Now I know that he'll get all this information in the movie, but since he brought it up on his comment to me, I feel the need to respond.  It gives me something to write about.  The Herd can skip all this since they know it all already.  I'm not writing anything new.

Something interesting about your “…there is no historical evidence that Jesus was anything more than a story recycled from other diety stories…” that I would like to point out. When you go to court as a witness, you are testifying to something you saw. Unless you are discredited, proven of lying on the stand, your word is taken as truth. Murderers can be sentenced to death because of one eye-witness. What do you think the Bible is? A testament of God and to God. The Gospel writers were writing their testimony of Jesus. Many disciples who were with Jesus were put to death because of their testimony. If they had made the whole thing up, do you believe that they really would have died for their lie, or wouldn’t they have sold Jesus out as a con?

1 John 5:11 (NKJV) reads:
“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

The word testimony is the Greek word marturia. It is where we get the word martyr. Marturia is an account or a record or report given similar to that given by a witness testifying in court. Marturia is no little word, but is packed with much fire behind it. John suffered much for his testimony. He fully stood by his words, as did the other writers of Scripture. What we have in hand is God’s revelation of Himself to us. He is testified of by His inspired writers.

Like all testimony, however, you have to decide what you will or will not believe. The consequences of either choice is clearly underlined in Scripture.

Jesus is under constant fire because if you nullify Him, you nullify all of Christianity. I believe that there is more than some logical, scientific, etc. reason that people want to deny the existence of God, something deeper. Perhaps these individuals were hurt by His “representatives.” Maybe they just can’t understand how a loving God could allow suffering into the world. Maybe they just want to live their own lives to their own ends and don’t want any interference from anyone, even God.

First, my motivation.  I wanted very much to believe in God and in Jesus.  And you are correct.  If you nullify Jesus you nullify all of Christianity.  It was in my search to find the true teaching of Jesus that I became an Atheist.  I felt that mankind had corrupted what the original Jesus Movement was all about and wanted to go back to that pure spring before any organized church had had a chance to poison the waters.  I wasn't hurt or angry, the anger came later when I realized I'd been manipulated into a con by religion.

Second topic: witnesses.  I was under the same misinformation that you are now.  You won't need to go far for confirmation on this but you might not want to.  This is the look behind the curtain.  The New Testament was not written by any eyewitnesses.  Not a one.  In a court of law, they are not credible witnesses because what they've written is called "hearsay".  At best they were followers of others who claimed to be the disciples.  We do not have writings from any of the disciples directly.  And why in a literate world, didn't Jesus write down himself his message for the future?  He certainly should have known what would happen after his death.  That someone is willing to die for their beliefs does not make their beliefs true - if that were the case than Charles Manson must be the second coming of Jesus.  As was David Koresh. 

I'm not going to go into all the specifics, because that would make for too long a post.  But I will point you to a page that gives a wealth of resources to all the controversy over did he or didn't he exist, and if he did what or who was he.  Historical Jesus Theories.  As you can see you can spend years investigating all of the opinions of people who are way more learned than me. 

For me, if there was a man who existed at the heart off all the myth, he's lost underneath it all.  I can't know who he was or what he said.  He could have been a mystic, a con, a nut job, or a revolutionary.  But if he was God made flesh, he certainly picked a bad way to make sure his message would survive past his death.  He should have written his own gospels down for us to use, supernaturally protected against deterioration or distortion.  That would have been proof that he was at least more than just a myth or a normal man.

I just stumbled upon a piece of old news that was too absurd to not write about. The culprit of this Christian-on-Christian fear-mongering is OBJECTIVE: Ministries, an organization that easily qualifies as one of fullblown religulous lunacy. A quick glance at its homepage will provide a king's buffet of psychotic idiocy and paranoia. And it will leave no doubts about its primary objectives: to fully Christianize the world, squeezing out all types of non-Christian and insufficiently Christian thinking and behaviour.

Consider some of the activism that it prominently endorses:

The nuttery of this site could not be done full justice without making a special post just for it. But that's not the point here. The point here is to talk about a particular instance in which they attempted to use malicious lies to demonize a group of atheists and to scare Christians out of possibly giving a listen to the atheists'  message.

