Seems Mel Gibson’s gore soaked homage to the last hours of Christ’s life was a little too much for a 57-year-old Kansas woman.
ClickOnDetroit.com - ENTERTAINMENT - Woman Dies After Collapsing At ‘Passion’ Screening
The publication said Scott collapsed during the last 20 minutes of the film and was transported to the hospital after two physicians tried to revive her. The paper said it was unclear whether the woman died at the theater or the hospital.
Wichita’s KAKE-TV—which was filing a report on local reactions to the film—reported that Scott collapsed during the film’s bloody crucifixion scene.
Three things will come of this: 1) it’ll push the film to higher profits, 2) someone will start selling t-shirts that say “I survived Mel Gibson’s snuff film starring Jesus,” and 3) Mel Gibson and anyone remotely connected to the movie will be sued by this woman’s estate for wrongful death.
Hmm. That t-shirt idea ain’t too bad…
Randall, Randall, Randall…
First, show me where on this site any of us have said that only Christians are judgmental and bigoted. You won’t find it as it hasn’t been said. Those traits aren’t exclusive to any belief system or lack thereof. Secondly, just because our idiotic poster says “Jesus sux” doesn’t imply he’s an atheist. He could be any of a number of belief systems including Christian. Had it occurred to you he may just be a young kid trying to yank your chain?
Wow, you went from two very good and rational opening sentences right into complete nonsense in about four seconds. That has to be a speed record.
Anyone who has truly read and considered the Bible already knows what Christ went through. If anything, it’s a sad statement about the average Christian that it takes an ultra-violent movie to drive home to them what Christ supposedly went through. I say “supposedly” as there’s not much proof outside of the Bible that Jesus ever existed. I won’t bother to comment on the rest of what you said about the movie as it’s just more parroting of what the message of Christianity supposedly is that we’ve heard before. Yeah, we know.
No, I judge Christians based on how Christians act. I don’t believe God exists so there’s not much to judge there. That said, I do judge what each religion says God is like based on their description of him (and have yet to find one worthy of worship), but simply judging an idea that doesn’t exist isn’t the same as judging something that does. You description makes Christianity sound like the ultimate hippy commune.
I don’t know if the movie is anti-semitic or not as I haven’t seen it. I have provided a link to an article previously that does talk about how it could be perceived as anti-semitic. Clearly there are people who disagree with you whom you’ve not heard their complaints. I suggest you seek out the link further up the page.
Sorry, there is very little in the way of outside references to Jesus and the authenticity of those references is largely up for debate. You go on to bring up Cornelius Tacitus in a later reply as proof, but the reference’s authenticity is questionable at best. For one thing, it can’t even get Pilate’s title right. He was a prefect, not a procurator and he refers to Jesus as “Christos” not “Chrestus” as you claim. Most of the scholars who have studied Tacitus feel he was merely repeating what he had been told by Christians as opposed to working from Roman records (which WOULD provide a supporting outside reference) for the simple reason that Roman records wouldn’t refer to Jesus by his Christian title, but by his given name. There’s little this reference provides in the way of support for Jesus’ existence other than Tacitus had heard of him from someone.
As for Thallus, it was Julius Africanus in the third century who made reference to a now lost writing by the Pagan Thallus which supposedly talks about the Earthquake and the darkness accompanying Jesus’ death, but as the work no longer exists it can’t be checked to see if it actually says what Julius Africanus claims.
It’s interesting that you include Phlegon in the same paragraph as these two are often lumped together by scholars looking into this issue. Richard Carrier has an interesting article titled Thallus: An Analysis which covers both of these writers and I’m going to quote some of what he says on Phlegon. It’s lengthy, but worth it:
Most scholars have assumed that Africanus is here quoting Phlegon, too, as a witness to the darkness story--although we know for a fact that Phlegon wrote in the 140’s AD, and was fond of fantastic stories, so it would not be surprising to find him borrowing this one from Christian literature. But Martin Routh noticed some telling details: the sentence mentioning Phlegon is grammatically and logically out of place.
In Greek, new sentences are marked by certain special words, usually left untranslated, such as MEN or DE or OUN, etc. The Phlegon sentence is not marked. That is like not leaving a period at the end of the preceding sentence. Also, Africanus has just finished attacking Thallus’ idea of a solar eclipse, yet here cites Phlegon favorably, who calls it the same exact thing. Moreover, the flow of thought is broken by this sentence. Africanus has begun a rhetorical argument with the phrase “let it be so,” which is otherwise interrupted by interjecting a historical note about Phlegon. Remove that sentence (and the added “Clearly this is our eclipse!") and we have a continuous stream of thought that makes more sense. The Phlegon sentence, for all of these reasons, does not belong here.
