With Faith, Results Matter

There was no Jesus, certainly not a supernatural one, and probably not one of the species homo sapiens. Scroll down for excerpts from Freke and Gandy, "The Jesus Mysteries." The paragraph below is from Wikipedia. Link follows. Maybe if we rid ourselves of the notion that God was a human sacrificing savage, we'd stop "sacrificing" our own.
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"The works (1990s) by George Albert Wells drew on the Pauline Epistles and the lack of early non-Christian documents to argue that the Jesus figure of the Gospels was symbolic, not historical. Wells later went on to retract his position somewhat and admit that he believed the Q source was a reliable early testimony to the historical nature of Jesus, although he has been criticized on this point by Robert M. Price because, Price argues, the imagined “single voice” behind the Q sayings is simply their common distinctive Cynical tang, and as Burton L Mack demonstrates, the same is found among any and all Cynic maxims, which is the only way he can tell the Q sayings are Cynic in the first place. They need not come from a single sage. Earl Doherty (1991, 2001) proposed that Jewish mysticism influenced the development of a Christ myth. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (2001) have popularized the Jesus-myth concept in their book The Jesus Mysteries.[1] Frank Zindler’s 2003 book The Jesus the Jews Never Knew: Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and the Quest of the Historical Jesus examines the Tacitus and Josephus material quite extensively but is mostly devoted to showing that the ancient Jews never heard of “Jesus of Nazareth” — indeed, they never heard of Nazareth. Another recent book, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus, examines all archaeological data extant and argues that “Nazareth” was not inhabited at the turn of the era when Jesus’ family should have been living there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology

BTW, IVR, I hardly think it helps to further associate 'Modern medicine' with "Jesus Never Existed."

In fact, that's the *darn problem* in this discussion, whichever constructed 'side' you take, and maybe use children for pawns in a theological argument.

"The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman."

Well, in the Pagan myths ( 'mystery cults' in the antrhopological sense' ) this was about *us* being *like* our food, not about not about being starved if we don't obey the Kings who control the 'millers.' Though that was known to happen in the European past, anyway. :)

"I say this because the facts as we know them in this case describe the horrible death of a child whose parents were following their religious practice. A popular reaction is to condemn all practices that affect the health care of children."

You know, starving and dehydrating a *sixteen month old baby* for not saying 'Amen' isn't about that baby's 'alternative beliefs' or 'faith.'

It's about people doing things they should know darn well *don't* 'heal,' that in fact they *harm and traumatize and kill in real and physical, knowable, and predictable ways.*

People that teach these things do otherwise, are equally culpable.

If not more, when playing on the fears of people who are distressed past their own functional reason.

" I ask for a level of objectivity when it comes to such an important issue as the health of our children. Excluding all forms of healing through prayer could actually be in the worst interest of children, not the best."

Could be. But these are children, not objects for religious 'tests of faith.'

Frankly, I hardly think Western medicine is to be trusted implicitly, but it does do some things well and among them are charting the effects of malnutrition and trauma on children and their futures, if they get one.

As regards how *my* faith is treated, people will *equate* not believing in your Jesus with 'Child abuse' and try and rip kids away from functional families, then ask us to stand aside for maniacal behavior like exorcisms and torturous 'faith healings' and even, horrors like this.

In my faith, yes, we go with what works, and we also know what *antibiotics are.*

Why, we even know that you need a *full* course of antibiotics if you don't want to breed a resistant strain of TB in your dearest little poppet... which is a darn sight better than throwing up your hands and letting New Orleans die of yellow fever. As has happened.

Sure, you have a right to your own beliefs. I question your *judgement* when members of your sect pray to a God for a *more miraculous cure* than the scientists I presume you believe he made *sent you* ...but it's a grey area in terms of where I think American law goes.

Past a point, I'm willing to be the 'bad guy.'

Praying for 'God' to convert a child you're *killing.* is waaaaay past that point.

"Jesus" never existed.

From "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, available at Amazon.

(There are many other sources on the Osirus/Dionysus/Jesus myth. Just use Google.)

"The traditional history of Christianity is hopelessly inadequate to the facts. From our research into ancient spirituality it has become obvious that we must fundamentally revise our understanding of Christian origins in the most shocking of ways. Our conclusion, supported by a considerable body of evidence in our book, The Jesus Mysteries, is that Christianity was not a new revelation. It was a continuation of Paganism by another name. The gospel story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah. It is a Jewish reworking of ancient Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman Osiris-Dionysus, which had been popular for centuries throughout the ancient Mediterranean.

