The “eunuch” thing is probably a reference to Matthew 19:12, which says:
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
“Eunuch” is generally interpreted as a figurative way to denote celibacy rather than a literal reference to self-castration. Note that Jesus does not say that HE is one of those eunuchs, though.
No. tolerance means you respect other people’s right to believe and practice whatever they want but it doesn’t mean you have to respect the beliefs themselves. No one has a problem saying that Xenu is a fiction or that African tribal myths are fictions. Much of the Bible IS fiction and quite demonstrably so. Tolerance does not mean that anyone has to ignore giant elephants in the room.
I don’t want to marry up you, jjimm. I roll my eyes at the eunuch bumper sticker because… I assume the stickerer in fact shares my religion, but I consider the particular assertion that Jesus was a eunuch to be unwarranted, unsupported by Christian tradition, and undocumented in the Gospels - I don’t toss out his entire belief system or giggle at his holy book as a work of fiction deserving to be mentioned as such in the same breath as a known 21st-century work of fiction. Heck, I have my doubts with the Book of Mormon, but the same manners I’m talking about naturally prevent me from calling it “a work of fiction” in the same fashion. So…
Bad luck on the whole calling-me-a-hypocrite thing, jjimm.
Gotcha; I hadn’t even thought of it that way :smack:
Sorta highjacky, but a co-worker just handed me a book called “A Quest for Answers: The Da Vinci Code”. It’s apparently one of the followup books that debunks all the theories in TDVC. It’s pretty thin, and so will probably be a quick read. The thing is, I’m not particularly interested in it. Is there a polite way to say so, or should I just slog through it so I can say I read it and give an acceptable amount of feedback when I return it to him?
It’s all good. Diogenes has now officially pwn3d my sorry ass and proved logically that I should not be offended by having my pet work of fiction called a work of fiction, so plainly there was nothing for me to be upset about in the first place. Ergo, there was nothing for you even to have thought of in any way. Catch ya on the flip (or in the pub).
Not your the-older-the-book-the-better argument (on preview, Diogenes said it better), the words “basic tolerance for other people’s beliefs”. If by “beliefs” you mean the old book, then fair enough, but if you just mean beliefs, then I’m afraid it doesn’t look to me that you have acquitted yourself.
I’m not saying you don’t have a right to be offended or upset by it (your emotional reactions are your own and you don’t have to justify them), I’m saying that religious tolerance does not bind those who don’t share your beliefs from being able to call things as they see them. We have the same right to express our opinions of the Bible as you do.
I would also add that the simple act of declaring a belief that one specific doctrine is true is a de facto declaration that someone else’s is not. If a person claims, for instance, that “Jesus is Lord,” they are claiming that Judaism is wrong. It isn’t possible to articulate any beliefs at all without necessarily stating at least implicitly that someone else is wrong.
Nope-they’re incontinent from the castration (bad aim).
I crack me up.
as to the thread: this insistence that Jesus was chaste (rather extreme to be made a eunuch–I must ask just what my church has to say about this one) is very Victorian, if not Puritan. :rolleyes: These people have no sense of humor.
In my opinion, it doesn’t, but he is a fairly devout Christian and what started out as a nice discussion about the book turned into a theological discussion in which I said with sincere respect that I am not a Christian and am thereby not impacted by it one way or the other. I guess I feel like I won’t be letting him have his say if I don’t listen to the other side. Normally if someone offered to share a book about something I’m not interested in, I’d politely decline, but since we’d already discussed TDVC, he knows I have at least some interest in it, and I don’t want him to think only the “church bashing heresy” is interesting to me.
If you have already read and enjoyed TDVC then, by all means, read more from a different perspective. I haven’t read the book yet and really don’t have much interest in it. Fiction presented as history turns me off for some reason. My comment about the debunking literature comes from the fact that I could never waste time reading more about something that I really could not care less about in the first place.
Great Og, that would have been the best comeback ever, if I had debated the guy face to face instead of passing his truck in traffic.
For the record. the subject statement was a well done application of stick-on letters, not a bumpersticker. At least it wasn’t spray paint on bare plywood…
So, can I start using Christs Balls! as an exclamation?
If that is Eve off her A-game, bring on the good stuff. I thought it was great.
As far as the whole Da Vinci crap. Just the preachin’ from the converted about it is enough to turn me off.
It’s fiction
It’s fiction based on a book I hold no regard or interest in
People who believe said book have discussion groups about The Da Vinci Code
If a work of fiction can cause such an uproar in the “believers” then I think they doth protest too much.
There are so many more interesting creation stories than the whole Adam and Eve bit. Go with the Yanomamo, who believe they came from the blood of the moon. Now that is poetic. How about giant turtles holding up the world? How about a big bang that created everything. Neat stuff out there. The Da Vinci Code? Yeah, not so much.
My favourite creation myth - of a god anyway - is the birth of Aphrodite, where (according to the people in Cyprus at the place it allegedly happened) Zeus got his cock chopped off by his jealous wife just as he was shagging someone else, and it fell into the sea, where the blood, sperm and seawater mixed together to make the goddess.
