SPEAKER_00

Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 490 of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thorogood, media producer at Speak Life, and in this episode, Glenn reacts to Bill Maher and Stephen Fry's assertions that the Christmas story borrows from the stories of earlier Egyptian gods like Horus and Osiris and Persian gods like Mithras. Now these are things that have been circulating for a while. The Stephen Fry clip was on QI a long time ago, actually, but it was it was shared on their channel pretty recently. And then the Bill Maher clip is a recent video he did supposedly you know doing this big debunking. Hey, you think uh the Christian story uh of Jesus is unique, but hey, look, it's just a patchwork of all these earlier myths of gods from around the world. And the funny thing is, so many of these arguments that were very popular among the new atheists have been disproven by Egyptologists and all sorts of people. And yet, Bill Maher and others are continuing to double down on these arguments and uh do some Christmas debunking. So here is Glenn debunking their debunking, and uh Glen gets very passionate in this in this reaction. So enjoy a nice Christmas special for you, wonderful podcast listeners.

SPEAKER_01

The comedian Bill Maher has come out with a video entitled The Truth About Christmas. The only trouble is there's no truth about his truth about Christmas. And that's the one problem you have. If you're gonna make an actually kind of video, and Bill Maher is full of making actually kind of videos, you need to actually get your actually's right. Actually, let's have a look.

SPEAKER_06

And finally, new rule Praise Jesus! It's a Christmas miracle. For the first time in the 21-year history of this show, we are on in December, which gives me a chance to explain to everyone something I've always wanted to expound upon in this show.

SPEAKER_01

Something he in fact expounded upon in his 2008 documentary, Religious, and he's had 15 years to correct the record, and yet instead of correcting the record according to facts, Bill Maher doubles down. And after 15 years of being told that this is total nonsense, here is what Bill Maher came out with this week.

SPEAKER_06

You know that whole thing about Jesus being born on December 25th? Well, it's a crock of sh.

SPEAKER_01

I don't know any Christians who actually think that Jesus was actually born on December the 25th. Do you? It's not actually in the Bible, and Christians don't actually put any weight on December the 25th. The church has wanted to celebrate Christmas when they celebrate Christmas because there is a certain meaning to, yes, the days are starting to lengthen after the darkness because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There's something very practical and something very meaningful about December the 25th, but no Christian is attached to that date. Are they?

SPEAKER_06

I'm not. Now, this is not an attack on Jesus, although he was a Nepo baby.

SPEAKER_01

That's a good line. That's a good line. You know, a Nepo baby is the child of a famous person who ends up going into that same business. Uh nepotism. Uh, and and you know, the son of the father, heir of the cosmos, I guess you could call him a Nepo baby. Okay, that's a good joke.

SPEAKER_06

But also a revolutionary philosopher with a beautiful message. As to whether he's a god, that's up to you. But if the subject is gods born on December 25th, we have enough of those for an entire Jeopardy category.

SPEAKER_01

And here Bill Maher discovers that religion is actually a thing. Down through the ages and around the world, uh, people have believed in all sorts of gods with all sorts of origin stories, and he can wear the smirk that he's wearing right now because of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has taught the world that actually there is one God who has been expressed through his son Jesus Christ, and that because Jesus has made the once and for all offering to the Father by the Spirit, because Jesus has done his great work of atonement, we do not have to be worried about the many different pagan deities out there. We don't have to worry about making things right with the gods, because Jesus has once and for all dealt with all of that, and now we can wear a smirk at the idea that there are gods with origins stories. All of that is thanks to Jesus. None of this debunks Jesus. It's Jesus that has debunked all the other gods around the world. He was the Egyptian god who took the form of a falcon. I know who was Horus. Yes, got it. Okay. Um now, was Horus born on December the 25th? Notice that this is the claim of Bill Maher, who's making an actually video right now. Actually, Horus was also born on the 25th of December. Well, actually, Horus is an Egyptian deity who did not live by a Roman calendar. Uh, but even if we were to calculate Horus' birth, I think probably October 9th is when people would actually say, actually, that Horus might have been born.

