News: The DaVinci Blog - Christianity Today Movies

I share information from a good site on the DaVinci junk. McKellen is a very good actor but it sounds like he is an ass. Enjoy

News: The DaVinci Blog - Christianity Today Movies: "

THE DAVINCI BLOG
McKellen: Bible Is Fiction
Da Vinci star Ian McKellen makes controversial statements about Bible, Catholic Church; Ron Howard tells concerned moviegoers to skip the film. Plus: Protests, boycotts, and hunger strikes ensue worldwide; Muslims, Asian Christians upset.
by Josh Hurst | posted 05/22/06

As if the filmmakers of The Da Vinci Code didn't have enough controversy on their hands already, one of the film's stars, Sir Ian McKellen, brought even more wrath upon the movie last week during an interview on NBC's The Today Show.

Addressing concerns felt by many Christian groups over the film's portrayal of Christ and the church, Today's Matt Lauer noted that 'people wanted this to say 'fiction, fiction, fiction.' How would you all have felt if there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie? Would it have been okay with you?'

Replied McKellen: 'Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story. And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing after they've seen it.'

View the clip here.

McKellen, a gay man who admits to ripping the book of Leviticus (which condemns homosexuality) out of hotel room Bibles, made similarly controversial comments in an interview with MTV, claiming the church 'is always saying very rude and unnecessary things about gay people, so I tend to keep out of their way and not listen to what they say.'

Meanwhile, the film's director, Ron Howard, has taken a more diplomatic approach. When asked about the film's controversy Howard stated, 'My advice … is to not go see the movie if you think you're going to be upset. Wait. Talk to somebody who has seen it. Discuss it. And then arrive at an opinion about the movie itself … Again: This is supposed to be entertainment, it's not theology.'

In other Da Vinci news:

Da Vinci undermines faith in Catholic Church (MSNBC)
Survey shows that book, film are dangerous

India delays film premiere (Associated Press)
Government postpones debut, citing religious concerns

Philippines gives film harsh rating (Reuters)
Da Vinci for 'adults only' in Catholic country

Film banned in Middle East (Pittsburgh Live)
Many Islamic countries reject movie

Muslims angered by Da Vinci (Reuters)
Film causes controversy for claims about Christ

Australian priest okays film (The Age)
Archbishop approves of seeing Da Vinci

Detractors use book, film for evangelism (chron.com)
Critics of story still use it to share faith

Protests escalate worldwide (Associated Press)
Boycotts, hunger strikes, attempts to block screenings

Beijing first to see film; protests throughout Asia (AP)
Christians in many Asian countries angered by movie

� Josh Hurst 2006, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information."

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Daily Encounter: A Biblical Answer to the Da Vinci Code for Friday, May 19, 2006

This makes sense. I share this from Daily Encounter:

Daily Encounter: A Biblical Answer to the Da Vinci Code for Friday, May 19, 2006: "Daily Encounter: A Week-day Devotional by Richard (Dick) Innes of ACTS International

Friday, May 19, 2006

1. A Biblical Answer to the Da Vinci Code

2000 years ago: 'When they [the religious leaders] heard this [Peter and the disciples preaching about Jesus Christ], they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them: 'Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God' (Acts 5:33-39, NIV).

In a letter to the editor of the New Zealand Herald newspaper, Barrie McClymont, director of the ACTS International in New Zealand wrote:

'In 1988 I was visiting Universal Studios in Hollywood as a tourist when I witnessed a few hundred people in a nearby section protesting against the film 'The Last Temptation of Christ.' While I understood their purpose I felt that such a public protest was simply drawing attention to the film pointlessly.

'Sure enough the film died a natural death as a piece of nonsense. Most folk today cannot even recall its existence. Over my years I have watched a number of easily forgotten attempts to challenge Christianity with material like the 'Da Vinci Code.' These theories died in short order as will the current material.

'The sub-leader in Monday's New Zealand Herald from the Sunday Telegraph correctly related the material to the G. K. Chesterton quote that 'when a man stops believing in God, he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes in anything.' The only reason the current Da Vinci Code gets wide attention [in New Zealand] is substantially related to the copyright debate and not to its veracity. These things die on their feet.'"

Rex Murphy is on Target Again

This is a great piece of work. Of course it is best to watch him "perform" his monologue. He always seems to cut straight to the key ideas of the issues. I personally have a vague idea of what Kyoto is about but on the whole I see an agreement that means nothing. It is the kind of thing that gives politicians a bad name. If you sign an agreement on behalf of me as my representative then you had better keep the agreement. At this point countries who have not signed on have a better record on the envoronment requirements than many countries that have signed on. As for the gun registry it was poorly planned, poorly managed and again it is the kind of thing that makes politicians look bad. If gun registry is the "magic bullet" then why is it that we still have gun crime? It has not done any change for good. Anyway read Rex. He says it better than I ever could.