This event took place in April 2006, and pertained to the people behind The God Who Wasn't There's War on Easter. Here is their unedited declaration:

Militant Atheists are targeting churches as part of a self-declared "War on Easter"

If you see suspicious Atheist types like the one above lurking around your church, call the police immediately.

The "War on Easter" campaign, designed to terrorize churches across our nation, is part of a larger war on Christians being waged by the leftist forces of Secularism. The group responsible has a website where they issue marching orders, distribute their hate propaganda, and sinisterly post pictures of churches they have attacked.

They call on members of Atheist sleeper-cells in our communities to sneak onto church property and place anti-Christian fliers -- most disturbingly, ones targeting children -- and copies of a low-budget film entitled Your God Wasn't There, which claims that Jesus has abandoned America. As proof of their anti-Christian motives, they are calling for "666" of the DVDs to be hidden around churches in time for family Easter-egg hunt activities.

This growing war on Christians has hit home for us as we learned of it this morning when one of their crude fliers was found taped to the front door of Mt. Fellowship Church. Later, our grounds keeper found one of their DVDs hidden in a bush in the church rose garden, where we will be holding our Easter-egg hunt this Sunday. It had a note attached reading "You found the lucky egg", proving that it was meant for one of our children.

(The culprit is still at large. However, we are conducting a thorough sweep of the garden to make sure no other items were planted and that the area is safe for children. Rest assured that come Sunday, Lambuel's Easterday Eggstravaganza will not be interrupted by terrorists.)

If your church is targeted, we urge you to take the matter seriously and report the incident to the Department of Homeland Security. While the fliers and poorly produced DVDs may seem like some juvenile prank pulled by Secularized teens, the people doing these acts of domestic terrorism are part of an axis of anti-Christianity that is aligned with bioterrorists who seek to wipe out 90% of humanity with ebola virus. We cannot stress strongly enough that you should not open any of the DVD cases as it is unknown what sort of agents or improvised devices might be inside.

How completely despicable. How on earth is placing fliers and DVDs on a church terrorism? And where in the bloody HELL did these clowns get the idea that these atheists are aligned with international bioterrorists?! I'm not a US civil rights attorney, but I would imagine that this degree of disingenuous malicious defamatory hate- and fear-mongering is sufficient justification for legal action. I'm honestly not quite sure where I stand on the atheists activities in this incident - it surely wasn't illegal or punishable, but I'm not sure that I'd personally have endorsed it. But regardless, OBJECTIVE: Ministries response is nothing short of deplorable.

But I guess in their deluded minds, in which the Bible is the inerrant literal word of God and deviation from the divine path is the necessary and sufficient precursor to an eternity in hell, the communication of un-Christian thinking to children whose brainwashing may not yet be complete is among the greatest acts of inhumanity that one could perpetrate. As that evil atheist Sam Harris has pointed out, "if you believe that there is something so spiritually wayward that your neighbour could say to your child that it would put him or her on a path to eternal damnation in hell, then your neighbour is far more dangerous than the child molester next door."

Calculated Contempt: Why Bible Critics Do Not Deserve the Benefit of the Doubt

What amazes me is how the Bible can be so complex, yet simple enough that all who will can understand and accept Christ.  Only the inspiration of God could have led to the formation of such a book.

On a side note, the same author addresses in detail the flaws in the popular atheistic film "The God Who Wasn't There," which caused a bit of a stir last year (I think last year???).

Again, I do not quite agree with his overall presentation.  Sure, it can be funny to sarcastically make fun of the inconsistencies of others (as atheists often attempt with Christianity), but it does nothing to further the cause of Christ (or atheism, for that matter).  Instead of attacking boldness and pride with boldness and pride, perhaps it would be better to respond with Christ-like humility.

Das kann man so sagen. Aber nur, wenn man von den anderen religiösen Mythen, die eben genau das wieder und wieder über ihre Erlöserfiguren behauptet haben, keine Ahnung haben will, weil's beim Lügen stört.

