Stephen Colbert. Say what you want, this guy… this guy.
Mr. Colbert has on his show the other day Bart D. Ehrman. Mr. Ehrman suggests that the Bible, specifically the accounts about Jesus, are all a bunch of hooey. He suggests the following.
- The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works
- The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later
- Jesus, Paul, Matthew, and John all represented fundamentally different religions
- Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologians
Mr. Colbert, a comedian, shows… well watch it. This is apologetics without apology and good clean fun.
A big thank you to Carina!
April 13, 2009 at 5:30 am
Wow. Crickets… That is embarrassing. How painful is it to have a comedian destroy the whole premise of your book using third grade analogies?
~cmpt
April 13, 2009 at 6:40 am
Dr. Ehrman’s timidity was profoundly more evident this second time around than his first encounter with Colbert, when he at least ponyed up to admitting his agnosticism. Having watched a number of his lectures at UNC on DVD, and read of couple of his books, I have the distinct impression that his loss of faith is a great discomfort to him. But apparently not great enough to keep him from swallowing his integrity to shill his books on shows like Colbert’s.
He is too easy a target for Colbert, and he knows it. That’s the shame in all this. Yes, funny. For Ehrman’s soul, not so funny.
April 13, 2009 at 7:28 am
I was never terribly fond of Steven Colbert- yeah, he’s funny, but a lot of times his humor just misses its mark with me. This one, however, was pretty good; I’ll have to pass it around to what few Catholic friends I know of.
This is the sort of thing I wish there were more of- exposing the ignorance and unreasoned arguments that most people level against the Church.
April 13, 2009 at 7:46 am
He may not be the worlds best Catholic, yet it amazes me what a little bit of grace can do for a person.
Here’s Praying that Mr. Colbert grows in the grace of God!
April 13, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Glad to see you received the tip. 🙂 While Colbert has his faults, there have been times that he’s brought better theology to the conversation than his ‘expert’ guests.
If I may, here’s another one: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/149094/february-11-2008/philip-zimbardo. Forgive the cursing in the ending, but he nailed it about hell.
April 13, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Seems to me Bart D. Ehrman is a glutton for punishment.
April 13, 2009 at 5:04 pm
A glutton for punishment and willing to be humiliated to sell more books. It’s kind of sad, actually.
April 13, 2009 at 9:51 pm
But first you have to establish the existence of the duck. It might actually be just another goose.
Anyway, he’s entitled to his opinions, just like everyone else.
April 14, 2009 at 12:34 am
As I listened, I just knew that Colbert was subtly making excellent points. I just wish he’d pointed out that accounts matching too exactly is actually less credible – ask any detective which is more suspicious: multiple witnesses with the exact same testimony, or those with different perspectives and slight variations, and he’ll tell you the former is a red flag.
April 14, 2009 at 12:34 am
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April 14, 2009 at 2:12 am
So, if Jesus weighs the same as a duck, he’s made of wood?
Ehrman is making the tired mistake of assuming the Gospels are like newspaper reports; factual and chronological accounts of what happened. On the surface it seems he fails to take into account who wrote the Gospels, when and why. Mark is writing to a Jewish audience, Luke to a Greek and so on. Heck, I learned that at age 16 in High School.
April 14, 2009 at 2:37 am
Here’s the problem: Ehrmann thinks that reports of historic events should be alike. This wasn’t even true of newspaper coverage until fairly recently.
I found out first-hand that this was not so when reading about the death of President Garfield. Some reports described Mrs. Garfield collapsing in sobs; others complimented the stoic way in which she took the news. Still others focused on his vice-president’s and personal physician’s reactions, not on the Garfield family. If I used the same criteria, I could discredit all accounts of his death because of the contradictions.
April 14, 2009 at 8:09 pm
For Canadian Readers, the URL is:
http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/#clip16311