SPEAKER_06

He is the god from ancient Persia, born bearing a torch. Is it Mithras? Who is Mithras?

SPEAKER_01

Uh usually Mithras, but anyway, yes, a Persian deity made famous through the Roman cult, uh about which we only know things from the second or third century and onwards. Whatever we know about Mithras is from post-Christian sources secondhand and from archaeological digs. Um was Mithras born on the 25th of December? Well, no, Sol Invictus was celebrated on the 25th of December, and Mithras was kind of like a sun god as well. Does that mean he was necessarily born on December the 25th? Probably not. We don't really know. And yet, Bill Maher is doing this debunking that he doesn't even need to do because nobody cares whether Jesus was actually born on December the 25th. The answer to that question is almost certainly not, but never mind.

SPEAKER_06

He is the Greek god of rebirth. Who is Adonis? Adonis.

SPEAKER_01

Well is the fertility god. I don't know where Bill Maher is getting this from. I don't know where he's getting his certainty that Adonis was born on the 25th of December, or or is he just noticing that the gods of pagan religions actually have birthdays? Um again, the smirk that he wears, by noticing the fact that gods have birth stories and origins stories, is a smirk that is given to him by Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who has taught the world that there is one God, and that Christ himself has propitiated anything that we owe to heaven, and we do not need to worry about the gods anymore. Bilmar is able to ridicule Christianity because of Christ. Okay? Adonis was not born on December the 25th. Adonis was born to incest, his his his grandfather was also his father. Okay, so that's a cool story, bro. But why is he even mentioning Adonis? I d I I don't understand. Who is Osiris? Okay, fertility god Osiris. Aga again, was he born on December the 25th? No. You'll see all sorts of memes about Osiris and and having been this god who was raised from the dead to be the lord of all and that kind of thing. Osiris, like, died and went to be the lord of the underworld. Like he he descended to the dead. That's true. He gets that bit of the Jesus story right. But then, don't we all, he never rose again from the dead. But yeah, the idea that Osiris was born on December the 25th, where is he getting this from? Like, if you're going to do debunking, at least be sure of your facts. Like, why should we have to do a debunking video of the debunking video? It's this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_06

This Greek deity was known for having a good time. Who is Dionysus?

SPEAKER_01

Dionysus, okay, yeah, the god of God of the vine, okay, and Jesus says he is the vine, and I guess, you know, brings a meal with wine. Is he is he like Dionysus? I guess, sort of, kind of. Like, Jesus is like all the gods in lots of different ways. One of the great Christmas readings is John chapter one, and in verse 9 it says, the true light, Jesus, who enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. The Christian position about Christmas is that Christ has come to earth the great myth about God and man and and how we all get right into facts. He he is the the word who is made flesh, he is the true light who has always been enlightening everyone, and he comes to do what he was always meant to be doing. And is he a little bit like Dionysus? He is the Lord of the vine who's come to bring fullness of life. Yes, he is. But the fact that there are other gods out there, look at the smirk on Bill Maher's face.

unknown

Like what?

SPEAKER_01

Of course there are other gods out there. Of course, people have been telling stories about reality and truth and meaning and the pathway through death and perhaps out the other side to some kind of hope. Of course, people have been telling stories like that. The fact that Bill Maher has done a little Google search on gods of the world and is surprised to find that there are some others before Jesus only goes to show that Jesus Christ, in bringing this kind of monotheism out to the world, has absolutely transformed all our moral expectations, all our religious expectations. What is absolutely commonplace for most people around the world and down through history is a surprise to Bill Maher, but it shouldn't be a surprise. And the person who is surprised by learning about world religion is not the person who should be doing a debunking video.

