Raf

Let me know when we're ready to discuss this week's episodes. Not a spoiler: Vandal Savage is the villain of this week's crossover episodes of Flash and Arrow. I wasn't overly tickled, but I did like it. Based on the old Justice League cartoon series (well, not THAT old), I thought Vandal Savage would make one hell of a movie villain for a Justice League movie. The Legends of Tomorrow series ought to be good with him as the main antagonist. ... Anyone see the trailer for Batman v Superman that was just released. I liked it. And DOOMSDAY! Oh MAN! I hope they don't screw that up.

In a movie that included an escort service. Brothel might not be the right word. But prostitute would be. Goodness, how many movies had those three people in it?

"Time can never mend, the .... of a good friend. To the heart and mind Ignorance is kind There's no comfort in the truth Pain is all you'll find."

The fascinating thing about the Trinity, I have always found, is that you cannot explain it, at all, without falling into "heresy." The only thing you can say is its definition, but when you try to work out how this seemingly self-contradictory "relationship" works, every single definition is heretical. That was one reason I never believed it. The other reason is I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, so I never, ever believed it. At one point I tried to just accept it, but by then doubts were on the march. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear to me as a layman looking at church history is the notion that the early church was just as divided on these questions as we are. The first three gospels offer no indication that he's God. The plainest reading of John is that he is God, and we ALL know how we have to contort ourselved to prove John is not saying what he (let's face it) pretty clearly seems to be saying. But even then, John confuses by calling The Father greater than The Son (an assertion that would have had him labeled a heretic if he had written it 200 years later). Paul seems to have no knowledge of a pre-existent Christ ("pre" referring to his birth), unless you want to count Colossians, which many scholars believe was not actually written by Paul. Point is, the early church was as divided on this as we are today, which is probably (I submit) why both sides are so successful at making strong cases in their favor. The problem isn't proving Jesus was born fully human or that Jesus was God. The problem for each side has always been disproving the other side. You can't do it, because the Bible actually makes both cases! I'm not sure when Wierwille jumped ship, but I do think it was before the filming of PFAL. It's in PFAL that he says any word other than "pros" in John 1:1 would cause your entire Bible to fall to pieces. That's an explicitly anti-Trinitarian argument. It's also anti-Johannine and anti-Greek, but c'est la vie. I do think the "God Almighty" reference in PFAL was a slip of the tongue. He was anti-Trinity before that. How long before? I couldn't tell you.

That, that right there, is golden.

A new take on Name that Tune... Provide the lyrics immediately before and immediately after the title as sung in the lyrics. Naturally, don't use songs like "Flashdance," where the title isn't in the song (but if you use "What a feelin," I'm sure no one would mind). Get it? Something before the title. Something after. The title can be represented by three dots [...] or the word TITLE -- whatever makes you more comfortable. I'll start: "Time can never mend the ... of a good friend."

"Give us, us free. Give us, us free. Give us, us free. Give us, us free. Give us, us free."

Back to the Future (I and II)

Pretty sure there were no Tollhouse cookies in Frozen, so no.

Now go back to the clue and name that movie!

"First we'll make snow angels for a two hours, then we'll go ice skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookiedough as fast as we can, and then we'll snuggle."

Addams Family

You have not identified the Iron Man villain.

For the record: TRUCE I will no longer make an issue of the authorship of Luke ON THIS THREAD unless conclusions are drawn from it that are relevant to the thread topic. I'm not conceding the point. But I'm not going to post a qualifier every time you or I say "Luke wrote such and such." To do so would be tedious. For purposes of proceeding with the discussion, I will refer to the author of Luke as "Luke," with no quotation marks or qualifiers. As to "God-breathed," I share Ehrman's doubt that Paul wrote the pastoral epistles, which leads to the inevitable question of whether we even NEED to explore the issue of whether the scripture is "God-breathed" by ANY definition.

A few weeks ago my cousin accused me on Facebook of worshipping Satan. His proof was that I capitalized "Satan." This is cultish behavior: inventing an arbitrary rule and then judging others for failing to adhere to it. This is what we did when we chastised people for saying "Good luck."

You got two out of three actors. The third is throwing you off. I never said bald.

There are letters known as III and IV Corinthians. They are so obviously forgeries that, to my understanding, no one argues otherwise.

And now I've been through good chunks of "Forgery and Counterforgery," which I had no intention of buying until I saw it offered for a fairly reasonable price on Kindle.

One of the stars of the film, relatively unknown at the time, would go on to play Superman's father. Another, better known than the first then, about as well known now, would go on to play Superman's human arch-enemy. A third, fairly well known but not nearly as well known as the first two, would go on to play an Iron Man villain.

Vincent Antonelli Gil Buckman Lucky Day C.D. Bales Navin Johnson

Different character

Name the Actor Orin Scrivello George Banks Jonas Nightengale

No. One of the original plans was to make it an HBO series, but THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. Should have been more clear about that. And no, not District 7 (or any other district).

My interest in this thread is obviously academic, since I reject the concept of anything being God-breathed. I am able to participate because (a) the rules allow it and (b) I'm concerned with the statements of fact implied by the thread title. That is, there ARE errors and contradictions in the Bible. Does that mean it's not God-breathed? My position is pointless. However, IF the Bible is God-breathed, then God-breathed has to mean something. And it has to mean something consistent with the facts. That's where "plenary verbal inspiration" falls short. As I said earlier, I give fundamentalists credit for attaching a testable definition to "God-breathed," but the problem is that the Bible fails that test. It is not without error (Luke and the census provide us with as documentable an error as you're ever going to encounter). It is not without contradiction (again, the Nativity stories in Luke and Matthew cannot both be true; Acts and Galatians cannot both be correct about where Paul went after his conversion, etc). So whatever "God-breathed" means, it does not mean "verbal plenary inspiration." Fine. So what DOES it mean? I have no answer, but whatever answer YOU come up with must fit the facts. I would offer another qualification. The answer you come up with must not only fit the facts, but should probably do so in a way that would be unique to the scriptures. In other words, to say that "God-breathed" means "useful for teaching, reproving, rebuking and instructing in righteousness" would be insufficient UNLESS you are prepared to argue that a written work cannot be useful for those purposes without being God-breathed. I can think of a lot of written works that are useful for teaching, reproving, rebuking and instructing in righteousness, yet are not God-breathed. My suspicion is that you're not going to come up with a useful meaning of "God-breathed" if that's the criteria for a useful meaning. I could be wrong.

The original. WW is up