• March 24, 2025

Freethought Nation

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

Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Acharya S/D.M. Murdock

Cracked.com’s shockingly crappy article about ‘Religulous’ and ‘Zeitgeist’

Cracked.com had an article disparaging documentaries “shockingly full of crap” that included the first “Zeitgeist” film. Unfortunately, the article itself – which had almost a million views in one day – is shockingly full of crap, as the author has a very superficial knowledge of the subject of comparative religion and mythology. Note that she doesn’t cite me, even though it’s basically my work she’s critiquing. Instead, in her “research” she relies on the deranged rantings of a rabid Christian apologist!

http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html

I sent her the following email – feel free to post the links around wherever you see such falsehoods:

Hi –

I read with interest your article purporting to refute “Religulous” and “Zeitgeist.” As the main source for the information about religion in the latter film, I need to inform you that you have made several erroneous remarks concerning the content therein. I have spent the past several years proving the facts in the religion part of ZG, including a nearly 600-page book Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection. You have merely scratched the surface and fallen into the trap of citing others who are not experts on the subject. The “Egyptologists” themselves apparently do not even know the work of the main scholars in the field, whom I quote abundantly in my book.

If you would like to know the facts about the Horus-Jesus connection and the rest of the characters upon which the mythical Jesus was founded, I am always available. A retraction of the fallacious parts of your article would be most welcome.

Here is a start for some real research:

http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/376-zeitgeist-sourcebook-part-1-the-greatest-story-ever-told.html

http://www.truthbeknown.com/chrisforbeszeitgeist.html

http://stellarhousepublishing.com/christinegypt.html

http://truthbeknown.com/christconspiracy.html

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=19

http://truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm

Thank you for your professional courtesy and attention to this important matter.

Note that my article “Was Mithra Born of a Virgin?” was also published in a peer-reviewed reader, Anahita: Ancient Persian Goddess and Zoroastrian Yazata, along with the articles of many Mithraic and Persian scholars. See my article: Anahita, virgin mother of Mithra. It does the Persian people a great disservice to misrepresent their ancient traditions with rude comments such as that Mithra was born of a “fucking rock,” as in this vulgar Cracked article.

Tags:
moses smashes the tablets

13 thoughts on “Cracked.com’s shockingly crappy article about ‘Religulous’ and ‘Zeitgeist’”

  1. Thanks for writing this blog response, Acharya! I cannot believe the Huffington Post re-posted that article, which is where I found it.

    Here’s what I’d like to say to them:

    #4 Religulous: “The Egyptian links have been debunked by actual Egyptologists.”

    Complete BS – that Ward Gasque link has been completely debunked:

    Tom Harper, Ward Gasque & Christ in Egypt

    For whatever reason, the author of that article, Amanda Mannen, decided to cite JP Holding as a source … he is scum:

    Shattering JP Holding’s Anti-Mythicist book

    “Zeitgeist (which doesn’t cite any sources)”

    Wow, blatant *LIES*:

    “Primary Sources, Publications and Scholars Cited in The ZEITGEIST Sourcebook”

    Primary sources and scholar commentary on them support ZG1:

    Sourcebook

    Rebuttal to Dr. Chris Forbes concerning ‘Zeitgeist, Part 1’

    Zeitgeist Part 1 – VIDEO

    These links should be added to the article as an update to demonstrate the FACT that this article is in error. There are in fact Egyptologists that DO agree with Maher and Zeitgeist part 1.

    Why the hell would Huff Po publish such crap? People should complain to Huff Po too for re-posting this crap: HuffPo’s Contact page

    And wherever else this trash is being posted.

  2. So that you can see what I endure for my mere existence, after I posted my simple and factual message here defending my work, I come across the below discussion. In it, males are attacking me personally, claiming I’m “ranting.” One makes the sexist remark that my FACTUAL analysis here is “ragging.” Moreover, in an egregious dismissal it is claimed that, by defending my work, I am “my own worst enemy.”