Und dann gibt's natürlich die Sekundärquellen der Marke "Die Christen erzählen, dass..." die aus irgendwelchen Gründen auch immer in der Liste außerbiblischer Jesus-Indizien aufgeführt werden, obwohl die keinerlei weitergehende Kenntnisse vorgeben als eben das, dass Christen was behaupten. Ganz zu schweigen von den offensichtlich "nachbearbeiteten" Texten, wie z. B. dem Josephus, von dem heute gar nicht mehr klar ist, was davon Original und was christliche Fälschung ist; klar ist nur, dass auch Josephus nur Geschichten aus dem Hören-Sagen, mithin Gerüchte weitergibt.

Die Frage nach der Historizität der Person Jesu ist also schwer eindeutig zu beantworten und letztlich nicht besonders beweiskräftig: es wird ja auch nicht an der Existenz der Person L. Ron Hubbards gezweifelt, sondern an dem metaphysischen Müll, den Scientologen über ihn verkaufen.

Aber das Schöne an einer Predigt ist, dass man da sich nicht auf Bewiesenes einschränken lassen muss: darum diesen Sonntag der Verweis auf ein neues Atheisten-Blog, The Atheist Blogger: Jesus Christ -- Fact or Fiction, der sich mit der Frage beschäftigt.

Die Darstellung stützt sich weitgehend auf die schon im Film The God Who Wasn't There ausgebreitete Argumentationslinie über die historischen Lücken im Leben und nach dem Tod Jesu, bis schließlich der Jesus gänzlich unbekannte Paulus damit begann, Gemeinden zu organisieren und Briefe zu schreiben. Der Film sei hiermit ausdrücklich empfohlen. Schon allein der Soundtrack von DJ Madson und der Thievery Corporation lässt die 90 Minuten lohnen.

Gewarnt sei vor dem anderen am Ende des Postes verlinkten Film Zeitgeist. Der stützt sich zwar ebenfalls weitgehend auf The God Who Wasn't There, übernimmt sogar Bilder und Animationen, bereichert das Ganze aber noch um einen astrologischen Hintergrund, der wahr sein mag oder nicht (astrologische Fixpunkte als Hintergrundwissen und Ordnungspunkte des christlichen Glaubens, nicht als Erklärung für irgendwas reales). Und das ist nur der erste Teil -- der Film driftet danach in Verschwörungstheorien über den 11. September und noch weitergehende Theorien über internationale Finanzverschwörungen ab.

Nur weil man als Atheist nicht jeden Scheiß glaubt, heißt nun mal leider nicht, dass nicht manche Atheisten dann doch wieder anderen Scheiß glauben.

"Why is it that Christians can be so specific about the life of Christ but they’re vague about what happened after he left? Aren’t Christian leaders telling them the story? [Regarding the Gospels], the other three are clearly derived from Mark. Mark mentions the destruction of the Jewish Temple which happened in the year 70. So, the Gospels all came later than that; probably much later. There’s a gap of four decades or more. Most of what we know about this period comes from a man who says he saw Jesus Christ come to him in a vision. He was the apostle Paul, formally known as Saul of Tarsus. (The God Who Wasn’t There)"

The allegation that modern Christians know little to nothing about the early Christian church is quite unfounded. There is actually a wealth of information about this time in history that not only allows for a relatively tight chronology, but also verifies the reliability of the New Testament books themselves. The early Christians left such a significant “paper trail” that the entire New Testament can be reconstructed simply from quotes and citations found in the letters and writings of the leaders of the church in the first and second century! While these non-Biblical documents aid in our understanding of the Bible itself, they also provide a great deal of information regarding the practices of the early Christians, the growth of the church, and even the details of heresies as they were discovered and how they were addressed. But Flemming seems more interested in challenging the reliability of the Gospels, specifically on the basis that they were too far removed from the events they describe to be trusted.