"Yoking wishfulness to vast expenditure"

May 16 2006

The gun registry and the Kyoto Protocol are, at least in one respect, twins. They both illustrate the uselessness of piety pretending to be policy, of half thought mixed with full-bore emotion substituting for a rational response to a perceived public problem.

Kyoto is a great empty house of wishful thinking. Some countries that have signed on have done less than those that did not. Canada has done less than the U.S., for example, though the U.S. Congress universally voted it down during the Clinton years, while Canada touted its signature on the accord as being in itself a great Boy Scout badge of international and environmental do-good-ism.

And then there's the gun registry. Whatever the gun registry was supposed to do, beyond raising a cloud of vague righteousness that something was being done, what has it specifically done for places like Toronto, say, with its year of the gun?

Where real gun crime exists, it almost always is handguns, stolen, smuggled, and unregistered, that are causing havoc.

Where's the registry in that picture? And today Sheila Fraser pounded a few dozen more 9-inch nails into the coffin of the gun registry. That other response to a problem which over the five years of its life has been an epic catalogue of unimaginable expense, was going to cost $2 million net and cost $1 billion instead.

She told us of computer systems whose costs ballooned, amounts in the tens of millions not recorded, and even more damning, added that the information these wonderful systems so expensively collected can either be (a) incorrect or (b) incomplete, and at a press conference that the data cannot be relied on. So it can't be relied on; its information is incomplete or incorrect, and it costs more than the tar sands.

Well, not the tar sands.

In the early days of this program, it was all so simple. We had then Justice Minister Allan Rock standing to tell the country, 'All that we're asking of firearms owners is to fill out two cards and mail them in.'

A few postcards and a postage stamp. And we get a billion dollars?

Who was the mailman? Wile E. Coyote?

The gun registry accomplished negatives, however, by the bucket load. A cost overrun that yet will make 'Ripley's Believe It or Not', antagonized whole swatches of harmless citizens, from duck hunters to farmers, who found themselves hectored and harassed to fill in its unreliable forms, pay its useless fees, or wind up listed as criminals if they did not.

Now, Kyoto is not a registry, but it has the same impulse at its centre, vagueness of intention surrounding an amorphous good cause. The science is contentious, regardless of what the propagandists of global warning will tell you. It is advocacy-driven and as much a lobby as General Motors.

As Kyoto is globally, the gun registry is for us nationally, a perfect parable of yoking wishfulness to vast expenditure to appease wistful public sentiment. Whatever that sentiment, it urges politicians to just do something. In both cases, they did. Kyoto eight years on is a hollow piety, and the gun registry is a compound of excess, uselessness, annoyance, and the most highly capitalized piece of policy pointlessness since the Newfoundland government 20 years ago spent $27 million to fund a science fiction dream of growing cucumbers out of the East Coast granite.

Keep the gun registry? Only if they open a museum for monumental illustrations of how to waste public money. And in that museum, the registry will occupy the same place in public policy that the private sector has long ago given the Edsel. For 'The National', I'm Rex Murphy.



Rex Murphy

Rex Murphy's
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The Da Vinci Rejects - Christianity Today Magazine

Christians can laugh when faced with the Da Vinci Code ridicule unlike our Muslim brethern. A sample below. Having been a Bloom County fan I especially like the one about the penguin invading the secret society. Anyway, enjoy.

Christianity Today, Week of June 14

PARODY
The Da Vinci Rejects
What other publishers could have done to respond to Dan Brown's bestseller.
By Ted Olsen | posted 06/16/2004 12:01 a.m.

Baker:
The Da Vinci Corrective: Recovering Biblical Equality in the Life of Mary Magdalene
By Catherine Clark Kroeger

Canon Press:
Evil Art: Da Vinci's Last Supper and the Need for a New Iconoclasm
By Douglas Jones

Chick Publications:
Opus Day: Everyone's Favorite Cartoon Penguin Invades the Secretive Catholic Organization
By J.T. Chick and Berkley Breathed, with introduction by former Opus Dei leader Alberto Rivera.

Church House Publishing:
The Da Vinci Code: Imagining Leonardo as an Anglican Isn't Crazier than Dan Brown's Fantasies.
By Rowan Williams

Crossway:
Gneutered Gnostics: Troubling Gender-Inclusive Language in Da Vinci Code Response Books
By Wayne A. Grudem

Eerdmans:
The Rembrandt Code: Understanding the Hidden Calvinist Messages in The Prodigal Son and Other Paintings.
By Hendrik van den Leeuwen

Harvest House:
The Power of a Praying Painter: The True Meaning and Devotion of Leonardo da Vinci's Art.
By Stormie Omartian, with a foreword by Thomas Kincade.

