Yet Another Movie That Might Change Your Life ... or At Least Make You Think

Great Debates
161

Incorrect. I, at least, have consistently asked you to explain how your assertions, and missed “prophecy,” fit the actual Scriptural description of prophecy and prophets (both true and false prophets, mind you). Ben, IMHO, has done no more than that either.

It truly amazes me that you have so little respect for the Scriptures as to call what they say about you an insult.

Please see my remark earlier in this thread about the physician and healing.

A. Ben and I are not cohorts. He is an atheist and I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Earlier, Ben told you his opinion of my church. There is no agenda. On the other hand, it’s quite obvious that yours is no different than any of the other “flaming fundies” who’ve visited this board to “set them heathens straight” and then been utterly stunned by the lack of acquiescence to your “divine mission.”

B. The only reason it seems that way to you is because, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION (words which would behoove you very well to start using!), you want to see it that way.

Then kindly commence following pldennison’s advice to you some time agol

Ben did not attack you.

My money’s on the real reason is that, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, he just knows the Scriptures, and their application, better than you do.

We have not attacked you.

{Snipped the completey and absolutely totally irrelevant aside about Mr. T in some movie.}

Just so’s you know for later, Ben and I were both sincere. But that does not mean we’re cohorts.

Evidently not.

Just one? Pardon me for a moment.

No, there’s something known as contradiction happening there. Now I happen to think that the teachings contained in the Scriptures are what’s important; however, the “flaming fundies” who arrive here seem to me to think the literal inerrancy of a contradictory literal reading is the most important. Which of us, then, has turned the book into an idol?

Chapter and verse, kindly?

Fercryingoutloud! There’s no maybe about it. You want to start it, start it! I’d do it for you, but my bet is that if I did, you wouldn’t post in it. Note that I’m not claiming to be a prophet.

I’ll go ahead and consider this a partial apology. Here’s some handy advice for you to either take or not take: think twice, then post once.

Interesting thing about this issue is that you thought I’m an atheist when you made that comment about how atheists think, so I’d have to say your conclusions were, yet again, incorrect.

And yet, I’m not on the “pro-Atheist side.”

Why is it so hard for you to say your assertion was incorrect? It’s not the end of the world, and it does no harm to whatever cause you have. On the other hand, continuing to assert as fact a disproven assertion does harm your credibility.

Not another prophecy?!

So you’re just a tad over 20 years old? What’s the Book say about how to treat your elders?

There are three distinct concepts which you might want to bone up on:

  1. Think is fact,

  2. Know is fact,

&

  1. Accept as belief.

They are, and should be, completely different things.

Apology accepted.

162

**

If I might try to stave off the inevitable objection from FoG…

FoG has indeed given verses which he believes show that NT prophets are “100% different” from OT prophets, and you have shown how those verses don’t hold up. If you ask him for chapter and verse, he’ll just complain that he’s already given it to you.

I, for one, would like to see FoG answer Monty’s objections. Unfortunately, he has decided to brand Monty as “rude” and hurl false accusations at him in order to give himself an excuse to ignore Monty’s arguments.

**

FWIW, I think Cthulhu is telling me that FoG is 34.

-Ben

163

The “pro-Atheist” side thing is my term, and it’s inaccurate because of its brevity. When I say “pro-Atheist,” it was with respect to the discussion about persecution of Christians and persecution of atheists in America. The “pro-Atheist” side was claiming that the atheists are more persecuted/harassed/discriminated against. AFAIK, the only person on the “pro-Christian” side is FriendofGod, which actually speaks volumes, I think.

(Quick Tangent–No, I don’t mean it speaks volumes about an anti-Christian bias on this board; rather, it speaks volumes about the merit of FoG’s claim. Before I sound like I’m backtracking on my earlier post, FoG can claim whatever he wants about “I feel that Christians are more harassed.” Since there’s no statistical evidence on either side, this is at least not entirely invalid. However, I lean the opposite way).

cough Er, where was I? Oh yeah. The “pro-Atheist” side is an unfortunate moniker. Please feel free to read it as “The side which feels that Christians have life in this country easy when compared to the harassment that atheists undergo.” Note, this side does not necessarily mean that you’re an atheist. I would also offer my unfounded opinion (why the hell not?) that the Mormons are more discriminated against than any other branch of Christianity, even the “Televangelism” genre of Christianity. Hell, whenever I’m in conversation with a group of my friends, an intelligent group of people, the word “Mormon” is inevitably and quickly followed by the word “polygamy.”

