My Reply to Atheism Part 5: What Science Actually Says About God's Existence

Over the course of this discussion there have been many times when I had to remind myself of how clueless I must sound to those believing they are of the “rational mind” variety. I have probably discussed religion more than I have any real evidence of there being a creator, and I have done so only because my own doubts (some of which are still there) spawned first from my understanding of God through the person and life of Jesus. Most people who are atheist or agnostic have already moved past these questions, and I had hoped to at least invite them back into the place where questioning is still relevant in the light of this present age.

Earlier this week, we got to witness two titans of opposing fields square off in a debate that seemed to capture the attention of millions across the world. It was a discussion about “Creationism” and if it has a place in the scientific theorem of origins. Bill Nye, a science guy, and Ken Ham, also a science guy and founder of the Creation Museum, had a respectable exchange of words on the topic of evolution, young earth science, and whether or not it was dangerous to believe things that so obviously denied that which science has proven as factual. As I mentioned earlier, I do not hold a particular stance on this issue, but I do maintain a certain level of criticism in dealing with both accounts. I see both sides of this debate to be struggling with ideologies that are based on great leaps of faith. Both have a lot to say in terms of evidence and how this breaks down, but Ken Ham is right in his assertion that we weren't there to witness when or how it happened, so everything we believe is in fact faith based.

I didn't bring this up to discuss evolutionary science and creationism, but rather to discuss the wave of criticism Bill Nye received for accepting Ken Ham's invitation to participate in this debate. People were outraged, thinking that the very act of entering into this debate means he is giving “creationism” credibility, and that he was doing a huge disservice to science by pretending that there was anything to debate at all. This mindset for me is terrifyingly dogmatic, as it sets up a precedence that says what we know is true and factual, and not up for debate, even when what they know is true and factual is only based on the presuppositions they hold, that is, things they presume to be true but can't actually prove.

Much in the same way I consider our knowledge of God to be deeply flawed, I also feel that our knowledge of the ancient world, as well as the cosmos is also, in all probability, deeply flawed. Scientists are constantly learning and updating their theories based on the latest “discoveries”, but most of the information we know is derived at by making great leaps of faith (even when they are disguised as practical predictions) about certain events that are concluded as most probable.

If the Christian equation is that the Bible claims God made the heavens and the earth in six days, and that according to the genealogy listed, places creation sometime around 6,000 years ago, then all discoveries must fit within this time frame for a Creationist, and if it doesn't, it must be reinterpreted, through the scope of physical events that could have caused such and such to happen. They point to catastrophic events such as a global flood as a viable explanation. I don't know if it explains enough, but when you read the research you can see why they think the way they do.

On the other side, you have a majority of scientists who believe that 14 billion years ago, or there about, there was this matter that exploded (big bang) that over the course of 10 billion years created the universe we now live in and are trying to understand. From there we have theory after theory of how everything was formed, how life evolved, and how Dinosaurs went extinct. What is not commonly understood however about this version of the creation story is how this matter got there and where it came from. In fact, I asked someone once about this, and they said that scientists mostly consider this unknowable, and choose to spend their efforts researching things we can know.

While all of this is considered the consensus, it too is based in faith. It's believing in something that cannot be proven, and basing all events after on such an assumption. Both theories have a structure that relies heavily on faith, and from that structure, the theories and mathematics take shape to paint vastly different pictures. It is up to you to decide which one is more rational, but to dismiss creationism as having nothing to do with science, or not including it in the conversation is absurdly closed minded given the leaps of faith we already take in the more popular story of creation.

Perhaps the one thing that has made many evolutionists uncomfortable in this present age is the growing support among scientists, especially those who deal in biochemistry, whose research has actually led them to conclude that basic Darwinian theorem doesn't actually add up, and that it is entirely unlikely that life just showed up on this planet on it's own. Some scientists have the theory that the first cells actually arrived here from outer-space, and that there is no way to tell exactly what it had evolved from as it is virtually unknowable in our present age, but could possibly be known some day.

