Now, why don't we go back to topic?

I love when people play this card, when they're pushed to the wall about their opinions and can't back up their statements with facts. Why can't people just admit they're wrong?

Atheists and other non-religious people love talk about how the Bible is flawed, or contradictory, or fraudulent, but they never seem to have any proof.

I guess they are taking that on faith.:rolleyes:

Atheists and other non-religious people love talk about how the Bible is flawed, or contradictory, or fraudulent, but they never seem to have any proof.

I guess they are taking that on faith.:rolleyes:

Guess what? Elvis didn't really die. He could still be alive.

I think the point has been made. It's time to lay off. You are starting to sound like the people who you argue.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

I think the point has been made. It's time to lay off. You are starting to sound like the people who you argue.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

How are we sounding like the people we argue? We can provide facts, they can't.

So take that: :fighting3

Be a graceful winner.

SOOOOOOO, how about that documentary Jesus Camp?

SOOOOOOO, how about that documentary Jesus Camp?
:LolLolLol

Is that the actual name of it - Jesus Camp? LOL. I've been trying to figure out the title. I thought it was just that video about the jesus camp. word play. It can be tricky. Or I can be tired and oblivious to my surroundings. :doh: :lol2:

Jesus Camp (2006) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/)

:ohno: :omg:

The trailer alone freaked me out. Yea, I'm going to add it to my que. I'm sure you will hear from me after I watch it.

(thanks for the link btw)

no problem.

it's queue, though. ;)

hehe. yep, sure is. told you I was out of it and tired. And with that, I'm out the door....have a good weekend everyone.

Atheists and other non-religious people love talk about how the Bible is flawed, or contradictory, or fraudulent, but they never seem to have any proof.

I guess they are taking that on faith.:rolleyes:

I consider myself to be a Christian, but I'm also familiar with the origins of the Bible as well, and we could probably have a separate discussion on that and it really would be a 10-page document.

For example discussions on the "Q" source and the missing author of the first four books of the New Testament (e.g. what literary analysis tells us), what happened between 33 AD and when the books were written down in around 80 AD, the "lost gospel of St. Thomas," translation mishaps in the KJV and the exceeding strangeness of King James himself and how that may have impacted the KJV, the recent (last 20 years) unearthing of Dead Sea transcripts which have a different number for the sign of the beast in Revelations, and so on.

To me its kind of pointless to have these arguments on religious texts and claim one person is right and the other is wrong. I'm surprised someone from another faith hasn't posted in this thread yet telling us that we are all wrong. :)

the "lost gospel of St. Thomas," the recent (last 20 years) unearthing of Dead Sea transcripts which have a different number for the sign of the beast in Revelations, and so on.

The books you mentioned above were actually written by the Gnostics, which as you know were quite legalistic and anti-Christian in their day.

The books you mentioned above were actually written by the Gnostics, which as you know were quite legalistic and anti-Christian in their day.

The only gnostic text I mentioned was the St. Thomas one. The Q source has to do with analysis of the first four gospels, and realizing through analysis that two of the books were probably authored by one person, one of the books another, and the fourth book a combination of one of the others and an unknown origin source, which theologians call the Q. I think I said that right. The rest of the stuff I mentioned was just questions swirling around the historical construction and what not.

We could really have fun if we dove into the decision process of what was canonized in the early Christian church. Third Council of Trent anyone? The Reformation (e.g. the argument of whether the Catholics have extra books in their Bible or if Protestants removed books they didn't agree with)?

All I'm saying is that things usually aren't as clear-cut as some would have you believe, and folks who don't take the time to understand the history of the church and how we got here today are really quite easily backed into a corner when they get into an argument with an atheist or one of the other types that was mentioned earlier in the thread who is familiar with it. Years ago there was a local non-denominational church that actually went through the first 1000 years of the early church and tried to recount the history from a Christian perspective. Personally I think it would be a great thing if more did stuff like that.

Well, remember the Q source is a hypothetical lost text.

