Anyone one seen The Christ,

[Boota]

A very bad day indeed. LOL.

In the movie there definitely is a drinkable amount of blood. I've been to several crime scenes and I have never seen anyone walk away with that much of their blood on the ground and still pouring out of them. Large, gaping wounds, like the one that exposes his ribcage, bleed profusely. It really is a splatter film.

The thing I think is strange is that the same people who love this movie are some of the same ones who decry violence in the media. The Passion of the Christ is far bloodier and more violent than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (Either version.) Don't get me wrong, I LOVE violent movies. Horror films have done it for me since I was a kid. I just hate hypocrisy and I'm seeing a lot of that. I read a review of the movie that praised the "power and brutality" of it, written by the same guy who ripped on Saving Private Ryan for being unnecessarily bloody.

 

[Pure]

Boota, I thought you might like this, if you haven't seen it:

FRANK RICH
Mel Gibson Forgives Us for His Sins

Published: March 7, 2004, NY TIMES


Thank God — I think. Mel Gibson has granted me absolution for my sins. As "The Passion of the Christ" approached the $100 million mark, the star appeared on "The Tonight Show," where Jay Leno asked if he would forgive me. "Absolutely," he responded, adding that his dispute with me was "not personal." Then he waxed philosophical: "You try to perform an act of love even for those who persecute you, and I think that's the message of the film."

Thus we see the gospel according to Mel. If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him — all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines "on a stick" and he wants to kill your dog — such was his fatwa against me in September — not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. "The Passion" is far more in love with putting Jesus' intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.

With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson's film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the money shots. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who on "Hardball" called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."

If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Mr. Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own — in America anyway.

 

[Boota]

Thanks Pure. I think that is pretty much on the money.

 

[robtheblack]

I just want to say i dont plan on seeing it, I dont plan on buying the movie when it comes out on dvd, nor do I beelive what even happend. I know that might seem bad but lately so many people have said, "oh have you seen this great movie", they have done this movie to death, mind the pun, there must be half a dozen christ movies.

Yes my middle name may be Chris but I dont hold any love for my name sake.

yes you may flame me now

 

[KenJames]

I just want to say i dont plan on seeing it, I dont plan on buying the movie when it comes out on dvd, nor do I beelive what even happend. I know that might seem bad but lately so many people have said, "oh have you seen this great movie", they have done this movie to death, mind the pun, there must be half a dozen christ movies.

Yes my middle name may be Chris but I dont hold any love for my name sake.

yes you may flame me now

Let he or she who is without sin cast the first flame.

I think your points are right on. Greater authorities than I have demonstrated that it didn't happen the way Mel depicts it.

Welcome to AH.

 

[Pure]

agape

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13873-2004Feb27.html

Last August, Gibson said about Rich's piece: "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. . . . I want to kill his dog."

New Mel:

"You try to perform an act of love even for those who persecute you,

The genius of the old Christianity was to thrive on persecution; the savvy of the new is to get rich on it.

 

[English Lady]

*side note* EL has not fallen off the face of the planet and will resume normal posting volume after the weekend

 

[KarenAM]

Gibson said he wanted to kill him? And his dog? That's just plain psycho!

He so belongs in Karen hell... where he'll get all the spankings he desires and deserves...

 

[Pure]

Several reliable websites report Mel's intemperate remarks, as does Rich in the opening of his column. Since there's no lawsuit, I assume they're accurate, but Mel may be give to a bit of Christian macho excess in language.

J.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Pure,

That is the funniest thing I've read all day!

How can you deny the obvious? You must be on of those godless liberals who just don't understand the nature of evil.

Sweet.

boota,


Next you'll be saying you don't think Satan is out and about and very busy working against the re-election of Bush and for the installation of more godless supreme court justices who want queers to have licensed, conjugal bumfucks on the steps of the whitehouse.

 

[smutpen]

I hesitate to resurrect this potentially contentious thread
All things considered, it perhaps were better dead


But, I owe some explications and clarifications.

Firstly, I did a poor job expressing myself if I gave the impression that I'm not sensitive to the need for balance between the rational and nonrational sides of human thought. As a songwriter, that complex, fluid interplay is something that is often much on my mind. But each has its place. Faith and emotion may give answers or provide insight where reason fails. But when faith or emotion lead to outright contradiction against reason, they are wrong.