The stories told about Osiris-Dionysus will no doubt sound familiar. He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a saviour who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood. The Jesus story is a synthesis of the Jewish myth of the Messiah Joshua (in Greek Jesus) with these Pagan myths of the dying and resurrecting Godman.

cont'd

It is hard for us today to imagine the Jesus story being consciously created, but this is because we have misunderstood ancient spirituality. Myths were not seen as untruths as they are now. They were understood as allegories of spiritual initiation, which encoded profound mystical teachings. Reworking old myths to create new ones was a standard practice in the ancient world.

The conquests of Alexander the Great had turned the Mediterranean world into one culture with a common language. This created an age of eclecticism, much like our own, in which different spiritual traditions met and synthesized. Jewish mystics of this period, such as Philo Judeas, were obsessed with synthesizing Jewish and Pagan mythology. In light of all this, it is actually no surprise that some group of Jewish mystics should synthesize the great mythic hero of the Jews, Joshua the Messiah, with the great mythic hero of the Pagans, Osiris-Dionysus.

At the time, both Pagans and Christians were well aware that the Jesus story was a myth. The early Christians, known as Gnostics, understood the Jesus story as allegory, not history, and even called Jesus by the names of the Pagan Godman. The Gnostics were brutally eradicated by the Roman Church in the 4th and 5th centuries, and since then we have believed the official propaganda that these Christians were dangerous heretics who had gone Pagan.

Actually the evidence suggests the opposite is closer to the truth. The Gnostics were the original Christians, just as they themselves claimed. They had synthesized Jewish and Pagan mythology to produce the Jesus story and many other extraordinary Christian myths largely unknown today. The Roman Church was a later deviation, which misunderstood the Jesus story as history. It was, as the Gnostics said at the time, an imitation Church teaching a superficial Christianity designed for the masses.

Roman Christianity, and all its subsequent offshoots, is based on the idea that if you believe in the existence of an historical Jesus you will go to heaven when you die. For the Gnostics, however, Jesus is an everyman figure in an initiation allegory. They taught that if you yourself go through the process of initiation symbolized by the Jesus myth, you would die to your old self and resurrect in a new way. The Greek word we translate as resurrect also means awaken.

Continued

For the Gnostics, Christianity was about dying -- the idea of giving up your mortal body and awakening to your immortal essence as the Christ within ­- the One Consciousness of the Universe. This mystical enlightenment was not something that happened after death, but could happen here and now.

The historical figure of Jesus has been so central to Western culture that it is hard to question his existence. As soon as we hear his name we can see him in our mind's eye, in his flowing white robes, with long hair and a beard. Yet this picture of Jesus was not created until the 8th century. Early portrayals of Jesus show him clean-shaven with short hair and wearing a Roman tunic. St Paul says that long hair disgraces a man, so presumably his image of Jesus was not the same as ours.

The fact is that everything we think we know about Jesus, like this romantic picture of the bearded saviour, is a creation of the human imagination. Actually there is barely a shred of evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus and this dissolves on closer inspection. Paul, the earliest Christian source, shows no knowledge of an historical man, only a mystical Christ.

The gospels have been thoroughly discredited as eyewitness reports. Other bits of traditional evidence, such as references to Jesus by the Jewish historian Josephus, have been shown to be later forgeries. If solid evidence had existed, there would have been no need to have created such fabrications.

A little over a century ago most people believed the story of Adam and Eve to be history. To most thinking people today its is obviously a myth. We predict that within a generation a similar revolution will have taken place in our understanding of the gospels. People will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and be amazed that a culture with the technology to travel to the moon could see the fabulous story of Jesus as anything other than a myth. However, we do not want to dismiss the Jesus story as nonsense. For us it is truly the greatest story ever told, because it has been thousands of years in the making. It is a perennial tale that has fascinated the human soul since the dawn of time.

Whilst our ideas clearly rewrite history, we do not see ourselves as undermining Christianity. On the contrary we are suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. According to the original Gnostic

Christians, the Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the mystical experience of Gnosis, which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else two thousand years ago.

