Megachurch pastor John Hagee wants atheists to leave America and Congress to ban witchcraft and satanism from military

About Reich:
"God is Nature and Christ is the realization of Natural Law."  This statement is from the introduction page of The Murder of Christ.  Now, if he had stated that the moon is made of green cheese he might have caught my attention.  But when he just jumps up and states "God is Nature" he's lost me right off the bat.  God is actually God – obviously. His Being may contain or produce Nature, but God is not (only) Nature in that narrow sense.  So his premise is screwed up to begin with and can only get worse as he goes along.  You can't begin a discussion with a false premise and arrive at a rational, sane conclusion.

Another gripe – "The Murder of Christ":
"Christ" is an office, a job, a duty, a function – not a person. In the same way that Obama is not a President, he is a human being.  Barack Obama's job, office, duty, function is President.  Jesus THE Christ (as in Obama THE President) is simply a title applied to Jesus of Nazareth.  So, if Reich had made it "The Murder of Jesus" then it would have made sense.  But since he even got the title wrong…well – you can't murder a job.

You said:
"Myths of Christianity".  Can you name one?  I think that to work on resolving whether something is a myth or not you have to examine the myth itself and not just "myths" in general.

Wheeeeee!!

Search the Scriptures and you shall find.

Not to derail the thread, but I have to ask…  Are you the same Kevin Slaughter from CFI forums?  Nothing wrong if you are, I'm just curious and think it rather cool you're here.

 Okay – tit for tat
http://www.tektonics.org/harpur01.html

 Tom Harpur began his career as an (evangelical) Anglican priest and
professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, Toronto. Just over 30
years ago, he moved from academia into journalism. Today, he is perhaps
the leading religion writer in Canada.

"The Pagan Christ" is the
story of his discovery of the writings of one Alvin Boyd Kuhn
(1880-1963) and two earlier writers (Godfrey Higgins [1771-1834] and
Gerald Massey [1828-1907]), who argued that all of the essential ideas
of both Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egyptian religion. Toward
the end of the third Christian century, the leaders of the church began
to misinterpret the Bible. Prior to this, no one ever understood the
Bible to be literally true. Earlier, in keeping with all other
religions, the narrative material of the Hebrew and Greek Bible was
interpreted as myth or symbol, read as allegory and metaphor rather than
as history.
According to Harpur, there is no evidence that Jesus
of Nazareth ever lived. He claims that virtually all of the details of
the life and teachings of Jesus have their counterpart in Egyptian
religious ideas. He does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or
recognized academic authority on world religions nor appeal to any of
the standard reference books in Egyptology or to any primary sources.
Rather, he is entirely dependent on the work of Kuhn (and Higgins &
Massey).
Who is Alvin Boyd Kuhn? He is given the title
`Egyptologist' and is regarded by Harpur as "one of the single greatest
geniuses of the twentieth century" [who] "towers above all others of
recent memory in intellect and his understanding of the world's
religious."
As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language
teacher who was an enthusiastic proponent of Theosophy, a prodigious
author and lecturer, who self-published most of his books.
Not
being myself an expert in Egyptian religion, I consulted those who are
about their views of contribution that Kuhn, Higgins and Massey have
made to Egyptology and whether they thought some of the key ideas of
"The Pagan Christ" well grounded. So I sent an email to twenty of the
leading Egyptologists – in Canada, USA, UK, Australia, Germany, and
Austria.
I noted as a sample the following claims put forth by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):
That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian "Iusa," which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves".
That
the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ…. He and his
mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child,
and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for
millennia prior to the Gospels."
That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with twelve followers.'"
That
"the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE,
and … this word, when the vowels are filled in., is really Karast or
Krist, signifying Christ."
That the doctrine of the incarnation
"is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was
current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least four thousand years
BCE"
Only one of the ten experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey!
Professor
Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not
one of these men is mentioned in M. L. Bierbrier's "Who Was Who in
Egyptology" (3rd ed, 1995), nor is any of their works listed in Ida B.
Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).
Another
distinguished Egyptologist wrote: "Egyptology has the unenviable
distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay
claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one
most beleaguered by false prophets. He goes on to refer to Kuhn's
"fringe nonsense."
The responding scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for Jesus and Christ.
Ron
Leprohan, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, pointed
out that while "sa" means "son" in ancient Egyptian and "iu" means `to
come," but Kuhn/Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the
name `Iusa' simply does not exist in Egyptian.
The name `Jesus'
is Greek from a universally recognized west Semitic name ("Jeshu'a"),
born not merely by the central figure in the New Testament but also by
many other people in the first century.
While all recognize that
the image of the baby Horus and Isis has influenced the Christian
iconography of Madonna and Child, this is where the similarity stops.
There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born.
There
is no evidence for the idea that Horus was `a fisher of men' or that
his followers (the King's officials were called `Followers of Horus")
were ever twelve in number.
KRST is the word for "burial"
("coffin" is written "KRSW"), but there is no evidence whatsoever to
link this with the Greek title "Christos" or Hebrew "Mashiah".
There
is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BC, so
Harpur's reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more
than a millennium and a half. (Elsewhere Harpur refers to "Jesus in
Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE" and he quotes Kuhn as claiming
that "the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least
10,000 years of age." In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have
dates from about 3200 BCE.)
Kuhn/Harper's redefinition of
"incarnation" and rooting this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus
by all of the Egyptologists with whom I have consulted. According to
one: "Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine
power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as
the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even `a
little bit of the divine'."
Virtually none of the alleged evidence
for the views put forward in "The Pagan Christ" is documented by
reference to original sources. The notes refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins,
Massey, or some other long-out-of-date work.
Furthermore,
Harpur's notes abound with errors and omissions. If you look for
supporting evidence for a particular point made by the author, it is not
there. Many quotations are taken out of context and interpreted in a
very different sense from what their author originally meant (especially
the early church fathers).
iritual pilgrimage than about the origins of Christianity.