Other scientists however have started to embrace the idea of Intelligent Design, and while many of them make no claims to religion, they insist it is much more likely that something external, outside of our reality, must have set things into motion and designed life to be the way it is.

Michael Behe, a biochemist and professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, once said in discussing what happened to him when he broke down the basic structure of a cell and noticed it's complexity, that “A man from primitive culture who sees an automobile might guess that it was powered by the wind or an antelope hidden under the car, but when he opens up the hood and sees the engine, he immediately realizes that it was designed”.

What biochemists and other scientists in related fields are coming to terms with, is the very notion that even with all these great theories and things widely regarded as factual, that the more we learn about that which we can actually learn, that is that which can be studied in a lab and not just through the schemes of presuppositions and careful mathematics, that these things just don't add up. What's worst is that they have been met at the crossroads of their discoveries by an increasingly vicious body of “believers”, that is people who regard any notion of creation or design as being rubbish while holding firmly to their own beliefs in the very theory being questioned, in a similar fashion as the Church once held on to it's position against science when these theories were first introduced.

Instead of constructive and helpful debate, these dogmatic scientists attack and devour all who oppose their long held faith in a theory masked as scientific fact. They compare evolution to things such as gravity, and grow mad at the notion of anyone doubting it's existence. As I have sat on the sidelines over the course of the past two decades trying to keep tabs on the debate and hearing both sides, I have determined that the only “rational” people in this debate are those who seem to be able to embrace both points of views without clinging to their own supposed ideas of what is true. Bill Nye spends a lot of time talking about how important it is for kids to grow up with a “correct” understanding of Science and how it works, but he fails to realize how important it is to be exposed to various views as this alone can teach our children to have critical minds willing to weigh evidence and not to buy into everything they are told to believe.

Now, with that said, I wanted to shift gears here and explain why I think the evidence of God is constantly in front of us if we only knew what to look for. To think that science could prove or disprove his existence is a stretch beyond any faith that I could muster, but according to the Apostle Paul, God's invisible attributes, or rather the evidence of His existence can be found in nature. So let's examine real briefly something incredibly fundamental, and that being atoms.

Atoms are commonly known as the building block of matter. Atoms are small...incredibly small. It is said that one million atoms lined up side by side are as thick as a human hair.

Atoms are made of smaller parts called protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons and neutrons are in the center of the atom, called the nucleus, which is one-millionth of a billionth of the volume of the atom. I remember in biology class, this is where we typically stopped in discussing atoms, but atoms are actually made up of even smaller particles, and those particles...yup, even they are made up of smaller particles, further and further into the subatomic world.

Ever since the electron was discovered in 1897, we have come across an astonishing number of new particles, such as bosons, hardrons, baryons, neutrinos, mesons, leptons, pions, hyperons, and taus. Glutons were discovered, which hold particles together, and this has all led to an inconceivably small particle called muon. By now somewhere around 150 subatomic particles have been identified, with the latest being the terribly elusive but important particle known as Higgs Boson.

The thing about particles is that they are constantly in motion, exploring all possible paths from point A to point B at the same time. Electrons for instance don't just travel around a nucleus, but rather they are known to disappear and reappear elsewhere without traveling the distance in between. Particles vanish and then show up somewhere else, leaping from one location to another, with no way to predict when or where they will come or go. This movement is known as quantum leaps...and you thought that was just a television show. A single electron can do forty-seven thousand laps around a four-mile tunnel—in a single second.

The fun thing about particles is that they seem to always know what the other particles are doing without any clear sign of communication. We can't predict what they are going to do, or what path they are going to travel, but they seem to always show up exactly in the right place they need to be. In other words, in the sub-atomic world, things don't actually function the way scientists have assumed the rest of the universe functions, as in particular laws and motions that can be known. Things come and go, disappear and appear, spring and leap and communicate and demonstrate awareness of each other, all without appearing to pay any attention to how the world is supposed to work.

