Holy Goldfish Cracker

“Someday in the future, there will be two warring sects of christianity, those who follow the holy goldfish, and those that follow the grilled cheese with the image of Mary. Many lives will be lost” ~ SuperAjmon

Pesach In 60 Seconds

OK… I missed the start of this by a few days, but:

The holiday of Pesach, or Passover, falls on the Hebrew calendar dates of Nissan 15-22. This year the coinciding dates of our calendar are March 25-April 2.

The first two days of Pesach are no work holidays. The next four days are Chol Hamoed: work is allowed, but with restrictions. Chol Hamoed is followed by another two full holiday days.

Why Is There An Easter Bunny?

The amazingly true story of Jeshua Cottontail, the animal messiah.

The Bible Movie Is Now a Book!

No, you read that right: Mark Burnett and Roma Downey have taken their miniseries one step further and turned it into a novel: The Story of God and All of Us: A Novel Based on the Epic TV Miniseries.

That scream and cracking sound you just heard? That’s the sound of Jim West’s brain breaking:

 

I’m hoping the pitch from Burnett to his publisher went something like this:

The Bible, stories, a book barely alive.
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it , we have the technology.
We have the capability to make the worlds first better Bible.
A Story of God and All of Us will be that Bible.
Better than it was before.
Better… Shorter… Truthier!

So far the Amazon reviews are epic:

Finally, all the Bible’s stories in one place!

When I watched the first episode of the epic TV miniseries “The Bible,” I remember thinking to myself, “This is spectacular, but what if I want to engage with these stories on a deeper level.” After watching and re-watching and re-re-watching the entire series, it still felt like something was missing…Thank God for this book! Finally, all the stories from the Bible have been gathered into a single text! Now I can go right to the source to get the news straight from the horse’s (or donkey’s) mouth, as it were. If you want to relive the fall of humanity alongside Adam and Eve, the story is here. If you want to be captivated time and time again as Moses turns water into blood, look no further. If you are looking for THE comprehensive account of just what God has been up to these last 5,000+ years, you must buy this book.

And that’s not all! Recently, a small group of friends and I have been getting together to study the stories here. What a blessing it’s been! We’re even thinking about gathering a larger group once each week and having a few gifted leaders teach us important truths based on this wonderful book. Who would have thought that a single text could be so life-encompassing and applicable.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a perfect resource. I do have a few complaints/suggestions:

• Is there a leather-bound version available? I hope there will be soon.
• I’d like to have even more detail, if possible. Why not add more stories, along with genealogies, poetry and maybe even a few letters?
• What would really be cool is if there was some sort of reference system to allow readers to connect parts of the book to other parts, when appropriate.

Certainly not damning criticism by any means, just some thoughts I had…

I any case, I give this book two thumbs way, way up! If you’ve spent your entire life wondering if there is a God that you can put in a box, consume in small, easy-to-chew quantities and exploit in order to feel some arbitrary (albeit fleeting) sense of meaning and happiness, this is the book for you.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a true representation of the real God, the God who is worthy of your entire allegiance and all your praise, the God who will use both blessing and suffering to transform you into the person you were made to be and who will ultimately give you eternal joy and infinite satisfaction, I’ve heard you can find him in the actual Bible… but really, who’s got the time to read that old rag, or the courage to encounter such a God, for that matter?

I’ll Never Be the Same March 25, 2013

By Reid… Either way, I really hope, no, I NEED the authors to keep going with this. I want a series, like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. I want to know what happens to ghost-Jesus. Does he keep walking the Earth like a slightly less powerful Bruce Banner? Will he travel the ages using his powers for good? Maybe they could do a re-imagining of some of history’s most notorious events and Jesus could use his healing powers and his way with people to prevent them. I mean, imagine if Jesus prevented The Plague or World War II. Maybe they could also do a crossover series where Jesus joins the cast of The Walking Dead…like a good zombie, or something.

Anyways, I strongly suggest reading this book. It will absolutely change your life!

The cream that rose to the top.

By Simone Turkington

Format:Hardcover… I think the creators of the “original” Bible might have jumped the gun getting it out when they did. It clearly needed more thought and revision and a little thing called readability before it was ready for a wide audience. The talent of someone like Mark Burnett is what the Bible needed. He has shown his skill time and time again with successes like The Apprentice, The Voice, Shark Tank and of course Survivor which, at the time of this writing, is in its 26th season.

Via Dangerous Minds

Lying and Insane For Jesus: Cindy Jacobs Can Pray Away Insanity?!?

The obvious retort to Jacobs ridiculous clam in this instance: Physician heal yourself!

Cindy claiming she can bind the spirit of insanity is like a quadriplegic claiming he can pray away paralysis. Like a crack addict claiming they can pray away dependency. Like an amputee claiming they can pray you new legs.

Basically, what we have here is an absolutely certifiable crazy person claiming they can bind the spirit of insanity.

This lady who insanely claims she can pray away insanity, has also claimed to do the same miracles as Jesus; has given us the most insane and ignorant explanation of Occupy Wall Street ever; has called on Christians to use their super-duper magic to literally take control over the weather, claimed to have reversed a hysterectomy by prayer, and claimed to have feed three thousand people with just three loaves of bread and still have bread left over! She also claimed to have revived people from the dead: On an absolutely disgusting display “during the August 6th edition of her show God Knows, the self-proclaimed “respected prophet” channeled her supernatural powers live on air to revive a dead child, claiming to have done so in the past as well.”

If she could “pray away” insanity, we wouldn’t know her name…

When Beliefs Become Delusions

This video is a stunning compilation of the sort of delusional world people can live in:

This is one of many reasons I reject such relativistic statements such as, “It’s OK to believe what you believe. I believe what I believe.”

Are all beliefs equal? Are all beliefs harmless? No, because there is something that is called ‘knowledge’ and it trumps ridiculous, ignorant ‘beliefs’ every time.

There is a qualitative and quantitative difference between ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’. There is such an important distinction between ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’. We can ‘believe’ a great deal of things that are nothing more than conjecture, we can ‘believe’ those things are ‘true’… and yet still be quite wrong!

Recently I had a conversation with a man that went something like this. Him, “We can create our own reality. What does it matter if that truck is black. If I think it’s white then it is white.” Me, “That’s not creating your own reality. That’s creating your own delusion. If we have ways to test things and make solid conclusions, and everyone else in the world, the entire planet agrees that the truck is black, but you refuse to let reality in, and instead delude yourself into believing it is white, then you have little better social and cognitive categories than a crazy person.”

However, because I can, or you can, have wrong beliefs it does not mean that we cannot pursue better categories for understanding; and gain real, actual, useful knowledge about the world around us and the universe we live in, which does not include shape-shifting NWO aliens!

Robertson: Beware Religious Scamsters?!?

And the pot called the kettle black…