dark empathy

hey elvis didn't do no druuuugs!

Kosh

Me too. (and I have to say that quietly since my brother worked on the show). But it's the content that's the problem.

Unfortunately, I have to say the same about "The God....". At least with the clips here. The problem is that they go about making unsupported assertions. Let me clarify that... their assertions ARE quite well supported, but they don't bother to present the evidence. Simply making a statement without presenting the evidence doesn't make them sound any better than the Christians.

Christian: Jesus rose from the dead!

Skeptic: No, he didn't.

Both sides are guilty of the same thing here.

BS. made similar mistakes. When "countering" the claims, they failed to point out some very valid (and it wouldn't have taken that long) reasons why they were disagreeing with the claims of the Bible. The reasons that any of us could list off the top of our heads.

But hey, that's entertainment....

lpetrich

I think that the movie did make something of a case, by calculating Jesus Christ's Lord-Raglan mythic-hero score. He scores very high, right up there with Oedipus, Moses, Romulus, Theseus, Hercules, Krishna, etc. In fact, I appreciate that the movie did that, because that's strong evidence that JC was largely, if not entirely, mythical.

But making a detailed case and discussing it in detail would have greatly added to the length of the movie, so it would be better to put that into some "supplementary documents". So the movie ought to contain only a summary, with references to detailed explanations elsewhere. The DVD actually has something like that, with URL's of some freethought sites, like this one, even if not exactly what I described.

Here are some previous threads on the movie:

The God Who Wasn't There - secular movie!

DVD: "The God Who Wasn't There" - a great gift idea

And this also:

My Lord-Raglan scoring of Jesus Christ

A summary:

Royal ancestry: Yes. Matthew and Luke make a big point of how JC's (supposed) human father is descended from King David. And if we are to believe a common explanation of the discrepancies between Matthew's and Luke's genealogies, his mother is also descended from King David.

Divine impregnation or otherwise miraculous or unusual conception: Yes.

Someone evil tries to kill him in his infancy: Yes. King Herod.

He is raised by foster parents in a foreign land: No about the foster parents, partially yes about the foreign land (his parents flee to Egypt with him, then return with him during his childhood).

We otherwise don't learn much about his childhood, except for stories of precocity: Yes. Him in the Jerusalem Temple.

He triumphs over some evil king/monster/whatever: Yes. He successfully resists the Devil's temptations and the Devil slinks off in shame.

He marries a princess: No. He was single all his life, and his extracanonically-rumored girlfriend, Mary Magdalene, was a commoner.

He reigns uneventfully: Yes. He mostly preaches and works miracles and gets into arguments with Pharisees.

He decrees laws: Yes.

He loses favor: Yes. His trial is a big turnaround, with the welcoming crowd turning against him and his disciples fleeing.

He dies a mysterious or unusual death: Yes. His crucifixion was a fast death by crucifixion standards, and it was accompanied by a mysterious darkening, earthquakes, corpses talking walks from their tombs, and the Temple curtain getting ripped from top to bottom.

Often atop a hill: Yes.

His body was not buried or at least does not stay that way: Yes. He rose from the dead a few days later and ascended to Heaven.

But he has at least one tomb: Yes.

So JC's a good fit to Lord Raglan's profile, even if not a 100% perfect fit.

HH32

Bah, It appears I can't seem to find my copy!! Just want to let you know I havn't forgot about your request. I did a mass cleanup on my computer recently (I had gigs upon gigs of videos to clean up) Just trying to organize myself over here.. It appears this doc got lost in the hoopla. Definetly apologize.

Otherwise hopefully I can make up to ya, Here's a great clip of Jon Stewart interviewing Jimmy Carter... They touch on the seperation of Church and State.

http://taytv.blogspot.com/2005/12/da...t-dec-5th.html

tonan22

For some reason, I just really love that "atop a hill" bit. Heroes never die in gulches.

ISVfan

This film makes no sense! Anyone in their right mind could cut through his arguements. For instance he makes the claim the Gospels were written in 70 A.D. this is true. Christ died 31 A.D. that's true. But Christians no that God 'inspired' or {God breathed} the Scriptures. So it could have been written 200 A.D. and still been completely accurate.

Toto

Christians might "know" that, but can't prove it to non-believers. In order to convince potential converts that the Bible is True, Christians claim that the gospels were written by people with access to eyewitness testimony.

ISVfan

Matthew,Mark,Luke,John were eye witnesses they just didn't write the Gospels until 70 A.D. But remeber that's just 40 years later. Oral tradition and their faith kept it alive until then but when those men started getting old God led them to write the Gospels. So that we may for all generations may have the story of Christ's atonement for the man.

Toto

There is no claim anywhere that Mark was an eyewitness, and his gospel is the basis of Matthew and Luke's. Luke does not claim to be an eyewitness. If Matthew was an eyewitness, why did he have to crib so much from Mark, who was not?

Why didn't God do a better job of preserving a consistent story? Why didn't God inspire a secular Roman historian to at least mention Jesus' crucifixion and put a firm date on it, so Christians didn't have to forge so many documents?

Really, your claims are quite baseless.

Kosh

You forgot the part about how the Jews have a special gene that makes them able to transmit oral tradition with no embellishment, modification, or loss of details, unlike the rest of is unchosen heathens.

Tell you what, please write for me a detailed account of an incident from your childhood that can be verified against historical records. We'll see how you do!