It's an amusing post geezer, but I think it misses the mark a little bit.
First, you'll need to educate me in the rapid and profound effect that satyrs and cockatrices had on society.
in the known world of the time, these creature did have a profound effect on the lifes of people, the satyrs attacked and took the sheep and goats, and danced whilst destroying farmsteads, cockatrices, mainly people, hatched there eggs to get the fiery serpents, so I would say they had a very profound influence indeed, ( from hebrew writings, the greeks and romans have much more information on these creatures).
In fact, I do not think belief in them spread all that rapidly as compared to Christianity,
I think your totally wrong, the stories of jesus have been around for just over two thousand years the stories of these creature have been around for at least another four or five thousand years, probably the reason they dont have as much effect today, is people have become used to them.
nor (and here is the important part) was there any reason to believe that particular constituencies were hostile to satyrs and cockatrices at the time those myths were created.
considering what they did I am pretty certain the were loathed and despised.
With Christ, on the other hand, there were ample opponents who, presumably, would have been very happy to seize on his non-existence as grounds for justifying their dislike of Christians.
come on your assuming the stories about this jesus person are true.
Even in 1st century Judea, Christians were oppressed.
Early attempts to discredit Jesus were made (of which we have written evidence from around the second century A.D.), but the disparagements launched were in the nature of "He was the son of a whore" or that he was conceived when Mary cheated on Joseph with a Roman soldier named Panthe (see
here.
theres no evidence for any of this either, have you got any source we can verify.
Surely, "He never even existed" would have been pretty solid grounds for attacking Christians if there were any indication that he, in fact, never really existed. In that society, it seems (imo) fairly likely that rumors/tales of his non-existence would have persisted amongst the opponents of Christians from the time of his purported crucifixion onwards, as more and more people were converted to the Christian religion and Jewish animosity to the movement grew.
this just an appeal to authority, I can not with absolute certainty say that god does not exist, because I cannot prove it, but I can be 99.9%sure it doesnt regarding the lack of evidence, those early aledged oppressers could not with any certainty say that a jesus never existed, for the very same reason they would say the roman gods did not exists, they could not be sure.
Now, perhaps that story was used against Christianity in its early days and was merely lost in subsequent centuries of conflict. In that case, though, assuming there was a credible charge that Jesus never really existed at all, it seems likely to me that Christianity would have had great difficulty gaining a foothold in Judea in the years immediately after the crucifixion. It clearly did not; membership in the nascent church grew astronomically early on.
and you know this how.
As I said above, this evidence is merely suggestive and far from conclusive (and I concede that conclusive evidence does not exist), but it's hardly on par with your "proof" of the existence of satyrs. That "proof" is similar in form only, not substance, when you look at it closely.
why is it any different satyrs have been around a lot lot longer.
lets for the fun of it, have a little storytime, lets say when I were little, I had an imaginary friend called Tom, we would play our little games each day, and each night I would tell my sisters and brothers about my day with Tom, and how nice and kind Tom is and how sweet he is to animals etc etc, and they in turn would tell their friends about Tom, because my stories about Tom were always interesting, even some of the friends would pass on the stories of Tom, so now eons after I've died and turned to dust my stories are still being read and still being beleived, because over those eons people either they forgot to mention Tom was my imaginary friend or my family had neglected even to mention Tom wasn't real in the first place.
and Tom because I had portraited him, as such a charimatic loving person, had became a cult, they had even wrote a book containing all his exploits, somebody decides to write the stories down, he had became known as Tom de Messie, he had become a god.
I had of course been totally forgotten about, but my imaginary friend Tom, became real!
Evidence unless it can be verified is not evidence, just hearsay.
