A Friendly Reminder…

via Brian Kelley on G+

The Empire State Building Shooting Victims Who Survived…

Were all shot by the NYPD.

All nine people injured during a dramatic confrontation between police and a gunman outside the Empire State Building were wounded by gunfire from the two officers, police said Saturday, citing ballistics evidence.  The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-clad gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled around and pointed a .45-caliber pistol at them as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.

I don’t fault the cops.  Seriously.  I just mention it to point out that the claim bandied about by the NRA-ians that ‘if someone on the scene of these kinds of shootings had a gun they could stop them from happening’ aren’t being honest.

If such persons were as trained as the NYPD they’d end up shooting a lot more people than the perpetrator ever could…

Related articles

• The Empire State Building Shooting Was Mostly Perpetrated by Cops [Esb Shooting] (gawker.com)
• Gunman kills 1, wounds 8 at Empire State Building (charlotte.news14.com)

The Filth In Kassel Has Been Removed

Das als anstößig kritisierte Werbeplakat für eine Ausstellung sei auf Wunsch des Künstlers von der Außenwand entfernt worden, erklärte am Donnerstagabend der Geschäftsführer der “Caricatura – Galerie für komische Kunst“, Martin Sonntag, in Kassel. Die Zeichnung des Künstlers Mario Lars werde in der Ausstellung aber weiterhin zu sehen sein.

I mentioned this yesterday.  I’m glad protest resulted in the removal from the gallery window of the blasphemous Dreck.  With thanks to Reformiert-Info on FB for the story tip.

Modern Pseudo-Christianity: An Observation

When I hear about pseudo-christian nonsense passed off on the Church as ‘spirituality’ I wish it were the 16th century and I had a pile of wood and a match.

The Telegraph Stoops to Despicable Plagiarism: The Obituary of Marvin Meyer

Mark Goodacre writes

I commented yesterday on the error-laden obituary of Marvin Meyer in The Telegraph.  It turns out that the errors are not the worst of it.  Chunks of the piece have been plagiarized.    I am grateful to Todd in comments for drawing attention to the following points, which I hear illustrate with underlining of the verbatim agreement so that there can be no mistake.

Wikipedia’s article on The Gnostic Gospels begins as follows:

The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of about fifty-two texts supposedly based upon the ancient wisdom teachings of several prophets and spiritual leaders including Jesus, written from the 2nd to the 4th century AD.

The Telegraph obituary copies this as follows:

The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of about 52 texts supposedly based upon theteachings of prophets and spiritual leaders, including Jesus, written from the 2nd to the 4th century AD. 

It is practically verbatim. If the obituary writer is dependent on Wikipedia, it’s not surprising that the piece is riddled with errors.

An article in last year’s New York Post, The new New Testament, by Maureen Callahan, features the following statements:

These writings, 52 in all, date from between 150-300 AD and offer profoundly differing accounts of the life and death of Jesus Christ . . . .

. . . . The Gospel of Philip ridicules the idea of a virgin birth and of Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead and anyone who would believe either. The Apocalypse of Paul also claims that Christ’s rise from the dead was spiritual, not physical. The Gospel of Mary suggests a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene(which served as the basis for “The Da Vinci Code,” Dan Brown’s loopy 2003 bestseller). 

This passage appears to be the basis for the Telegraph’s problematic paragraph I mentioned yesterday:

These writings offer profoundly differing accounts of the life and death of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Philip, for example, ridicules the virgin birth and Christ’s bodily resurrection; The Apocalypse of Paul also claims that Christ’s rise from the dead was spiritual, not physical; The Gospel of Mary suggests a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

This is plagiarism pure and simple, and like many plagiarizing students, the author is copying from someone else because he does not understand the issues him/herself, carrying over the errors from the source piece.

Sickening.  First, using Wikipedia for your news source is pure stupidity.  Just pure stupidity.  But totally lifting entire paragraphs- Telegraph, someone needs to be fired.  In fact, numerous people- from the writer to the editor.  What shamefulness.

Mark has more, read it all.

Related articles

• Sad News: Marvin Meyer Has Died (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)

More Stupid Angry Atheist Antics

This time they’re mad because churches actually had the audacity to feed a high school football team before a game.  Heaven forfend that kids eat!