FriendofGod,
Well, my pseudo-third-party take on the exchanges between you and Ben&Monty is that neither side is “innocent,” and neither side is “guilty.” You claim that they’re ignoring some of the things that you post, and maybe they are. They claim that you’re ignoring some of the things that they post, and maybe you are. (I’d actually encourage to drop by Ben’s Pit Thread; he’s got some good quotes, and he’s being civil). As far as calling you a “liar,” I think that most of this has been from miscommunication… but neither side wishes to admit that. Ditto with the “false prophet” bit (but Ben does specifically draw attention to the relevant miscommunication in his Pit Thread).

Heh, Mr. T cracks me up, but it’s his persona that cracks me up. I don’t think he intentionally tries to be funny; I honestly think that he takes himself seriously, or at least more seriously than he should.

I don’t know if I’m going to see Judgement. I seem to recall you saying that it’s not really anything earth-shatteringly new in the way of apologetics. As such, I’ve more than likely heard it before. Also, you say that the movie does a good job at looking at both sides of the issues. It seems to me that a 90 minute movie is a poor forum to really look at any issue in depth. This is just my suspicion, but I’d wager that an issue is raised by the Evil Anti-God people, the God team retorts with some platitude, and the Evil Anti-God people relent. That sort of straw-man treatment of the issues does more to piss me off than educate or entertain me. Still, I haven’t ruled it out; it just has to get in line.

Also, it’s partially (almost entirely?) my fault for crossing the threads with the persecution vs. media portrayal issues. Still, I think they’re inextricably linked. If a subgroup is widely harassed, the media will reflect this.

Ummm… ok, I think that covers it.
Quix

164

For the third time – but doubtless not the last time – it’s called a REALITY TUNNEL.

It’s a set of a priori assumptions that affect the way you perceive the world. It’s a filter that sits between unvarnished reality and your interpretation of it. You are convinced beyond all reason and rationality that Christians are portrayed negatively in the media, and therefore your perception of the world is altered to fit.

I’d go on, but I’d be repeating myself, and it’s become abundantly clear that it would be a waste of effort.

165

Think of it this way: FoG made a prophecy, and then denied being a “prophet.” When I called him a liar (assuming as I did that “prophet” meant what the dictionary says it means,) he angrily demanded that I be more careful about accusing him of lying, and to keep in mind the possibility that I might have misunderstood him. In context, this is a weird claim, since it boils down to saying that no matter how clear the evidence of lying might have been, I should have assumed that it could evaporate once I ran FoG’s words through a Charismatic Decoder Ring which I do not possess.

At the time that he was making these demands, FoG was accusing me of dishonesty, and his accusations stemmed from the fact that he had read my post so carelessly that he completely misread it. When I pointed out his mistake, he stuck to his claim, saying that while technically my facts were right, my argument had created a misleading impression. (As I have pointed out already, my argument actually did no such thing.) Although he may have made the accusation out of carelessness, he still hasn’t retracted it even though he now knows it to be false. He is, therefore, a liar at worst, and more than a little hypocritical at best.

As for “false prophet,” it’s not a question of miscommunication at all. Monty, at least, feels that the Bible is plain: according to Scripture, FoG is a false prophet. FoG has presented his rationale for why he is not a false prophet, and while I understand his viewpoint, I still think that if Christianity were true, FoG would be a false prophet. (However, TTBOMK I haven’t argued this issue with him since the nature of the miscommunication became clear.)

-Ben

166

Re: Pat Robertson
There is a verse that says “By their fruits you shall know them.”
Meaning that how they act, is how you know if they are Christ-like or not.
I’ve read many quotes of Pat’s and they don’t sound very Christian.