First, Flemming alleges that the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John are derived from Mark. Do all the Gospels derive from Mark? This is hardly the consensus. In fact, while similarities between Matthew and Luke suggest Markan priority, there is plenty of additional information in each that is not found in Mark, possibly suggesting other sources- unless of course the writers were actually just faithful to the message they received from Jesus. Whether these 'other sources' can be accounted for on the basis that the authors of these Gospels were actually who tradition suggests (Mark, a close disciple of Peter, and Matthew the disciple of Jesus himself) is a separate question, but clearly there is too much information within both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke that cannot be accounted for only by the content of The Gospel of Mark. In fact, Luke explicitly states that he embarked to gather information from many sources, and implies that the Christian tradition, then being put into writing, was first established and spread orally:

“Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having understanding of all things from the very first, to write you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed (Luke 1:1-4)”

Some scholars infer, on the basis of similarities among the synoptic Gospels, a prior source, called 'Q,' that preceded the writing of any of the canonical Gospels and for some reason was not preserved but would have had to have been established quite soon after Jesus' crucifixion (I have written on the ‘Q’ hypothesis in a previous post titled What About Other Gospels, Part 3). Note, however, that if such a document were to be discovered and did represent the earliest teaching about Jesus, the difficulty which many critics have with the span of time between the death of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels would be even more unfounded. ‘Q,’ then is a hypothesis which would only strengthen Biblical reliability.

Flemming then hones in on a particular target and claims that the Gospel of Mark could not have been written until after AD 70, followed by the other three. He interviews another scholar, by the name of Doherty, to corroborate this:

"The earliest possible date for Mark was used on this timeline [AD 70]. In fact, the 40-year gap is probably much wider. Scholarship shows that Mark could have been written as late as 85-90 A.D. (Flemming)"

"The first Gospel wasn’t written until almost the end of the first century...The others follow over the next several decades (Doherty)."

I happen to think that we have very good reasons to disagree with this scheme of dating, but for the sake of argument, let's give Flemming and Doherty the benefit of the doubt regarding the supposed 40-year gap. To suggest that a 40-year gap between an ancient event and its documentation disqualifies it from being historically reliable is contrary to the process and standards of historical verification. In fact, most of our current data on ancient events relies on documents far more removed from the events they describe than the Gospels. Flemming and Doherty’s suggestion otherwise is intentionally misleading. However, current Biblical scholarship is not in agreement with the dates for the Gospels given by Flemming and Doherty, which I will address later.

Regarding the span of time between the writing of the New Testament documents and the events they describe, Biblical scholar Frederic Kenyon writes,

"This may sound a considerable interval, but it is nothing to that which parts most of the great classical authors from their earliest manuscripts. We believe that we have in all essentials an accurate text of the seven extant plays of Sophocles; yet the earliest substantial manuscript upon which it is based was written more than 1400 years after the poet's death. (Frederic Kenyon, Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament)."

If Kenyon's statement isn't robust enough for an argument, renowned Biblical scholar F.F. Bruce provides a bit more of a detailed comparison:

"Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar's Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 B.C.) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar's day. Of the 142 books of the Roman history of Livy (59 B.C. - A.D. 17), only 35 survive; of the 16 books of his Annals, 10 survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of his two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth centruy and one of the eleventh. The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogus de Oratoribus, Agricola, Germania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century. The History of Thucydides (c. 460 - 400 B.C.) is known to us from eight MSS, the earliest belonging to c. A.D. 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the History of Herodotus (B.C. 488 - 428). Yet, no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?)."

So assuming that there is such a 40-year gap, as Flemming asserts, this seems to be a fact still in favor of the reliability of the scriptures, especially within the context of other ancient sources and how they are treated historically.

Incidentally, however, Flemming's dates for the Gospels are significantly off from those that many Biblical scholars affirm. While evangelical and skeptical Biblical scholars tend to vary by a factor of ten years in their dating of the New Testament books, one method of pinpointing a date is to start from a suggested dating of the book of Acts and work backward. The final accounts of Acts detail Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but say nothing about his subsequent death, nor the deaths of Peter or James (believed to have occurred sometime between AD 60 - 70). This is remarkable given the final passages of Acts’ primary focus on Paul. Nor does Acts account for the Roman war (AD 66) or the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70), both major events which would have been especially germane to the subject of the book and surely of interest to the apostles. The omission of these relevant facts lead to a likely conclusion that the book itself was completed prior to any of these events, sometime prior to the early 60's AD. Since most scholars affirm that the Gospel of Luke was written prior to Acts and after the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, one can conclude on the basis of historically positioning the book of Acts that all of these books can all be dated before AD 70.