On the question of the Old Testament and the New. Christians are given the advantage of Jesus' teachings and the enlightenment that they bring. There is a clear elevation of thought in the New Testament that did not always exist in the Old. There are hints of enlightenment, such as when Elijah slew the prophets of Bael, and then in a statement of remorse said "I am no better than my fathers". And then went on to have some amazing experiences.

Stating that Jesus was directing Isaac is to misunderstand the Christ that came with the new Testament. Jesus, the Christ, changed man's view of God and the power that came from this understanding. Without this change we would still be living under the Mosaic code of "An eye for an eye...". Thankfully Jesus brought us to a higher state of thought, forgiveness, and understanding.

I am curious about the assertion that medical healing is superior to faith healing. It is always assumed that a child that dies in a family that practices Christian Science would live if given medical treatment, but there is never a question that a child that dies under medical treatment might have been healed by Christian Science. The evidence of Christian healing is voluminous and irrefutable. The real question is whether the parents were diligent in caring for the child. Neglect comes not from the choice of care, but rather from not caring at all.
If a Christian Scientist is giving spiritual care to a child and is diligent then they are acting in a responsible manner. Just as a parent who believes in medical healing is responsible and diligent when the take their child to a doctor.

It is a slippery slope to judge the form of care, as long as there is evidence that it is effective. For even in the medical world there are differing opinions on how care should be administered. If a parent listens to one doctor and ignores the other and the child dies, are they to be judged as neglectful?

If Christian Science were in the majority and a parent sought medical treatment, would they be judged as irresponsible and negligent. I doubt it.

At 3 years of age, I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and I was treated by two other physicians who confirmed the diagnosis. When I continued to grow worse, my dad asked the doctors their prognosis. They said they couldn't guarantee that I would live, but they could guarantee that if I did I would be an invalid--would not be able to participate in strenuous sports and basically would not lead the life of a normal, active boy.

My aunt told my dad that prayer would heal me. She said that Christian Science had practitioners that he could call upon for help. He knew nothing of Christian Science except what she had told him but was desperate, so he called a Christian Science practitioner and asked for prayer. I was healed completely in less than one week. The doctors gave many of the same arguments I see in these comments, but my dad stuck with his decision to go with Christian Science, and it worked.

Since then, I played all of the high school sports, missed only 2 days of school (k-12) for illness, went through rigorous military physical exams that confirmed a complete healing of rheumatic fever, and worked 34 years as a professional educator without missing a day for illness. I have reared 5 children who now have families of their own--all of whom rely on Christian Science for every facet of their lives--including physical healings.

PAMSM

It’s obvious you don’t understand the bible.

Jesus did give orders to kill in the Old Testament. He did that when the victims were beyond redemption and had committed serious offences. It was truly his only recourse. To say it simply, if you offend God bad enough, you are in deep do-do.

Also, the laws of Moses and Abraham were quite heavy handed and numerous but they fit the times. When Jesus decided to come into the earth he threw out most the old-school laws and gave us a new set. It was time to change. No, that is not a pun.

As for Abraham’s son Isaac, Jesus did call upon him to sacrifice his only son, but it was a test of his faith. When it came down to it he sent an angle to stop him.

Gen 22: 12 “And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.”

Mark
Always seek the truth.

BTW, Phil - the vast majority of illnesses are viral, and are resolved naturally by the immune system.

With these, it doesn't matter whether you pray over the afflicted, give him antibiotics, dance around him with a bone in your nose, fast, give him vitamin C, or do absolutely nothing - he will regain his health in precisely the same time frame, regardless.

For non-viral illnesses, disorders, and injuries, if you don't take your child to the doctor/hospital, you should be held criminally liable and have him removed from your custody.

PHIL: "If we can accept the fact that God is unconditional Love, then He would never ask someone to abuse, neglect, or harm someone else."

Unbelievable. Have you heard of Abraham? Have you read of the directives to the Israelites to destroy the cities of the Babylonians (and others) - to put to the sword every living thing - man, woman, child, animal? (Oh, yes, he sometimes allowed them to refrain from killing the women who had not "known" a man - these virgins they could keep for their own pleasure - as sex slaves.)

Have you heard of what he planned for and did to his "son"?

PHIL: "In fact, I don't see how suffering could be a part of God's plan at all."

If not his, then whose???? There's certainly plenty of it! And you can't blame it all on "fallen" man, either - what about hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, lightning, storms at sea? Who made bacteria and viruses? In fact, who made this whole sorry mess - including the nature of men, both collectively and individually?

