-Caveat Lector-
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2000 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: [CTRL] (CTRL) OT: Scientists conclusively I.D.
Christ'sfingerprint(fwd)
> In a message dated 9/16/00 1:23:35 PM Central Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << That's because he's an idiot, a liar, and a fool who will make up shit
> to sell books. >>
>
>
> Au contraire!
> Icke is a brilliant scholar and a daring man...his books are a wealth of
> information.
> Might I also suggest the beautiful and talented Acharya S's book THE
CHRIST
> CONSPIRACY for further evidence that Christ never existed.
>
> Bill.
Au contraire, contraire! Have to agree with J2 "That's because he's an
idiot, a liar, and a fool who will make up shit to sell books." Such truly
is an appropriate claim for the utter crap peddled by self-proclaimed "son
of god" loon David Icke, and co-accused fruit loop and misologist Achy
Breakie heart Acharya S - mere money grubbing charlatans.
Acharya S for example, wouldn't know the difference between true
Christianity and her bunghole. To call these shysters "scholar" - is a
thorough misnomer.
For insatnce, "The Christ Conspiracy" by Acharya S - is published by an
obscure publishing house called "Adventures Unlimited," (1999) not exactly
Harper and Row, or Yale University Press, but at least they know where to
buy ink.
It is written by one who piles on the PROFESSED credentials like they would
disappear if not referred to in a hurry: "...archaeologist, historian,
mythologist, and linguist." Did they forget, con artist, sloppy researcher,
amateur logician, incompetent, angry and irrational person?
Silly Achy Heart S is all of these things; The Christ Conspiracy a tedious,
boring compilation of some of the silliest arguments, some of the broadest
and vaguest generalizations, drawn from some of the most outdated and
unreliable sources, that I have yet seen composed.
Lets face it, such spurious, fabricated nonsense is not new, and is hardly
much more than the re-mashed diatribes of dead and buried sceptics, whose
erroneous material on Christianity even honest, studiously rigorous,
modern-day sceptical scholars are
EMBARRASSED about and would never print.
Yet, here we have another self-appointed guru, rummaging around her box of
stale corn flakes, and attempting to make some ghastly conspiracy mache out
of it.
The somewhat sparse popularity such works receive from Esoteric's, Gnostics,
sham dress-up Sceptics, and New Ager types, is, in my opinion, a further
demonstration, that critical thinking ability has sunk to a new all time
low.
It seems, that as soon as one puts "conspiracy" on the cover, it is like a
fairy-floss attractant to the paranoid, childish conspiracy mindset.
We must also ask, is Acharya S still communing with her ethereal little
"entities?"
I guess also having such supra-human "entities," as your authority and
informational channel, precludes the necessity for hard honest scholarship
when it comes to these higher-than-mortal esoteric mind farts.
Lets quickly make some points on JUST ONE of dear confused Achy's sections -
the Gnostics, and while she is partly right to say that the ideas that were
part of Gnosticism, are indeed old, older indeed quite often than NT
Christianity, she takes the usual overboard position that "Gnosticism was
proto-Christianity." (60) Which I have demonstrated here just last week,
such a paltry claim could not be further from the truth.
The evidence for this concocted claim?
* That critics of Christianity like Porphyry and Plotinus attacked Gnostics
whom they considered to be Christians--which means about as much as the
modern media attacking the groups of Jim Jones and David Koresh as
"Christian." The ignorance of others, and their inability to offer precise
classifications of religious groups they hate intensely, offers no proof of
anything.
* That three church Fathers were either sympathetic to Gnostic views
(Clement of Alexandria, and Ireneaus, so we are told, who "had a zodiac on
the floor of his church at Lyons" [60]) or once were (Augustine)--which also
means absolutely nothing; that a small number of church Fathers some 200
years after the fact and in an entirely different social-cultural milieu had
any sort of involvement in a contrary movement no more adds proof to the
thesis that "Gnosticism was proto-Christianity" than pointing to a group of
modern Christian youth who play Dungeons and Dragons proves that "fantasy
gaming is proto-Christianity."
* It is claimed that Christianity shares Gnosticism's "disdain for the
flesh and for matter in general," (60) although the citations offered prove
no such thing, especially when examined in their literary-historical
context. "The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of
it, that the works thereof are evil." John 7:7 is cited as proof of Jesus'
supposed Gnosticism! BUT, this only says that the works of the world are
evil, not matter or the world itself.
She further nonsensically alludes to Paul, and calls him a Gnostic based on
his supposed "abhorrence of the flesh," though no cite is given showing this
and actually, Paul, like all Jews, believed that the flesh was weak and in
need of a better replacement, the physical and material resurrection body
(cf 1 Cor. 15, 2 Cor. 5)
Further spurious claims are made from the passage, "In whom the god of this
world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of
the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto
them." 2 Cor. 4:4, where Paul is said to "speak gnostically" about the "god
of this world" being evil, although how this is specially "Gnostic" is not
enunciated, in fact, taken in context, the passage is in fact far from any
resemblance to classic Gnostic thought and teaches the very opposite!
We are also told that Paul "reveals" here that "the scriptures were tampered
with," when he indicates that others have been "handling the word of God
deceitfully"; even if applicable, this could hardly prove that any such
tampering survived the textual-copying process, and was no more than an
aberration; beyond that, there is nothing specifically associated with the
Greek here that indicates textual tampering as opposed to, say, oral
preaching which is in fact whereof Paul is speaking of here.
* A Christ-myth maker named Massey, generally, a nobody of the sort often
quoted in this delirious camp is uncritically quoted as saying that Paul
opposed the idea of an incarnated Christ in the flesh; opposite indications
are excused away as "retouching" by the later editors who believed in a
physical Christ. All of such makes for a cutesy conspiracy theory - when it
can't be detected except by X-rays, or only Acharya-Lunatic-rays!
* "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free,
there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal.
3:27 is said to somehow prove, all via the above ignoramus Massey, that "the
Christ in this human phase could be female as well as male" and was
therefore an androgynous concept! How this is so, is not even explained - at
all!
Particularly, since the passage at hand is in fact speaking of BELIEVERS and
their CURRENT STATE in Christ. Furthermore, we have little evidence that
conversion to Christianity caused immediate androgenization! Yet such is the
intnet of the nonsense peddled by these cranks and charlatans.
A.
>
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