Howard Publishing:
Hugs for Heretics

Moody:
Saddam Hussein Leonardo da Vinci the Antichrist?
By Charles H. Dyer (Slightly revised from earlier published edition of similar book)

Relevant:
The DiCaprio Code: Spiritual Messages of Leonardo's Work, From Growing Pains to Catch Me If You Can
By Will Johnson

Also from Relevant:
Fresh Frescoes: The Spiritual Journey of Dan Brown

Spence:
The Da Vinci Threat: How a Painter Blurred the Lines of Gender & Sexual Ethics and Is Still Destroying the Family 500 Years Later
By Joseph Farah

Strang:
The Da Vinci Cure: How Leonardo Painted the Perfect Diet
By Don Colbert, M.D.

Waterbrook:
The Da Vinci Codependent
By Steve Arterburn

Westminster John Knox:
The Gospel According to Dan Brown
By Mark I. Pinsky

W:
Line of ancillary products: The Da Vinci Coat, The Da Vinci Comb, and The Da Vin-Tea Cozy

Zondervan (emergent/ys):
A New Kind of Code: The Church Needs to Read Heretical Fiction Because It's So Modernist, Man
By Brian McLaren

Christianity Today:
Is Gnosticism a Religion of Peace?
By J.I. Packer, Timothy George, and Tom Oden
Copyright � 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information."

Da Vinci Decoded

Let me begin by saying that fiction is fiction and I well understand that. I have not yet read the Da Vinci Code. I will probably read it via the library at some time. I understand it is a great read. The problem I have is that many will look at this book as factual. If you are a reasonable person with a well developed intellect you will see this story as a story. But there are some out there who don't check historical fact. Many will take all that Dan Brown wrote good history and based on good research. Time will tell but I know some will examine the facts and come know the real historical Christ. Others will turn away. Another group will use it as an excuse not to believe in the first place.

Check out this site for some good factual information:

Christian History - The Da Vinci Code Special Section

Example from above:

Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out - Christianity Today Magazine: "But was there really no such thing as 'orthodoxy' before the fourth century? Is it really the case that Gnosticism was harshly suppressed without being given a fair trial?

First, there is no strong evidence to suggest that gnostic Christians vied with the orthodox from the beginning. Even what is probably the earliest gnostic document, the Gospel of Thomas, seems to have come from a period after the New Testament books were already recognized as authoritative and widely circulated.

The Gospel of Thomas, in fact, draws on most of these documents, adding some new ideas about Jesus and about the faith. All other major gnostic texts—like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of Mary, and so on—are clearly written in the second and third centuries.

Church Fathers Irenaeus and Tertullian addressed Gnosticism in the second century in works titled Against Heresies and The Prescription Against Heretics. And the Muratorian Canon (a list of New Testament writings from late second century) says this: 'There is current also an epistle to the Laodiceans, and another to the Alexandrians, both forged in Paul's name to further the heresy of Marcion, and several others which cannot be received into the catholic Church. For it is not fitting that gall be mixed with honey.' In other words, it is historically false to say that the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries invented or first defined 'heresy.'

Revisionist historians like Pagels also argue that there was no core belief system, later called 'orthodoxy,' in the first century. This is a strange claim, because anyone who has read the letters of John, for example, knows that discussions about orthodoxy and heresy were heating up in the New Testament period. Paul's letters, too, show distinctions being made between truth and error. By the time we get to the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus), there is a strong sense of what is and is not sound doctrine, particularly in terms of salvation and the person of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, the early church viewed the Old Testament as both authoritative and inspired, as 2 Timothy 3:16 shows. This is an important point in regard to Gnosticism. The earliest churches had already recognized the Hebrew Scriptures as canon, a set of authoritative and divinely inspired texts. Notice how much of the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament books—all written to edify churches across the ancient world. Gnosticism fundamentally rejected Jewish theology about the goodness of creation, and especially the idea that all the nations could be blessed through Abraham and his faith. When the church accepted the Hebrew Scriptures, it implicitly rejected Gnosticism before it had a chance to get started. Thus we are already at a watershed moment in the development of early Christianity, one that could not allow Gnosticism to ever be regarded as a legitimate development of the Christian faith."

Check out more real history. It is usually more interesting than a goofy conspiracy theory!!!

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"Tories more popular than Bloc in Quebec: poll
2006-05-02 08:10:59

It has not taken long for the Harper Conservatives to win the minds of Quebecers. After 100 days in power, a new CROP poll for La Presse suggests the Tories are now more popular than the Bloc Quebecois in this province.
The survey reveals that if elections were held this week, the Tories would get 34 percent of the vote in Quebec, compared to the Bloc's 31 percent. The Liberals would get a mere 15 percent of the vote and the NDP 13 percent.
56 percent of Quebec respondents say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the Harper government, the best approval rating for a federal government in Quebec in years. "