Re: "Because Christianity is and was one of the most powerful and widespread religions in the world, and unlike the dead religions of the past, Christianity is still among the most popular religions worldwide.
One should remember that Christianity is only around 2,000 years old and as such, is not an old religion. It's popularity is partially due to timeliness as it came into popularity at a time in man's technological development allowed a spreading of the Christian message more so than for older religions which came to popularity when spreading messages was far more difficult and thusly, unlikely.
There have been many other powerful religions in the past. Perhaps less on a world scale and more on a regional scale. But for their time they were still a major influence and were governing forces over billions of lives.
For any religion to be truly different, it should demonstrate actual differences in its basic doctrines and this is something that Christianity simply does not do. At its most basic, it is but a restructuring of components of older pagan religions with many of the components left so completely in tact as to be unmistakeably spawned by pagan myths.
Re: "From a skeptic's perspective, they are all the same. However, for people who believe in one or another, no religion is the same."
Certainly, were they all identical, they could not rationally be called by different names. But when one looks to the historical development of religion, Christianity is but a patchwork assembly of older pagan beliefs and tales, right down to the polytheism which Christianity attempts to market as monotheism. When one refers to three God-heads, some of which are said not to be fully aware of the ideas, thoughts and plans of the others, one is not referring to monotheism. The Trinity (which was completely rejected by the likes of Sir Isaac Newton and many Christians today), makes Christianity polytheistic, not monotheistic.
Re: "I still think you should read Zeitgeist part 1 debunked. The other "saviors" were less similar to the supposed Christ than the movie makes them out to be."
The assumptions here seem to be that (1) if one does not agree with the supposed debunking, they are unfamiliar with it and (2) if you agree with it then it must be accurate and comprehensive.
I must disagree on both counts. This is not a new topic nor one to which I am at all unfamiliar. It is a topic which was discussed at great length for much of the 4-years while I was enthusiastically active in the debates in the apologetics forum at www.christianforums. Input was offered by Christians, non-Christians, Atheists and Pagans alike. What was found should be of no surprise to anyone. Just as there are many forms of Christianity (some 38,000+ officially recognized versions today), there are also different forms of many of the pagan stories.
In fact, where some of the pagan gods are concerned, the languages which document the stories are less fully adaptable to today's language than are the Aramaic and Hebrew of the Holy Bible. And just as many of the disagreements among Christians today focus on claims of mistranslations of the original biblical texts, many of the variations among the pagan tales center upon potentially flexible translations of the pagan doctrines.
This point was made very clear in a discussion between myself and a practicing and very knowledgeable pagan on the aforementioned forum. They continually presented reputable sites which presented versions of the tales behind multiple pagan gods which were in high contrast with the Jesus story, and I presented just as many reputable pages showing versions of those stories which were highly consistent with the Jesus story. There are simply different versions of the pagan stories, just as there are different versions of Christianity.
To some Christians, Jesus was a man, not God. To others he was definitely God. To some Christians the sins of Jesus outlined in the Bible show him to be other than without sin. Others will out-right hand-wave those portions of the Bible and insist that he was without sin. Some Christians insist that the concept of Hell is simply separation from God. Others will note that Jesus supposedly spent time in Hell which would not be possible if he were God. In any religion there will be points where certain followers will disagree with others. These eventually form fractures in the belief systems themselves and ultimately lead to multiple versions.
The fact that Christianity has followed this expected occurrence in no way separates it from pagan religions. What it does is to demonstrate that Christianity is no less subject to multiple versions than were any of the pagan beliefs from which Christianity originally arose.
Re: "Now, while I don't feel that any religion is more valid than another (because none of them are backed up by evidence), they are not all derived from the same cut-and-paste myths. They're actually widely varied."
This is highly arguable unless one is to align themselves with a single particular view (often centered on the observations of a single individual), and refuses to see a more broadly based view-point.
If you watch Zeitgeist, The God Who Wasn't There, The Pagan Christ, National Geographic's Bible Secrets; The Rivals of Jesus and Resurrecting the Dead Sea Scrolls, you will see that a great number of scholars have all recognized the massive parallels between a combination of pagan gods and the Jesus/God of Christianity.
In fact, one of the earliest and most notable Christian Apologists was Justin Martyr and when he was confronted with these absurdly coincidental parallels, the best responses he could muster were;
“When we say that Jesus Christ was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call the sons of Jupiter.”
He found further difficulty in attempting to refute the idea that Christianity was simply a re-development of older Pagan tales and resorted to suggesting that the Devil was aware of the Jesus Tale which would unfold thousands of years in the future, and thusly re-created the stories before they happened in order to undermine the credibility of Christianity.
"For when they say that Dionysus arose again and ascended to heaven, is it not evidence the devil has imitated the prophecy?"
Had these parallels not existed, he would have had no need to go to such lengths to attempt to explain them. One should remember that Justin Martyr is said to have lived from 100–165AD. This makes the argument that movies such as "Zeitgeist" have manufactured the parallels between the Pagan tales and the Christian tales utterly implausible.
