Convicted Heavy Metal ‘Christian’ Singer Admits Being Atheist, Duped Fans

WPHA said:

Rbruce... any comments on what I said?

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I didn't respond because I agree with you. If Christian rock isn't a stumbling block to you, great! We can both get on with our respective ministries without disagreement. The "crickets" are because I am trying to let this thread die a merciful death. Too much of it was devoted to non-radio topics - one person who has a problem with CCM in their church. It IS a stumbling block to him, and I think we pretty much agreed to disagree and moved on. I have too much to do in service to the Lord to spend my time and energy trying to convince one person that my ministry is valid. Sometimes the Lord grows his church by subtraction - a single person or small group of persons stands in the way of what the Lord wants to do. When they leave, and quit hindering the ministry, it can grow exponentially. This is what Joel Osteen experienced. He doesn't come out and say it - but it sounds like the old "name it and claim it" bunch was standing in his way. Once they left, he could teach Biblical Christianity. And the Lord was able to grow that church beyond everybody's expectation.

landtuna said:

The absence of religious overtones does remove a certain amount of conflict in Aristotle and Socrates but from what I have read there is much from both surviving to this day to prove them real. Even the most Jesus-educated scholars cannot make that claim - and, it always seems to be that the people trying to prove he was a real person have a vested interest.

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I suggest you acquaint yourself with a book called the Annals of Cornelius Tacitus, Book 15, Chapter 44. Tacitus was a pagan Roman historian of the early second century AD. He wrote one of the most definitive histories of ancient Rome and the emperors. He also hated Christians, considering them depraved. And yet, he also confirmed the basic account of the Biblical narrative that a man named Jesus was executed by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate in the reign of Emperor Tiberius. I seriously doubt that someone like him who had access in his time to materials no longer available to us would have decided to make that up when he had no reason to promote Christianity. I might also add that having studied early Christianity a good deal and the lives of the early Christian apologists in the centuries when it was a persecuted faith, *not one* argument was ever made against the new faith by its opponents, be they Jewish or pagan, that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. Strange how the answer that is seemingly obvious to modern-day atheists, somehow wasn't taken seriously by those who lived close to those times to begin with!

You are entitled to your own beliefs about whether Jesus was Divine or not, but you are not entitled to your own facts regarding the matter of His existence. This has long been a settled question in the annals of historical study and only a fringe group of people with agendas to push have ever tried to question that point. This is something I can attest to since history is my field and I teach it for a living. I don't presume to know anything about how a radio station is run (I am here because of my interest in subjects related to historical radio material and a search thread caused me to wind up here, just for the record) so I won't quit my day job to give advice about that, but when it comes to areas of historical scholarship on a point that in all areas of mainstream scholarship is not subject to serious debate, I suggest you don't quit your day job either.

Also off topic but if I can remember to look for it online I will.

A county where I don't live which has a newspaper some people in my area get home-delivered has county commissioners who see the need to pray before each meeting, and have gone to court for the right to pray in Jesus' name. One man who was saved at 7 and now calls himself "anti-theist" agrees Jesus existed but thinks his followers did a terrible job marketing him. He now sees Christianity as a way to oppress women and blacks (he is black, I think) and otherwise justify mistreating people.

I guess he has some valid points.

First off, early 2nd century AD is not "more than a century" after Jesus lived. It's in fact 70 years and only 40 years after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul during the reign of Nero, which is the event Tacitus records. But since you are so determined to give up your day job and pretend you are a scholar, then I have to bear the bad news to you that under the standard you are invoking to deny the existence of Jesus (which not a single professional scholar worth his salt would do) you would also have to deny the existence of EVERY Roman Emperor Tactius and Suetonius writes about from the same time period and you would also have to deny the existence of Alexander the Great, since there is not a single first person account from Alexander's time that exists (only historians from one to three centuries after he lived quoting the works of authors who are lost). Of course the Gospel accounts themselves are eyewitness accounts by any normal standard of historical methodology except to those who have agendas to push first so I'll let your dismissal of that which isn't rooted in any rational standard of methodology be noted.

And then of course there is the problem of Josephus, whose complete history of the Jews is the standard text for everything we know about the history of Judaism up to his time, and he too mentions Jesus in passing along with John the Baptist and his murder by King Herod Antipas (and Josephus does so without tying John to Jesus which proves this is the voice of an independent non-Christian source) as well as James the Just, Bishop of Jerusalem killed by Jewish authorities in 64 AD who was the brother of Jesus. The rational scholar acknowledges that by all the yardsticks of normal historical methodology we have *more* about Jesus than just about any other individual of this time period and from manuscripts that date to less than a century after he lived which is *superior* to the manuscripts that tell us about Alexander, the Caesars, Socrates etc.

As I've said, none of this has to do with whether you believe Jesus to be the Son of God or not. It's simply pointing out how the issue of His existence is not a subject for debate unless you choose to resort to a Flat-Earth society type of argument and that might work among those who love to nip at the Dickie Dawkins Kool-Aid, but it doesn't work in the real world of historical scholarship and is a nice reminder of how so many atheists who presume intellectual superiority unto themselves because they think their unbelief makes them smart, usually end up revealing how little they actually know (since you obviously never heard of Tacitus until I mentioned his name).

landtuna said:

Religion was the first gubmint and was established to control the masses. In certain parts of the world, including the USA, it still does. We won't be entirely free until we free ourselves from the shackles of organized religion.

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There's already been some interesting examples of such societies. Jacobin France and the Reign of Terror. Stalin's Russia. Mao's China. Quite a legacy of "Freedom" to be found there.

I found a link to the column I mentioned.

http://www.salisburypost.com/2015/06/09/my-turn-butch-hudson-trouble-with-christians/

And today at the library I saw an entire page of responses in the actual paper. I would assume those responses can be accessed online but I haven't tried.

That entire page came FROM online, so it can be done.

And more opposition has followed. A letter to the editor, and after a column by the editor explaining she gave the man a chance to tone it down, with another letter following, saying the paper was promoting sinful behavior despite claiming to have Christian roots. Probably referring to the article about others like Bruce Jenner who lived in the area.