Responses to The Nativity Story:

I thoroughly enjoyed Julia Thompson's review of The Nativity Story, and would like to post it on our church's website. Thank you! - Rev. David M. Demarest, Pastor Kirkwood Presbyterian Church, Bridgeport OH

I read your comments with interest. My husband and I pastor a church here in Nanaimo. We went to see the film. What I saw I really liked but it’s what I didn’t see that disappointed me. I thought Hardwicke missed an opportunity to take the film over the top. Mary’s meeting with an angel would not be “business as usual” as well as the angelic pronouncement to the shepherds. Both scenes would have carried a lot of emotion:, fear, amazement, joy, peace. I like the film but it could have been so much better. - Pat Markham Director for Women's Ministries Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada

I am, to say the least, disappointed in this article. My pastor saw a private screening of this movie, and what struck him were the elements were definitely NOT in line with Scripture. The most glaring one is when the THREE Wise Men arrive at the MANGER to see the NEWBORN Christ Child. With all of their "research," they apparently did not read the Christmas accounts in the Gospels. You usually do a good job in your pieces, but this one leaves a LOT to be desired. - James Smith History Department Southwest Baptist University

I wish someone would get it right. The Nativity Story is the NOT the story we find in the Bible. Why do we think that Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem by themselves? Both families were required to go to Bethlehem. Why do we keep supporting the idea that Jesus was born in a cave or a stable when the Greek word for "inn" really means "guest room"? It is the same Greek word that is used to describe the room Jesus and His disciples held the Last Supper. In the parable of the Good Samaritian, Jesus uses the Greek word that is used for an "inn". In Luke 2:7, Luke did not use that word. The Nativity Story may be a decent movie for families to attend, but it is not the real story of Christmas no matter how slick it might be. - Rev. Peter Waid Spartanburg, SC

Responses to Answering Atheists Arguments:


Your account of the atrocities performed by the Roman Catholic Church are very inaccurate. The conservative estimates of the amount of Christians killed during the 1260 years of dominance in Europe by this power are 2,000,000. The true number is never going to be known this side of Paradise because it was Its policy to destroy not only the Christians but also the records, so that not even their existence is known nowadays. The annihilation of the Armenians by the Turks is another example of Religious persecution in modern times. The forceful "Christianizing" of the American Indians by the "Conquistadors" is another example of religious killings and the amount in this case is at least 20,000,000. So the Roman Catholic Church has a very bloody past and a very tainted present. The pedophilia practiced by its priests is not something new to the 21st century. It is something institutionalized since its very inception due to the fact that its hierarchy forbids the marriage of its bishops. Unfortunately the persecution of this power is not going to end yet. They are preparing to take over the same policies of destruction in the very near future. The small horn is been given life again and is going to continue speaking blasphemy until the end of the time. - Abel Poloche

Responses to other tothesource articles:

Is religion to blame? In his new book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, the academic guru and Ayatollah of atheism has clenched his tiny fist against God. On the first page, Dawkins invites us (in the spirit of Lennon) to imagine a world without religion. Yet the only memories of religion we are offered are abuses of faith. At a deeper level, Dawkins imagines religion to be the primary cause of human atrocities. Here he echoes his earlier thoughts, “Only the willfully blind fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities of the world today” (A Devil’s Chaplin). Like other conclusions in his book, this one though widely held is forced and flatly wrong. But Am I wrong to imagine an agenda? In another recent book, Unspeakable: Facing up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror”, Os Guinness notes that, “It is a widely held and largely unquestioned belief in educated circles today that religion is the main cause of repression and violence in our world and an essentially divisive and explosive force in public life that we would be wise to exclude from the public square altogether. For example, one New York Times reporter argued after September 11 that our main problem is not terrorism but ‘religious totalitarianism’ and that the danger of religious totalitarianism was represented not just by Islam but by Judaism and the Christian faith as well—in fact, by all faiths that have ‘absolute’ or ‘exclusive’ claims.” Again, this is simply wrong. Guinness demonstrates that, “The worst modern atrocities were perpetrated by secularist regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, and in the name of secularist beliefs.” Those who believe that more wars have been waged and more people killed in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history are factually wrong. And Guinness is rightly concerned that the “lazy repetition” of this myth, “seriously distorts public debate and endangers democratic freedom.” Contrary to widespread opinion, he notes that, “September 11 was a break with the worst twentieth-century massacres because the atrocity was done in the name of Allah” (Emphasis mine). This is not to deny the horrific massacres in the name of religion. But the truth is that: “More people were killed by secularist regimes in the twentieth century than in all the religious persecutions in Western history, and perhaps in all history. More than one hundred million human beings were killed by secularist regimes and ideologies in the last century” (Guinness). We must never forget the Ottoman massacre of more than a million Armenians; the slaughtered of nearly two million people by Cambodia’s communist leader Pol Pot; the murder of an estimated thirty million Russians by Stalin and Mao ZeDong’s unimaginable destruction of sixty-five million Chinese. And what should be said about Hitler and the extermination of millions of Jews? Guinness rightly notes that, “Hitler and the Nazis are something of a special case. Hitler was implacably hostile to the Christian faith, but not an advocate of atheism. Almost to a person, as the history of Nazism and the record of the Nuremberg trials attest, the Nazi leaders were ex-Christians and ex-Catholics. Those, including Hitler, who had Christian backgrounds, vehemently rejected them. Hitler said, “Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.” The dictators behind the greatest carnage of human history were not motivated by religion. The most destructive atrocities were executed by secular regimes for secular reasons. “The full story of the evils of Stalin and Mao is yet to be unearthed and told with anything like the completeness accorded to Hitler and the Nazis, but the secularist commitments are clear beyond dispute” (Guinness). Dawkins conveniently overlooks this fact. But he also fails to accept that, “Secularist philosophies such as atheism are just as ‘totalitarian’ as the three ‘religions of the Book.’ What secularists believe is so total, or all-encompassing, that it excludes what the religious believer believes.” The most notable recent example of this was Communism. Guinness correctly identifies Communism as, “…the most dangerous delusion in history so far.” The era of Communism has been accurately described as “an atheistic millennialism.” The persistent inclination to blame religion is rooted in “…an unexamined Enlightenment prejudice that simultaneously reduces faith to its functions and recognizes only the worst contributions of faith, not the best—such as the rise of the universities, the development of modern science, the abolition of slavery, and the promotion of human rights. In his magisterial moral history of the twentieth century, Humanity, Jonathan Glover points out that even those who do not believe in a religious moral law should be troubled by its fading. ‘It is striking how many protests against and acts of resistance to atrocity have also come from principled religious commitment.’” (Guinness) Dawkins superficially fails to realize that, “our problem in the public square is not ‘religious totalitarianism,’ and the solution is not a ‘multilingual relativism’ that bans all absolute and exclusive claims. In a day of exploding diversity, the real question is: how do we live with our deepest differences when many of those differences are absolute, including those of secularism?” - Steven W. Cornell Senior pastor Millersville Bible Church

While I agree that it is people who kill, not religions, as many of your respondents have said, I wonder if those who clain that Hitler was a Christian, or who claim that he was the heir of Christianity are aware of a little rhyme that the SS used quite regularly: Ich kann nicht ein Christen sein Jesus war ien Juden schwein. It doesn't sound very Christian to me. - Ann

Perhaps but correct me if im wrong. but the only thing you proved with your argument is that both Faith and atheism are not the answers to todays modern society or any society. You tried to proved that atheism was a bane against society, only as a scape goat to what religion has done. The human race is not perfect, atheists just like christains have been misguided. - Stefan

However, it can't be denied that religion has contributed to many battles. It remains such a controversial subject, much like in the past. I myself am not an atheist. Thus i believe that humans were not placed on this earth to judge. I believe if one were truly religious, he would adhere to the fact that God makes the final judgements. Can there not be more than one (aka "the only, and the right") opinion towards religion? Many do not think so, which is ironic. - S.K.

Dawkins and Harris unleash a bit more than 'fly-spots' on imortal marble; however, it might be said that they have flung dung at moving monoliths and a lot of that it flew back in their faces. Thanks for the statement. - J.C.W.