advice from a "mythicist" troll . . . .

A couple of years ago, on another blog, I transcribed Greg Boyd's opening statements from a debate he had with Robert Price, so that I could reference it and engage it at a later time in my own study.
Yesterday someone commented on that post. I thought I would share this here as it relates to mythicism..
The comment, in its entirety:

Anonymous said...

You still have much studying to do on mythicism:

The Mythicist Position - video
What is a Mythicist?

For further explanation see,

The Evemerist vs. Mythicist Position
Astrotheology of the Ancients
The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ
Jesus as the Sun throughout History
The Gospels: A 2nd Century Composition
Zeitgeist Part 1 & the Supportive Evidence

People like this help me to understand why some get so annoyed at the mere mention of mythicism. There are some really delusional people out there on the internet who make the rest of us skeptics look bad. I mean . . . c'mon . . . really??

Zeitgeist???
Anyway, below is my response to this strange individual:
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I'm a bit perplexed on several fronts here . . .

Here is someone who knows practically nothing about me, telling me that I have much studying to do on mythicism. While I agree with the gist of this statement at face value (I mean . . . who doesn't have a lot of studying to do, whether about mythicism or about any number of things, right?), I find myself taking a modicum of umbrage at this particular "anonymous" (of course) individual. It's kinda like being told by an Esteban fan that I still have a lot to learn about playing guitar. While true at its surface, it's insulting.

Clicking on the links that he or she provides here soon (and quite ironically) reveals his/her own very narrow scope of understanding of the subject matter that he/she in turn sees me as being deficient in. It seems that this person is fixated on the work of Acharya S, which I guess is no sin in itself. Hell, I've even taken some time in the past to cursorily review some of her work in my study of this subject. But this anonymous commenter seems to think that her writings are the pinnacle of mythicist thought, and has therefore stopped there, seemingly quite content that the kind of astrotheology that S espouses holds the key to this complex topic.

I have nothing against Ms. Murdock herself. In fact, I think that she is more or less correct in highlighting the role that the sun and moon (etc) archetypes have had in the long progressive history of world religions in general. She has some genuinely insightful things to say about the many parallels that clearly exist between the symbolisms used by the countless religious traditions of the world. Her work is not entirely unlike that done by Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell in the sense that such parallels can indeed be shown to exist. They form a kind of matrix in which all religious trajectories have taken root and grown out of over millenia. To deny this would be silly, but, on the other hand, to stop there, that is, to not see that the skeletal understructure of any given individual religion needs fleshing out beyond this basic thumbnail sketch comparison, as this "anonymous" person does, seems rather myopic to me.

Specifically, the origin of Christianity (the focus of my mythicist musings) simply cannot be explained away by such simple generalities. One can correctly say that human beings are "vertebrates" and still show no understanding of their detailed physiology, much less of what makes them tick.

Some advice for "Anonymous":

1- Get a name.
2- Read some other authors (I could suggest some, if you like).
3- Perhaps an introductory book on critical thinking might be useful to you as well.
4- Definitely drop the smug authoritative posture. It makes you look like an idiot.

Ó

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