The case against a common second source
Austin Farrer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Farrer) [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document#_note-0), Michael Goulder, and Mark Goodacre [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document#_note-1) have argued against Q, while maintaining Markan priority, claiming the use of Matthew by Luke. Other scholars argue against Q because they hold to Matthean priority (see: Augustinian hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis)). Their arguments include:

There is a "prima facie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_facie) case" that two documents both correcting Mark's language, adding birth narratives and a resurrection epilogue, and adding a large amount of sayings material are likely to know each other, rather than to have such similar scope by coincidence.
Specifically, there are 347 instances (by Neirynck's count) where one or more words are added to the Markan text in both Matthew and Luke; these are called the "minor agreements" against Mark. One hundred ninety-eight instances involve one word, 82 involve two words, 35 three, 16 four, and 16 instances involve five or more words in the extant texts of Matthew and Luke as compared to Markan passages.
While supporters say that the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas) supports the concept of a "sayings gospel," Professor Mark Goodacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Goodacre&action=edit) points out that Q has a narrative structure as reconstructed and is not simply a list of sayings.
Some make an argument based on the fact that there is no extant copy of Q and that no early church writer makes a (unambiguous) reference to a Q document.
Scholars such as William Farmer (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Farmer&action=edit) maintain that Matthew was the first Gospel, Luke the second, and that Mark abbreviated Matthew and Luke (the Griesbach hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griesbach_hypothesis)). Q, part of the Two-Source Hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Source_Hypothesis), would not have existed if Matthean priority is true, as Luke would have gotten his triple tradition ("Markan") and double tradition ("Q") material from Matthew.
Scholars such as John Wenham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wenham) hold to the Augustinian hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis) that Matthew was the first Gospel, Mark the second, and Luke the third, and object on similar grounds to those who hold to the Griesbach hypothesis. They enjoy the support of church tradition on this point.
In addition, Eta Linnemann (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eta_Linnemann&action=edit) rejects the Q document hypothesis and denies the existence of a Synoptic problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem) at all.[2] (http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/q_linnemann.pdf)
Nicholas Perrin has argued that the Gospel of Thomas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas) was based on Tatian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatian)'s Gospel harmony the Diatessaron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatessaron) instead of the Q document.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document#_note-2)
[edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Q_document&action=edit&section=3)] History

If Q ever existed, it must have disappeared very early, since no copies of it have been recovered and no definitive notices of it have been recorded in antiquity (but see the discussion of the Papias testimony below).
In modern times, the first person to hypothesize a Q-like source was an Englishman, Herbert Marsh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marsh), in 1801 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1801) in a complicated solution to the synoptic problem that his contemporaries ignored. Marsh labeled this source with the Hebrew letter beth.
The next person to advance the Q hypothesis was the German Schleiermacher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Daniel_Ernst_Schleiermacher) in 1832 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1832), who interpreted an enigmatic statement by the early Christian writer Papias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias) of Hierapolis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierapolis), circa 125: "Matthew compiled the oracles (Greek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language): logia) of the Lord in a Hebrew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language) manner of speech". Rather than the traditional interpretation that Papias was referring to the writing of Matthew in Hebrew, Schleiermacher believed that Papias was actually giving witness to a sayings collection that was available to the Evangelists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelists).
In 1838 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838) another German, Christian Hermann Weisse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Hermann_Weisse), took Schleiermacher's suggestion of a sayings source and combined it with the idea of Markan priority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markan_priority) to formulate what is now called the Two-Source Hypothesis, in which both Matthew and Luke used Mark and the sayings source. Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Julius_Holtzmann) endorsed this approach in an influential treatment of the synoptic problem in 1863 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1863), and the Two-Source Hypothesis has maintained its dominance ever since.
At this time, Q was usually called the Logia on account of the Papias statement, and Holtzmann gave it the symbol Lambda (Λ). Toward the end of the 19th century, however, doubts began to grow on the propriety of anchoring the existence of the collection of sayings in the testimony of Papias, so a neutral symbol Q (which was devised by Johannes Weiss based on the German Quelle, meaning source) was adopted to remain neutrally independent of the collection of sayings and its connection to Papias.
In the first two decades of the 20th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century), more than a dozen reconstructions of Q were made. However, these reconstructions differed so much from each other that not a single verse of Matthew was present in all of them. As a result, interest in Q subsided and it was neglected for many decades.
This state of affairs changed in the 1960s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s) after translations of a newly discovered and analogous sayings collection, the Gospel of Thomas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas), became available. James M. Robinson and Helmut Koester proposed that collections of sayings such as Q and Thomas represented the earliest Christian materials at an early point in a trajectory that eventually resulted in the canonical gospels.
This burst of interest led to increasingly more sophisticated literary and redactional reconstructions of Q, notably the work of John S. Kloppenborg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Kloppenborg). Kloppenborg, by analyzing certain literary phenomena, argued that Q was composed in three stages. The earliest stage was a collection of wisdom sayings involving such issues as poverty and discipleship. Then this collection was expanded by including a layer of judgmental sayings directed against "this generation". The final stage included the Temptation of Jesus.
Although Kloppenborg cautioned against assuming that the composition history of Q is the same as the history of the Jesus tradition (i.e. that the oldest layer of Q is necessarily the oldest and pure-layer Jesus tradition), some recent seekers of the Historical Jesus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus), including the members of the Jesus Seminar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar), have done just that. Basing their reconstructions primarily on the Gospel of Thomas and the oldest layer of Q, they propose that Jesus functioned as a wisdom sage, rather than a Jewish rabbi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbi), though not all members affirm the two-source hypothesis. Kloppenborg, it should be noted, is now a fellow of the Jesus Seminar himself.