Now here's the thing, all of this is going on while you sit there...or stand...or whatever, unaware of what goes on every fraction of every second of every day. The chair you sit on, well that's just made up of atoms (which is actually 99.9% empty space). The computer you use? Well that operates the way it does based on our knowledge of the quantum theory. It's all invisible, all unseen, and yet as a unit, creates something functional and physical that is, as best we can determine, real.

Tangible, material, physical objects, well they are made up of particles in motion, bouncing off each other, crashing into each other, coming in and out of existence billions of times in billionths of a second, existing in ghost states and then choosing particular paths for no particular predictable reason. Your chair might seem solid, but that is a bit of an illusion. Your chair is just a relationship of energy.

Everything, from planets to tea spoons may appear to be solid, but are at their core endless frenetic movements of energy.

Now consider you...yes you. You are made up of trillions of atoms. You lose fifty to one hundred fifty strands of hair each day (if you have hair that is), and shed ten billion flakes of skin. Every twenty-eight days you get completely new skin, and every nine years your entire body is renewed. Yet in the middle of all this shedding and dying and changing and renewing, somehow your body continues to remember “you”.

Your body is made up of around seventy-five trillion cells, every one of those cells containing hundreds of thousands of molecules with six feet of DNA in every cell containing over three billion letters of coding. These cells are potent blend of matter and memory—bones and hair and blood and teeth and at the same time personality and essence and predispositions and habits.

Millions of cells, drifting through the universe, assemble and configured and finely tuned at this second to be you, but inevitably moving on in the next seconds to be other things and other people. The atoms that make you you in this very second are not the same atoms that made you you a few minutes ago, and yet you stayed the same, nothing changed except, well you know...everything.

The basic elements of life are actually quite common—hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and a few others. The dirt below us, the sky above us, the sun, moon, stars, we're all made of the same stuff. You share over 60 percent of your genes with fruit flies, over 90 percent with mice, and 96 percent with large apes...and yet your DNA is uniquely yours. You are not carbon copies, you are a unique physical creature sustained by an immense amount of energy going on at the sub-atomic level.

Through all of this, these trillions of atoms, when put together responding to the coding and the unique structure of who you are, make you you. Somehow these things know, and are directed, and over the course of the seconds they stay with the whole, they don't change it but rather become part of who you are.

Those trillions of atoms that make you you, they form molecules, and those molecules form cells, and those cells form systems—nervous, immune, limbic, circulatory, digestive, muscular, respiratory, skeletal, and so on. Those systems eventually form a far larger, more complicated system which we know to be you. Trillions of atoms coming and going, billions of times a second, all of them knowing their place within the hierarchy that is you.

Do you understand how incredible this is? What orders these things to respond the way they do? How they they know where to go and what place they belong in the short moments between when they enter and when they leave the hierarchy? Can we assume that natural order just is, and that these things just exist, and that all order is simply controlled chaos?

What's more, even with this natural order, does this account for consciousness and awareness? For poetry, and language, and society? Does this account for our ability to have an invisible consciousness that responds to more than just instinctive behavior?  If you were taken a part, atom by atom, there would be nothing there that is uniquely you, and yet put together, not only do you exist visibly, but your consciousness is self-aware and function.  Where is your consciousness?  Is it in the wiring of your brain?  Can electric pulses firing off in your brain somehow create a self-aware creature that lives for more than just being alive?  That responds to more than just what is needed to survive? 

We can make the bold claim that things are the way they are and have always been the way they have always been, and even that atoms are simply responding to natural order, but in the end, the way our brains respond and perceive cannot be accounted for by some natural phenomenon.

I believe that this energy that flows through us, and that sustains life and creates consciousness and order cannot be accounted for when we are considering something as wonderful, and profound as natural order. This is why I consider it a greater leap of faith to declare that all of this has happened through accidents and wonderful coincidences. I find it completely illogical to say that this hierarchy is formed without any real intelligence navigating each moving piece, (all several trillion of them) to respond and behave in the way they need to in order to maintain the coding found in each of our unique strands of DNA.

