Mr. Cameron (forget his first name, the Titanic guy) made a special on the History channel about the Exodus. I didn’t see it, but apparently is was wrong in many areas.The biggest error is one on which I can comment having not seen the movie — it was on the History channel! Folx, the Bible is not history, it’s mythology. When the History channel airs stuff like this, it legitimizes the story as fact. It gives the viuewer the wrong information.We get the same thing from CNN, FOX, and ABC news when they do stupid reports such as “Is Armageddon coming?”. It totally takes away from the legitimacy of the channels, and I think we should let them know. I know I trust these stations less when they abandon fact for a story about fantasy presented as fact.
Holy crap! It looks like Frontline has pretty much every episode available for online viewing. Find a fast connection and start watching!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/
as you might imagine, I listen to a lot of NPR. I specifically like Brian Lehrer on WNYC (93.9 fm). He’s my model for asking good questions: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/
I also get news analysis from my friend’s website http://www.pinr.com
and of course the Daily Show and Colbert Report
polygamy how widespread is it.where it is legal do most practise it.
Atomic, I love the Discovery Channel’s Biker Build-off. Mmmmm–Billy Lane (sigh). I’m going to meet him this Saturday. I can’t wait! We talk on-line because we may be related (well sort-of). My stepdad’s name is Billy Lane too, and both of our families hail from Western PA (about 20 miles apart). Guess I’m braggin a bit. Sorry.
Concerning that History Channel show about things depicted in the Bible (Old Testament), I was sorry to have missed seeing that program. The History Channel usually does a fine job of NOT prostletizing FOR religion. It is to be presumed that the people responsible for the History Channel programming are just Too Smart to be sucked-in by the idiotic religious hucksters’ mythology. I believe I once saw an ad for the History Channel that mentioned “Pope Joan”. This was the Pope who had been ‘annointed’ and was then travelling by foot in a procession through Rome – heading back to the papal apartments. Part way back on this trip, this Pope suddenly fell ill and collapsed in the street. As the faithful worshipers gathered to see what was wrong, the Pope proceeded to give birth to a child! The outraged mob of citizens were said to have beat this ‘pope’ to death right on the spot. Although there is a lot of controversy as to whether this actually did occur, the History Channel deserves much credit for mentioning this weird & amusing incident.
Just to add a little something more -the History Channel WILL deliver programming that the Xians enjoy & find supportive. It’s been said that the U.S. is about the most heavily Xian of all the developed nations, having perhaps about 90% of our moronic population who believe in “god’s” existance. In contrast, the U.K was named (somewhere) as having about 25% of its population who responded to a poll, who AGREED that religions are the major cause of most of the problems in the world today. So the History Channel will NOT be able to state anything that the Xians would feel are outright “heresy” – or are blatantly atheistic. It *apparently* is forced to provide programming that agrees with the weird mythological views of the superstitious herd.
If you throw out all historical records which claim a mythological component, you throw out a lot of history.
Just because Constantine claimed to see an “XP” in the sky doesn’t mean that there was no “battle of Milvan Bridge.”
I watched the show on the history channel. I thought it was interesting.
I don’t think that it legitimizes the bible story of the exodus. It did help prove that bible stories are sometimes based on actual events that the xian leaders twisted for their purpose of converting nonbelievers.
Some points made in the show were…
-The time period for the bible story was off by several centuries.
-The Jews were actually a group of people known as the Hyksos and they weren’t slaves, but they did leave the area.
-Rameses wasn’t the pharoah at the time.
-Every plague was explained scientifically, not religiously. Everything that “God” reined upon Egypt was actually aftereffects of a volcanic eruption.
-The Red Sea parting was probably caused by water being pulled out of the area by a tsunami somewhere else…also, the Hebrew was translated wrong..it wasn’t the Red Sea, it was the Reed Sea….which could be any number of marshy areas in Egypt.
This show was enough to help my 9 year old stepson (who has religion forced upon him by his mother) to say he believes in the scientific explanation of the plagues the show offered more than the story in the bible about “god” causing the plagues.
Panda- very interesting facts about the program. I saw an advertisement for it, and heard it was from Cameron so I was interested- I’m a big fan of Titanic…
But, I missed the show….
Titanic, by the way, is an excellent example of writing a fictional story around a historic event.
The sinking, of course, did happen- but the Jack/Rose romance thing is pure fiction….
Maybe it’s just me… but hasn’t the History Channel been showing a whole lot of religious-themed programming all summer ?
The did a few nights on pirates when the Pirates of the Carribean sequel came out.
But otherwise, since around the time The Da Vinci Code was released History has been doing a lot of stuff centered around religion.
Maybe it’s just me- but it seems every time I surf onto the channel, someone is seated infront of a stained glass window, talking about Jeeezus !
While the History channel does do a lot of religious-based shows, I watch them when I can because they aren’t trying to persuade someone to be religious. They interview people on all sides of the story and I’ve caught at least one show a while back where they discussed how the religious leaders changed their holy book to get people to do what they wanted.
As for the Da Vinci Code–I’ve never read the book, but from what I’ve been told, it’s a piece of fiction that xians have taken out of context. It would be interesting if Jesus had been a real man with a wife—what a blow to the xian faith.
Has anyone ever watched “30 Days?” A good for hardcore xians to watch is the one where the xian dude had to spend a month with a muslim family and particiapte in their religios practices….