As some of you know I am working on various YouTube sites.

What surprises me is the rise of new atheism. I'm not personally sure what to make of it.

This could be attributed to various things. One could be in reaction against our Governments who have lied so much in the Gulf war, used these lies with religion as part of the rationale, and as a response, young people are reacting against all religions put together. Too many lies. The internet is facilitating young people to question everything and believe nothing. Who can blame them?

In the floods of mail and posts I get on some of my channels, I have noticed some questions as to why the details of the Jesus story are so similar to the story of Horus.

Jesus and Horus could easily be the same person. Is it possible in describing who Jesus was, the culture that wrote the Bible virtually carbon copied the details of Horus?

I looked up a few web sites to check. There it was. This is not a new question. I can almost hear David Boaz's keyboard revving up...

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm

There are many others...

Now look at the YouTube site that took my imagination:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-yI7ckLdcc

This looks interesting stacking up the information.

Then there is the radical atheist side to YouTube culture that has Christians realing. All I have to say is mention "dendrophilian" and you have the Christian fundamentalists barking like German shepherds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaZ4u-kY9yE

The shock jock on YouTube that Christians love to hate.

Then there is "the Blasphemy Challenge" where people are asked to renoucne the existance of God and the Holy Sprirt, liberate themselves, and admit that there is no God. They have the chance to win a free book.

Thousands of YouTubers have denounced God, and announced their liberation. The numbers are growing by the day. Why?

The is a movement that all religions did not account for. The possibility that a generation of people would totally shun them all forever.

Over to you David...

Saintfletcher,
I’m also familiar with the Jesus/Horus similarities but there are many more pagan “saviours” that share uncanny similarities.

Here’s a summary of some more.
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/jesus_similar.html

And another
http://home.earthlink.net/~pgwhacker/ChristianOrigins/PaganChrists_Attis.html

Plus a handy reference to other Gods.
http://www.godchecker.com/

I think the doubt is the result of increased availability of information plus general social dissatisfaction as disillusionment.

On the other hand, religion reinforces personal arrogance and superiority and long-held beliefs are not surrendered lightly.

The similarities are further enhanced by the symbolic use of numbers in religions. In Christianity, is it just coincidence that there were 12 disciples, 12 months of the year, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 gates of Jerusalem, 12 manner of fruit on the tree of life and so on? Even multiples of 12 appear in heaven as signs of perfection. 12 is said to be the number of the Church while other significant numbers (such as 3, 6 and 40) have other meanings and reappear constantly.

Likewise, all the main stories (virgin births, miracles, healing, resurrection) have historically appeared elsewhere many, many times before Jesus arrived, just as stories of a Great Flood occur in several cultures.

The scriptures related to Jesus that pre-date the Gospels (like actual historical records) make absolutely no mention of any of these divine aspects so it may be that “extra bits” were added to the story later on and were just a composite of many of the earlier legends, just as extra verses were mysteriously inserted into the Gospels over time.

The three monotheistic religions have the same origin and this seems to have come from ancient Egypt.

Before all this – as in most ancient cultures- people’s lives were dictated by the movement of the sun and stars – such the time to sow their crops and the predictable changing of the seasons. These movements were personified into stories that led to the pre-astronomical version of astrology (not the modern mumbo-jumbo version) and most religions include these references, whether they choose to admit them or not.

*POUNCE* :)

OK....I'm here.. coooeeeee...

Yep..I've heard/seen the horus thing b4.. it's really quite laughable, rather than try to address it directly, I suggest some study of SOURCES.. in particular the New Testament, the Gospels, and really did into this, and it become more than abundantly clear that any such similarities are coincidental at best, and it also ignores the differences.. nuf said.

Wow..that Dendro character is really quite a piece of work eh :) a very rascally bloke. "We reap what we sow" comes to mind. I hope he opens his heart the the Lord he is currently mocking.

I don't worry about the 'new atheism' I prefer to focus on the 'old' time religion and the growth of the Church and believers.
You know the parable of the Soils ? (also called the sower) it describes most category of people.

Ok.. I've said my bit :)

WATCH CNN 2 NIGHT 11:00PM "GOD'S CHRISTIAN WARRIORS" Should be interesting.

READ THE BOOK OF DANIEL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND STUDY THE PROPHESIES THEN GO TO THE BOOK OF REVELATION IS IT JUST COINCIDENCE?

Fletcher (I'm taking the Saint off, because it doesn't ring true), the problem with the Internet is that you can find a site to support almost anything.

I don't have a problem with the idea that mythic elements found their way into the life of Christ. Or that some Christians appropriated mythic rites and deities. But I don't see that this invalidates Christianity.

My final year English project was an attempt to write a life of Moses stripping the myth away from it. I got a VHA, and this at a Catholic school in Brisbane. I could probably have done the same thing with a life of Christ and achieved the same result.

Any serious Christian knows that there are all sorts of overlays. But that doesn't invalidate the historical fact that he lived, nor the power of the story to provide meaning to human life. It's a compelling narrative, at least as powerful in the metaphysical realm as e=mc2 is in the physical.

The sites that you have linked to are generated by people with serious problems, particularly the guy who says he's God. People with that degree of hate are destroyers, not creators.

You make it sound very conspiratorial but it’s really quite simple.

Basically, the cult of Mithras was the dominant religion in the Western world until it was formally supplanted by early Christianity by Emperor Constantine.

Many of the Mithraic features seem to have been incorporated into Christianity during the 300 –odd years they co-existed – such as making Sunday as a day of worship, the chief festivals during the (now traditional) Christmas and Easter periods, the virgin birth, baptism (which incorporated the sign of a cross on the forehead), eternal life through salvation as well as many other now familiar themes. Ancient Christianity was also originally Unitarian while Mithrasism was Trinitarian (a trinity).
Easter (or Oestre) was originally a pagan festival of fertility (hence eggs and rabbits) where bulls were sacrificed and eaten in a ritual of communion. The bulls were eventually replaced by loaves of bread to eliminate the paganism feature. There are a multitude of other things I could include here.

Festivals (like our own public holidays)had to be retained to "keep the peace" during the transition from one belief to another so the dates were simply and conveniently merged.

Despite the first Edict of Milan and the first Congress of Nicaea, after Constantine’s death, an attempt to restore Mithasism was made by Emperor Julian (the Apostate) but he was killed by the Persians (allegedly killed by a Christian soldier).
The following Emperor Jovian restored Christianity’s status and removed the last remnants of Mithrasism. Ironically he did this by killing those who did not accept the idea of the Holy Trinity! Nice idea.

If languages and customs cross-pollinate when they co-exist in societies, why not religious ideas as well? Particularly over hundreds of years.

There is no reason to believe that ANY religion sprang to life spontaneously and independently from all others around it(except maybe Scientology which is really a contrived religion in name only for tax reasons).

The tragedy of religion comes when people obsess and kill over the literal nature of scriptures and ignore any underlying message and potential for good that religion may contain.