Box Turtle Bulletin

According to the Texas school board, Thomas Jefferson never existed.

Ray

I went ahead and sent Brian Fischer a memo on this along with a link to the Jefferson letter on the web site of the Library of Congress. I’ll probably get spam email from RenewAmerica and AFA for the rest of my life but it seemed a worthwhile thing to do in the pursuit of historic accuracy.

Thanks Timothy.

Ben in Oakland

Not to mention that Hitler’s slogan for women was: Kuche, Kirche, Kinder.

Kitchen. church. children.

So what you are telling us is that it is notg the liberals who are nazis, but the conservatives, since that is exactly their ideal for women in society: Kuche, Kirche, Kinder.

BearToast Joe

Hitler spoke German, didn’t he? Maybe Mr. Urquhart doesn’t know that. And, he probably thinks Jesus spoke in 17th century English. Me thinks he thinks not.

Jaft

Wait, wait, wait Tim – are you sure Jefferson wasn’t?

Because, according to Scott Lively…

Candace

WELL, weren’t Jefferson’s ancestors from Europe? Wasn’t Hitler from Europe?

Case closed. God bless the AFA!

David

It always amazes me that politicians complain about how the public schools need to be more “accountable”, about how many “bad” teachers there are, about how teachers need to be paid on the basis of “merit” rather than longevity, blah, blah, blah. Despite the fact that teachers not only need a college degree but they need to be licensed by the state, certifying that they have the necessary training to teach. On the other hand, the only qualifications required to be a politician are to be (1) a US citizen, (2) a minimum age, and usually (3) not a felon. A politician can be: a high-school dropout; totally broke (insolvent); a sociopath; etc., etc. But they ALL know how to run the schools better than the teachers!

David

My point, incidentally, is that Glen Urquhart is an example of the ignorant politician who might as well never graduated from high school.

John D

And it’s obvious that Jefferson must have said “Trennung zwischen Kirche und Staat.”

Ron

“he probably thinks Jesus spoke in 17th century English”

I always get a chuckle out religious nuts who try to tell me that Jesus was a Christian and not a Jew.

Rob San Diego

This all about that “hidden” conservative agenda. And yet they think the hidden homosexual agenda is trying to rewrite history.

Ryan

My favorite part is that he believes saying “how come you’re a Nazi?” to someone is a legitimate debate tactic.

Priya Lynn

Ron said “I always get a chuckle out religious nuts who try to tell me that Jesus was a Christian and not a Jew.”.

Jesus followed himself, believed in himself, therefore by definition he was the first christian.

Brennin

The language “separation of church and state” is not found in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is, however, found in the constitution of the Soviet Union:

“In order to secure for the laboring masses genuine freedom of conscience, the church is separated from the state and the school from the church, and freedom of religious and anti- religious propaganda is acknowledged to be the right of all citizens.”

Priya Lynn

Brennin, reference to Jesus isn’t found in the American constitution, but is found in Hitler’s speeches, letters, and proclamations.

Donnchadh

Correct, Priya. I think Ron’s point is that Jesus was also, ethnically, Jewish, and some anti-Semitic types will invoke his crucifixion without mentioning this once.
On a side note, the Latin and Greek terms from which we have “Christian” was only coined after his death, and was at first derogatory. And it is often thought that the Apostle Paul shaped and spread the faith as much as Jesus did.

Priya Lynn

I understand that Donnchadh, however one’s ancestry does not determine one’s religion. There is Jewish ancestry and then their is Jewish religion. Jesus was ethnically Jewish but christian by religion.

darkmoonman

Come no. We all know how to tell when a Republican is lying: his mouth is moving.

Brennin

“Brennin, reference to Jesus isnâ€™t found in the American constitution, but is found in Hitlerâ€™s speeches, letters, and proclamations.”

Yes, although Hitler criticized Christianity in private. (He was an admirer of Julian the Apostate’s Against the Galileans.) Moreover, references to Jesus are also found in the writings of the founders.

You might want to check the mercury content of your red herrings, as mercury poisoning is associated which cognitive decline. (Although, in your case, I doubt there was much from which to decline.)

Priya Lynn

No Hitler did not criticize christianity in private. That lie is based on Hitler’s Table Talk which was edited for “appropriateness” by the anti-catholic Borman, the areas where its claimed Hitler spoke against christianity are fabrications by Boreman. Unlike Hitler’s other speeches and proclamations praising Jesus there are no audio or original recordings of Table talk, all that exists is a copy of the transcripts edited by Boremen. Further demonstrating that the anti-christian comments were fabricated is the existance of parts of Table talk where Hitler praises Jesus.

