LogFAQs > #936602053

Tyranthraxus posted...

Astrology ~3000 B.C.

Judaism ~600 B.C. (generous overestimate)

So?

If it is true that the Torah is divinely inspired, and especially if the events of the Torah are literally true (which I don't believe they are), why would it matter that people associated meaning to astronomical events before that? And that applies to every religion. Every religion is also slightly different, some more than others, so it's your prerogative what you want to believe.

To respond to the claim that Jesus was based on Mithras, the reality is scholarly sources disagree with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism_in_comparison_with_other_belief_systems#Mithraism_and_Christianity

A Christian saying Jesus is God vs. a Muslim saying Jesus is just a prophet is a matter of faith. If you want to disprove major religions (calling the story of Jesus fake would essentially totally disprove two religions, Christianity and Islam, in which over half of the world believes in), you really do need actual scholarly sources and evidence.

I agree that ancient religions must have influenced each other. Some religions are more obviously influenced than others (for example, Christianity and Islam). And another example of a religion being influenced by society is Christmas being based on Saturnalia. But it's nonsense to imply that all the religions of today are derivative of the horoscopes that you read in the newspaper, which is essentially what you're doing.

I think it's fair to say that (almost) all religions are based on some universal truths and grow from there. The two most famous dead religions, Egyptian mythology and Greek Mythology (and Roman mythology from that), didn't have a name because they were never unified. It makes perfect sense that the ancient religions that are still around today are the ones that were most unified back then. And what would cause unification more than actual belief? Or you could look at the many scholars throughout the centuries who were religious. This obviously doesn't prove what they believed is true, but people like Maimonides, Newton, and Einstein were clearly not stupid. Therefore, edgy atheists' utter dismissal of religion is in fact stupid.

So again, it's up to you what you want to believe or not believe. But if you want to just dismiss the major religions of today as fake (rather than disagree with them as a matter of faith), you need actual evidence. And that is really a rhetorical statement because if those religions were able to be disproved, they would have been already.
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