I am convinced that scientists only accept the concept of a cosmic accident because there is no other possible explanation. I mean how lucky are we that glutons exist to hold all these particles together?

Once you remove God from the equation you are left with what you must consider rational, which leaves many to marvel at the incredible power of nature, while not seeing the obvious and more practical solution of something external programming this to happen. Logic would tell us when we come across a computer that it was made by intelligence that exists outside of that computers hierarchy. The computer responds to the way it was programmed to respond until let's say a capacitor goes bad, or jumper short circuits, and then what? The electricity stops and the computer stops functioning.  When this happens to a living being, we call this death.  Both things, a computer, and a human brain are complex machines that require electricity in order to function.  Yet we can look at the brain and somehow call it, with all it's incredibly complexity and wiring, the product of billions of years of accidental progress guided by a natural order that in all practicality, shouldn't exist. To say all of this happened by accident would be to deny the obvious.

It doesn't matter what your view is on religion, or theology, these things can be dismissed for many obvious flaws, but to dismiss the notion of design by intelligence? You, my good atheist, have a lot more faith than I ever could.  

A Reply to Atheism Part 3: Historical Nonsense

It is a very difficult task to prove to an atheist that God does exist, when proof is all preferential. What I mean is that we determine truth in very different ways while looking at the same evidence. I could explain that anyone looking for proof of God's existence should look no further than the tip of their own noses and marvel at the complexity and design of human life, let alone the environment they find themselves in and the incredible capacity of man to dream, scheme, and accomplish just about anything he sets his mind to.

An atheist could point to the same “evidence” I listed and marvel at how wonderfully advanced man is considering what he came from, and think only of accomplishments while dismissing any silly notion of a creator designing man to have such capacity. An atheist can claim that there is no evidence of God, and dismiss religion as folly, where as a believer could point to everything as proof of existence of God and dismiss the intentions of man as folly. In other words, we all have the same “evidence”, but it is viewed and interpreted vastly differently depending on what worldview you presume to hold.

The same can be said in interpreting historical events. For instance, there are a lot of people who rightfully point out that the story of a global flood as written in Genesis, is not unique at all and that it exists in many other traditional religions, such as Greek mythology (Babylon), Mesoamerican (Aztec), several Aboriginal stories (Australia), Hinduism, Native American, among others. Their claim is that the flood never actually existed, at least not on a global scale, and that the proof is in how many other religions include this unlikely story of a global flood, and a hero who escapes on a giant vessel with his family and some animals.

I could take the same information however, and point to the fact that every religion mentioned here somehow manages to reach every region of the Earth, and if this did in fact take place, then naturally it would be part of that cultures heritage as a literal known event passed down from generation to generation starting with Noah himself.

My point here is that we all have the same evidence, and it's how we interpret the evidence that determines our belief. I am not an historian, nor a scientist, so I will leave a lot of the technical debate up to those who spend their lives researching these things, and all information I share here is public information and not something I discovered and am currently sitting on while waiting for a book deal.

The institution of Science is a vast body of educated men and women, with differing opinions, and intentions in their field. A scientific consensus is not a concrete fact but rather an established truth that is based on the most likely outcome as determined by those doing the research. There are many Scientists on both sides of any issue when determining things that cannot be concretely determined. As I mentioned, we all have the same evidence before us, but the difference lies in the presupposition one might hold in examining such evidence. There are many scientists who believe the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and there are many who think it less than 10,000 years old. From both sides people tend to scoff at the other, but when you read how it all breaks down and how scientists had come to determine such age, you'll find that it all comes back to mathematics starting with a presupposed theory. I could care less if the Earth was thousands, or billions of years old, and I don't think my faith is determined by what is true in this discussion. Civilization itself is less than 10,000 years old, so we can start there and determine whether or not the events of the Bible were true, or if they were based on superstitious lore handed out by the nearest pagan culture.