167

[slight hijack]

The Executive Director of the Christian Coalition is also a model Christian. She says that at the C.C. “we view any act of discrimination as morally reprehensible.”

Umm… guess not.

[/hijack]

168

TTBOMK?

169

JAB:

IANAROA* but I would hazard the guess that it stands for “To The Best Of My Knowledge”

[sub]* … Repository of Acronyms[/sub]

170

Thanks, I was wondering too.

Tank tops break out mom’s kitchen? Try to beat off my koala? :confused:

171

TDM TLAs.

172

Well, from where I sit, it might have been miscommunication in the beginning, but there’s no excuse for continuing with the negative labels after I clearly and explicitly stated where I was coming from as clearly as I possibly could. The fact that they still are hurtling their accusatory words my way even in these most recent responses speaks volumes about their sincerity, or lack thereof.

Think of it this way: would you choose to have a polite conversation with someone who starts out, “Hey such-and-so, BOY are you an awful husband to your wife! Let’s get together and chat sometime! :D” It’s kind of hard to treat someone with respect that isn’t treating you with any.

Ah, I would hate this movie if it went that way. In fact, that’s what I love about it … it’s very different. It’s a multi-layered film and things aren’t always as they seem. At least in the courtroom. As I said the Mr T subplot is quite weak by comparison. But the prosecutor in the case is so darned convincing in her convictions it’s chilling. Her character really believes what she’s saying. The defense attorney is the real story in this movie, because he is not all that he seems.

Cervaise said:

Okay let me put it as precisely as I can: I have seen what to me is very clear evidence for 20-25+ years that there is a bias against Christians in the media. That is a fact. I cannot and will not say ‘I have not seen it’ because it’s not the truth. End of story.

173

Round Two. This is not a fact, and you really should know it. Care to guess what I’d call something that’s not a fact?

174

I bet this movie FoG is raving about isn’t even as good as Dogma.

175

Monty (I think it was Monty, apologies if I misID’d) replied to FoG: *I am very Bible literate,

Evidently not. *

I think from the context that what FoG meant was “Bible literalist”, since he then went on to talk about issues of apparent contradiction between different biblical verses.

FoG later said: Okay let me put it as precisely as I can: I have seen what to me is very clear evidence for 20-25+ years that there is a bias against Christians in the media. That is a fact.

Folks, I don’t mean to sound unduly triumphant here, but I think that my years of training in reading medieval Sanskrit and Arabic mathematical manuscripts copied by successive generations of uninformed and/or semiliterate scribes have finally enabled me to figure out what FoG is talking about on this one. :slight_smile: Remember that FoG often uses the term “Christian” in a very selective way that excludes a lot of the people who go to pray to Jesus on Sundays in buildings with crosses on the top, whom most of the rest of us would naively identify as Christian: e.g., Christians who are homosexual, non-homosexual Christians who believe that homosexuals can be Christians, Christians who don’t believe that atheists are going to hell, Christians who don’t believe that Jews are going to hell, Christians who don’t believe in hell, etc. etc. etc. I suggest that in this case, FoG is using the word “Christian” to refer specifically to his fellow Bible-literalist, strongly conservative Christians, AKA “fundamentalist” Christians.

To support my reading of this passage, :wink: I adduce FoG’s repeated remarks from the previous page of this thread to the effect that he saw lots of discussions in the '70s and '80s in “Christian and secular” media about whether “Christians should get actively involved in politics.” Now to anybody who uses the term “Christian” simply to refer to, well, Christians, you know, the vast majority of the population who subscribe to a religious doctrine including the proposition that Jesus is God, this remark sounds as loopy as a crocheted bedspread. For pity’s sake, when pretty much every President we’ve had since the eighteenth century has been a churchgoing Protestant (one, famously, Catholic) who invoked the name of God freely in speeches and ceremonies, HOW can anyone think that it wasn’t till the seventies and eighties that Christians were getting “actively involved in politics”? But if you define “Christian” to mean “FoG-Christian”, it makes perfect sense: the era he’s talking about is exactly the period in which heavily-politicized conservative/fundamentalist Christian lobbies such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition were emerging as a political force. (The example he gives of a “Christian media” source, Charisma magazine, makes it even clearer that “Christian” = “FoG-Christian”.)

