To hear the Gospel according to David Plotz is like taking a dusty corner of the Sisteen Chapel around to the masses declaring, "See, how can anything beautiful come from this!!!"

Look Dave, I get that you have a very dim view of God's love and mercy - perhaps you've had a very harsh experience with authority in your own life, so it's easy to project that onto God....but don't choose to conveniently overlook all the sin of those inhabiting the earth God chose to destroy: rampant murder, incest, rape, theivery, continuously without ceasing to increase. Any loving parent would put an end to it all and start over.

I appreciate your perspective on keeping Christ in Christian movie making very much. I only hope you see beyond the blood and gore to realize love can be real enough to go all the way for you and me.

Don Wahl

Tacoma

If you had a dozen kids and ten of them committed horrendous crimes, you would shoot all 12 kids, kill all the animals living on your property, exterminate the vegetation and ruin all the buildings just so you could go out and start a new and "better" family?

Yep, that's sounds like the way to go all right.

Plus, if I recall correctly, a number of babies and children died -- too young to have started 'sinning'.

Plus I'm still not quite clear about what terrible sins the dogs and the deer and the elephants and the birds had been committing.....maybe nw can explain!

Maybe they're not as strong as their parents, but if they were they'd probably rampage through society. There's also the question of how exactly you'd raise all those children after you eliminated the people who urged them to sin, their parents.

So let's kill them all 'cause they're probably going to be sinners.

Hmmm.

nw316:

To hear the Gospel according to David Plotz is like taking a dusty corner of the Sisteen Chapel around to the masses declaring, "See, how can anything beautiful come from this!!!"......

Don, I guess you probably have not followed Plotz "Blogging the Bible" series on Slate -- in which he recently concluded a blog of the entire Tanakh (ie the "real" Bible -- excluding those late pagan additions otherwise known as the NT).

In any case, Plotz has clearly spent considerable time considering and discussing the role of G_d as depicted through the Old Testament, and is hardly picking on an isolated "dusty corner"

So, loving parents drown puppies . . . ?

"Plus, if I recall correctly, a number of babies and children died -- too young to have started 'sinning'.

Plus I'm still not quite clear about what terrible sins the dogs and the deer and the elephants and the birds had been committing.....maybe nw can explain!"

You've forgotten that it was God's expressed policy to punish sinners even to the third and fourth generations. Grandpa was a sodomite? You're doomed.

He is also a self-proclaimed lapsed Jew, not a scholar at all, just an ordinary person who wanted to read and discuss it from a layman's point of view so he doesn't have a monopoly on the interpretation of the OT. And your characterization of the NT as pagan is so incredibly insulting, close-minded and ignorant that I can't even believe someone like this is bothering to read an article in the Faith Based section of this webmag. You do yourself and whatever religion you are an incredible disservice. When you represent your religion this way, do you think it increases tolerance and understanding or do you think it might just add to all the hate and bitterness and fighting in the world? I would love to hear your explanation of "pagan" when referencing Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. That's not being sarcastic, I would actually enjoy hearing your definition.

Don't they kill dogs who attack children, other dogs,etc.?

"And your characterization of the NT as pagan is so incredibly insulting, close-minded and ignorant that I can't even believe someone like this is bothering to read an article in the Faith Based section of this webmag."

It is more ignorant and hubris to not acknowledge that it is so.

The christ myth is a variation on a myth that was around long before Christ. There are many variations. many of them share the same birthday as christ albeit being centuries older. Attis, Mithra, Dionysus are just three such. The trinity has no basis in the old testament. The early Christian church fought over the whether god was trinary or unary. Trinary won out.

Christianity likes to bill itself as a monotheism. It's not.

Lots of Christian churches, not just the RCC, have saints to whom people pray. That's downright pantheistic.

There are plenty of books documenting this stuff. in the 19th century there was a whole branch of theology trying to prove that the myths were divine foreshadowings of Christ. However, as in most cases, the simpler explanation is likely the true one.

If you're interested do the research. Then you will believe the results. Then perhaps, you will reconsider your ignorant and insulting remarks.

BrittonH:

He is also a self-proclaimed lapsed Jew, not a scholar at all, just an ordinary person who wanted to read and discuss it from a layman's point of view so he doesn't have a monopoly on the interpretation of the OT. And your characterization of the NT as pagan is so incredibly insulting, close-minded and ignorant that I can't even believe someone like this is bothering to read an article in the Faith Based section of this webmag. You do yourself and whatever religion you are an incredible disservice. When you represent your religion this way, do you think it increases tolerance and understanding or do you think it might just add to all the hate and bitterness and fighting in the world? I would love to hear your explanation of "pagan" when referencing Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. That's not being sarcastic, I would actually enjoy hearing your definition.

If Christianity is proven to be "pagan" because the human heart hungered for something like it before Christ appeared, is modern science also proven to be "magic" because earlier people practiced alchemy and astrology--or is modern science a more accurate understanding of the way things are?

And have any of you people who insist that children left to themselves would have no problems heard of the book "The Lord of the Flies"?

......but I still don't get why the elephants and the baby seals and the chichadees had to die......

And your characterization of the NT as pagan is so incredibly insulting, close-minded and ignorant

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Am mildly curious as to why 'pagan' should be a demeaning word. 'Heathen', I get -- its why every religion calls followers of every other religion 'heathen'. But what on earth is wrong with 'pagan' -- Christianity would be a nicer religion if it revelled in its connections with all the pagan religions rather than set itself up as 'holier-and-superiorer-than-th­ou'.....