If you wanted to research the age of the Earth or whether or not a flood occurred, there are plenty of articles online that come from all different viewpoints and arrive at all different conclusions. A great place to start in researching the science from an “Intelligent Design” angle would be the website “answersingenesis.org” which not only bolsters a top rated cast of ID Scientists, but also attempts to answer all of these questions in articles that range from simple, to incredibly complex. Have at it.

As for this particular article, I wanted to address two of the most common and crippling charges people might make against historical Christianity. These two questions led me to almost throw in the towel myself, and are the main talking points people like Bill Maher use in attacking the Christian faith.

No Records of Israelites in Egypt as Slaves or of the Plagues

For years now archaeologists have been trying to find proof of a large settlement of slaves near Egypt, that Egypt actually had slaves at the time the Hebrew's were thought to be there, and if in fact many plagues destroyed parts of Egypt and that this large group of 2 million people actually left, on foot, through a divided sea that wound up consuming Pharaohs men as they pursued them. People rightly point out that they have yet to find any records of any such events taking place, and that surely there would be some evidence given just the sheer size of the population that left. There are countless articles that state that there is absolutely zero evidence to support the claims of the Bible, and that it is a myth.

Back when I first encountered this argument, I read many articles that made similar claims. I remember being troubled over this as I looked for any answer whatsoever that could explain this lack of evidence. The Bible seemed so descriptive, even with it's story about Joseph and his rise to fame in and prominence in Egypt, his grain silos, and even an Egyptian royal burial, yet the accusation of it never occurring stared at me, unmoving, daring me to prove it wrong. Then I came across a small thread of discussions that made the charge that our decades old understanding on Egyptian history, dynasties, and all recorded events might be seriously flawed. Apparently there were some making the claim that the occupation of the Israelite slaves would have actually been during a different dynasty altogether, and that if we simply move from the 18^th dynasty to the 12^th, everything begins to make sense and actually line up with not only the claims of the Bible, but also the time-line given.

First of all, and this is a common talking point, the Egyptians were not known for recording defeats or embarrassing events, such as a large group of slaves overthrowing the government, so it would be hard to find any official record of the plagues and the journey to Canaan that cost the Pharaoh many lives. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that Egypt tended to rewrite it's own history, and could have just simply pretended that this never happened, even when it comes to giving credit to those Hebrew's who helped build their pyramids. However, Joseph being an important and celebrated figure, there must be some account for his presence there, right? Funny you should ask.

There is a figure, known as Imhotep who served as vizier of Pharaoh Djoser during the 3^rd Dynasty, who was known as the chief designer of the step pyramid, which had a design used all over Egypt at that time, and was known to store grain. What's more, the “famine stele” found near the first cataract of the Nile tells the story of Djoser's dream, and how he asked Imhotep to help save Egypt from the coming seven years of famine. In fact, if you haven't guessed it yet, there are many who believe Imhotep and Joseph were in fact the same person, and the similarities went on to describe not only how he bought up a lot of the land except for that belonging to priests, charged a 20% tax, married the daughter of a high priest, and lived to be 110, serving multiple Pharaohs.

Okay, so Imhotep (Joseph) became sort of a god after he died and there is no mention of his connection with the Hebrew slaves, but why would there be? He was an important figure that literally saved Egypt, and held influence across the land up until his death. The fact that his descendants wound up getting forced into slave labor, and that the Pharaohs who ruled during this time knew very little of Imhotep's heritage, let alone the growing Hebrew population in a near by settlement, means nothing in terms of it actually happening. The question then is, if the Hebrew population had grown so much over the course of four hundred years, is there credible evidence to prove that they were there outside of the Bible?

Again, according to the popular timeline of Dynasties and legend (which has been in place since the 1920's), the answer is a resounding no. If we do however, go back to an earlier time, and follow the actual period spoken of in the Biblical texts, we see a much clearer picture.