Brennin

Dim bulb,

You can stop parroting the moron Richard Carrier because I did not make recourse to Hitler’s table talk. The source for my comment re: Hitler’s admiration for Julian the Apostate’s Against the Galileans was Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist, and the Plot for the Third Reich by Steven Sage. (You can read relevant excerpts via google books.)

There is also this journal entry of Goebbels:

“The FÃ¼hrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of religious rights. Both have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed.” (Also available via google books.)

Incidentally, “contact [with] the animal element” is what you advocate.

Priya Lynn

You’re a lyer Brennin, I’ve never advocated for contact with the animal element.

The journal entry by Goebbels has never been corroborated and is completely out of place in the huge volume of speeches, radio broadcasts, proclamations, and writings where Hitler expressed his devout christianity. When assessing what a person’s attitudes are you take the overwhelming volume of consistent statemenst over and above the lone inconsistant claim that didn’t even come from Hitler himself.

Jim Burroway

Brenni

We strive to provide a forum for civil discourse here. To that end we welcome a wide variety iv viewpoints. In the interests of civility, personal insults are not tolerated. If you cannot make your argument without them, then your arguments, no matter your standpoint are not welcome here.

Please read our comments policy. The link is prominently displayed above the comment form. And behave accordingly. We’ve moderated and banned all sorts of people, pro-gay and anti-gay, for violating them and the principles they represent. Consider this your warning.

There is Jewish ancestry and then their is Jewish religion. Jesus was ethnically Jewish but christian by religion.

Sorry sweetheart but you are incredibly and painfully wrong.

Jesus was an observant Jew. He worshiped in Jewish synagogues, taught about Jewish law, observed Jewish holidays, and (for the most part) observed Jewish law. He never for once denied that he was a Jew and that his intentions (at least in the surface) were to reform the Jewish religion and tradition.

If that was not the case, why would the original Christians be seen and perceived as a Jewish sect for nearly 100 years after the death of Jesus? If he was, as you say, a Christian, then the apostles would have understood his intention of founding a new religion and would have traveled that path intently; not as Jewish people trying to reform the religion they knew and trying to teach that the Messiah had already come and that the prophecy had been fulfilled.

Now, if you are saying that Jesus was aware of the fact that his coming to earth was starting a path that would eventually split his believers from the Jewish religion, then I would be inclined to agree; but that does not mean that he was not a Jew, because his behavior and words clearly point to the fact that he viewed himself as a Jew.

Priya Lynn

Lindoro, Jesus was jewish in religion just like Christianity is a jewish religion. You said it yourself – “He never for once denied that he was a Jew and that his intentions (at least in the surface) were to reform the Jewish religion and tradition.“. Christianity is a reformation, or evolution of Judaism. Jesus could be considered a Jew in terms of his ethnicity, but not his religion – Jesus was the first Christian even if the term didn’t come into use for some time.

Brennin

“Youâ€™re a lyer[sic] Brennin, Iâ€™ve never advocated for contact with the animal element.”

Apparently, you don’t apprehend what Goebbels meant by “point of contact to the animal element.”

“The journal entry by Goebbels has never been corroborated…”

To the contrary, it is corroborated by comments from Hitler’s other confidants as well as Hitler’s own words:

“wie klar ein Mann wie Julian die Christen und das Christentum beurteilte”

(How clearly a man like Julian had judged the Christians and Christianity)

“and is completely out of place in the huge volume of speeches, radio broadcasts, proclamations, and writings where Hitler expressed his devout christianity. When assessing what a personâ€™s attitudes are you take the overwhelming volume of consistent statemenst[sic] over and above the lone inconsistant[sic] claim that didnâ€™t even come from Hitler himself.”

Yes, cuz’ there has never been a politician who says one thing to the masses in public and something else to his confidants in private.

Incidentally, even if your cut-and-paste claim re: Bormann were correct (it’s not), you still have to contend with the notes of Henry Picker.

Ryan

Brennin, is your point that because the concept of separation of church and state was in the Soviet constitution, that it’s automatically invalidated? Because that’s pretty faulty logic. Or are you saying Jefferson was a Communist?

Brennin

Ryan,

No. That’s my way of tweaking the nose of secularists. The pertinent point is that the language “separation of church and state” is not the actual language found in the First Amendment.

Priya Lynn

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

Brennin said “Apparently, you donâ€™t apprehend what Goebbels meant by â€œpoint of contact to the animal element.â€

I couldn’t care less what Goebbels meant by that, its irrelevant to your claim that I advocate for contact with the animal element. I most certainly did no such thing – you’re a liar and a damn bad one at that.