A prominent atheist organization is calling for an investigation over reports that a high school football coach in Georgia had several local churches provide pre-game meals for the football team.  The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which aims to “protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” recently sent a letter to the superintendent of Walker County Schools requesting that the school board look into the activities of the Ridgeland High School football coach Mark Mariakis.  “Taking public school football teams to church, even for a meal, is unconstitutional,” wrote FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel in the letter. “This program is an egregious violation of the Establishment Clause and must cease immediately.”

How ignorant are these people?  I mean besides disturbingly and profoundly.  What we need in America is a Freedom From Angry Atheists Foundation.  We’ll call it the AFFAF and we’ll raise money and we’ll follow the angry imbeciles around.

Feeding kids isn’t religious instruction.  Though the way kids are these days it would be great if it were.

Rightly does Calvin declare certain persons created for destruction and destined for damnation.

It’s Time to Abandon Use of the Phrase ‘Biblical Christianity’

Chris explains why.

Sins of Omission and Commission: Zwingli’s View

Zwingli, in the aforementioned book, writes

That “sin” is properly used of a wrong committed through negligence or thoughtlessness, I think everybody is aware, such as the Greeks call παράπτωμα ἀπὸ τοῦ πταίειν, the Latin theologians “delictum a deliquendo vel negligendo,” the Hebrews “asham,” like those wrong-doings from which St. John says no man is free, and which Christ bids us atone for by constant prayer, saying, “Forgive us our debts.”

For since they are of daily occurrence, they drive the pious man, like constant goads, to self-debasement and depreciation of his faults.

Or it [that is, the word ‘sin’] is used for the misdeed which any one commits and enters into knowingly and with his eyes open, after mature deliberation and thought, such as the Greeks call ἁμαρτία, i.e, a failing or fault, because, if we may believe Origen, it is done “contra conscientiam,” in conscious opposition to conscience, while the Latins call it “scelus,” “crimen” or “flagitium.” In this category are included highway robbery, homicide, war (voluntary sins these), treason, excessive lust, mercenary judgments, oppression of the innocent, and all this class of monstrous wrongs, such as the sins of David, Ahab and Judas.

For Zwingli, then, sin falls into two categories, unintentional and accidental and intentional and malicious. He’s certainly correct and he does indeed give us something to think about.

Pahl on Epehsians 6:10ff

This is the sort of thing Pahl writes and it’s the reason I’m glad he’s back to blogging after an all too long absence.

Remember Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness? That was an eye-opening book for me. Reading it was an apocalyptic event, pulling away the veil that separates this-world from the otherworld. For months afterward I saw demons in every dark corner and angels behind every inward nudge to pray. I walked around like a Perettian Green Beret, waging “spiritual warfare” by binding demons, tearing down strongholds, and calling on the forces of light to conquer the evil forces in the spiritual realm all around me.

I don’t think that way anymore.

Click on over and see why.  Welcome back, M.P.

Today With Zwingli: Original Sin (?)

Zwingli writes, provocatively,

[W]hat could be said more briefly and plainly than that original sin is not sin but disease, and that the children of Christians are not condemned to eternal punishment on account of that disease?  On the other hand, what could be said more feebly or more at variance with the canonical Scriptures than that this disaster was relieved by the water of baptism, while through want thereof it was intensified, and that it was not only a disease but even a crime?

He says so in a Flugschrift from 25 August, 1526 titled ‘Regarding Original Sin‘.  As the editor of the English translation puts it

This pamphlet was in answer to a letter of Rhegius to Zwingli, which has not been discovered thus far.  Rhegius had some doubts as to the soundness of Zwingli’s views regarding original sin. This appears from a letter which he wrote on January 14, 1526, to Ambrose Blaurer of Constance, in which he expressed himself rather vigorously: “I am sorry Zwingli was not at Baden [i. e., the Baden Disputation, May 21–June 18, 1526]. He would have defeated all the Papists once for all, except in the matter of original sin, which he seems to treat in a very unsound fashion. In regard to the Lord’s Supper, though he might be criticized, he certainly could not have been defeated by those counterfeit theologians.” Nor was his mind altogether set at rest by this treatise, for he expresses in a letter of September 28, 1526 (Zwingli’s Werke, VIII, 726–8) the fear that Zwingli might be accused of Origenism. Zwingli tried to remove his doubts by a letter dated October 16, 1526 (Werke, VIII, 737–9).]

It’s a fascinating work.  Really thought provoking even now.