Flemming also notes that the Gospel of Mark mentions the fall of the temple in Jerusalem, which happened in AD 70, therefore Mark could not have been written prior to AD 70. Actually, the passage he is referring to does not explicitly mention the destruction of the temple in AD 70, but contains a cryptic prophesy from Jesus which has subsequently been interpreted to refer to the temple. It reads:

“Then as He went out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!' And Jesus answered and said to him, 'Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down (Mark 13: 1-3).”

Though this has come to be known as a prophecy confirmed by the fall of the temple in AD 70, it is not a specific mention of the event itself. One would have no reason to date this text after the event unless the possibility of prophetic accuracy was rejected prima facie. However, if one were to reject the prophetic, it is certainly plausible that Jesus was simply stating that no building will remain after His second coming, making the fall of the temple decades later a significant coincidence. While exegetical stances may vary in regard to this passage, Mark 13: 1-3 is not helpful in discerning the date of the writing of the Gospel, and certainly should not bar it from having been written prior to AD 70.

Besides the Gospel accounts, the details of Jesus' life are also found in reliable secular historical sources. These include Tacitus, Suetonius, Thallus, Pliny the Younger, Trajan, Hadrian, Lucian, Mara Bar-Serapian, and the Jewish historian Josephus. All of these writers cited information related to Jesus or Christianity within 20 to 150 years of the death of Jesus. For secondary affirmations in history, these are very early and valuable to refuting the claim that we know little of that portion of history. Jewish historian Josephus, for example, provides a detailed account of the rule of Pontius Pilate, and even includes an account of Jesus:

"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of the Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day (Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII, Chapter III)."

As a disclaimer, I am well aware that portions of this passage which seem to agree with the most supernatural claims about Jesus are likely to be spurious. My point in quoting from Josephus is not to prove that Josephus believed in the deity or even messianic identity of Jesus, but simply to show that Jesus was important enough to have been mentioned by him.

Skeptics might at this point suggest that using the same method of historiography to evaluate the New Testament documents as one might use to evaluate the documents of Herodotus is invalid, given that the Biblical accounts include supernatural and miraculous events, while the ancient histories do not. This is, however, false. In fact, ancient historical accounts do include numerous reports of omens, prophesies, miracles, as well as divine and demonic encounters and activity.

One often cited example comes from Plutarch's account of Alexander the Great, in which he notes that Alexander came from a Herculean genealogical line, as well as other supernatural details such as how the Greek pantheon favored and assisted him in battle, how he had encounters with a priest claiming to be the son of the god Ammon, and how he relied constantly upon oracles for decision making. Tacitus, too, mentions the divinity of the Caesars, the worship of them, and the divine influence upon the crop cycle. Suetonius includes in his writings numerous examples of divine encounters, interactions with the spirits of the dead, worship and prophesies, and many additional citations of omens found in heavenly observation, dreams and visions. While many of the ancient historians not only reported things of a supernatural nature, suggesting that people of that time actually believed in them, it seems that the historians themselves also believed in these phenomena. Why then are these writers forgiven their supernatural inclinations and trusted in their reporting, yet the New Testament writers are not given the same benefit? It seems, then, that this discrepancy is the result of historically retrospective discrimination.

Flemming plays fast and loose with claims of the illegitimacy of the New Testament and infers on such basis that secrets were kept and knowledge suppressed by church leaders for the purpose of misleading people and assuming control over them. Such a conspiracy and manipulation theory is often too easily assumed today without considering the cumulative weight of the evidence to the contrary, especially when the motivation to do so is first established by an emotional appeal to skepticism. I have previously written on the reliability of the New Testament, and am strongly in favor of the position that regardless of what one chooses to believe about the scriptures, their position and authority in history is clear (see my previous post on the reliability of the New Testament).