  5. Actually …
    Actually, JB & DA, Acharya is your worst enemy because she tells the truth and truth is the one thing idiots can’t deal with. But, thanks anyway for showing us how stupid you are.

  7. Howdy! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I
    could get a captcha plugin for my comment form?

    I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having problems finding one?
    Thanks a lot!

  8. The author is primarily critiquing Religulous. I watched the clip in Religulous and then read more about Horus and Mithras and found that the connections just aren’t there. From what I’ve read, there isn’t even a version of their stories where either of the Gods (Mithras and Horus) die, much less are resurrected from the dead. Even the Mythicist Richard Carrier admits that Horus and Mithras are bad examples and that the connections are not really there for those two Gods. And even the examples that Richard Carrier often cites (such as Romulus and Osiris) aren’t as similar as Mythicists try to say that they are (at least when reading Plutarch’s version of their stories).

    Furthermore, there’s just so much good evidence that Jesus really did exist. Both Tacitus and Josephus mention his existence. Paul claims to have personally known his brother James and close follower Peter. Also, there is simply no reason to believe that a first-century group of Jews would have invented a crucified messiah from Nazareth. That’s almost the exact opposite of what the first-century Jews were expecting from their Messiah. The Messiah was suppose to defeat the oppressors of the Jewish people (the Romans), not die on a Roman cross (which was thought to be a sure sign of a blasphemer.

    The mythicist view may be interesting to contemplate, but when examining (in proper context) the reason why a small group of first century Jews began claiming that a man who had been crucified was their Messiah, the best explanation is that a man (Jesus) had been crucified and they really thought he was their Messiah.

    1. Thank you, but I disprove the contentions about Horus and Mithra – “…Horus and Mithras…the connections just aren’t there” – in this very post, which I’m wagering you didn’t even read. The connections most assuredly ARE there, and someone who has simply scanned the internet is not an expert. If you looked hard enough, you would have found the connections, including in my article on Mithra and my nearly 600-page book on Horus. You wouldn’t even have to look too hard because, again, the information is in this very post.

      I don’t particularly care what Richard Carrier has to say, because he is not an expert on Jesus mythicism. His opinions are useless in this field, as far as I am concerned. His methods are terrible, and he smugly ignores the vast bulk of the important data.

      From what I’ve read, there isn’t even a version of their stories where either of the Gods (Mithras and Horus) die, much less are resurrected from the dead.

      FALSE. Again, you are not an expert on the subject, which takes years of study in multiple languages from antiquity. Start here:

      Dying and Rising Gods

      There is NO good, scientific or credible evidence for the existence of a “historical Jesus of Nazareth.” You are simply repeating unfounded beliefs. The development of Christianity did not happen as the doctrine and you state here. It developed significantly in the second century, long after the purported facts.

      The “Jesus Christ” of the New Testament is a fictional compilation of characters, not a real person.

      Next time one posts a comment, it would be a good idea actually to read the original article.

      1. I’m going to read these posts with great interest, having heard previously that the Religulous film contained errors on these mythical connections. I will say I’ve studied a lot of Ehrman and his colleagues, and I think they make a strong case for the historicity of Jesus.

        I think it’s important to explain that historicity doesn’t mean a certainty someone existed. It basically means they have the same weight as the criteria we apply to claim that Aristotle or Plato, or other ancient figures. These scholars argue that a historical Jesus merely meets enough points criterial for historicity.

        Criterion of dissimilarity
        Criterion of embarrassment
        Independent sources

        And we have references by Josephus and Islamic authors

        1. “The discussion is being framed incorrectly. It is not a question of whether or not a Jesus existed. There were plenty of Jesuses in antiquity. It is not, however, their “biography” being told in the New Testament. The gospel story represents myth historicized, not literal history or history mythologized. Hence, we can say that “Jesus” did exist, as a myth. Therefore, your question is moot, as there is not and will never be any evidence of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, because the story is myth historicized.

