Posted on 04/10/2006 11:15:15 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
A media company that produced a best-selling documentary asserting that Jesus Christ never existed today launches its "War on Easter," encouraging volunteer atheists to plant copies of the film "The God Who Wasn't There" in churches across the United States.
Dubbing the effort "Operation Easter Sanity," Brian Flemming, a self-described "former Christian fundamentalist" and president of Beyond Belief Media, hopes to covertly place 666 copies of the documentary in churches by Easter Sunday, April 16. The number 666 is the biblical mark of "The Beast," which also is the name of another film by Flemming set for a 06-06-06 release.
"People go to churches to hide from the truth," Flemming said in a statement. "At no time is this more apparent than Easter, when Christians get together to convince each other that a man died, stayed dead three days, rose from the dead and then flew into the air above the clouds.
"Our nonviolent campaign sends the message that nowhere in the country is safe from the truth. Wherever Christian leaders are indoctrinating children with 2,000-year-old fairy tales, the truth may just find its way there."
Continued the former Christian: "Our 'War on Easter' is of course completely without violence of any kind. Christians believe that beating a man to a pulp and nailing him to a cross somehow solves all the world's problems. Beyond Belief Media does not."
"The God Who Wasn't There" is currently No. 5 on Amazon.com's list of best-selling documentaries.
Fleming claims to have planted copies of the DVD at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles Sunday morning.
"I put the DVDs in my right inside jacket pocket," he explained on the War on Easter website. "It was a gorgeous Palm Sunday. The kind of day that makes you want to ride on a donkey and get hit with palm fronds.
"As soon as the Mass was over, I got to work hiding DVDs and flyers in hymnals and the like."
Fleming posted a photo of Cardinal Roger Mahony and himself allegedly taken after the Mass.
Responded "Eric" on the site: "Why do you feel the need to spread hate? Just because you are miserable doesnt give you the right to lash out. Listen, you need some professional help. You remind me of Hitler and what he was trying to do. Are you proud of that?"
Another poster encouraged Flemming: "That is just awesome. Someday people will wake up, and I hope your crusade helps to do just that."
. . . He would immediately be flogged in the public square and then forced to undergo "sensitivity training."
Once again, you are drawing conclusions from facts not in evidence.
Nah, we'll just go to church. Gridlock causing demonsrations are for lefties.
Really? When was the last beheading ordered by a Christian minister?
My post was in reply to a claim the guy gave Islam a pass. The posted quote said nothing of the sort.
You paraphrased the author of the film as he made the assertion that Moslems and Christians are doing about the same thing. All I did was point out the idiocy of such a claim.
Well, I'm not a chr*stian or a defender of e*ster, and I think that people who believe in the resurrection of J*sus but who insist that the "old testament" is mythology are hypocrites who deserve a dose of their own medicine, but I'd like to point out that in the absence of a Creator G-d "truth" has no moral authority or significance whatsoever and this idiot has no business "crusading for the truth" or for any other cause.
Perhaps, but he's much more hypocritical, since in the absence of a Creator (to arbitrarily distinguish right from wrong and good from evil) his beliefs don't justify a "crusade for the truth" or any sort of crusade for any cause whatsoever. Kinda like you and your buddies basing your spartan lifelong crusade for "free enterprise" on the absolute ultimate meaninglessness of everything.
Dang--just typing that phrase makes me wanna go out and march for social justice!
But do you spend a great deal of time arguing about his existence? There seems to be a difference here.
No one over the age of five believes in Santa Claus. However, at least 98 percent of the population believes in some kind of deity (athiests make up something less than 2 percent of the population). Arguing against the existence of God does not indicate a hatred of the Almighty (which would be wierd -- you can't hate something you don't believe in). It could instead be seen as a reaction to the in-your-face proselytizing practiced by some of the more aggressive evangelical types. Hell, being Catholic I've often found myself mocking the "are-you-saved" crowd, especially when they're attempting to "save my soul."
BTW, God is not the arbiter of right or wrong, as theologians and philosophers have been pointing out for millennia. If someone said God told him to slaughter all the inhabitants of your town, would you consider him right simply because of his claims?
And yet so many do!
It could instead be seen as a reaction to the in-your-face proselytizing practiced by some of the more aggressive evangelical types. Hell, being Catholic I've often found myself mocking the "are-you-saved" crowd, especially when they're attempting to "save my soul."
My apologies for assuming you were an atheist.
In that case best wishes to the man for highlighting the hypocrisy of people who believe a dead man rose from the grave after three days but who ridicule people who don't understand that the Creation of the world was the result of an overarching natural process. They deserve it.
At least the "in your face" types are consistent. And would you even be Catholic if some missionary in the dear dim past had not been in someone's face?
Methinks you mistake contempt for Christians with a hatred of God. Many Christians do seem to equate themselves with the Almighty, and easily construe hatred of them as hatred of Him. The two are not synonymous, however.
And would you even be Catholic if some missionary in the dear dim past had not been in someone's face?
The honest truth is, probably not; the bonds of tradition are incredibly powerful and resistant even to the blade of reason...
Then why all the redneck-bashing? If Jews were once "rednecks" (when they invaded Canaan and exterminated its inhabitants) and Catholics were once "rednecks" (during the crusades, etc.), and moslems were once (or perhaps still are) rednecks, why are American Fundamentalist Protestants (the white ones, at any rate) singled out as uniquely prideful, imperialistic, bigoted, annoying people? Who knows, perhaps one day rednecks will be a cosmopolitan, intellectual people condemning some new religion for being "simplistic" in its approach to truth.
BTW, sounds to me like you can't quite make your mind up whether you are a Catholic or an atheist. Until you can resolve this internal contradiction, a little humility (not a trait for which atheists, Catholics, or dragons are noted) would not do you any harm.
The notion that the existence of God is a matter of belief and not of fact is the heresy of Fideism and is essentially a Kantian and not a Catholic notion.
Therefore, to follow the logic of the Magisterium, those who deny the existence of God either have an impaired faculty of reason (are insane or developmentally compromised in some way) or deny the manifest truth out of hatred for either God or His moral law.
And Junior, if your Catholic forebears date back to before the 1500s and are not Italian, their Catholicism is most likely due to an "in-your-face" kind of witness, given what we know of the original Christian missionaries sent by the Church to Northern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, etc.
Come on now.
And, regardless of my particular spiritual situation, it is not for you, or anyone else here, to recommend humility to me; the implication of your comment being that only those not Protestants should practice that trait.
Sorry. I get carried away sometimes, and in recent weeks I seem to have said many things that have been hurtful to you. For that I am sorry. I will add in my defense that non-literalist Catholics are indeed very prideful, ironically while claiming (with a straight face) that accepting the words of the Bible at face value is a prideful imposition of one's personal opinion.
As for Junior (whose Catholicism has heretofore been invisible, as he only appears on threads to defend evolution), he has admitted that he is being irrational because he cannot rid himself of certain habits of thought despite their being contrary to "reason." That being the case, what profit is there to argue with him? How do you even point out to someone that his (or her) moral/ethical beliefs (for which he/she constantly crusades) are irrational when removed from a Theonomic basis when that same person has already admitted that he is irrational and contradictory in his thinking?
What I have realized is that what appears as Atheist is realy Satanic or some some branch of Marxist.
Those who are legit Atheist seem to live and let live.
But organizations such as the American Atheist group and the UCLU have an agenda
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