Comment by Tina Springer on October 5, 2011 at 11:02pm

Ernie, maybe you aren't aware of this but Robert Price actually agree's with Zeitgeist, he is even on the freethought nation website backing up Acharya S. who put most of the information into the video.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzOrc_kwcU4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQGLoXntHc&feature=related

 

These skeptic websites really need to start doing research and use scholarls instead of Christian apologetics.

 

 

 

Comment by Nelson on October 5, 2011 at 11:08pm

Tina: Price is a mythicist, yes, but be careful to lump him in with "Archarya S." (Archarya S is the silly guru name for the person actually named D. M. Murdock). Quoting from my own post linked above:

Robert M. Price, himself a "mythicist" believing that Jesus Christ never existed and is a total myth, reviewed Murdock's book, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, and laments that "Those of us who uphold any version of the controversial Christ Myth theory find ourselves immediately the object not just of criticism, but even of ridicule. And it causes us chagrin to be lumped together with certain writers with whom we share the Christ Myth but little else. even though he himself is a mythicist he finds her scholarship on the subject lacking- "She is quick to state as bald fact what turn out to be, once one chases down her sources, either wild speculation or complex inference from a chain of complicated data open to many interpretations... The Christ Conspiracy is a random bag of (mainly recycled) eccentricities, some few of them worth considering, most dangerously shaky, many outright looney."

Comment by ernie garcia on October 6, 2011 at 1:04am

@tina: i'd be curious to hear just how much of that movie he agrees with. do you think that he supports that entire movie as fact?

i'm not sure what you mean by christian apologetics versus scholars unless you mean to imply that all theologians are believers in the skybully. price has many books on theology, but he has identified himself as a nonbeliever.

Comment by Tina Springer on October 6, 2011 at 2:24am

Nelson, according to Robert Price's website, he backs Acharya S. 

Yes, she published it herself. So did Hume. Nuff said.

 

"Some may think to accuse Ms. Murdock of committing the fallacious appeal to authority because she peppers her text with information ascribed to various scholars and includes
their professional titles or academic posts. But she is not thereby trying to
lend a weight to her thesis which it would not possess on its own. Rather, she
is trying to help us place the specialists whose work she is discussing. I am no
Egyptologist, so it helps me to know who I am “listening to” here and that it is
never just some convenient crank."

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/murdock_christ_egypt...

 

 

Comment by Tina Springer on October 6, 2011 at 2:34am

Price goes on to say:

"Besides random
judgment calls re this or that proposed parallel or conclusion, my only
continuing disagreement with the Acharya is on her model whereby a committee of
creators sat down to formulate the Christian religion. Such a scenario is by no
means impossible, but it seems unnecessary to me. I prefer the old Romantic idea
of Hölderlin and the early form-critics of an anonymous and nebulous “creative
community.” It is hard to track down rumors, myths, or ascendant religious
symbols to specific names. But this difference hardly matters. We are in
agreement on the thoroughly syncretic character of primitive Christianity,
evolving from earlier mythemes and rituals, especially those of Egypt. It is
almost as important in Christ in Egypt to argue for an astro-religious
origin for the mythemes, and there, too, I agree with the learned author. Let me
outline the main argument that persuades me, some of it learned here, some
already assimilated and facilitating my acceptance of much that Acharya
offers."  and "I find myself
in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock: “we assert that Christianity
constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a
synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others
[including Buddhism, via King Asoka’s missionaries] from around the ‘known
world’” (p. 278). “Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion
being Judaized and historicized’ (p. 482)."

  http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/murdock_christ_egypt...   So from that conclusion, it doesn't look to me as if he thinks she is some silly nilly girly that doesn't know what she is talking about.  I am not sure where you got that quote of him Nelson,but  I got this quote right from his website. 

 

 

No Ernie, I was specifically referring to the religious part of  the first video.   

Comment by Nelson on October 6, 2011 at 3:10am

No one reading that would say that "he backs Acharya S" is quite an accurate summation of the piece. In the portion you quote he backs her against her critics who say that she commits the appeal to authority. At the end of the article he says he finds himself "in full agreement" with her statement that "Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka’s missionaries] from around the ‘known world’” and that “Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and historicized’"

But hardly anyone familiar with the scholarship would argue against the notion that the Christian religion is a syncretic mix of these earlier religions. And he explicitly rejects her theory of a committee of persons sitting down to make up the religion deliberately.

