Barry's Answer to Kathryn

It is not too often that someone impresses me with the brilliance of their reasoning or their mind. Mr. Barry Young's response to my post impresses the hell out of me.

After reading my post -- this was his response --

Tinggay, when somebody tells you something, especially on the Internet, that may shake the foundation of your beliefs, you should always ask them to provide credible references for their claims. The problem with the Internet is that anyone can say anything.

And the problem with Kathryn's claims is that they are about 80% incorrect. There is way too much for me to respond to so I will just deal with the simplest, the claim that all of these Mythical deities were born on December 25th.

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Here are the problems with this:

1) "December" is a month in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. There is no such month in the Egyptian, Jewish, ancient Hindu or any other calendar. Thus, 4 of the 5 gods cited could NOT have been "born" on December 25th because there was no such date!

2) The 5th god cited (Mithras) did have his birth celebrated on Dec 25th in ancient Rome from the 1st through 4th centuries AD. Thus Christians could not have copied Christ's birth story from Mithras because Christ's birth preceded it.

3) The date that the naysayers are actually alluding to is the Winter Solstice. And as you might imagine almost every Sun god and goddess of agriculture or fertility both "died" and was re-"born" on the Winter Solstice.

4) So why was Jesus born on the same day? Simple, he wasn't. Nor has any Church ever claimed that he was. The fact is that we don't know when Christ was born, though the Bible does indicate that it was in the spring, NOT the winter. Dec 25th is just when we *Celebrate* Christ's birth. It is likely that this date was chosen intentionally to supplant the festivals of those mythical gods.
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And I promise you that all of those other claims have just as many problems with them.

And you can confirm the facts I have cited at Wikipedia or in any good Encyclopedia.

You don't have to defend your Faith. That is why it is called "Faith". It is not Science or Law or Philosophy. Those are all good things that correctly require assertions to be defended. But Faith can NOT be proven and if it could be, it wouldn't be "Faith".

Likewise, it cannot be Disproven either. And you should therefore require that those who attack your faith must support and defend their claims with credible (authoritative) evidence. In argumentation (as in Law) there is something called "Presumption", which is the side of an argument that is presumed to be correct unless it can be disproven. This means that the other side has the "Burden" of making their case first. If the side with the Burden cannot make a convincing case first, then the side with the Presumption does NOT have to even defend itself.

The Law always defines where the Presumption and the Burden lies in a legal case, but in the matter of your own Faith you decide this yourself and of course you should always give yourself the Presumption. Therefore whenever anyone attacks your Faith, you should always require that they defend their claims first. Require that they provide evidence of the proofs that they claim. And if they try to make you do the same, simply reply "My Faith does not have to have proof sufficient for YOU, it only has to satisfy ME, and it does."

Now, what would Kathryn say about that?