For instance, if we ask whether the leglessness of snakes is a result of natural evolution, or whether it is some sort of divine punishment for the pushing of magical fruits, the correct answer is easy to determine. If we likewise ask whether the excessive pain suffered by human females in childbirth is a result of this same sort of vindictive punishment, or rather a simple consequence of our oversized brains and heads, again the correct answer is easy to identify.

And when faith decrees that it is a good thing to burn, torture, and mutilate other human beings because they do not believe our scriptures, or because they interpret scripture differently than we, that faith goes against reason and shows itself unstable as a foundation for ethics.

Regarding your question, EL, as to why so many people seem to need God, think of the environment. This is a predominantly Christian culture; even those of us not born Christian feel the pressure to accept the Christian worldview from early in our lives.

No doubt when Confucianism was the dominant philosophy of China, its promoters marveled at the need people felt for the social structure and discipline which only Confucianism could provide. Being disciples of the dominant cultural belief system renders Christians unconsciously overbearing and arrogant. I hasten to add that you, English Lady, seem less likely than most to exhibit such attitudes, certainly far less so than some others in this polylogue. But I think you are repeating a chestnut which appealed to you and which has its origins in just such a stance.


As Mark Twain put it:

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

And while I'm at it, I can't resist presenting another Twain quote about faith:

Faith is believing what you know ain't so.

Now on to free will.

Free will is, for me, the central question of philosophy. Without it we are puppets; if choice is illusory, so is meaning.

It is obvious that in the presence of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, free will is impossible. If God knew every detail in advance (omniscience), and could have changed his creation in ways large or small to alter that outcome (omnipotence), then free will could only be a sham, a mockery.

Indeed, predestination is a central matter of faith for Calvinists and many related groups, and also is clearly laid out in the New Testament numerous times. To choose just a couple:

Eph 1:4-5
He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

2 Th. 2:11-12

God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned.

That's also an interesting one for those who claim God does not lie, BTW.
Perhaps clearest of all:

Rom. 9:11-22

For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. .... For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? ... Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.

That's a long one, but the meaning is clear. God decided whom he would save and damn. Then it goes on to recognize the obvious question; how can God then blame us for his own choices? The answer, typically, is, "How dare you question God? Does the clay question the potter?"

The clay does not question the potter, but the potter does not claim omnipotence or omniscience, or moral perfection. And clay does not suffer pain, neither physical nor emotional, neither from the potter nor from the other vessels in the workshop.

And if you use these questions to subject the proposed faith in a biblical God to rational, critical analysis, you cannot begin with the assumption that God really is the Creator, so that answer is no answer at all.

This, by the way, is why I strongly disagree with the oft-repeated exhortation to ask for God's spirit to help you read the Bible properly. Before you put any faith in the Bible, or the God it describes, you should try to read it at least once with no preconceptions about God's existence or nature, or the truth or falsehood of the writing itself. You should read it with your critical thinking facilities intact and functioning. I believe that anyone who does so will be incapable of worshiping this primitive, brutal, bloodthirsty, baby-murdering God of storm and war. I believe anyone who does so with any reasonable foundation of scientific understanding will be unable to believe even in the existence of such a being.

But I digress. So, free will is not compatible with an omniscient and omnipotent Creator. It is not scripturally supported by the New Testament, although the Old Testament implies that we are free to choose. Then again, the old testament covers long periods of changing beliefs. In many cases the omnipotence and omniscience of God are not supported by the OT.

So when apologists try to make free will the answer to the Problem of Evil, they are using one insoluble defect in the Christian worldview against another, as if they might somehow offset each other. They do not.

Consider this. Jesus did not sin, correct? Yet he had free will, did he not? If God willed that all should be saved, and none perish or suffer damnation, why did he not make all of us with the same kind of will that Jesus had; the same strength and purity? Or is that something He could only achieve by impregnating a human female (a patently absurd notion if there ever was one, it seems to me); how then is He omnipotent?

Food for thought, perhaps, for those who are willing to think about such things...

 

[Pure]

(bump) as long as Mel's making tens of millions per week on this 'authentic' material, it should be discussed. anyone know of which Christian or charitable projects he's giving 80% to? (sarcasm alert). BJU?