Hitler most certainly never corroborated Goebbels journal entry in fact he contradicted it hundreds of times in public. That Hitler may have had some complaints about the Catholic church doesn’t in anyway contradict the overwhelming support he gave for it and Christianity. I myself have criticized some prominent atheists, that most certainly doesn’t dimminish my overall support for them. Hitler professed that he remained a Catholic now and for all time, he never renounced his catholicism. His actions spoke louder than the extremely isolated and inconsistant quote you provided – Hitler signed the concordat with the pople and worked closely with the church to promote Naziism and Christianity:

You’re the typical dishonest person suffering from bias confirmation. You put on the blinders to ignore the tons of evidence that Hitler was a Christian to focus on the one questionable bit suggesting he wasn’t. Once again, when you want to know what a person thought you take the overwhelming volume of proof that is consistent with Hitler’s christianity, not the one questionable bit that is inconsistent with every moment of his life – If you’re an honest rational person anyway

Jim

a. omg Cholesterol.

b. Glen Urquhart, a Republican congressional candidate in Delaware

choose a or b.

Jim

I think this conversation can go on failblog.

Jesus was jewish in religion

Make up your mind baby, you are either a Jew or a Christian (in terms of faith) but you can not be both.

You can not say that Jesus considered himself to be a jew, was a member of the jewish religion and in the next breath say he was a Christian. That is impossible. Either he was a practicing jew or he was a Christian, not both.

The fact that Christianity was born from Judaism does not mean that Jesus was automatically a Christian. The fact that Jesus intentions were to reform Judaism does not automatically disqualify him from being a member of that religion.

If you acknowledge that Jesus considered himself to be a Jew, why would you contradict his own statements?

Steve

Jefferson may not have been a Nazi but he regarded black people as property as he was a slave owner.

Hitler depended on the Christian vote and the backing of the Catholic precursor of the modern Christian Democrats to become autocrat. The massacre of the Jews was itself a consequence of Christian doctrine at that time that falsely accused the Jews of deicide, being a burden on and undermining society, parasitical, etc. Indeed similar Christian charges were laid against the Jews in the infamous film Jude Suess as their modern day counterparts made of black Americans in the pre-Civil Rights era and are now directed against gays and tommorrow will be directed at secularists.

Priya Lynn

Lindoro sweetheart I never said Jesus was both a Jew and a Christian in terms of faith. There is the Jewish ethnicity or ancestry and then there is the Jewish faith – the two are completely seperate. What I said was Jesus was a Jew in terms of his ethnicity and ancestry but not his faith. In terms of his faith he was Christian.

The fact that Jesus believed in Jesus and followed Jesus disqualifies him as being of the Jewish religion – that is the definition of a christian.

Timothy Kincaid

To paraphrase Anne Lamott

You can safely assume that you have created a Hitler of your own imagination when it turns out that Hitler has all the characteristics of the people you hate.

Paul in Canada

A theocracy…….. yes, as in Iran!

Priya Lynn

Timothy, Hitler’s christianity isn’t a matter of anyone’s imagination – its well documented throughout his life. Read the link I posted on June 19th.

Priya Lynn

And Timothy, I don’t hate christians either.

The fact that Jesus believed in Jesus and followed Jesus disqualifies him as being of the Jewish religion â€“ that is the definition of a christian.

And that is where you are wrong.

1. I never talked about Jesus race, given the fact that his belonging to the Jewish race is undebatable.

2. Jesus followed Jewish law, taught in Jewish synagogues, spoke of Himself as a Jew, therefore he could have NOT being a Christian anymore that I could be said to be a Muslim is I speak of myself as a Christian.

I do not know what kind of pebble you have up there against this idea, but if someone speaks of himself as a Jew, well damn it, I am not going to go great lengths and twist every possible word to make sure that I contradict him.

It is very much like how a lot of us deal with people in the closet: If they say they are straight, then we treat them like straight people until we are told otherwise. Jesus said he was a Jew, for me that is pretty much as simple as it gets.

I do not understand why it is so complicated for you.

Priya Lynn

Lindoro sugar pie, honey bunch, its not complicated for me. A christian is someone who believes in and follows Jesus. Jesus believed in and followed Jesus, Jesus was the first christian. Of course he refered to himself as a Jew, he was Jewish by ethnicity and Christian by religion.

Timothy (TRiG)

Priya, Hitler was weird. He was a megalomaniac. But whatever his personal beliefs were, he used Christianity to convey them. Some of the Nazi top brass held to some form of Wagnerian paganism. Hitler himself was apparently Christian, though we cannot be certain. What is certain is that the vast majority of Nazis, like the vast majority of the German and indeed the European population, were Christian. Also, we can be sure that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was shared by the bulk of the German population, and that this anti-Semitism derived at least in part from the rantings of the Roman Catholic Church and of that noxious racist Martin Luther.