The basic premise of The God Who Wasn’t There is that Jesus never existed, and that fact, among many others pertaining to the traditional Christian faith, is a fabrication without any historical basis. Now, I must initially state that such a claim is so fantastic and on the extreme fringe of scholarship in theology, religion, history, and other fields as to be simply incredible and not worthy of discussion. However, and as I think the DaVinci phenomenon illustrates, we seem to be at a point at which we are more likely to extract truth from incredible sources, especially fictional ones, rather than those which exist to provide it. In other words, entertainment seems to have a more authoritative voice in our society such that outrageous claims and simply erroneous statements slip by and are taken as reliable while they cleverly hide within a seductive narrative context. To be fair, this is not exactly the sort of context in which The God Who Wasn’t There is presented; as I said before, it clearly intends to be a documentary. However, it is one with a particular agenda which provides a substantially skewed portrayal of just about every known fact pertaining to Christianity, yet its growing popularity suggests that many are convinced by its claims. In my next few posts, I will be examining some of the major issues related to this documentary and its distorted portrayal of the Christian faith.

The first portion of The God Who Wasn’t There is essentially a barrage of ad hominem (or "against the man") attacks against the Christian faith, mentioning the Galileo controversy (which I addressed in an earlier post called Valid and Invalid Conclusions from the Galileo Controversy), and several notorious individuals who have associated themselves with Christianity. In particular, Flemming mentions Charles Manson, Pat Robertson, Dena Schlosser, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, David Koresh, and then concludes, "So, I guess it’s kind of a mixed bag." I assume that at this point, the intention is for the viewer to have developed a distaste for Christianity based upon the provided roster of Christian “spokespersons” known for being insane, homicidal, publicly outrageous, and controversial. Yet, attacking individuals for various reasons says nothing about the veracity or the value of the Christian faith.

Augustine of Hippo is known to have said ‘One must not judge a philosophy by its abuse.’ Flemming’s use of Charles Manson as an example of Christianity is an obvious distortion of what Christianity actually is. It would be obviously ridiculous to say that, regardless of whether it is true, Christianity teaches white supremacy and homicide. Additionally, it would be incorrect to conclude that if Charles Manson, an admitted killer, claims to be a Christian, Christianity must be a lie or a failure. What Augustine means to show is that a proposition, or in this case a systematic faith, can be true regardless of how people respond to it or whether people even believe it. Needless to say, we cannot know how sincere any of these people are in their claim to be Christians. What Flemming is doing is establishing a distorted version of Christianity by intentionally selecting a list of notorious figures to represent it, likely hoping to build a strong foundation of resentment and anger upon which to build his weak historical case.

Ironically, while Christianity does not logically establish a basis upon which to behave as someone like Charles Manson has, Atheism cannot logically support the derivation of objective morality and thus can lead to such behavior. In fact, the most notorious crimes against humanity in the 20th century have been committed under the auspices of atheistic regimes like those of Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mau and Pol Pot. I am not saying, of course, that an atheist cannot live a moral life. Many atheists do live a moral life, yet they do so by adopting a system of morality from some external source which does not fit within the scheme of atheism. Thus, what I am saying is that atheism as a philosophy cannot account for a moral law and thus opens the door to such atrocities. If there is no God, then there is no moral law objective enough to which we must be accountable. If there is no objective moral law, then there is no logical reason why Stalin, Hitler, et al should have acted differently. On the other hand, Manson, though he may claim to be a Christian, committed acts which represent a clear rejection or diversion from the teachings of Christ, and thus cannot be a credible representative of the teachings of Christ.

The first portion of The God Who Wasn’t There, while trying to establish an atmosphere conducive to belittling and debunking Christianity actually backfires and reveals the subjectivity and personal angst of the filmmaker himself. Sadly, this is very common in the church and should serve as a convicting reminder that our works should be indicative of our faith, and will be how the faith is represented to those who are on the outside looking in. While this issue is obviously a logically flawed and illegitimate means of building an argument against the Christian faith, it does show the profound cost of poor stewardship of the church throughout history. We must be compelled to look to the example of Christ and act accordingly!