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Raf

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Everything posted by Raf

  1. You got two out of three actors. The third is throwing you off. I never said bald.
  2. There are letters known as III and IV Corinthians. They are so obviously forgeries that, to my understanding, no one argues otherwise.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Vincent Antonelli Gil Buckman Lucky Day C.D. Bales Navin Johnson
  6. Name the Actor Orin Scrivello George Banks Jonas Nightengale
  7. 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).
  8. 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.
  9. Clearly anyone who believes in plenary verbal inspiration is biased. You can tell because the evidence is to the contrary and the people arguing in favor of that position have a vested interest in it.
  10. Herman Munster was supposed to be a DUH hint, but I think it was glossed over
  11. Not a lot of roles for women in this movie, but one of the brothel employees won an Oscar for her performance. Um, performance as an actress.
  12. "What a dangerous precedent. What if there more heroes like him? What if courage and imagination became everyday mortal qualities? What will become of us?" "We would no longer be needed. But, for the moment, there is sufficient cowardice, sloth and mendacity down there on Earth to last forever."
  13. Steve, your posts sound like you disagree with points you're not making because you actually don't agree with them. ;)
  14. Does this character even HAVE a name? And when did Cumberbatch play him?
  15. So he provides a link to a conservative Christian site. Unbelievable. Aesops Fables are god-beathed by the standard you're proposing here. Not literally true, but useful and meaningful, even if the authorship is in question.
  16. Actually, Steve, you've got my position backwards. It's not that scholars who agree with me are unbiased and those who disagree are biased. It's the other way around: I take bias into account when assessing whether to trust a scholar on a particular subject. That is, I agree with scholars who are not connected to a vested interest in whatever conclusions they draw. Thus, when 90 percent of climate scientists say global warming has significant man-made causes, while 90 percent of scientists who work for ExxonMobil say human activity has nothing to do with climate change, I am inclined to trust those scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome. Conservative Christian scholars have a vested interest in certain positions, and the authorship of Luke appears to be one of them. I do not trust their judgment on this issue, not because they're Chtistian, but because the evidence shouts against it from the rooftops. So I have repeatedly cited evidence in my explanations about Luke. You, on the other hand, have repeatedly cited conservative Christian scholars. Feel free, but I have made a case for their bias that has nothing to do with whether they agree with me. I agree with those scholars who do not have a vested interest in the answer. Among those scholars, the consensus is that Luke did not write Luke, just like the consensus among scientists who do not work for fossil fuel companies is that human activity contributes to global warming, just like the consensus among doctors who don't work for Phillip Morris is that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. In every other field, you take bias into account when assessing claims and conclusions. Somehow, when the subject is the Bible, that flies out the window. Here's the key: scholars who don't believe Luke wrote Luke lose absolutely nothing I'd they're wtong. Those who DO believe Luke wrote Luke have as lot riding on that conclusion, because so much of the reliability of the gospel is supposedly tied to it. What do I lose if Luke wrote Luke? Nothing. He's still woefully unreliable as a historian. What do you lose if he didn't? A crucial claim to historical accuracy. Tell me, who is more likely to allow bias to affect judgment here?
  17. There are a couple of verses that come close. If you take that particular verse from Corinthians you have to concede that it's only talking about the things Paul is writing in that particular section of that letter (elsewhere in the SAME letter he FLAT OUT TELLS US) that he's offering his opinion and not a commandment of the Lord. There's the verse that talks about holy men of God speaking as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, but that's not a blanket claim about scripture (and, alas, it's another forgery, a letter claiming to be written by Peter, though Peter didn't write it, dictate it, sign off on it, approve it, endorse it or read it). So God-breathed is in a forged letter, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy ghost is in a forged letter, and, oh, "rightly-dividing the word of truth"? Yeah, that too.
  18. I have a hypothesis about that. But before I get to that... Steve, I don't think we're clear yet on why I moved this thread here from Questioning Faith. From the "About this forum" thread on Questioning Faith: I think you can see that this thread does not fit that description (not necessarily anyway). Anyway, you never complained about it, but I wanted to make it a little more clear than I have. In any event: Protestant Christianity started with an exaltation of the Bible over church tradition. Never mind that we don't even HAVE a Bible if not for tradition. The early Protestant churches distinguished themselves from the Catholic Church by placing their doctrinal emphasis on scripture over tradition, and they distinguished themselves from each other by claiming to adhere more closely to scripture than the other guys. Take away the inerrancy of scripture, and it's just a bunch of people wrangling over the words of men. Wierwille asked "why division," answering that it's because of a wrong dividing of The Word. But that's not the case at all. We have division in the church precisely because the doctrine of inerrancy, the refusal to admit these gospels and letters and histories contradict each other worse than the DC Multiverse (yes, I'm exaggerating). Inerrancy breeds inflexibility. If the Bible is always right, and it says what I think it does here, then I'm right, no matter what you think it says somewhere else. Without inerrancy, we can say, "hey, Paul seems to disagree with James. Fascinating. What can we learn from each of them?" WITH inerrancy, we can't stand the thought of Paul disagreeing with James, so we force them to agree with each other. (Yes, I recognize the irony of ME using this example. What can I say? Time has passed). And if I'm right, then YOU ARE WRONG. GET OUT OF MY CHURCH BEFORE YOU POISON EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING WITH YOUR HERESY. I lose my claim to be right if you can be right too. Anyway, that's my thought on Protestant Christianity's vested interest in the inerrancy of scripture. Just a hypothesis.
  19. No No. Closer to sword and sorcery than cop flick, but I've never heard this movie described that way.
  20. The genre is crime. One of the plot devices, a brothel with a particular set of offerings, was actually modeled after a real brothel. But before you insult one of their offerings, it would be wise to make sure she's not really who she claims to be.
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