SPEAKER_06

Well, yeah, we wrapped up the Emmy with that one. So you may be asking, those are all real, by the way. I think that was the problem. They think I'm making this up, but I'm not.

unknown

Those are all realists.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, yes, those are all real mythical God stories that have circulated around the world for thousands and thousands of years and have been meaningful to people for thousands and thousands of years. What Bill Maher's trading on is the triumph of Jesus. He's trading on the triumph of the Jesus revolution that has completely reordered our sensibilities about God and the gods. We now think it's absurd to have origins stories for the gods. Such that I'm often asked in evangelistic settings, uh, if God made the world, who made God? As though the idea that God having an origin story is the most ridiculous idea that there's ever been. But that has not been a ridiculous idea around the world and down through history. People have always told the I mean, all the Greek myths and all the Roman myths and all the Persian myths and all the Assyrian myths and all the Near Eastern myths, they they all talk about the origin stories of the gods. They've they're fascinated by the origin story of the of the gods. And the only people who find that ridiculous are the people who have been the heirs of the Christian revolution, such as Bill Maher. And what Bill Maher is doing is he's basically being kind of a hyper Protestant, okay? He is basically like the Puritans who banned Christmas, who always want to kind of chip away at tradition and tradition and tradition and get back to the bare minimum of the facts. The only trouble is with Bill Maher is the facts he's gotten down to are not facts at all. It's nonsense. It's total nonsense. And it's just like his religious documentary that I mentioned earlier. Fifteen years ago, Bill Maher made a documentary about how ridiculous religion is. And he starts doing this whole shtick about there are other stories. Don't you know? Didn't you know that there were other stories of dying and rising gods? Stories that might be seen if you squint and cock your heads to approximate the Jesus story in one way or another. And they've been circulating for thousands of years. This is what he says.

SPEAKER_06

We've got Krishna, who was in India thousand years before Christ. Krishna was a carpenter.

SPEAKER_01

Krishna was not a carpenter. Krishna was uh he was royalty, right? Um so he is an avatar of the gods. Um, but there was no way that he'd be like a builder's laborer, the same as Jesus was a builder's laborer. Um he was royalty.

SPEAKER_06

Born of a virgin?

SPEAKER_01

He was not born of a virgin. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_06

Baptized in a river.

SPEAKER_01

No, he was not baptized in a river. Where is he getting this stuff from?

SPEAKER_06

Are you saying that was written in history?

SPEAKER_01

So Jesus pushes back and and and asks the factual question. Bil Maher has spun a story. All of the facts of his story turn out to be nonsense, and this guy playing Jesus is pushing back and saying, Can you justify the story you've just told me? Okay, that that at that stage, the act of playing Jesus is trying to get to the facts of the matter. What is Bill Maher going to do? Is he going to reveal his sources? Is he going to footnote his citations?

SPEAKER_06

Or it's written down a history, is what you said. Absolutely. There's the the Persian god Mithra 600 years before.

SPEAKER_01

What he's going to do is switch to the Persian god Mithra, okay, and he's going to go to 600 BC Persia, but all that we know of Mithra is actually from the Roman cult that that is post-incarnation.

SPEAKER_06

Born December 25th.

SPEAKER_01

He was not born December 25th.

SPEAKER_06

Performed miracles, resurrected on the third day.

SPEAKER_01

Uh he performed miracles. He was not resurrected on the third day, for goodness sake. The only thing we know about Mithras is that he killed a bull, right? He killed a bull, he shed the blood of a bull, and and the bull was like this monster that was terrorizing people. So, in one sense, he was a savior, and he did great deeds, although, you know, killing a bull is that the greatest deed a god could do. But Bill Maher is shocked to find that there are other gods with other stories of miracles that are happening. And of course there are other stories of other gods doing miracles. I don't I don't see how that demythologizes Christmas.

SPEAKER_06

Known as the Lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the Savior, Messiah.

SPEAKER_01

We don't know this about Mithras. We we only know secondhand like comments about Mithras. It sounds like Bill Maher is reliant upon scholarship of the 19th century that has been debunked over and over and over again. And in the aftermath of Religious, which came out in 2008, there were all sorts of people who again debunked what Bill Maher was saying. And for 15 years, he's known that what he's saying here is nonsense. Has he retracted it? No, he has not. He has just doubled down on it. And it's just like, and I don't care about that except when you make your actually video. Like, like, if you just take the L and move on. He hasn't taken the L and move on. He's just doubled down on something that is just patent nonsense.