 

[sweetnpetite]

I'm going to print this out so that I can really read it, but I agree with quite a bit here (esp the 'new translation')

On the subject of the new translation, I doubt that god's 'intent' (for 'story purposes' whether you consider it fact or fiction is beside the point for what I'm trying to say) was to say "you will begin to die," or anything else considered in modern day to be more 'clear' simply because, *if god had been that clear about what would happen, the serpant wouldn't have had the neccesary 'opening' to 'decieve' them.* (ps. the quotes aren't to disparage anyones beliefs, they are simply to make a nutral statement adressed both to believers and unbelievers about the *story* I hope that makes sence)

so anyway, Eve ate and she saw that she did not die, so she offered some to her husband. If God had told her "the day you eat will be the day you become mortal, and you will eventually die" then she wouldn't have taken the fact that she was still breathing to be proof that the food was safe.

Also, God did *not* tell them that there eyes would be open, that they would know good from evil. He kept that fact from them, the serpant is the one who told them that, and what the serpent said, did in fact happen. By failing to share that important point, God left an opening for the serpant to tempt them, and as god, *he knew full well that he did so*

Genises seems to be telling us that man was ment to be "innocent" ie, good and dumb, and that knowlege is bad. This doesnt' make sence to me and only serves in my mind to give the leaders (political/religios being one and the same in those times) absolute control. to learn, to question, to think is wrong. just do as i tell you, because god speaks to me.

In fact, no matter how good a point an intelligent person makes, the church tells you that they are sent by the devil to confuse you, and to cause doubt. The ultimate verse to pull out in order to 'win' any logic based discussion is 'lean not on your own understanding'

The great flaw in 'faith based thinking' is that christians only apply it to christianity. when in fact, defining faith as belief in something without proof could lead to believing anything. If your faith is based on the 'word of god' -the bible, then it would be not exactly faith according to that definition, because you are useing the bible as your proof. I can't consider this 'faith' to be any kind of virtue.

I do have faith in certain things, faith that things happen for a reason, faith that things generally turn out for the best, faith in the interconnectedness of all things. But blind faith that precludes all rational thought, or knowlege or understanding, is not to me faith, it's delusion.

I will not jump off my roof, believeing that if my 'faith' is strong enough, I will float down instead of fall. I think that the term 'faith' has been overused, misused and abused.

So I am frustrated with any religion that teaches 'all you need to do is believe' and then adds, 'but you must believe *this* and nothing else' Blind adherance to one set of beliefs while blocking out anything else.

Yes, the shepard takes good care of his sheep... before he leads them to the slaughter. The difference is that sheep don't have the *capacity* to think, to question, to predict a logical conclusion- but we do.

...and the fun continues.

This so-called Living Bible is intriguing. What we have there is evidence that some devout believers recognized that the Bible sure makes it look as if God lied. He said they would die; clearly Adam and Eve understood him to mean die, as in cease living. Curious that they should understand the concept at all, if death came into the world through the sin which they had not yet committed...

These devout believers were so tired of being in the position of making rather weaselly-sounding excuses about spiritual death, or some such, that they decided the Bible could use a little improvement. They felt justified in putting words in God's mouth, because of their faith, which is based on the very document they were altering.

No doubt they found many opportunities for such "improvements." I wonder what they did to sanitize God's clear instructions to murder women and children, such as in Dt. 20:13 -- Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes.


Anyway...

rgraham666 and shereads,

You both said words about atheism that I want to contest, somewhat. Only somewhat, because there are many atheists who base their beliefs simply on rejection; of God, of religion, whatever. That is just a reflection of the faith of believers.

shereads, I wanted to point out something about your example which I think speaks to one difference between atheism and belief. You found an example of horrendous evil perpetrated in the name of theistic belief. Sadly, such examples abound in history books and newspapers. How many instances can you think of where such atrocities have been done in the name of unbelief?

Some would argue that Communist Russia and China committed some, and it may be true. But it can't begin to compare. Then again, they were not guided by rational, humanistic ethics, but by yet another irrational ideology which simply replaced the all-powerful, unquestionable God with the all-powerful, unquestionable State. Feh.

And as to crimes like the one you cited -- personal rather than political -- atheism provides no support or motivation for them.

Now as to this idea that atheism must be as faith-based as religion. The existence of God is not a privileged question; it is as susceptible to reason as any other, if we choose to apply reason to it.

The trickiest thing about approaching the question is that we need to know what we mean by the word. To me the central focus of my disbelief is the anthropomorphism of God, and the notion of the supernatural.

Einstein and Spinoza believed in a sort of God as Nature, but because this God was impersonal -- no personality, no will or intent -- and in no way violated the laws of physics, they were atheists for all practical purposes.