In fact, the phrase “Clearly this is our eclipse” (literally “clearly this is it") is a telltale sign of an interlinear note by some other scribe. It appears that some copyist was copying or reading this passage in either Africanus or Syncellus and remembered the Phlegon connection, writing it as a note to the side or in between the lines. A later copyist then mistook this marginal note as text to be re-inserted, since, not having erasers, scribes who forgot a line would add it in the margins or between the lines (if they noticed the error at all). This was very common in the transmission of ancient and medieval books. There was no standard rule for distinguishing between added notes and re-inserted text. Both were marked and written the same way, leading to many marginal notes being read as re-inserted text and many lines of re-inserted text being mistook for marginal notes. Without further data, we might say that Syncellus mistook the marginal note of a previous owner of his copy of Africanus, or made the note himself while a later copier of Syncellus mistook it as text, or that the note and the mistake happened entirely before or after the involvement of Syncellus. But since Syncellus immediately follows the Africanus quote with a passage from Eusebius which quotes Phlegon correctly, it is almost certainly the case that the Phlegon passage here was inserted after Syncellus. This is further supported by the extent of the insertion’s inaccuracy, which looks more like something that appears in the work of Agapius in the 10th century, or in Michael the Syrian in the 12th century.
This leads us to the most important reason for supposing this line to be an insertion by someone other than Africanus (or Syncellus): Phlegon almost certainly said no such thing. Eusebius quotes Phlegon verbatim (the only one to do so), and what Phlegon actually said is telling--the text is attested in Syncellus in the original Greek, but also in the Latin of Jerome, the Syrian epitome, and the Armenian:
Jesus Christ..underwent his passion in the 18th year of Tiberius [32 AD]. Also at that time in another Greek compendium we find an event recorded in these words: “the sun was eclipsed, Bithynia was struck by an earthquake, and in the city of Nicaea many buildings fell.” All these things happened to occur during the Lord’s passion. In fact, Phlegon, too, a distinguished reckoner of Olympiads, wrote more on these events in his 13th book, saying this: “Now, in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad [32 AD], a great eclipse of the sun occurred at the sixth hour [noon] that excelled every other before it, turning the day into such darkness of night that the stars could be seen in heaven, and the earth moved in Bithynia, toppling many buildings in the city of Nicaea.”
This quotation shows that Phlegon did not mention Jesus in this context at all (he may still have mentioned him in some other obscure context, if we believe Origen). Rather, Phlegon merely recorded a great earthquake in Bithynia, which is on the coast of the Black Sea, more than 500 miles away from Jerusalem--so there is no way this quake would have been felt near the crucifixion--and a magnificent noontime eclipse, whose location is not clear. If the eclipse was also in Bithynia, as the Phlegon quote implies but does not entail, it also could not have been seen in Jerusalem, any more than partially, since the track of a total eclipse spans only 100 miles and runs from west to east (Jerusalem is due south).
It goes into this a little further so if you really want to know then go read it. Not exactly the proof you claim it is and there are other outside references you didn’t mention that do a better job of supporting the idea that Jesus was a historical fact that are still questionable.
You then go on under the assumption that you’ve proven Jesus’ existence to cite the popular C.S. Lewis “trillema” once more which is only valid if Jesus did exist and you haven’t conclusively proven that he has. Regardless, we’ve already covered the trillema on here before including possibilities that it doesn’t cover. I suggest you read through the archives if you want to see what was said as I won’t be repeating that argument yet again here.
No it’s not and you’ve yet to establish that it is. Merely asserting it doesn’t make it so.
Seeing as there’s no such thing as a “scientific accident” I agree with you. This world came about through completely natural processes and clearly it is possible because it’s happened.
None of which proves it couldn’t happen by chance, it only proves how poor a grasp you have of odds making and just how mind bogglingly huge the universe really is. Events where the odds are considered “impossible” happen all the time just on this planet alone. Expand the opportunities to the size of the Universe and the impossible suddenly becomes much less so.
This is such a stupid argument and shows your stunning ignorance of the theory of Evolution. We didn’t come from monkeys, we share a common ancestor with the simian branch of primates. We are one off-shoot of those ancestors as are all primates. Go off and study up before trying to argue Evolution any further as it’s clear you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about already.
You’re again making assertions with nothing to back it up. Why do you think it’s not possible for all life to have Evolved from a common ancestor?
See, you’re again demonstrating your immense ignorance of the theory which makes you hardly one to criticize it. Go study up on it and all your questions will be answered. And try picking something other than a book written by a Creationist.
There is plenty of evidence in support of much of the theory of Evolution. The fact that you’re ignorant of that evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, just that you haven’t bothered to educate yourself in it. There is so much evidence in support of Evolution that it’s the foundation of modern day Biology and has spawned a number of new fields of science that would not be possible if Evolution wasn’t a reality. Fields that have produced some very important breakthroughs in medicine. Stop making claims about things you obviously know nothing about.
You’ve only provided three questionable citations for the possible existence of Jesus (and not even the better ones), hardly overwhelming proof that he did. As such your claim that you have proved he did exist is incorrect. If you can manage to prove Jesus did exist then we can move on to the argument of whether or not he was as Christians claim he was (son of God) and THEN we can possibly move on to the question of does he disprove Evolution, but you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you before we get to that point.
I assert he never was anything. He’s a myth. And with that we’re right back to square one.