Jesus himself, assuming he existed at all, which is open to question, was Jewish by race and primarily Jewish by belief. The Jewish religion at his time was fractured and wide-ranging: there was a massive variety of beliefs encompassed within Judaism, and there’s no good evidence that the Jesus movement, any more than the Essenes, intended to start a new religion. You can blame Paul for that.

TRiG.

Priya Lynn

Trig, you and Lindoro are welcome to reject the idea that Jesus was the first Christian, but if one wants to believe a Jesus existed and was god then by definition he has to have been the first Christian. Jesus was no more Jewish by religion than the Christian religion is the Jewish religion.

Timothy Kincaid

Lindoro,

You are completely wrong.

It’s obvious: Jesus was a Southern Baptist.

Southern Baptists follow Jesus, and Jesus followed Jesus (though that does seem a contradiction in terms), ergo Jesus was a Southern Baptist.

Oh, and by the way, you are wasting your time trying to have a debate based on reason or logic. When issues of religion arise, folk will stand by their assertions no matter how bizarre.

Priya Lynn

No, Jesus didn’t specifically follow the Southern Baptist version of Christianity so that while Jesus was a Christian and Southern Baptists are Christians, Jesus wasn’t a Southern Baptist.

OK, I’ll play….

If we are talking about the 1st Christian, the Jesus was not the first, since Mary had to believe that he was the Messiah and had to believe all that was written. Also, she followed him and believed till the day she died that he was the Messiah.

So all you BS about Jesus being the 1st christian ends here because before he could believe in himself he had to have another person believe in him so he could be brought into the world the way he was.

Go ahead and argue that one.

TK:

You are grossly misinformed. Jesus was a Catholic:

1. He believed in Mary and her virginity
2. He believed that he was giving his body in a piece of bread.
3. He believed the same thing about wine and blood
4. he believed that Peter was the pope
5. He was late to mass and early to leave
6. He drank alcohol

Looks like a catholic to me.

Timothy Kincaid

I was a doubter ’til I got to point 5. You might have convinced me.

Timothy Kincaid

But as Christian theology is that Abraham’s offering of Isaac was a precursor to Christ and that Abraham looked forward to the messiah, I think we have to say that Abraham was the first Christian. In fact, all Jews were really Christians.

I really am espousing the absurd today, aren’t I?

Give me a minute and I’m sure I could make a case for Hitler being the first atheist and really get people riled up.

It was the being late to mass right? The bible says he was late because he was shooting the sh1t with the vendors. Catholics do the same thing every time, they are late because they are shooting it in the corner bakery.

That and the alcohol. Who else but a Catholic would actually think of serving shots during mass? Total marketing genius: Come to mass, get a shot of 100% certified organic wine He was a man ahead of his time lemme tell you. Also a Catholic trait; if I may add.

No, No. We have already established that Jesus was a Catholic and we know he was not a convert, so Mary had to be a catholic too, and since she was his mother She had to be the first Catholic and Christian. I’m sure because she was the 1st one to learn with 100% certainty who the Messiah was, his name and what his address was going to be. The other ones only got a note card saying he’s coming; but Mary was the only one who got the “Save the date” card.

Consequently, Mary’s cousing Isabel (or however she is known as here in the USA) was the 2nd Chriistian because she believed in jesus before he was born, so she had to be the 2nd Christian, and also a Catholic.

Lastly, John the Baptist is the 3rd Christian because he is something like 6-8 months older than Jesus and his mother told him Jesus was the Messiah and he believed.

So when we are talking Jesus, he is like the 6th or 7th Christian, because we have not counted Joseph, and he must’ve believed since he stayed with Mary; or Isabel’s husband, or Mary’s parents, or Joseph’s parents. And if we count any cousins, we might be talking Jesus being like the 20th Christian; you know how fertile those Jewish-race ladies used to be in the good old days.

Emily K

i think it’s hilarious when christians use the binding of Isaac as a theological fortelling of Jesus being Messiah because that story is used as an allegory against human sacrifice.

Timothy Kincaid

No, you have the order wrong. John leaped in Elizabeth’s womb (Luke 1) so clearly John the Baptist believed before Elizabeth did. He get’s second billing. (and hence the medieval paintings)

And you’re right about families. Gosh, by the time Jesus followed himself, he had a whole cadre of Christians following him.

Ya know, it’s a good thing he observed his good Christian upbringing. Can you imagine if he’d rebelled against his family’s Christian faith?

He’d be leading his followers into not following him. And they would follow him (following himself) along the path of not following. But once they stopped following his example (of not following), they would be free to follow again (only to then be led back to not following).

And you can get ruts in the carpet that way.