Religulous

[Pravoslavnik]

American comedian Bill Maher and Lionsgate Entertainment are about to release Maher's new film Religulous, which is scheduled to appear in American theaters on October 3, 2008. I saw an ad for the movie on television this evening and was quite appalled, even crestfallen, to see a spoof of the crucifixion. The film is apparently a series of live interviews conducted with a variety of religious fanatics from around the world, including Moslems, Christians, Jews, and Mormons. It is a cinematic version of some of the modern bestsellers like The God Delusion.

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  I read a Wikipedia article tonight on Bill Maher, and noticed that his mother, Judith Berman, is a Jew, and his father, apparently, a nominal Roman Catholic from New York.  I had long suspected that Maher was a Jew, given his obvious antipathy toward Christianity in interviews with Larry King.  What I find almost as appalling is Larry King's clear urging on the air that "people need to see this film!"  Is King, also, a Nazarene?

 Heaven forbid this mockery of Christ God !  How long, Lord?

   Maranatha, Adonai !!

[Pravoslavnik]

From Wikipedia:

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   [color=red][i]Early life

Larry King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger, the son of Jennie (née Gitlitz), a garment worker, and Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker.[1] He was raised in a "very culturally Jewish" family.[2] His father died at 44 of heart disease when King was nine,[3] and his mother had to go on welfare to support Larry and his younger brother. His father's death affected King greatly, and King lost interest in school, ruining his chances to go to college. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age he wanted to go into radio.[4][/i][/color]

[Incognito1583]

Read "The Dawkins Delusion," by Mcgrath

[Pravoslavnik]

Steve,

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 Have you read the interesting work of Gerald Schroeder, including [i]The Science of God[/i]?  Schroeder is an Orthodox Jew who is also a physicist from MIT.  In [i]The Science of God [/i]he presents compelling evidence that the seven 24 hour "days" of creation--when time is measured from the point at which the "Big Bang" occurred-- have actually lasted about 15 billion years when time is measured from the perspective of planet earth, based upon Einstein's theory of relativity.  Time is an integral function of our expanding universe, and passes at different rates, depending upon relative velocity.  There is a rather striking fit between Talmudic interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis and modern astrophysics.  For example, using Schroeder's cosmological clock, the "great reptiles" (dinosaurs) of Genesis were created on the fifth day--corresponding with the Jurassic Period of earth history. There is nothing scriptural which indicates that God did NOT create life on earth through evolutionary processes during the past 3.5 billion years of earth's existence.  Also, see Brown University professor Kenneth Miller's book [i]Finding Darwin's God.[/i]

--Pravoslavnik

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  Brown University '79
  Harvard Medical School '83
  Orthodox Church '92

[Pravoslavnik]

Steve,

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   Thank you for this information.  I am astonished to read some of this information about the Talmud.  For some reason I always believed that the Talmud was a righteous compendium of Judaic wisdom and exegesis.  What was it that Christ God said, "If the eye is darkened, how great is that darkness?"

[Pravoslavnik]

Steve,

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   I am interested in learning more about the (unabridged) Talmud, and I am looking into your above rather shocking reference on [i]The Talmud Unmasked. [/i] I looked up the Wikipedia reference on the Lithuanian priest who wrote the book, and it was not very flattering.  It described him as an anti-Semitic  Roman Catholic instructor at a theological institute in St. Petersburg.  He was involved in a famous legal case against a Jew in Tsarist Russia who was accused of murdering a child, and was, reportedly, debunked in the trial as an anti-Semite who was not very knowledgeable about the Hebrew language or the proper interpretation of the Talmud.  I recall that St. John of Kronstadt issued a public condemnation of the anti-Semitic perpetrators of the Kishinev pogrom in the Ukraine, but I do not know of any Orthodox Christian opinions on the subject of [i]The Talmud Unmasked.[/i]  Do you know anything about the author and the reliability of his work?