Yes. Me too. Brought up in a strongly Christian home, but started to ask questions and, about aged 16, realized I had been cruelly lied to.
I remember the day I was sat cross-legged in assembly at Primary School, I was 8, and when they were reading from the Bible, even at that age, I looked around, looked at the teachers, looked up at the cross on the wall... and I thought “this is a load of rubbish, this”.
Religion becomes less believable to me by the year, to the point where I am a convinced atheist. And a strong believer that, if we are to honour something at the times of the festivals, we should ditch the deities and gods and just appreciate what is really being worshipped by religions - the Sun and the seasons. In 2020, we don’t need the deities and gods. We’ve advanced as a species without needing them.
Looking back through history at older religions than Christianity, there were Sun gods, miracle births and resurrections of gods. Christian stories and Saints are just taken from past religions and put out there as “new”(at the time).
John Moles from
The Acts Of The Apostles and early Christianity said the Dionysian cult influenced early Christianity, and especially the way that Christians understood themselves as a "new" religion centred around a saviour deity. In particular, the account of Christian origins in the
Acts of the Apostles was heavily influenced by Euripides’
The Bacchae. Moles also suggests that Paul may have partially based his account of the Holy Communion/Lord’s Supper on the ritual meals performed by members of the Dionysian cult.
There’s little originality in any religions, and Christianity (as did Judaism and Islam) just copied bits from here, there and anywhere to the point where it’s pretty much just a plagiarised religion.
Just some of the hundreds, probably thousands, of examples:
- Amun was an Egyptian god, it’s where “amen” at the end of Christian prayers comes from. The parallels between the Christian religion and the is the Ancient Egyptian religion are huge.
- Ra was the Egyptian god of the Sun. He had a halo above his head representing the Sun. He was called the creator.
- Horus was the Egyptian god of the sky. Born on the Winter Solstice. His rival was Set who was the god of disorder and violence. They fought (or more precisely, shagged!) in the
Contendings of Horus and Set each day and Horus won every morning while Set won every night. This may be the oldest religious thought of all, probably going back tens of thousands of years: light v dark, day v night, Summer v Winter, good v evil, god v devil.
- Osiris was the Egyptian god of death, resurrection and afterlife. He died when the crops were sown and resurrected when they sprouted.
- Tiwaz was the Sun god of the Luwians, he was the descendent of the sky god Dyeus. He was referred to as “Father”.
- Apollo was a Greek god of light and healing, son of the sky god Zeus.
- Helios (Heliopolis was where Ra the Egyptian Sun god was worshipped, traditions simply being passed down through generations with evolving names) was the Greek Sun god, thought to be the personification of the Sun itself.
- Sol was the Roman Sun god, birthday celebrated on Sol Invictus on 25th December (as the Roman calendar just had the Winter Solstice on that date since that’s when the Sun starts to move up in the sky by 1°, they didn’t note the Solstice as the shortest day).
- Zoroastra was Persian prophet, his priesthood started at age 7, he started his ministry at age 30 where he was spreading the word about Asha and Druj. He emphasised individual judgment, heaven and hell, the resurrection of the body, the final judgement, everlasting life for the reunited soul and body (Christianity); praying five times a day, covering the head during prayer, and of Thamud and Iram of the Pillars (Islam).
- Dionysus was the Greek god of wine. Had festivals associated to him on the Winter Soltice and Vernal Equinox. Wine was the representation of Dionysus on Earth, his blood. He appeared before Pentheus charged with claiming divinity, he died and was resurrected - in part similar to Osiris - with the sowing of the vines and was resurrected when they bloomed.
- Attis was the Phrygian god of agriculture. Born on Winter Solstice. Died and resurrected.
- Aion was a Greek deity associated with the Zodiac. He was born of a Virgin on the Winter Solstice.
- Dusares was a holy child of Petra, born of the virgin goddess Kore on the Winter Solstice.
- Mithra (the ancient Persian religious figure, seen much earlier than in the later 200CE Roman Mithraism - but even then there were Mediterranean coins depicting Mithra around 128BCE long before Jesus’ time) is who Apollo is supposed to be based on. Born on the Winter Solstice. Said to be all seeing and hearing and was a mediator between God and man.
- Uti was the Sun god of the Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Was all seeing, the enforcer of Devine justice and aided those in distress. He was the twin of the goddess of heaven.
- Shapash was the Canaanite goddess of the Sun, daughter of El who was the father of all Canaanite gods. She was the main Sun deity in the region of Jesus centuries before Jesus. Jews stoned anyone found worshipping Shapash and said Sun worship, as well as bowing to the East (where the Sun rises), instead of worshiping their theistic god, was punishable. It is forbidden in the Tanakh and the same thing was adopted by the Bible which replaces all words meaning the Sun with things like “the light” and eventually Jesus who, like Helios and Amun-Ra, is just the personification of the Sun.
Here is a link to an article comparing Jesus/Christianity to more ancient Buddha, Zoroastrianism, and Krishna:
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...-of-a-Route-Map.pdf?origin=publication_detail
If looked at in particular detail, from deities from all around the world, the list would be endless.
Throughout the ancient world, each region and town seemed to create their own deities and gods within the main religion. Some of them spread more widely, some became the main gods, some became religions in their own right. Jesus is just another one of these among many. His myth is no more important or special, or believable, than any of them. There is nothing that I’ve ever read that has convinced me the myth wasn’t just another personification of the Sun, just like Ra, just like Helios, just like all of them. Even if he did exist as a person (nothing has convinced me he did), he was just a person, and all the myths attached to him were plagiarised from the hundreds of Sun deity stories that went before him.
Same with his “Father” in all this. In the Jesus myth, his father was god. In other Sun god myths, their father was the god of the sky. The Sun is just the son of the sky, with the sky personified as the father of the son/Sun.
This is only touching on “god” and “Jesus”. You could look through all the Christian (and Judaism and Islam) stories and find them being exact copies of older religions’ stories. And it’s the same with Christian Saints, all adopted and amended from older religions on the seasonal festivals that were also stolen from older religions, usually with the words “the true...” “the Devine...” “the one...” as if to emphasise their importance over what they were copied from.
