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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There is a difference between an atheist and a
person with a small God put into a box of our earthly experience. Don't know nor
care which you are but you have called all who do read the bible to task for
having the stupidly to believe what is written in any form. You have the
perfect truth of all the faults of the writing and the belief in any God but
yours. So, once again we choose who we are going to follow and believe. I
do not feel you are stupid nor misinformed...you just have a small God so that
you can fit him/her into your information. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I do not think Mr. Wilson has any idea who I am. I
do know some people who go to his church but I have never sat in his church to
learn anything. I say this just to protect him from having to justify anything I
might say on this site. My walk has been diverse and singularly interesting. It
comes under the heading of 'everyone has a book in their life' and I don't want
Mr. Wilson nor anyone else to have to explain me. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>PK</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
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<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ngier@uidaho.edu href="mailto:ngier@uidaho.edu">Nick Gier</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, December 31, 2004 5:28
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Mary and her
Donkey</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Dear Pat,<BR><BR>There they go again: Pat & Co. assuming
that any criticism of conservative Christianity must be coming from evil
atheists. For the record I am a theist, not an orthodox one, primarily
because heresy is always more fun, enlightening, and usually more true.
If we do theology and don't abide by the rules of logic and the canons of
evidence, then gibberish is the result. If that means we put God in a
box, then so much the better for logical boxes. For one, it would lead
to better election results.<BR><BR>God did not have to put Mary on a donkey,
Pat, Joseph could have easily done it himself. But my point was that the
trip was not necessary. The Romans sent officials from village to
village to make property tax assessments. Joseph would have been
required to stay in Nazareth or he would have faced severe penalties.
One in the crowd at the Feast of Tabernacles implies that Jesus cannot be the
Messiah because he comes from Galilee and not Bethlehem (John 7.41), yet
another Messianic expectation that Jesus did not meet. The deeper implication
is that the authors of John either did not know of Luke's story or they
rejected it as unhistorical.<BR><BR>Even if Joseph were somehow required to
return to ancestral land in Bethlehem, it was not necessary to take Mary with
him. But the whole idea is a fantastic one. In <I>The Rise of
Christianity </I>the former Bishop E. W. Barnes remarks: "The Romans
were a practical race, skilled in the art of government. It is
incredible that they should have taken a census according to such a fantastic
system. [returning everyone to their ancestral lands] If any such census had
been taken, the dislocation to which it would have led would have been
world-wide. Roman historians would not have failed to record
it."<BR><BR>Just another Moscow Banshee luxuriating in his little box of
intelligibility,<BR><BR>Nick Gier<BR>
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