          If one would like to know what the Christ myth represents, one is free to study my works:

          http://truthbeknown.com
          http://stellarhousepublishing.com
          http://freethoughtnation.com
          http://astrotheology.net

          – Acharya S

          Here’s what scholars say about Jesus:

          “The only definite account of his life and teachings is contained in the four Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All other historical records of the time are silent about him. The brief mentions of Jesus in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius have been generally regarded as not genuine and as Christian interpolations; in Jewish writings there is no report about Jesus that has historical value. Some scholars have even gone so far as to hold that the entire Jesus story is a myth.”

          – The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia

          The Truth about Judeo-Christianity
          http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=16665#p16665

          Rabbi: Did Jesus actually exist?
          http://freethoughtnation.com/rabbi-did-jesus-actually-exist/

          Any Islamic writings are entirely far too late to offer any valid evidence of Jesus’s historicity.

          Bart Ehrman’s flaws and poor scholarship on the issue of Jesus’s historicity have been thoroughly debunked by several scholars.

          Over 80 Rebuttals to Bart Ehrman’s Anti-Mythicist Book ‘Did Jesus Exist?’
          http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=25719#p25719

          Here’s what Dr. Robert Price had to say about this issue of Ehrman’s comments about Acharya S:

          “Such libel only reveals a total disinclination to do a fraction of the research manifest on any singe page of Acharya’s works.”

          – Dr. Robert Price, page xxi of the book, ‘Bart Erhman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?’

          Richard Carrier defended Acharya on this issue in the book too as well as across several of his own blogs:

          “At the very least I would expect Ehrman to have called the Vatican museum about this, and to have checked the literature on it, before arrogantly declaring no such object existed and implying Murdock made this up 
 She did not make that up. The reason this error troubles me is that it is indicative of the carelessness and arrogance Ehrman exhibits throughout this book 
 [Ehrman] often doesn’t check his facts, and clearly did little to no research. This makes the book extremely unreliable. A reader must ask, if he got this wrong, what other assertions in the book are false? And since making sure to get details like this right is the only useful purpose this book could have had, how can we credit this book as anything but a failure?”

          http://freethoughtnation.com/the-phallic-savior-of-the-world-hidden-in-the-vatican/#comment-11233

          Bart Ehrman caught in lies and libel?
          http://freethoughtnation.com/bart-ehrman-caught-in-lies-and-libel/

          Primary sources and scholar commentary on them support Zeitgeist Part 1 (ZG1):

          ZG1 Sourcebook (transcript, sources, citations & images)
          http://stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf

          Zeitgeist Part 1 & the Supportive Evidence
          http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2997

          Star Worship of the Ancient Israelites
          http://astrotheology.net/star-worship-of-the-ancient-israelites/

          Zodiacs on the Floor of Synagogues
          http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4148

          2,750-year-old solar-aligned temple discovered in Israel
          http://freethoughtnation.com/2750-year-old-solar-aligned-temple-discovered-in-israel/

          Jesus Christ, Sun of Righteousness
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faILHU82-Cw

          “This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation entitled “Solar Worship in the Biblical World” which was submitted to the Graduate School of Yale University in the Spring of 1989. As may be judged from the title of that work, I had at one time planned to cover more territory than sun worship in ancient Israel, but found the material pertaining to ancient Israel so vast that I never got beyond it.”

          – Rev. Dr. J. Glen Taylor, “Yahweh and the Sun: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Sun Worship in Ancient Israel” (1993)

          “At Stonehenge in England and Carnac in France, in Egypt and Yucatan, across the whole face of the earth are found mysterious ruins of ancient monuments, monuments with astronomical significance. These relics of other times are as accessible as the American Midwest and as remote as the jungles of Guatemala. Some of them were built according to celestial alignments; others were actually precision astronomical observatories … Careful observation of the celestial rhythms was compellingly important to early peoples, and their expertise, in some respects, was not equaled in Europe until three thousand years later.”

          – Dr. Edwin Krupp, astronomer and director at Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles

          “I find it undeniable that many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and constellations.” “I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock”

          – Dr. Robert Price, Biblical Scholar with two Ph.D’s

          ; )

Comments are closed.