tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post1507942618808065688..comments2023-06-23T07:16:59.149-07:00Comments on Sufficiently Wrong: Suns of God, The God Sun (pt 2)Miekkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-44119026130210637372012-12-04T03:51:17.280-08:002012-12-04T03:51:17.280-08:00"Generalized adjectives about how bad Acharya..."Generalized adjectives about how bad Acharya is"? NO. Rather specific things pointed out about how bad _HER REASONING_ is, there's quite a difference between an ad hominem argument and an argument that looks into the quality of arguments. If you want to obfuscate that difference, shame on you. Care to stop misrepresenting what I write in your responses to it? <br /><br />Regarding this bit: "It seems Acharya wants the reader to think these facts are somehow kept secret and that they indicate much more than they actually do", I basically referred to the facts regarding how Indo-European languages are related, and the fact that many names of gods and everyday things such as fire, the wheel, ... are a heritage common to the indo-european languages in general. Acharya tries to make this seem mystical and surprising and secret.Miekkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-31337256321986321102012-12-03T03:31:41.242-08:002012-12-03T03:31:41.242-08:00I found this post to be rather weak. After more g...I found this post to be rather weak. After more generalised adjectives about how extremely bad Acharya is, Miekko concludes "It seems Acharya wants the reader to think these facts are somehow kept secret and that they indicate much more than they actually do. The conclusion of the chapter is essentially correct: sun-worship is ancient and widespread, God and the Sun probably were often understood to be the same."<br /><br />It is not sun worship that is secret, but how Christianity displays continuity with sun worship, displacing the sun with its anthropomorphic myth of Christ.<br /><br />I think you might be surprised at how little known the history of sun worship actually is, leading you to skate over important information presented by Acharya.Robert Tuliphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11813291140905541664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-54786043036828183952012-10-09T06:06:08.796-07:002012-10-09T06:06:08.796-07:00It is from Thomas Inman's Ancient Faiths and M...It is from Thomas Inman's Ancient Faiths and Modern, available at archive.org: http://archive.org/details/ancientfaithsmod00inma<br /><br />Pp 57-59. In which it is made clear that this is not anything Thomas Inman himself has researched - it is but a summary of <br /><br />Of Prescott's work, Inman says "The reader of Prescott will find that he has not adopted this account without carefully estimating the value of his authorities, and I believe that he may be fairly trusted." (pages 56 and 57, just at the end of the former and beginning of the latter).<br /><br />This means that in Acharya's book we're dealing with a summary of a summary of a summary. This from an author who boasts about reading sources in the original languages.<br /><br />A cursory glance at Inman's book shows that he is just an armchair thinker, who has read things in order to come up with a theory - see, e.g. page 23, where he talks about how the natives of North America do not have a religion, etc. Very much a child of his times, then.<br /><br />After flipping through the pages of archive.org's edition of Inman's book for a while, I can conclude that:<br />He did not mention what work of Prescott's he was using as his source, except that there was a corrected edition in 1866. This is strange, as he does give chapters and page numbers. Well, maybe I just missed it. I presume this refers to William H. Prescott, though, and his collected works come in more than a dozen volumes (available at archive.org). <br /><br />I suspect reading the Prescott source would provide either some sign of quote-mining or just bad data. Miekkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03254032879671190589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298055147607304087.post-86256766808932680542012-10-08T07:53:39.141-07:002012-10-08T07:53:39.141-07:00Interesting- is the source for the claim regarding...Interesting- is the source for the claim regarding the Inca "nuns" given? I wonder if it would be impossible for a culture otherwise indifferent to virginity to maintain superstitions about certain taboo women. I think (correct me if I'm mistaken) the Japanese had (have?) temple virgins in some shrines while others were dedicated to phallic gods and orgiastic rituals, so, it would be interesting to get more info about this.philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08513876927710154838noreply@blogger.com