• April 16, 2024

Freethought Nation

presented by Acharya S and Truth Be Known, online since 1995

Acharya S/D.M. Murdock

Moses discussion with Aron Ra of American Atheists-TX

UPDATE: Aron has promoted my book at the beginning of his video discussing the 10 Commandments and Christian commentator Dennis Prager:

Here’s the Youtube video of my discussion on November 20, 2014 with Aron Ra of American Atheists-TX and Mark Nebo of BeSecular.com.

In the caption on the video, Aron relates:

“Previously I have interviewed Frank Zindler, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald and Robert Price, all of whom are ‘mythicists’; they don’t think there was ever anyone alive whom we could recognize as either Jesus or Moses. Of the lot of them, I would have thought that Price was the foremost expert, but he referred me to D.M. Murdock, also known as Acharya S, author of ‘Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver‘.”

At 36:50 minutes, I comment:

“The first part of my book dissects the so-called historicity and then the second half of it deals with where the myth actually comes from … 1,800 citations drawing from 20 languages.”

At 37:45, Aron says:

“This is an impressive piece of work. It’s definitive.”

Here’s one person’s impression of the program, that of Pieter Droogendijk on Facebook:

“Holy shit, Murdock is a badass. Can she come back and talk more?”

We had a great time. Please have a listen, thumb up, favorite and comment.

Insults and Falsehoods

I should add that I stopped reading the comments after some people decided to rain on my parade by spewing hatred at me. Armchair critics are a dime a dozen.

Nevertheless, here are a few of the falsehoods being posted in the video, along with my responses:

1. I created “Zeitgeist.” FALSE. I was a last-minute consultant on the first part of the first film ONLY. My work was utilized in that film, and I have spent years backing it up with numerous primary sources and other scientific research.

2. Irish and Sanskrit have nothing in common. FALSE. Irish is one of the INDO-European languages, and there are many studies asserting that ancient/archaic Irish has commonalities with Sanskrit or Vedic.

3. Horus was not killed by Seth. FALSE. As I stated correctly in the program, the myth of Horus being killed is in the writing of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus during the first century BCE. I even cited a GREEK word Diodorus uses, anastasis, because I’ve read significant parts of the myth in original Greek. Says Diodorus (1.25.6):

Isis also discovered the elixir of immortality, and when her son Horus fell victim to the plots of the Titans and was found dead beneath the waves, she not only raised him from the dead and restored his soul, but also gave him eternal life.

Here Diodorus’s Greek word for “raised him from the dead” is from the verb αναστησαι, the noun for which is anastasis, the very word utilized in the description of the later Jesus’s resurrection.

Egyptologist Sir Dr. E.A. Wallis Budge describes the incident of Horus’s death and “recovery,” after he was stung by a scorpion. The scorpion was sent by Set. Hence, Set kills Horus, as I stated, correctly.

4. There are no parallels between Jesus and Horus. FALSE. I have an entire nearly 600-page book full of these parallels, Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, drawing from thousands of primary sources. Only those who have not studied this subject in any depth can make such erroneous claims. Hence, they are not experts and should not be pretending to be.

5. There is no influence from Egyptian religion on Christianity. FALSE. This nonsensical falsehood completely ignores the Coptic Christians, for one, who adopted and adapted many elements of Egyptian religion and myth into their version of Christianity, one of the earliest forms. Another very early form of Christianity, dating to the second century, is Egyptian Gnosticism, headed by Valentinus and Basilides. This Egyptian Gnosticism was highly influential on Christianity.

Numerous Egyptologists have acknowledged the blatantly obvious influence of Egyptian religion on Christianity. Many of their comments can be found at my article “Newly discovered ancient Christian magical spell reveals Egyptian influence.” Here are but a couple:

“The influence of Egyptian religion on posterity is mainly felt through Christianity and its antecedents.”

Egyptologist Dr. Siegfried Morenz, a director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Leipzig in Egyptian Religion (251)

“…it is not improbable that even early Christian texts were influenced by ideas and images from the New Kingdom religious books.”

Egyptologist Dr. Erik Hornung, a former professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel who has been called “the world’s leading authority” on ancient Egyptian religious texts, in The Valley of the Kings (9)

There is much more, again, as can be found in my book Christ in Egypt.

As we can see, it is my critics who are “full of shit.” They simply do not know what they are talking about.

Further Reading

Did Moses Exist? The Myth of the Israelite Lawgiver

The Ra Men podcast EP10 – Did Moses Exist? with D.M. Murdock (forum thread)

Texas school board to vote on textbooks criticized for religious bent

Separation of Religion and State

Religion and the Ph.D.: A Brief History

No, Zeitgeist has not been refuted

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11 thoughts on “Moses discussion with Aron Ra of American Atheists-TX”

  1. Some extraordinarily nasty commentors on Youtube. Youtube has many very good, very informative, very entertaining, very educational videos, but is generally a wasteland of ignorant, rude, trollish, vile commentors.