SPEAKER_06

All I know is that I can, I don't go by that here say that say I go by the word of God. I know that's what I believe.

SPEAKER_03

But I believe it's because it's truth. Okay, it's not that it's not true.

SPEAKER_06

Okay. Study the religions of the Mediterranean region for a thousand years before. Many of the gods were born on December 25th.

SPEAKER_01

Like like who? Like Sol and Victus? Okay. I'll give you one. I'm waiting for another.

SPEAKER_06

It's not a new one.

SPEAKER_05

It's not. It's but it's not.

SPEAKER_02

And we don't think Jesus was born on December the 25th. Like we don't.

SPEAKER_03

Like, what are you talking about? It's funny you should bring that up because of course in Star Wars Episode 1, Phantom Menace, Anakin is born to a virgin. And people see that and they say, wait a second, where have we heard that before? Right. That's not original.

SPEAKER_01

That's an interesting point. Okay, so the stories that we tell tend to have stories of like virgin births, extraordinary kind of births. Where do we get this idea from? Well, isn't it interesting that the very first story in the Bible that predicts Christmas is that Christ would be born as the seed of a woman. Now, seed belongs to men, and yet a man is not kind of referenced. It's the seed of the woman. This is odd. And throughout the Old Testament, there there becomes this expectation that there would be something miraculous about the birth of this Christ, this savior. He would not just be the result of men, you know, men produce all the problems in the world. And somehow this would not just be the product of men. This would be a miraculous birth. This would be God's doing to bring about a virgin birth. And the fact that these stories, both BC and AD, have circulated in which the special one comes and their origin is miraculous in some ways. That that shouldn't be shocking to us. Okay? I think this guy does a good job and points to different stories. And I would say that those stories are kind of like counterfeits of the original. And you have counterfeits of the original because the original is worth something and the original is real.

SPEAKER_00

Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01

There's a reason that we don't have £12 counterfeit notes, because there is no such thing as an original £12 note. Okay, so why would you go to the bother of actually counterfeiting something that's not genuine? And yet we do have counterfeit stories. Okay, we do have all these different stories of miraculous births of a saviour figure who's gonna come as a golden child to bring about a new age. There's all sorts of stories about that. Wouldn't it be strange if all we had were counterfeits and there was no real? And what Christians are just saying is, yeah, all those are counterfeits of the genuine and real story.

SPEAKER_06

But the Jesus story wasn't original. How so?

SPEAKER_01

So the Jesus story wasn't original. The guy asks, how so? And we have to go to this expensive montage at this stage, because I'm assuming in the moment Bill Maher didn't have anything to say. Or at least he didn't have anything to say that was worthy of making it into this film. Instead, they had to pay a lot of money to get Walk Like an Egyptian from the Bengals, which I'm sure licensing cost them a pretty penny, and yet this is what they cut to. Horus is the son of the god Osiris. Sure, there were lots of sons of gods everywhere. Born to a virgin mother. Born to a virgin mother. Shall I tell you how Horus was born? Let me read this to you. Okay. I hope you haven't eaten recently. This is from the excellent Twitter thread of the excellent Ash Cunningham. He writes, I will happily concede that Horus's birth was not exactly ordinary. Isis's brother, Osiris, was murdered by their other brother, sometimes called their half-brother, sometimes stepbrother, Set. Set cut Osiris up and scattered the pieces across the world. Isis gathered up all the pieces and reanimated him. The one piece she couldn't find was his penis, so she made a substitute out of gold. She then slept with her brother and bore Horace. Now, I don't know whether there is a prescribed term for that particular series of events. If there's a word for it, it eludes me. But a virgin birth, it ain't. So this is this a virgin birth? This is very far from a virgin birth, and it's uh kinda nauseating. Kinda nauseating, and yet Bill Mar goes there and continues to go there. Baptized in a river by Anup the Baptiser, he was not baptized, and there's no record of a person called Anup who was later beheaded. Where are they making this up from? Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, we don't know this. He did some godlike things. Uh Bill Mar is shocked that gods do godlies. Uh more at ten. He raised Asa from the dead. Asa translates to Lazarus. Not sure where he gets this from. He had twelve disciples. He had four disciples, actually. Um, but you know, four times three? Huh? Is it starting to are you starting to piece things together? Horace was crucified! Horace never died. Let alone he was not crucified. How do you get away with this, Bill Maher? How do you get away with debunking the religious attitude out there? And you just make up stuff from out of the sky. This is re This is utterly shameful. And not only have you not retracted this from 15 years ago, you've doubled down on it. This is nonsense. You call religion ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02