 

It just doesn't seem accurate to say that Price "backs Acharya S" on the basis of a positive book review when he's also slammed her in another book review. He may agree with her in the broad strokes, he may even agree with everything she says in the reviewed book, but to say "he backs [her]" is going too far. Especially when he's on record as saying that he regrets the association of himself with herself solely on the basis of their both being mythicists due to her poor scholarship.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting the notion that I said she's a "silly nilly girl". I referred to "Acharya S" as her apparent silly guru name as she's apparently a believer in some brand of laughable nonsense mysticism that prompts her to go around calling herself "Acharya S" ("acharya" means guru apparently)

It was just a remark though. Obviously if she wanted to call herself Minnie Mouse it wouldn't mean that her scholarship should be called into question solely on those grounds. And certainly not solely because she's a woman.

 

As for the link, I had embedded it in my post when I first wrote it, it's unfortunately dead now. You can see a snippet of it here so that you know it does indeed exist and that the quote is accurate. The quote is by Price from a book review he did of Murdock's The Christ Conspiracy. And it's not so surprising really. Even in the review you linked to and quoted on Price's site there's reference made to how he found her book The Christ Conspiracy, from which his review of my quote is taken. He says "Any and every fault, real or perceived, that one might have detected in The Christ Conspiracy..."

 

Honestly, he responds to emails, someone should just ask him what he thinks of her. If he responds to say that he backs her in the way that you allege then, great! Okay. No problem! I'm just saying that it's not fair to say that he does on the basis of one positive review of a book when there exists an explicitly negative review of another book as well. Surely that we can easily agree on. And I'm just as happy to admit that one negative review of a book of hers doesn't mean that he definitely doesn't back her.

 

Anyway, it hardly matters to the question of the original post. Zeitgeist is a movie that relies on only a handful of sources in favor of the stated hypothesis, without including any critical sources at all, and one of the sources that it does include as backing the hypothesis wasn't an Egyptologist and has been dead for more than a hundred years. And then there's the conspiracy theory nonsense.
Look, I'm not wedded to Jesus historicity or Christ myth either way. I'm not saying "The movie sucks outrageously because Jesus existed and the movie says he didn't." I'm saying "The movie sucks outrageously because of the uncritical way it presents the material." The movie leads viewers to think that the matter is as

Comment by Horus Christ on October 6, 2011 at 8:46am

Hey Ashely C :) Im glad to see more that more and more people are waking up to the dubious origins of christianity and it's pre-christian roots. Zeitgeist was more correct about christianity than even Peter Joseph realized. I've just started a thread showing the evidence that ties jesus to horus... I hope you and others find it very helpful and use this information whenever discussion arises with those who unfortunatley are not in-the-know. See you all on my thread: http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topics/horus-is-christ-undeniable...

Comment by Tina Springer on October 6, 2011 at 10:57am

Nelson, if Price agree's with Acharya regarding "Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka’s missionaries] from around the ‘known world’” and that “Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and historicized’"

which was the whole premacy of Zeitgeist, then the rest is symantics. 

 

You state: "Zeitgeist is a movie that relies on only a handful of sources in favor of the stated

 hypothesis"

 

which is blatantly untrue.  Anyone and everyone can go look at the Zeitgeist sourcebook and see that there is more than a handful of sources as there are in Acharya's books. 

 

From my understanding, the video was supposed to be college film art project and it got released on the web after it won a prize so I think that it is expecting too much from something that was not supposed to be used as a documentary in the first place.  It wasn't made to give you facts it was made to win a prize. It should make people think and do their own research which suprisingly, so few people want to do.  Instead, I see people go to the first Christian or skeptic website and take their word for it and as a researcher, this is upsetting to me.   I thought the whole idea of skepticism was to look to see if the evidence backs up the claim and in this case it does. 

Not too long ago, I was in a debate with a Christian about this and I notice a few of the people on here are using those same arguments that the Christian was using.  Zeitgeist is not about Acharya S or Dorothy Murdoch or what ever her name is . Honestly,  I don't give a flying pigs patootie what Price thinks of Acharya S, but to insinuate that her sources are invalid, invalidates the scholars that she uses as sources, which more than a few times, is Price himself. 

 

 

 

Comment by Logan on October 10, 2011 at 11:26pm

Zeitgeist was an intriguing documentary. Well made and attention grabbing, especially for people that are looking for answers. That said, most all of the film is scare tactics mixed with conspiracy theorizing. It is not a good movie to show to someone who is vulnerable, as it can plant seeds of doubt, in all the wrong places, and cause a person to fall for more nonsense. In no way am I saying your post is wrong, just that you looked at that film in the wrong way. Any person who has taken a critical thinking class can tell you all the fallacies and fantasies that that film attempts to portrait. Its not a good step toward thinking critically, in fact, its the exact opposite. GG....

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