Given that definition, it becomes abundantly obvious why FoG doesn’t think that the overwhelming evidence in favor of a pro-Christian media bias that people here have pointed out in any way contradicts his conviction of an anti-Christian media bias: we’re not talking about the same Christians! Newspaper “Religion” sections stuffed full of church activities and magazine articles on issues related to Christianity and ministers and Christmas celebrations on TV shows simply don’t count in his evaluation of bias, because they’re not presented from a FoG-Christian perspective. When he’s talking about media bias and Christianity, he’s talking specifically about how the media present FoG-Christians, and he feels that “it is a fact” that that bias is negative.

And you know what? I think he’s right. And we’re not the only ones who think so: sane and acute critics such as Molly Ivins have previously noted that the stereotype of the scary and vicious fundamentalist is very active in the media. Not all FoG-Christians are like—well, like FoG (or at least the impression that FoG’s managed to give of himself to nearly all of us here), but you wouldn’t know that from the typical media presentation of “fundies”. Many seriously pious Bible-literalist types are kind and loving people who don’t go around parading their salvific success and subtly patronizing or threatening others who believe differently. But since they’re comparatively quiet and undramatic, they’re not good copy, and the media attention goes to their more obtrusive brethren. I think that’s a shame, and yes, I think it is comparable to the unfairness of the negative media presentations of atheists and Pagans, although I doubt that the bias is really worse in the former case.

And of course, it doesn’t change the fact that Christians as a whole—meaning not just FoG-Christians, but the more than 85% of the population that identify themselves as some variety of Christians—have the media and cultural bias solidly in their favor: Christianity is the spiritual cultural norm of the USA, and everything from the movies to municipal regulations reflects that fact in many ways. Why FoG has not already cleared up the confusion in this argument by stating explicitly how he delimits the definition of “Christian”, I do not know: my personal guess is that he fears that if pushed to the wall, he’d have to acknowledge that he considers Pat Robertson a priori more “Christian” than, say, Polycarp, and this audience would just give up on him entirely.

176

I think Kimstu said it all. Can I go home now?

177

Very nice post, and I mostly agree. But – and I don’t want to sound smug here – I pointed out exactly the above weeks ago. I observed that the majority of environmentalists are nice politically active people who pick up trash on beaches and such, but what shows up on the news are the tree-spiking extremists who chain themselves to railroad tracks and such. Ditto professional sports players; we don’t read about the nice guys who volunteer in hospitals and stuff, but we hear endlessly about the one guy who arranged to have his pregnant girlfriend killed. I made exactly the same observation as you, that the extremists get the copy. I did this as part of the reality-tunnel thesis I introduced at about the same time. Impression made on FoG? As far as I can tell, nada.

Just pointing out some recent history as context, that’s all.

178

Kimstu,

THAT was the most helpful post I’ve seen in this entire debate. I wouldn’t necessarily have used the exact same terms (certainly not ‘FoG-Christian’) but I 100% understand what you mean by it.

I think you have indeed unearthed the root of the misunderstanding we are having. Thank you! And actually, you have given me another rather large insight into how those on this board think. Apparently, the definition of “Christian” on this board is a very broad definition.

By the way you were correct about this:

Yeah I actually cringed when I re-read my quote. It sounds like I’m saying I’m an incredibly brilliant scholar or something, which I will not claim :).
Kimstu, this may help with understanding more of where I’m coming from: I would agree that America is a very very religious country. Again, most people believe in God. Most people belong to some religion, and the vast majority of those people belong to some Christian denomination. I simply don’t equate “religious” with “Christian”. I have known many people (primarily when I was younger) who go to church almost as a ‘religious fix’ but they have no personal relationship with God. They are very religious but are not Christian.

The simplest definition of a Christian that I know of is simply someone that has a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Someone can go to church their entire life (fundamentalist or not) and not have a personal relationship with God. Someone can never darken the doors of a church once in their life, yet have a vibrant relationship with God.

