Easter Celebrations are Worship of the Sun

[Hazelelponi]

What's that got to do with this? "False equivalence", as the saying goes. I don't worship the stupid tree, I don't even worship the tomb, nor the cross, nevermind that I don't have one on me to look at, nor do I worship the day nor the season. I'm not Catholic. Never have been, never will be.

You don't want me to start on what it seems to me like you so superstitiously worship.

I'm thinking this thread needs moved to a different, more appropriate, category/forum.

I'm pretty sure my husband would throw me out of the house along with any tree I tried dragging in should I ever decide decorating is the way to go... Lol .

This is why I scratch my head .. like, what idols does he think Protestant people have, exactly?

Our framed baptismal certificates? Or new Bibles at Christmas-time? What idols,?

 

[makesends]

I'm pretty sure my husband would throw me out of the house along with any tree I tried dragging in should I ever decide decorating is the way to go... Lol .

This is why I scratch my head .. like, what idols does he think Protestant people have, exactly?

Our framed baptismal certificates? Or new Bibles at Christmas-time? What idols,?

I've been told the crucifix is one. (Really disappointed the poor sap when I told him I didn't have one. Don't even have a fish symbol on my bumper!)

 

[QVQ]

The Sumerian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake, and was subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld. One of the oldest resurrection myths is Egyptian Horus. Born on 25 December, Horus and his damaged eye became symbols of life and rebirth. Mithras was born on what we now call Christmas day, and his followers celebrated the spring equinox. Even as late as the 4th century AD, the sol invictus, associated with Mithras, was the last great pagan cult the church had to overcome. Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother. Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life.

All of these sybolic representations (myths) are linked to the cycles of the earth. The "gods and goddesses" are worshipped as symbols of spring. Spring festivals marking the seasons of the sun were celebrated in many cultures. The cycles of the seasons, aptly defined as "regeneration of earth, , not the "resurrection" of the symbolic "god or goddess," was a means of marking the turning of the earth from season to season.

These examples from "sun worshipping" belief systems are not in any way correlated to Christ or the Resurrection.
Christ is unique. There aren't any parallels in other religions.The teachings of Jesus did not "evolve" from some other human source.

The teachings of Christ are astonishingly original.

 

[QVQ]

This thread has initiated some random thoughts for me.
Two points
1) The gods and goddesses in myths are symbolic representations of physical manifestations, such as Thor, god of thunder.

2) Even though mythologies are symbolic representation of physical manifestations, mankind has always recognized and acknowledged a conscious entity controlling all physical phenomena, fates and destinies.

It is not religious anthropomorphism or man would have more universally rejected the "intelligent designer." that has been the intuitive understanding of the majority of mankind for all time.
Christ introduced the correct model of God to replace all the idols and symbols previously attributed with divine aspects and powers.

It has been argued the Christian God is a symbolic representation of man, i. e. man made God in his own image.
But the person of Jesus Christ is the image of God, and man. No mere man could conceive of or image Christ our Lord before Jesus was Christ.
An anthropomorphic god that man could imagine, before or since, would not have the extraordinary human and divine attributes of Christ
That is why Christ is unique. There wasn't any representation of Christ, symbolic or otherwise, before or since Christ appeared.
Christ was outside the ken of mankind in man's imaging of gods and goddesses.

 

[QVQ]

The view presented in the OP is the current secular religion. I was raised in that religion. The core teaching is that all religion is myth. And all myths share elements (solstice/sun worship) that "evolved" into more "enlightened" moral constructs
There are arguments at the core of that secular belief system that no one seems to address other than as "I believe in God," allowing the arguments to go unanswered.

However this core argument of the secularist and atheist is one that I had to address and perhaps it requires more attention to what exactly "myth" as "symbolic respesentations" means.

The main argument is that man created God in his own image, which is specifically targetted at Christianity as Jesus was a man.
However that places Jesus as simply another prophet or teacher, which is a view adopted by some quais-Christian groups.
Man has fashioned god in man's image. Man has symbolic respesentations of man as god.
Superman is a modern example.
When man imagines himself with the attributes of gods, it is heroic. This god-human has powers to vanquish his enemies, leap building at a single bound and fly. It is power and can includes lust, even for a fair maiden, desire to please and preen. Man imagines himsellf as himself as god with super powers and that is a with all the attributes of fallen man.

It is my contention that in man's symbolic representations of himself as god, he would never have conceived of Christ.
Christ is not the favored human ideal.
And man would not have chosen the God whose powers were tempered by love, justice and mercy.
Nowhere in the human history has man imagined a symbolic representation of man who was a man such as Jesus or a God who was not what man imagined or would have symbolically represented as a god.

The final argument is:

Psalms 50: 21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself. But I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes.

And Jesus Christ set them in order before our eyes.

 

[Hazelelponi]

The view presented in the OP is the current secular religion. I was raised in that religion. The core teaching is that all religion is myth. And all myths share elements (solstice/sun worship) that "evolved" into more "enlightened" moral constructs
There are arguments at the core of that secular belief system that no one seems to address other than as "I believe in God," allowing the arguments to go unanswered.

Is this what the OP is arguing then? They are trying to argue in favor of this secular view?

 

[QVQ]

Is this what the OP is arguing then? They are trying to argue in favor of this secular view?

Yes
The time of the Crucifixion is based on historical events.
One is the Passover which the Israelites marked on the their calendar as the date of the liberation from Egypt. It had nothing to do with the equinox. It is the traditional date.
The Crucifixion is based on that date as Jesus had an historically legitimate reason to be where he was, doing what he was doing.
These dates were determined, just like our 4th of July, to commemorate historical events.
The secular view of these historical commemorations being symbolic representions of sun worship is historically inaccurate.

Having been raised in the secular view that all religions are myth, better characterized as "symbolic representions" of natural phenomenon, I see the OP as a core tenet of the secular/atheist belief system but the issue is larger than just Easter.

Easter is a favorite target for the secularist to argue. Easter, to the secularist, is merely continuation of older myths.
The secular view is that religion is evolving. So the secularists attempt to trace the roots of Christianity by drawing false parallels with other belief systems, altering or ignoring historical facts and drawing false equivalencies, such as Easter being sun worship, based solely on proximity.. According to that system the 4th of July is actually a sun worshipper's celebration of the summer solstice.

There are other components of the "religion is myth" belief, the most notable that man creates God in his own image.
In myths that is certainly true.
There are myths that are symbolic representations of natural phenomenon, such as Thor, god of thunder
Thor was also a symbolic representation of man as god, Thor had all the attributes and form of man.
The pantheon is another example. While those god and goddess had "god power", they also had the attributes of man, including all of fallen man's lust, pride, envy, hatred, and fear. They represented what man would want to be if man could be god. Superman!

However, the final argument against the contention that Jesus as only a mere man or the God Jesus represented was only a symbolic representation of man as god is the fact that all the pagan gods are merely human with human attributes and super human power.

Jesus did not fly to Jeruselem. He rode a donkey as a man and yet, as God, He was not the image of man.

Again, the final answer from the Bible itself

Psalms 50: 21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

The secularists believe that God is altogether such a one as thyself, and therefore man created god in his own image.
God is altogether not such a one as man
Man could not concieve of the true God without Jesus Christ to set them in order.
It would be like a man trying to descibe an elephant when he doesn't know a thing about elephant.
That leads to another interesting thought.
In all of history man has known he is in the presence of God, however faulty his representations of that Being have been. Only through Our Lord can we truly know God.