First of all, a “workers village” has been discovered, and this discovery goes back to the late 1800's. It appeared whoever dwelled there, lived during the 12^th dynasty, and vacated it shortly into the 13^th dynasty leaving behind numerous artifacts and tools that were used to make mud bricks. This is not necessarily proof that this was occupied by the Hebrew's, but the fact that they were workers who made mud bricks, lines up completely with what Exodus tells us about the type of slave labor they were subjected to. It's also important to note that during the discovery, they found boxes under the floors of the homes that contained the remains of babies up to three months old, which was believed to be the remains of the Hebrew babies killed on Pharaoh's orders around the time of Moses' birth. Another interesting thing is that the 12^th dynasty actually used mud bricks laced with straw in their pyramids serving as a core for the structures. The Labyrinth built by Amenhemet III (sixth pharaoh of the 12^th dynasty) at Hawara was made out of mud bricks too, as well as many houses and other structures, which all would have taken a huge slave labor force to build. In fact it was common knowledge around the time of Christ that the Hebrew's had actually built the pyramids in the Egypt. (One of the harshest criticisms this story has faced is how the secular timeline given puts Israel's occupation in Egypt long after they had stopped making pyramids, where as the new timeline actually puts them in the middle of it all, and even explains why Egypt stopped making them in the 13^th dynasty, you know, due to their labor force up and leaving).


Also, the Pharaoh who built the last pyramids was Amenhemet III, and had no sons. When he died, his daughter took over the throne for only 8 years before she too died and the 12^th Dynasty ended. There was a figure however known as Amenhemet IV who is believed to be an adopted son of Amenhemet III and raised by his daughter. The interesting thing about this person is that he seemed to have ruled with Pharaoh for several years, but then suddenly disappeared. There is no further trace of him in Egypt's records, and no one even seems to know where he is buried. As you may recall, the person of Moses was an adopted son in Pharaohs house, who ran away after he killed an Egyptian official for hitting a Hebrew slave, and only resurfaced forty years later prior to the Exodus.
Piecing the rest of this together, we know that the 13^th dynasty didn't last all that long and held very short terms for it's Pharaohs, the longest reign was only 11 years. It is believed that the Pharaoh who Moses would have confronted at the time was named Neferhotep I. The settlements believed to be occupied by slaves were occupied up until his reign, and there is very little word on what happened to him, not to mention the fact that his body has yet to be discovered. Following his death, the Hyksos (Amalekites) invaded Egypt with very little resistance, which would have made sense if the strongest men of Egypt were all dead laying at the bottom of the red sea.

Perhaps the case I am making would be more significant if Egypt had kept records of all that occurred, but remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are plenty of facts surrounding this story that line up very clearly with Biblical texts, and it doesn't take a great leap of faith to see the connection. I have discovered that we barely know anything about the ancient world, and what we do know is pieced together by presumed conclusions. Even if we presume that the writers of the Bible inserted their own superstitious ideologies about God, we can be assured that it is still a useful book as one of the most intact recounts of historical events (With the exception of the creation story in which no man was actually there to witness the events that took place).

What we do seem to know a lot about however is ancient Rome, which was one of the largest Empires in the ancient world and still holds a steady influence over modern politics, engineering, law, language, and other very useful societal traits that can be traced back to the culture and influence it held on the region and the tens of millions of people who called it home. We know with certainty that Rome occupied the city of Jerusalem, and that they held authority over the Jewish people. We know that the new Testament was written during this occupation, and that the writers of the books and letters all grew up under it's authority while trying to stay true to their own faith and religious practices. There is no one who would refute that this happened, but there has been a growing population of skeptics who think either the story of Jesus never happened, or that if it did, it became that of legends shortly after when the writers took great liberty to make this story so much more significant than it actually was.

Isn't the Story of Jesus Based on Ancient Myth and Not Actual Events?

Anyone who has heard Bill Maher discussing religions, namely Christianity, knows that his objections to the faith tend to rely heavily on the knowledge he holds of a certain god in Egypt named Horus. He dismisses the Christian myth with a wave of his hand as being superstitious and outdated, and incredibly misleading as it lies heavily on a story that existed thousands of years prior to Jesus entering the scene, and even shows up in the story of Buddha some 400 years prior.