Christians can believe many varied things about topics. Christians can be totally wrong in certain beliefs and still be Christians. But I will say this: with a very small number of exceptions (that I can count on one hand), every believer I’ve ever known believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. I believe those who dont believe this are incorrect, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t Christians. But my point is: my experience has been that those who have a relationship with God also believe in the inerrancy of the Bible … and those are people who today are labeled ‘fundamentalists’ (or at least I suppose so).

So therefore, when I refer to ‘Christian’, I obviously mean that they have a relationship with God, but I also assume people who take the Bible literally and believe it 100%, simply because I’ve rarely seen believers who didn’t believe that!

So hopefully that helps a little, or even a lot.

As for the media bias issue, the fact that we have been portrayed so negatively over the decades makes it even more fascinating for me when exceptions do come up – like the last season of L A Law when they had an intelligent, pretty and smart born again Christian character (now that I think about it, they did refer to her as a ‘fundamentalist’).

I have seen a few ER episodes that made my jaw drop, because they portrayed a Christian character so fairly. I’m not used to seeing that. One that comes to mind was a character who only appered for about 5 minutes about two years ago. Jeanie was treating this man, and when she took off his shirt to treat a wound there was a swastika tattoed on his chest. The man said, “I’m sorry you had to see that. It stands as a stark reminder of my past, but now I’ve given my life to Jesus Christ. He’s made me a brand new person”. Jeanie talks to him for a few moments and the story moves on, but I loved that he wasn’t a wacko or a nutcase … just a guy with a messed up past who came to Christ and who got fixed up by God, just like real life!

Another surprising and welcome move in the news end of things was ABC actually hiring a born again Christian as a “Religion Correspondent” a couple of years ago! And she’s good too, I’ve seen her several times. As far as I know, the other networks don’t even have this category.

Anyway, Kimstu thanks for the clarity you have brought to the discussion! It helped a lot.

Cervaise, just as a brief aside, I did take note of your comment about extremists getting all the press and I agree up to a point. For example, sure if there’s an abortion protest, the news would rather show the pro-life jerk and pro-choice jerk shouting at each other than the hundreds of peaceful demonstrators. But I’ve seen things much more blatant than this that are just outright bias. Just as an example of media bias in general, I am remembering right now several news specials in the 80s on the abortion issue (NOT to start an abortion debate) that were so obviously skewed toward the prochoice side it was a joke. I’m a big believer in putting all the arguments out there and letting people decide for themselves what they think is right. Anyway, there’s more where that came from but I thought I’d at least briefly address your comment :).

179

I, on the other hand, do not believe that both sides must be given equal consideration in the media. When I see some poor woman trying to enter a family planning center and protesters, holding large signs painted in red and black, are yelling and screaming at her(though they cannot possibly know which of the many services the center is providing her), I do NOT feel that the media should give equal time to let the leaders of the protest state their views. Sometimes both sides are not equal. There is a dangerous and dedicated “Army of God” out there that thinks it’s o.k. to blow up clinics and kill people, and a hundred people for every one of them that say to themselves when it happens “Well, I guess it’s a tragedy, but those aborionists did bring it on themselves…”. Can you point to the pro-choice group that is dedicated to blowing up religious organizations?

The two sides of this debate are not equal, and as far as I’m concerned the media gives far too much time on the news, talk shows, and the radio, to people I think are terrorists and terrorist supporters.

180

So you now admit that you (a) are not the scholar you (apparently) wish us to believe you are, and (b) are not that literate in the Bible and therefore really meant to say that you © believed the Bible was literally inerrant.

Again, I direct your attention to any dictionary, on or offline.

Grand. You now have admitted that your assertion was incorrect. Please cease to assert that it was, and is, correct now that you have admitted it wasn’t.

The Bible says that’s God’s task to determine and not yours. Again, you come across as an incredible bigot when you assert that it’s your task.

The rest snipped because FoG still continues to assert as true that which he just admitted was false!

GOOD GRIEF!