality among his worshippers
." Mithras represented a system of ethics in which brotherhood was encouraged in order to unify against the forces of evil. The worshippers of Mithras held strong beliefs in a celestial heaven and an infernal hell. They believed that the benevolent powers of the god would sympathize with their suffering and grant them the final justice of immortality and eternal salvation in the world to come. They looked forward to a final day of Judgment in which the dead would resurrect, and to a final conflict that would destroy the existing order of all things to bring about the triumph of light over darkness".
"Purification through a ritualistic baptism was required of the faithful, who also took part in a ceremony in which they drank wine and ate bread to symbolize the body and blood of the god. Sundays were held sacred, and the birth of the god was celebrated annually on December the 25th. After the earthly mission of this god had been accomplished, he took part in a Last Supper with his companions before ascending to heaven, to forever protect the faithful from above".

[WildClarySage]

1. re:days of the week

don't worry, they'll get to it.

They'll be Bushday, SunMoonday, Lifeday, HeteroWeddingday, TerryDay, Falwell, and Straightday.

[eleny]

2. Send it to O'Reilly - I'd love to watch him go ape-shit

[yellowdogintexas]

3. yep, the Romans co opted that one too

Most scholars will tell you that when the Romans took over anything, they just incorporated the local customs into the official state religion in order to facilitate their domination of the local group. So, after Constantine converted to Christianity, it became the official religion of the Empire and all these local customs became part of the Christian observances around the year, merging with the existing story of Christ. Eventually of course this became Catholicism, (universal)and when the Empire split, the western half observed Roman Catholicism and the Eastern half observed Eastern Orthodoxy which is the parent institution of Russian Christianity and Greek Christianity along with some sub groups of Orthodoxy.

History of Christianity up to the Protestant Reformation in one short paragraph.

According to the descriptions in the Gospels, the activities surrounding the birth of Christ should have taken place in the spring, as the sheperds were in the field by night and in winter they would not do that. Also the enrollment/taxation would have occurred in the spring/summer months as travel is easier in the warmer weather.

We can pretty much thank the Romans for the dates we currently observe for our Christian holidays. If we were following events as they actually took place, Easter would fall about 3 days after Passover, since the Last Supper was actually a Passover Seder.

[RC]

4. For a lot of people this should be in LBN

:evilgrin:

I find myself in awe of those that can believe in a good, moral, loving all powerful entity that is so impotent that it needs us mere mortals to carry out its dirty work of destroying nature and other living things.

[onager]

5. I like this answer...

As theologians, the Protestant reformers replaced the authority of the Catholic Church with the authority of the Bible, which they opened to the public. The inevitable but unforeseen result was that every individual who could read thought God could communicate directly with him.

Unfortunately, as recorded in the Bible, the voice of God often rambles incoherently like that of a slightly schizoid manic-depressive with delusions of grandeur. Worse yet, his Protestant readers promptly splintered into numerous sects which agreed only on one point—they wanted to be separate.

By 1650, there were 180 sects all based on the Bible and each more dogmatically intolerant than the next. Even these, however, failed to meet the religious needs of the people, so there were revivals (like Methodism) and reversions to more primitive forms of Christianity.

From James F. Welles, "The Story Of Stupidity."

You can read the whole book here: http://www.stupidity.com/story1final/