If the story of Jesus is in fact, well, not factual, then the crux of what the gospel is built on is nothing more than legend prescribed to a man who riled up a few religious leaders, and started a rag-tag band of misfits who tried to gain power and influence over their oppressors.
This was the second question I was confronted with that almost made me throw in the towel. However, unlike the story of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, this one is much more easily explained, and if you follow along, you'll see what I mean.

The similarities between Jesus and Horus are astounding, in that he was born of a virgin, walked on water, had 12 disciples, was crucified, and rose from the grave 3 days later. This story can be traced back to the early 1900's, when a poet, and self-taught Egyptologist named Gerald Massey published a book called “Ancient Egypt: Light of the World”. In his book, Massey argues that the story of Jesus borrows heavily from ancient Egypt mythology, and goes on to cite over 250 parallels between the two figures of Massey and Jesus. Massey makes the effort of pointing out that the story of Christ was actually concocted by Roman officials as a means of controlling the masses. (his theory has actually picked up a lot of steam in recent years and there is a growing group of people who believe that this was in fact what Rome did, and they had no idea it would become something so powerful, even though this actually lacks any clear evidence).
It's important to note, before we get into this much further, that Massey's work has never actually been taken seriously by scholars. His book is a weird mix of historical speculation, philology, and theorizing about the precession of the zodiac, all presented as fact with minimal supporting evidence.

So let's start with the charge that Horus was from a virgin birth. The most common story from the ancient world about Horus actually was much different. The most common legend about the birth of Horus is that the god Seth dismembered the body of Osiris, his older brother and husband of Isis. Isis collected the pieces of her husband’s body and sewed them back together, then took the form of a bird and fanned Osiris with her wings, reviving him enough to have sex and get herself pregnant with Horus. Not exactly a virgin birth story, is it? So where do we get the idea that legend would have him born of a virgin? Well, the origin seems to lie with Massey himself as all other accounts found in historical writings and retellings seem to not mention this little tidbit of being born from a virgin, and since Massey gives little reference for his discovery, we are left to conclude that his conclusion was less than...well, conclusive. In fact this claim of being born of a virgin seems to be in many different legends, yet none physically predating Christ. For instance the story of Buddha being born of a virgin may take place historically several hundred years before Christ, but the written form seems to have been recorded around the same time the first missionaries would have traveled to these eastern countries in the first and second centuries. This would also explain why Hinduism seems to have many similar stories, given the fact that missionaries traveled as far as India, and well into these cultures that adopted the stories into their own canon of important figures. It would make more sense to claim that these stories were based on the story of Jesus rather than the other way around, even though the claims seem to be prescribed to deities and figures that predated Christ.

As for the crucifixion and resurrection, well this seems to be based on the story where Osiris, Horus' father, was nailed into a coffin (not crucified) by Seth and revived long enough to essentially be a sperm donor before dying again. It is important to understand how significant the story of Jesus was to the regions in which the gospel spread. Respectable Romans left their own security to join these illegal groups noting that their passion and willingness to die for their beliefs was beyond intriguing, and that in time it gained enough power and influence to literally be the religion of Rome only a few hundred years after it's inception. While the story of Jesus might still be in question, we do have many surviving texts from that era that show the fervor and dedication of it's followers, the simple and moralistic lifestyle of those who followed it's teachings, and the impact it had on Rome itself. Whether or not Jesus was as divine as the story claims, no one can dispute the impact the story of Christ has had on the ancient and modern world. Like any important figure throughout history, legend does seem to follow by those who encounter the story, and we have many writings from that era that are considered false, mystical, or just outright crazy, but one thing has remained constant, and that is the message that Jesus preached and the impact his followers had in giving of themselves to a cause even unto death, based on what they knew to be true.

Forget the western brand of Christianity for a moment, and look to movements around the world that are much more in line with the teachings of Jesus and the early Church movement. What you find is the same spirit alive today as it was two thousand years ago. Communities (often living illegally) fueled by their passion of God, and love for one another.

Next up,
Blood Shed and the God of the Old Testament