lying for Jesus

[xpastor]

No, I did name Drich in the opening line, and as far as I am concerned it was fair comment on an earlier post of his and far milder than many of the comments directed at him.

Drich had previously cited a Christian prayer attributed to Jefferson, and Minimalist pointed out that the attribution has no validity. I did not say Drich was lying for Jesus. I'm sorry if this was unclear or taken the wrong way. However, Drich was doing what I later commented on in the OP, uncritically circulating a lie for Jesus.

[Drich]

No, I did name Drich in the opening line, and as far as I am concerned it was fair comment on an earlier post of his and far milder than many of the comments directed at him.

Drich had previously cited a Christian prayer attributed to Jefferson, and Minimalist pointed out that the attribution has no validity. I did not say Drich was lying for Jesus. I'm sorry if this was unclear or taken the wrong way. However, Drich was doing what I later commented on in the OP, uncritically circulating a lie for Jesus.

When I quoted Jefferson I included a source for the quote. did you personally take that into consideration before you decided to call me out and try to make an example of me? Did you do your due diligence or were you uncritically circulating a lie for yourself because mini's pomp and pageantry really tickled your fancy? Do you really think he is who he pretends to be? Truthfully he seldom quotes anything besides articles containing conjecture and speculation that supports his personal world view. Which I will admit coincides with your own, but where is the critical thinking there? I quoted a historical source, that has no stake in atheism/theism at all. This society is only concerned with preserving all things Jefferson. Including his faith from people like you and mini who would pretend he was not a man of faith.

Since I was dragged into this calling out thread despite my efforts to stay away it's my turn.
.... But I think I'll pass. You know what you did.

[Jackalope]

Personally, I enjoy lying for Cthulhu.

Sweeeeeeeet.

[xpastor]

When I quoted Jefferson I included a source for the quote. did you personally take that into consideration before you decided to call me out and try to make an example of me? Did you do your due diligence or were you uncritically circulating a lie for yourself because mini's pomp and pageantry really tickled your fancy? Do you really think he is who he pretends to be? Truthfully he seldom quotes anything besides articles containing conjecture and speculation that supports his personal world view. Which I will admit coincides with your own, but where is the critical thinking there? I quoted a historical source, that has no stake in atheism/theism at all. This society is only concerned with preserving all things Jefferson. Including his faith from people like you and mini who would pretend he was not a man of faith.

Since I was dragged into this calling out thread despite my efforts to stay away it's my turn.
.... But I think I'll pass. You know what you did.

Drich, you gave two links for the Jefferson prayer.

The first one is found on the website for the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which exhorts visitors to "Become a Praytriot Member."

The second one is on a website called THENEXTRIGHT, and it explicitly states , "The goal of this post is to dispell those false notions and to firmly re-establish Jefferson as a Christian. "

In what universe are these "historical sources" which have "no stake in atheism/theism at all"?

My mistake was to assume once again that you might know a tiny bit about history. Sorry, about that, Min. I've learned my lesson now.

Do you remember,Drich, when I called you on it for naming Voltaire as your favorite atheist? I pointed out that Voltaire was not an atheist but a deist.

Get it through your head. With few exceptions skeptics in the 18th century were deists (or Unitarians) but not atheists. And most modern atheists know this. You could pile up hundreds of quotations in which Jefferson professed a belief in God, and it would not change my understanding of him at all.

On Religious Beliefs of the Founding Fathers Jefferson is quoted to this effect:

Thomas Jefferson, third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:"I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian." He referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac" and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."

Jefferson considered Jesus a great moral teacher, but he believed that right from the earliest days his teachings had been corrupted with doctrines about his divinity and his sacrificial death.

I guess you are blissfully unaware of Jefferson's Bible:

The Jefferson Bible, or The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as it is formally titled, was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the latter years of his life by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson's condensed composition is especially notable for its exclusion of all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels which contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages indicating Jesus was divine

This Wikipedia article contains a link to an online version of the complete Jefferson Bible.

I haven't checked lately, but when I was a pastor in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, we would have withheld the name of Christian from someone who denied the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of the atonement and the physical resurrection of Jesus, even if it was a nice Unitarian who thought Jesus was a great moral teacher.

[EvolutionKills]

Personally, I enjoy lying for Cthulhu.

Sweeeeeeeet.

Wait a minute, you don't look like Cthulhu...


You look like Eddie.

[Jackalope]

Sweeeeeeeet.

Wait a minute, you don't look like Cthulhu...


You look like Eddie.

You think?

[Minimalist]

No, I did name Drich in the opening line, and as far as I am concerned it was fair comment on an earlier post of his and far milder than many of the comments directed at him.

Drich had previously cited a Christian prayer attributed to Jefferson, and Minimalist pointed out that the attribution has no validity. I did not say Drich was lying for Jesus. I'm sorry if this was unclear or taken the wrong way. However, Drich was doing what I later commented on in the OP, uncritically circulating a lie for Jesus.

When I quoted Jefferson I included a source for the quote. did you personally take that into consideration before you decided to call me out and try to make an example of me? Did you do your due diligence or were you uncritically circulating a lie for yourself because mini's pomp and pageantry really tickled your fancy? Do you really think he is who he pretends to be? Truthfully he seldom quotes anything besides articles containing conjecture and speculation that supports his personal world view. Which I will admit coincides with your own, but where is the critical thinking there? I quoted a historical source, that has no stake in atheism/theism at all. This society is only concerned with preserving all things Jefferson. Including his faith from people like you and mini who would pretend he was not a man of faith.

Since I was dragged into this calling out thread despite my efforts to stay away it's my turn.
.... But I think I'll pass. You know what you did.

X-P is innocent but I do recall informing you that you were far too gullible and would believe any piece of shit that someone puts out which seems to back up your preconceived notions. When you cite a source and that source is some useless xtian bullshit artist do not be surprised when you get called to account for it.

I doubt your sincerity.

In fact, I think you are a useless xtian bullshit artist, too. Just not one of the better ones.

[EvolutionKills]

Wait a minute, you don't look like Cthulhu...


You look like Eddie.

You think?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you look like an Eddie.



Or maybe even a Ralph or a Steve, but Cthulhu? I'm just not seeing it...


And Herbert agrees with me.

[orogenicman]

yeah... I know it's not completely in the spirit of the thread, but... it sorta is too...

There are simply no words...



I can't EVEN send this to anyone. Damn.

[xpastor]

For the sake of completeness I should mention two books, both by Bart D. Ehrman, which address this topic of "lying for Jesus" but which I did not use.

Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics

Ehrman's focus is different than mine. You might say that I have been looking at lies directed largely outside the Christian community, presumably in the interests of evangelism, e.g. telling fictions about the conversion of a prominent atheist or going right back to the gospels claiming that Jesus was born of a virgin. Ehrman looks at lies told within the Christian community, specifically literary forgeries, spurious claims of authorship by an authoritative figure.

In the first book Ehrman is concerned specifically with material which made it into the canon of the New Testament. Only 7 or 8 books of the NT are regarded as being produced by the author whose name they bear. That would be 7 of the 13 epistles attributed to Paul and possibly Revelation, whose author makes no claim except that his name is John.

In the second book Ehrman reviews the forgeries in the New Testament (pseudepigrapha to use the polite scholarly word), but he goes much farther and looks at forgeries attributed to prominent Christian figures such as Tertullian, Origen, Augustine. It would appear that the different schools of Christian thought lied as readily as our modern politicians.