It was Einstein who best expressed the rational foundation of disbelief in a supernatural God. I won't quote it, because it's long. But essentially it says that more we understand nature, the more obvious it becomes that the supernatural is an invention of the human imagination. Compared to the reality we have begun to understand, that imagined world appears feeble, shallow, and childishly wishful.

The universe is one harmonious whole, utterly interconnected and interdependent. What we call laws of nature are not really laws, such that they may be broken by someone with sufficient power. They are descriptions of underlying structure, and all occurrences, all events, all patterns are reliant on the consistency of that structure.

Although atheists make up only about 10% of the general population, 60% of working scientists are atheists. If you limit the sample to those recognized by their peers as the elite (members of the National Academy of Sciences), the percentage of atheists rises to over 90% -- as reported in Nature, 1998.

This does not mean, as many atheists smugly claim, that the smarter you are, the less likely you are to believe. There are plenty of brilliant believers. But it does mean that those who have spent their lives studying how the universe fits together and functions are the least likely to believe in a Creator of that universe.

Biologists are the least likely to believe. Biologists recognize, to pick an easy one, that the notion of a male without any female counterpart is utterly absurd. (Adam before Eve...yeah, right.) Biologists also tend to recognize that consciousness, sentience, even will and purpose, make perfect sense within the context of the evolution of living things, and no sense whatsoever outside that context. Consciousness without language makes no sense, and language without a social environment makes no sense.

Physicists are most attuned to that interdependence I referred to, and to the awesome beauty, power and elegance of nature in action. They also understand that the old dualist worldview, of spirit as separate and independent of matter and energy, has been intellectually bankrupt for centuries.

That worldview, the Aristotelian (it's older than him, but he codified it clearly) Great Chain of Being, had base, inanimate matter at the bottom, matter-spirit mixes like animals and people in the middle, and God -- pure spirit -- at the top. When that worldview collapsed, God had no place and no support.

Yet people continue to believe. No scientist would ever propose a dualistic explanation for any real event or phenomenon, but most people continue to believe in that worldview, primarily because it allows them to believe theat when they die, they won't really be dead, because the spirit part of them will live on.

OK, enough for now. EL, I will address the Free Will thing, when I can.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

How did Adam and Eve even know the meaning of the word "die" anyhow?

That goes along with the question of who God was talking to when he said "Let There be Light".

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

How did Adam and Eve even know the meaning of the word "die" anyhow?

Great question, Mab. I only looked into this thread cos your name was here.

If there really was an 'Adam and Eve', i.e., only two humans on the face of the earth at one time, what language did they really speak?

Perdita

 

[sweetnpetite]

Adam's Rib

My take on the idea that the first woman came from the rib of the first man-

First remember that, the first creation story in the bible gives a different order of creation and also seems to say that men and women where created at the same time.

The two stories, contrary to popular belief, were not written at the same time. They were two seperate 'mythologies' (ie, explanations for the reason things were the way they were- not made up stories for literature classes to discuss ) that were peiced together to form a whole.

Anyway, I happen to think that the idea of woman coming from man is rediculous. It makes absolutley no logical sence, other than to denigrate women's status as bringer of life and to show that man should be 'over' her.

I think that ancient men where simply jealous that women had a power, or ability that they didn't have, and perhaps they were angry and scared of the power that there own mothers held over them. The truth is that women have the power to bring forth both a creature like themselves (a female child), but one that is different (a male child) Leaving modern science out of this, one can see how this would be threatening to a male power stucture. Men owed there lives, there being to women- how then could they rule over them, and treat them as property? Somehow they invented the idea that the *first* woman came from the man- therefor the power stucture is:

GOD

MAN

WOMAN

to top it all off, they decided to blame the woman for the 'fall from grace' (being the first to be tempted, and to offer sin to the man)

Traditionally, the earth was seen as feminine, and the sky masculine. God (male) is from Heaven/the heavens, and things of heaven are spiritual, while things of the earth are carnal, or, profane, or mundane. SATAN, was given doman over the earth, thereby makeing everything of the earth (ie, feminine) sinful and unsacred. The goal was no longer to live in harmony with the earth, but to dominate.

to quote the good book, let those who have eyes see.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

If there really was an 'Adam and Eve', i.e., only two humans on the face of the earth at one time, what language did they really speak?