    I think that atheist types seriously need to move on out of the “that really couldn’t have happened like that” mode. Yes, we know it couldn’t have happened like that. And? Personally, I’ve known that those things couldn’t happened like that after my first science class in elementary school and I was questioning them before that! However, I’ve moved on. Please try to grasp “myth”, atheists, and move on. Mythicism neutralizes all of it and opens up a much larger, more interesting window into the human psyche and the Universe and the way we view and understand reality.

    And, sheesh, how many times do people have to be told that you didn’t make the Zeitgeist movie?! Good grief.

    Great interview, however.

    1. A waste land, indeed, of hatred and vileness. At least I’ve got intelligent and sane people like you commenting here.

  2. http://youtu.be/n4JG9z7q168
    http://youtu.be/zWi8T4Gqyy4

    Those internet trolls in Ra Men video only verfies the videos above that some people can’t separate their emotional biases to their rational judgement. Furthermore, those trolls are wrong when they say that your work isn’t well-researched or scientific. By definition, Science is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” Which brings us that even religious beliefs should be scrutinized scientifically by going to primary sources and the works of other people; both old and modern and try to corroborate that. It’s quite dumb to say that we should just ignore everything before 1950. The modern writers obviously have a source and it is the older writers. Furthermore, modern scholarship doesn’t necessarily mean precision and accuracy. The ones we call modern scholarship today will be considered old in 50 years, should scientists and scholars just ignore that? Right now, Carrier and his lackeys preach to trash old pre 1950 scholarship, does that mean experts 50-100 years from now should ignore pre-2000 scholarship? That is plain absurdity to trust a scholarly paper on the sole merits that its modern. To react on something without studying/understanding it only amplifies ignorance. Those two videos basically describes Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman, and all of the pretentious detractors who have not studied your work. I noticed that some of the trolls in Ra Men’s video are men so I guess they’re quite sexist and probably ranting in their dinky minds “How dare a woman teach us!”

    Apparently, science has shown that religious extremism makes a person dumb. http://youtu.be/RZqaeusdMTk

    1. Well put! The Theory of Relativity is from 1905 but it is very much current not to mention Newton’s laws of gravity from 300 years ago. As you said, it is ludicrous to say that the passage of time makes a scientific finding obsolete but rather it is new peer reviewed discovery that updates the old one that does.

  4. Hi AS,

    Thank you for your relentless research. As usual i have questions. After watching Caesar’s messiah, and the ’empty cross’, I am puzzled at how much is still unknown. Your work has convincingly established that the gospels were an updated version of ‘the final Jubilee’ by Samaritans; That the gospel of Marcion preceded the synoptic gospels and John. John Atwill’s work convincingly reveals the Flavian’s hand in the authorship of the gospels aided by non other than Josephus, Philo, and Herod’s grand daughter. What that does is add a lot of confusion about who did what and when. Lets start with the names Jesus Christ. In whose mind was the name and character conceived? Is it the authors of the Epistles, Josephus, Flavius Titus, Philo, or other Samaritans? It is said that there were as many as 59 gospels attributed to fictional/dubious characters such as Nicodemus, Magdalene, Thomas, even Pilate etc. Who wrote these others and when? Why do the gospels differ on important events in the life of the main character if they were all written by the Flavians? Did the Flavians interpolate an existing gnostic gospel? When did the Flavians’ Gospel get published? As you can tell i am addicted to this subject. It is so intriguing.
    Now that am over the myths and similarities (i.e. i think i understand them well) i am now curious about how and when the gospels were authored, and the whodunit. The more i know the more things make sense. As you have noted in CIE, the nature aspect lays the foundation for myths, but the politics and culture also give it relevance. A good metaphor is, ‘while Ford, Toyota, Land Rover, volvo, Volkswagen come from different countries, they have the basic invention-THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE’. So is the solar myth. Jesus and others are variants of the same myth.
    Thanks again for your enlightening work

    1. Sorry, one more question:
      What happened at the council of necene? Did the bishops, presbytes, and others vote which god to worship, or did they syncretise a composite deity based on the prevailing saviour gods, Hesus (druids), Christ (Krishna), and later H (for Horus). I found this in other literature online. Am trying to construct a consistent narrative from all the various works out there. Again, would you happen to know exactly when the term ‘Jesus H Christ’ started being used? Is it pre-necene or post council of nicea. Am awaiting your thoughts with baited breath. Thanks again for reading my questions.

  5. Dennis Prager is not Christian he is an observant Jew. Please correct this error.

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