What should we call this?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, Horace was crucified first. No, he wasn't. And after three days, two women announced.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01

Oh let me ask you a question. And so remember, there was the guy asking Bill Maher the question like, what are the copycat stories? Um, that you you say predated Jesus. And we cut away from Bill Maher at that point to the montage, which is what you do when you don't know what to say. And then we just cut back to Bill Maher and the actor playing Jesus. Let's say if you take the side that this is all made up. I do. What if you're wrong? What if you're wrong? No, no, we we can't countenance that, we can just ridicule it. Um, goodness me. But it's not just Bill Maher, two years earlier than religious Stephen Fry on the show QI, got his actually, actually wrong.

SPEAKER_04

So let's just take a few moments then together and try to remember why is Christmas Day on December the 25th. Bring bring bring a ding.

SPEAKER_05

It's the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01

The classic actually moment, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05

It's a midwinter solstice. It's a pagan festival that's been appropriated by Christianity.

SPEAKER_04

There is a great deal of truth in that.

SPEAKER_01

Not a bad summary.

SPEAKER_04

It was indeed there's a Teutonic, Celtic, and pagan view that if you survived the winter. Solstice on the 21st of December, and you have a feast to celebrate it. But also, there was the Roman god. Was it Saturnalia? There was the Saturnalia, it was also at that time of year, but there was Mithras. There's the two of them. Here we go. Well, there are amazing things claimed about Mithras, and I'll read you some of them. Claimed by Krackpots. Sent to earth delivers a mortal through whom it was possible for sinners to be reborn into immortal life. He died for our sins, but came back to life the following Sunday.

SPEAKER_01

Like, okay, immortality was pro promised through the Mithraic cult in a kind of a Gnostic sort of kind of disembodied sort of sense. Absolutely. But we we don't know anything about his death, certainly not his resurrection.

SPEAKER_04

He was born of a virgin on December the 25th in a manger or perhaps He was born of a virgin.

SPEAKER_01

He was born of a rock, which I guess technically a rock has not had sex. So are we gonna call rocks virgins now, Stephen? Is that what we're gonna do? Just to prop up you're actually that's it's it's so so silly.

SPEAKER_04

A manger or perhaps a cave, attended by shepherds and became known as the light of the world.

SPEAKER_01

Uh he was kind of a sun god, so yeah, we'll give him that. Light of the world.

SPEAKER_04

He had twelve disciples with whom he shared a last meal before dying.

SPEAKER_01

Uh twelve disciples. There is an engraving in which there are twelve figures around him, but most people think that's just the twelve signs of the zodiac. There's no there's no other evidence that he had twelve disciples. His devotees symbolically consumed the flesh and blood of him. Interestingly, the source for this is the Christian Justin Martyr in the second century, he writes in his first apology, um he describes sort of the Christian ritual of communion, and then he says, which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For in the Mithraic cult, bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites. Um so interestingly, you know, the Mithraic rites are copies, says Justin Martyr, in the second century, of the Christian thing, which is which is what you always have to bear in mind with Mithras, is that even though it claims to be a kind of a 6th century BC Persian cult, what we know of it is its Roman derivation, and and the Romans loved having their mystery cults, and they had loads of them. And whether this is in any way a faithful representation of what a 6th century BC Persian is doing, um, nobody knows. Um but Justin Martyr says the Mithrasts were copying the Christians, and interestingly, where the Christians drank wine, they drank water.