Perdita

Jewish tradition has it that God spoke--and speaks--Hebrew. Kabbalh depends on it.

Tradition also says that the ten commandments were written in red fire upon black fire, an image I've always admired.

---dr.M.

 

[NoJo]

(psst -- can you keep a secret? It's all crap from beginning to end. This is all there is!)

 

[Pure]

And note for Sweet,

Saw Mel on Leno--a tape I guess--and he was being very 'cool' about the whole thing and he forgives his critics. He says the worst thing is 'fabrications'. Some early critics based themselves on a stolen script, which was changed a bit, he says.

It's funny that no critic I've read has said this: there is no one acct of the events surrounding the crucifixion. All the single narrative 'lives' of Christ are, in a sense, fabrications. Often Event A is added to Event B, from two sources, and this is without justification. I.e., John doesn't mention the Virgin Birth. But the VB is taken from Mt and Lk and added to most narratives of Jesus.

Likewise who's present at the cross, differs; the death of Judas differs. The "last words" differ, and the orthdox list is simply composite.

Obviously sometimes this is valid, as when I ask people "What do you remember of meeting Jack Kennedy?" Then I can 'add' the accts together in a bio.

However, if I go second or third hand, "What have you heard about Jack, from those who knew, or knew those who knew?" it's problematic to simply 'add'. Sometimes it will be the same story, but mangled or exaggerated.

Sweet said, relevant to this:
//First remember that, the first creation story in the bible gives a different order of creation and also seems to say that men and women where created at the same time.//

There are two stories (Gen 1 and Gen 2), and they can't be harmonized. One(Gen 2) has "Adam" created first, before animals, for heavens sakes.

If the six days of creation(Gen 1) acct for everything, WHEN is the adam and eve story? On the sixth day? After the seventh day? It can't be in the earlier days.

 

[Pure]

IT'S A VERY POWERFUL FILM

running score: 2

[start]
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian pastor died of an apparent heart attack while watching the Mel Gibson film "The Passion of the Christ," witnesses say.

Jose Geraldo Soares, a 43-year-old Presbyterian pastor, had reserved two movie theaters at a Belo Horizonte shopping mall on Sunday afternoon to see the film with his family and the congregations of two local churches.

But halfway through the movie, Soares' wife noticed that he was no longer awake. A doctor who was also watching the film tended to Soares, but the priest was already dead.

"He was calmly watching the movie next to his wife," said Amauri Costa, a family friend who also attended Soares' funeral on Monday.

Soares is at least the second person to die while watching "The Passion," which opened in Brazil on Friday. Peggy Scott, 56, died of a heart attack on Feb. 25 in Wichita, Kansas while watching film's climactic crucifixion scene.

The film, which was praised by Catholic leaders in Brazil as a faithful depiction of events in the Bible, has been criticized by many for its violent and bloody portrayal of Christ's final hours.

03/23/04 09:49 ET [end]

 

[Boota]

I just saw Dawn of the Dead yesterday, the movie that dethroned The Passion of the Christ. I have to say it was pretty good, but I think the reason it did so well relies on the Christ movie. I think audiences figured if one guy coming back from the dead was cool, then a movie with thousands coming back from the dead has to fucking rock.

 

[Guest]

Boota, that's a brilliant post.

Perdita

 

[Boota]

Thanks Perdita!

Nice new avatar, by the way.

 

[Guest]

Woo woo woo!

Python film to challenge Passion

Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.
The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary.

Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?"

Distributor Rainbow said it hoped the film would "serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel's movie".

The Life of Brian follows a Jewish character from Nazareth who is worshipped as the Messiah then crucified by Romans.

It was condemned as blasphemous before its original release, although Monty Python said it was intended as a spoof on Bible films and intolerance rather than Christianity.

The film could not be completed until former Beatle George Harrison stepped in to finance it after EMI Films withdrew, fearing it was too controversial.

Rainbow president Henry Jaglom said: "We decided this is an important time to re-release this film, to provide some counter-programming to The Passion."

He said the surviving members of the Monty Python comedy team "all agreed this was a good time" to bring back the film and would help promote it.

Mr Jaglom, whose partner John Goldstone produced the original film, said trailers for the comedy would start to appear in cinemas on Good Friday.

BBC

 

[KarenAM]

Romanis eunt domin?

This is perfect! I loved "Life of Brian"!

Remember, always look on the bright side of life...