SOOOOOOO, how about that documentary Jesus Camp?

ROFLCOPTERS

I love when people play this card, when they're pushed to the wall about their opinions and can't back up their statements with facts. Why can't people just admit they're wrong?
I am a bit surprised at you, of all people for sniping at someone who has realized just how far off the topic they have wandered and made the respectful suggestion that ALL should get back on topic...furthermore, I was not trying to trap anyone into anything, I sincerely never thought that the bible (which ever one that you use this week) did contain the term "homosexual". You know yourself that 100 different churchs can, in fact, take the same text and use it to prove their point and their beliefs...if that isn't being biased and having personal agendas, I don't know what is. One more thing, while I am still on here, I think that If any belief, no matter how "kooky" ,helps one become a better person and set a good life example for someone else to live and learn by, can't be all bad...BUT, ON THE OTHER HAND, if it causes one to be hatefilled and judgemental of others, then how good is it and what good is it? I have seen religion tear families apart, ruin lives and cause suicides, but then, that is what Jesus is supposed to have said was his purpose, wasn't it?

So, are you saying that you're not definitely and absolutely sure that water is a liquid at temps ranging from 0 degrees C to 100 degress C? Are you not for sure that babies grow? Are you not for sure that the world is round? Are you not for sure that grass is green.....really, is that an illusion made up by frogs? Are you not certain you're a female? I could go on and on.Am I to assume, Patrick, that those are rhetorical questions? If not, are you wanting/needing answers? re: water...it would depend on where you were if that were true or not, wouldn't it? re: babies growing...some actually do not. re: the world being round....are you calling the earth the world? if so, the answer likewise would be no, it is not exactly. And again, re: grass being green, all grass is not green...the female question? hmmmm, you are referring to physical attributes, correct? Those questions did remind me of how holy books describe "the world" as the writer knew it, knew about it at that time...surely we all know that and should keep that in perspective whenever we read any book written before it was common knowledge that there are many worlds, many galaxies, etc, etc, etc. Donlt you agree?

N/a

holy smokes batman. I finally got to watch this over the weekend. I can't even begin to describe how this made me feel. Watching those kids cry and feel so horrible. The way they are being indoctrinated instead of taught. All I kept thinking was "don't drink the kool-aid." Let's just say I watched 'The Messengers' after this movie, and I don't know which one frightened me more. :ohno: :headscrat