SPEAKER_04

Because Mithras was a sun god, he was worshipped on Sundays.

SPEAKER_05

Is he a tribute band?

SPEAKER_01

Is he a tribute band? I love that. Um is it the case, though, that there are a whole bunch of tribute bands and no original, or might there be an original from which the others are tribute bands? And that's that's the Christian position that down through the ages, that there have always been these stories about the gods interacting with humanity and coming down to us in our darkness and somehow bringing us some kind of peace. Interestingly, in every one of these tribute bands, the peace that is offered is such a pale imitation of what the Christian gospel offers. And yet, with Jesus we have the Son of the God who comes to take flesh, who has a truly remarkable birth, in order that he might make peace for us and die for us. You know, Horus didn't die for his people, Mithras didn't die for his people. Jesus, so the story goes. Jesus dies for his people, sheds his own blood, rises up again to offer us immortality for free and forever. It sounds to me like if you're going to name which is the tribute act and which is the original, it seems to me like the Christian story is the original story. So how should we respond to all this? Because one thing to do is just to debunk the debunking, and then we're just left back at zero. Here's how C.S. Lewis writes about this in his book on miracles. He says Christ is like the Corn King, who was this sort of mythological figure who has some s similarities to the Jesus story. He is like the corn king because the corn king is a portrait of him. The similarity is not in the least unreal or accidental, for the corn king is derived through human imagination from the facts of nature, and the facts of nature from her creator. The death and rebirth pattern is in her in nature because it was first in him, in God. On the other hand, elements of nature of religion are strikingly absent from the teaching of Jesus and from the Judaic preparations which led up to it, precisely because in them, nature's original is manifesting itself. So do you get it? Nature cannot help but testify to nature's origins, to her creator. And so, if all you have is the raw materials of this world, you're going to piece together something about, well, I guess it gets cold and then it gets warm, and I guess there's darkness and then there's light, and I guess there's death, but we hope for something more, don't we? And wouldn't it be nice if the light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it? Wouldn't that be nice? And there are all sorts of stories, like the Corn King or like Osiris or like Mithras or whoever it is, there are these stories, but none of them can bring themselves to have hope the same way that the Christian story has hope. And yet, C.S. Lewis says the story in the Bible doesn't mention those other, you know, tribute acts because it is the original. You know, Adele doesn't mention like the Adele Tribute Act, because Adele doesn't need to. The Tribute Act very much is dependent on Adele. Adele is not dependent on the Tribute Act. And what happens at Christmas is that the myth became fact, the word became flesh, the great story earthed itself in history, and it's a history that will survive debunking. Bilmar, Stephen Fry, the new atheists. There's a reason why the new atheism got old, okay? Because all it had was a sneer. All it had was a swagger. All it has were memes, all it had was a vibe. And it turns out that when you press into that vibe, there is no substance to it. Bill Maher is still trotting out the same nonsense, as though his nonsense disproves religion. The QI YouTube channel released that clip last year. It is still standing by utter nonsense. It should be embarrassed of. And we should all be embarrassed of the new atheism. And I hope that new atheists are embarrassed by the new atheism and by the things that they trotted out year after year, decade after decade. What is ridiculous is not religion. The fact that we find these things ridiculous is only a testament to the Jesus Revolution. To the fact that the one story that has shown up in history as verifiable fact has actually spread to take over the world and to take over the religious sensibilities of even a Stephen Fry, of even a Bill Maher. We live in the world that Jesus made. And we're going to celebrate Jesus on December the 25th. Not because anyone thinks that that's actually when he was born. I actually think he might have been conceived then, but anyway, it's not because we think he was born on December the 25th, but because, yes, indeed. Isn't it great to appropriate Sol Invictus? Isn't it great to say that after the darkness comes the light? And born into the midst of our valley of deep shadow comes the light of the world. And his light has been spreading through the nations. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. It's the new atheism that is the blip. Jesus is the revolution that has taken over the world. If you want to find out more about that revolution, we'd love you to do 321. Have you checked out the 321 course? Go to 321course.com and find out about Jesus, the light of the world. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.