Christianity vs Mithra?

Question

One complaint I keep hearing from Atheists is that Christianity stole stories from Mithra or other ancient religions
my question is why do atheists believe these ancient writings but not those of Christianity - there are far fewer writings to confirm anything is true or accurate, far fewer scholars that can do the investigating properly - just far less evidence for these older religions but atheists take them as being true without investigating, I suppose a reason would be that they lean toward your beliefs so why look deeper
if you did look deeper you would find that these religions are not similar to Christianity but were altered and to look like they were but I'm sure that's just the belief of the crazy Christians

I want the atheists to see that it is not true also

Kallan - my point was that atheists use these similarities to disprove Christianity but the evidence for these similarities is not real so using that as a way to discredit Christianity is false

Answer 1

Focus your energies on things of God....you already see its not true so just let it go

Answer 2

Actually, your assumptions of the lack of scholarship are not justified. There is little or no evidence of the Jews until around the 12th century BC. Egyptian writings, at best, may mention a race that might have become the Jews but there is no strong evidence for it.

There are writings from older civilizations that pre-date the oldest versions of the Pentateuch, Talmud and the Jewish people which contain similar stories. So the question is did the Hebrews adopt stories that they run across or did they make up similar ones? It is obvious from the archaeological/fossil records that the flood did not occur, that the exodus did not occur and that the creation did not occur. There simply is no evidence for these events.

Christians tend to point to Josephus, Thallos and other writers as proof of Christ's existence. What many of them do not realize is all of these writers were second century writers around the time the gospels and other NT books were written. There are no first century historians that mention Christ, his crucifiction, any of the "easily" observable events surrounding his life (the star, killing all males under 2, earthquake, 3 hour darkness, destruction of the temple curtain, etc).

Answer 3

I'm not an atheist, but I'll try to answer your question.

The reason people think that Christianity stole many of their practices, is that the historical record, shows they did.

Mithra was around before Jesus Christ. He was born on the 25th of December and by some is thought to have been born about 1400 BC.

But, he has been recorded in the Vedas, which are believed to be up to 17000 years old. Yes, 17 thousand years old. They think this, because some of the lands described in the Vedas where flooded by rising water while the earth was coming out of the ice age 17,000 years ago. They can see the plains and river valleys, hills mentioned in the Vedas, all under water. There is no way those who wrote it could know about it, if they hadn't seen it. Talk about a great flood!

He was considered the Son of God, people gave each other presents on his birthday in his name, His birth was heralded by a star, three wise men visited his parents, His mother was a virgin, not even married, had never known a man. His followers drank bulls blood and/or wine as his blood in his name, they ate bread as his body.

Of course, none of this sounds familiar to Christians, as they don't have any of these practices in their religion. Do they?

Answer 4

Sweetie, atheists don't believe in Mithra anymore than they do in Jesus.. unfortunately, there is no historical evidence of Jesus' existence. Mithra worship was around at least 400 years before the alleged birth of Jesus, and Mithra was a popular god with the Roman army. When they invaded that area of the world known as Israel, they brought with them their religious beliefs. If you look at Mithra, you'll see some striking similiarities between that mythos and Jesus. That's all they're trying to get at when they say this.. they don't believe in any god no matter how old or how young.

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

No-one knows man.

It is like asking someone to describe the scene of an accident that never saw what happened. I am sure there would be many quick to point out the volumes of books written hundreds of years later on it, and how they must be right.

But I would also be just as quick to point out that they may also be false. People do lie, and get things mis-construed.

Unless they were there, there is really no way to know.