Recalled contaminated pet food goes to pigs

The pet food contaminated with melamine that was recalled after causing the death of pets has been sold to hog farms in the U.S.

See also “Chemical interaction harmed pets” or “More about pet-food recall.”

Did Christ exist?

There’s a question that it seems hard to get an objective answer to. I’m looking for sources that are neither believers nor atheists. Here’s a review of the facts and who believes them, on religioustolerance.org.

From Impact Press, “Did Jesus Exist–and Does It Matter?”

Viewing the biblical Jesus as a pastiche woven from stories of various pagan gods, demigods, and heroes adapted to a first-century Jewish milieu, many scholars have noted striking similarities between Jesus and his pagan counterparts. For example, the Persian sun-god Mithra, widely worshipped in the Roman Empire before the inception of the Christian era, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, was buried in a tomb, rose on the third day, was called the Good Shepherd, identified with the lamb, considered “the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah;” his principal festival was held on what was to become Easter, and he instituted a Eucharist or Lord’s Supper. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire in 313 C.E. (Common Era), he was influenced by the pell-mell conversion of Roman soldiers from Mithraism to Christianity. The biblical Jesus gave them a sort of home-grown Mithra

See also “Dates for early Christian writings” (previous).

Dates for early Christian writings

I always assumed that the order of the books in the New Testament echoed the order in which they were written. But that’s not true. The Epistles came first, then the biography of Jesus.

It’s notable that the epistles of don’t tell of Jesus as a person who, on a certain occasion, said a particular thing that would settle the current argument. Instead he speaks to the apostles in their hearts. The biographical details came a century later.

1. The letters of the apostles come first, but they are fifty or more years after Christ.
2. Then there’s the Gospel of Mark, 65 – 80 years after Christ. Mark is described by early writers as an apostle of Peter who never met the Lord (and he is clearly unfamiliar with Palestine).
3. The book of Matthew (80 – 100 C.E.) was copied from, and elaborated on, the book of Mark.
4. The author of Acts of the Apostles also wrote the Gospel of Luke some time between 80 and 130 C.E. This Luke was not an apostle of Jesus; as describe in “Luke” itself, he is someone who knew Paul and travelled with him.
5. John is a later author (90 – 100 C.E.), who is also not an eyewitness, as we can tell from the dates of the controversies and events that he mentions.

So what we have in the New Testament is a tradition of Christianity not by eye-witnesses, but by writers who believe in Christ and speak of him largely as evangelists do today when listening to the “voice of God.” Then we have later writings that spoke of Jesus as a person and were ascribed, based on tradition rather than scholarhsip, to his disciples.

On the cultural side we have the Hellenistic ideals that were sweeping Judea at the time, Greek ideals of the philosphical school called Cynicism, and a very standard hero myth.

This story was built up in a way that reminds me of Santa Claus. The story of Father Christmas, a generous ideal who would reward children who were good all year, came first. Only later was he transformed into Santa Claus with eye-witness accounts. His packsack became miraculous (magical), larger outside than in and able to supply multitudes. He acquired flying reindeer that carried him into the sky. Other writers added Mrs. Claus, elves, Rudolph, and a taste for cookies & milk. If Santa made all the toys in the world, he must have a factory staffed by elves and we began to hear about his labour troubles.

Similarly, in the American legend, Paul Bunyan the giant logger came first, then was given Babe the Blue Ox and miracles (called “tall tales”) such as creating the Grand Canyon by dragging his ax-head on the ground. Babe acquired verismilitude through detail such as the fact that she measured 42 ax-handles and a plug of tobacco between the horns.

So Jesus came first, then the iconic events of his life such as miracles, persecution, and death, and finally Joseph & Mary and a childhood. Instead of having details of his life fade away in later writings, they are added when he is outside the scope of human memory.

See also “Biblical scholarship” (previous) or “Did Christ Exist?” (next).

Tags: blog against theocracy

Religions: Confucianism

From Wikipedia:

“Confucianism or “The Teachings of Confucius”) is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. It should be noted that many “Confucian” teachings existed before Confucius but they were summaried and furthur developed by him. Confucianism is a complex system of moral, social, political, and religious thought which has had tremendous influence on the history of Chinese civilization.”K’ung Fu Tzu (Confucius) (551–479 BCE) was a famous sage and social philosopher of China whose teachings deeply influenced East Asia for twenty centuries. The relationship between Confucianism and Confucius himself, however, is tenuous… The first occurrences of a real Confucian system may have been created by his disciples or by their disciples. During the philosophically fertile period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, great early figures of Confucianism such as Mencius and Xun Zi (not to be confused with Sun Zi) developed Confucianism into an ethical and political doctrine….

“It is debatable whether Confucianism should be called a religion. While it prescribes a great deal of ritual, little of it could be construed as worship or meditation in a formal sense. Confucius occasionally made statements about the existence of other-worldly beings that sound distinctly agnostic and humanistic to Western ears. Thus, Confucianism is often considered an ethical tradition and not a religion. However the United Nations recognizes Confucianism as a religion.

“Its effect on Chinese and other East Asian societies and cultures has been immense and parallels the effects of religious movements, seen in other cultures. Those who follow the teachings of Confucius say that they are comforted by it. It includes a great deal of ritual and (in its Neo-Confucian formulation) gives a comprehensive explanation of the world, of human nature, etc. Moreover, religions in Chinese culture are not mutually exclusive entities — each tradition is free to find its specific niche, its field of specialisation. One can be a Taoist, Christian, Muslim, Shintoist or Buddhist and still profess Confucianist beliefs.”

When I was a child, Confucianism seemed the most sensible teaching available.

See also Shinto.

Religions: Christianity

From Wikipedia:

Western Christianity. Western Christianity is a form of Christianity that comprises Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism (sometimes considered a part of Protestantism), and Protestantism. As opposed to Eastern Christianity, it developed and came to be predominant in Western Europe. Some of the principal respects in which Western Christianity differs from Eastern Christianity are Western Christianity’s doctrine of original sin; Most Western Christians use an amended version of the Nicene Creed that states that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (considered heretical by most Eastern Christians, who use the Creed as originally promulgated by the Council of Nicaea, saying that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father”); and the date of Easter, a major religious holiday.Eastern Christianity. Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in Greece, Russia, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity. It is contrasted with the Western traditions of Christianity which descend through, or alongside that of, the Catholic Church’s Western church also known as the Latin Rite.

Arianism (Christianity). Arianism refers to the theological positions made famous by the theologian Arius (c. 250-336 CE), who lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early 4th century. The controversial teachings of Arius dealt with the relationship between God the Father and the person of Jesus Christ, a relationship known as the doctrine of the Trinity. Arius taught that God the Father and the Son did not exist together eternally. Further, Arius taught that the pre-incarnate Jesus was a divine being created by (and possibly inferior to) the Father at some point, before which the Son did not exist. In English-language works, it is sometimes said that Arians believe that Jesus is or was a “creature”; in this context, the word is being used in its original sense of “created being”.

See also: Islam.