Is it true christianity is nothing but bastardized pagan beliefs?

Question

Most of the christian holidays coincide with pagan rituals that predate christianity by thousands of years. In addition, the christian prophet looks surprisingly similar to surviving images of Zeus.

Answer 1

The Roman church deliberately adopted pagan roman holidays and renamed them as Christian holidays, and gave them new meanings and symbols, so that people would not have to give up their days off in order to become Christian.

And when pagans converted to Christianity, obviously they kept their same artistic styles, so their Christian paintings look similar to their pagan paintings.

That is a rather superficial similarity between Christian beliefs and pagan beliefs, however. If that is all that you got, then your evidence is rather weak.

Answer 2

Originally, during the Dark/Middle Ages the Roman Catholic church would "schedule" holidays to coincide with pagan holidays in the hopes of detracting from pagan forms of worship. Although, ironically enough, if not for monks during those times and earlier we would not have many of the mythological stories we have now, such as Gilgamesh or the Iliad and other various works that were written and copied down by "men of the cloth."

Answer 3

Many of the holidays are based around them, history tells us that Christmas was put where it was to aid in the Christianisation of Pagan countries like Britian when the Romans invaded. And it certainly believable that the horned God of Pagan beliefs could have been subverted to the Christian devil. Also Easter is based on lunar cycles, and the moon is held in high regard by Pagans.

There's certainly a lot of proof for a lot of their practices having come from Pagan traditions, but their basic belief of one god and such varies greatly.

Answer 4

The early Christian Church (after the Apostolic Age, though) adopted many local Pagan symbols and holidays and made them Christian to make it easier to obtain converts.

Instead of praying to multiple gods, they started praying to the Saints asking them to intervene with the Father.

They moved Christmas from the Spring (when Jesus was really born) to coincide with the Yule.

In English even our celebration Of Christ's resurrection is named for the Pagan goddess Easter (Latin languages call it the Christian Passover).

However, none of these things are crucial to true Christianity. True Christianity is that the Lord Jesus took upon himself flesh, died forour sins, then rose from the dead. Because of Jesus' Atonement (at-one-ment) we may return to the Father.

Answer 5

Even the core concept of Christianity is pagan: The cult worship of Jesus as a living God.

There are countless examples of humans worshiped as gods. The Egyptian pharaohs, the Babylonian kings, Alexander "the Great," Julius Caesar, and Antinous (the Roman Emperor Hadrian's homosexual lover) were worshiped as living gods. Even Constantine (who Christians mistakenly believe converted the Roman Empire to Christianity) built temples devoted to the worship of his father as a god.

Christians believe that their religion grew out of Judaism, but that isn't true. Judaism teaches that there is one God and he is not a human. When Paul began preaching to the Gentiles, they incorporated their pagan myths into Christianity. Today, there is so much pagan mythology in Christianity that almost nothing of the true beliefs of Jesus or his disciples remains.

Answer 6

Well the similarities between Christian festivals and various Pagan ones are suspicious but I am not happy to say that Christianity is made up.I'm Pagan not Christian but still condemning their religion or saying it's made up is wrong.

Answer 7

Christian ideals are not rather that heavily concerning Pagan ideals, yet some Christian trip journeys coincide with Pagan/Wiccan trip journeys. Like yuletide/wintry climate Solstice as an occasion, happens on the twenty first or twenty 2d of December, observing the 12 months. Christmas is on the twenty 5th of December. Many pagans have fun yuletide because of fact the beginning of the God purely as Christians do. additionally, Many pagans have fun Ostara (March twenty first) with symbols like eggs, tulips, rabits -purely like Easter.

Answer 8

Bon:
The main distinction between the gods devised of human flesh & blood and the God, who created all life is the unconditional, absolutly free gift of GRACE, available through Jesus Christ. THIS is the hallmark of the true Christian God and not the limited expression of man's wishful thinking and devising. All socienties, who retain the ways of the TRUE Christian God within the knowledge of their society flourish; whereas, those societies who invent gods, go the way of Zeus into reliance upon those societies who acknowledge God. The relevance of the observation of whether "Christian holidays coincide with with pagan rituals" has absolutely no bearance on a Christian's relationship with God, the Father, through Jesus Christ. It is ALL about GRACE - NOT race.

Answer 9

Yes, it is true....Did you know many pagan symbols are used in Christianity, which pre-date Jesus of course. Even the cross was used before Jesus's time.

Finally someone who gets it.

You know this question will be removed by yahoo....because the fundies will report it as abuse in droves.

That's ok though...I applaud your righteousness on the subject.

I had a question removed...for asking "was jesus a street magician ?"......I thought it to be a valid question, but apparently some found it offensive. To bad the same logic doesn't apply when they attack atheists, and condemn them to hell on yahoo..

The moderators must be xtian fundies too.

Answer 10

What religion doesn't adopt the culture of what ever poor sucker religion they replace.

Its all a bunch of baloney anyway. I have nothing against religious people but I just don't understand how anybody can believe that their god is the author of their religious beliefs.