The only thing that makes any sense at all, is that it's all just indifferent nature. Get real.

I think we should restrain ourselves from attacking faiths that are not ours.

Maybe they have issues, and maybe they don’t, but we are all children of God. Because of this, I am certain that God listens to the prayers of all of his children regardless of their particular breed of faith.

That being said, he also requires us to do our part in taking care of ourselves and particularly our children. As a parent, I expected my boys to exhaust all efforts to take care of themselves before they expected me to cover for them. If they needed guidance in doing that I offered it freely, but if they were not willing to do what they knew how to do, I was not going to do it for them.

Heavenly father (God) is our spiritual parent and he operates in the same manner. After all, he is not the kind of parent that child services was invented for.

God helps those who help themselves.

Does prayer bring God’s healing? Absolutely, but you must do your part as well.

Can a blessing from a priesthood holder heal an afflicted child when the parents are doing all that they can to help that child themselves? Absolutely! I have first-hand experience in that one.

But to punish a child to the point of death for not saying “Amen”, “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” Luke 17:2

I pray for the person who offended this child that they will see the light and correct their ways.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

It's not surprising to see that the most incomprehensible answer to this week's question has been offered by the resident Christian Scientist. I read it three times and I'm still wondering if it's just a tasteless April Fool's joke.

A woman starved her child to death because (she said) God told her to and Mr. Davis asks us for a "level of objectivity." What does that mean?

I have a hard time understanding why organizations like Christian Science still exist. I suppose you can say they're there to support the delusions of a few. Mr. Davis' solipsistic incoherence is a pretty neat example of the kind of thinking that allows curiosities like Christian Science to survive, even today.

But there's a bigger issue. If people want to be dangers to themselves, it's a free country. But when they're permitted power over the lives of others, like children, that's a problem for society.

Something must be done to prevent organizations like Christian Science from victimizing those who cannot help themselves---all to scratch the itch of people, like Mr. Davis, who clearly can't think straight.

Mr. Davis, I was in the CS Church for a number of years and attended Principia College, a school for Christian Scientists in Elsah, Ill. I never saw evidence that CS could heal anything. In fact, two students and a child of a staff member died of the measles during my freshman year in 1984-85. How sad. Two of my favorite college professors died much too early because Christian Scientists deny that our bodies are real and that pain is an illusion. Well, no. Pain is a sign that something's wrong. No one is against prayer -- just against people denying the reality that life isn't perfect and that it's OK to use medicine. Adults should be free to make their own choices, but they shouldn't be playing Russian roulette with their children's lives.

Does this mean, Mr. Davis, that if your child was ill and you tried to make her well through prayer, but the prayer didn't work, you would take her to a physician for diagnosis and treatment?

You say that, with children, quick results are important. But what does that mean in terms of whether and/or when you change approaches?

My high school boyfriend (let's call him John, and this was nearly 35 years ago) came from a CS family, and his father served as a CS practitioner. I asked John one time what his father would do in a dire circumstance: Let's say (I said) you break your arm; it's a compound fracture, so there's broken bone poking through the skin. (I wanted to make my example as gruesomely visual as possible, thinking that the sight of blood, bone, tendon, etc., wouldn't be something you could ignore.) So, I described the scenario and then asked John: "Would your father just wrap your arm in a towel and go into the corner and pray?" And John said yes, that's what he'd do.

This made no sense to me then, and it makes no sense now. Maybe, Mr. Davis, you can help me understand. In my example, you've got a profusely bleeding kid who likely will go into shock pretty quickly. Yet his parent will pray over him instead of getting medical attention while the child is bleeding to death? With what expectation? That the blood will stop, the bone will re-knit, the open wound will close itself, and all will be as if it had never happened? Is this what Christian Scientists believe?

Please explain this to me, because, from my point of view, this behavior constitutes child abuse.

The evidence doesn't support your claim that "prayer as taught in Christian Science has brought repeated healing".

In the USA, Christian Scientists on average live about 3 years less than other people. They regularly contract infectious diseases that they aren't vaccinated for. Nor do Christian Scientists recover from diseases that are generally incurable. Prayer doesn't cure Huntington's, or regenerate severed limbs.

If your type of prayer was an effective method of treatment, then it would be easy to find evidence of that in the data. In fact, we see the exact opposite.