A reader asked me to do a post about someone called Dionysius (not the greek god). The reader was informed by someone at his church that this fellow Dionysius apparently wrote about an eclipse at the time Jesus died on the cross. I decided to have a quick look at what I was getting myself into, and the first thing I discovered was that Dionysius was someone mentioned in the book of Acts who was converted to Christianity by Paul. When I went searching for the claim about the eclipse...
The writing mentioning the eclipse was written by an anonymous author in the 5th-6th century pretending to be the Dionysius mentioned in Acts. This is yet another case of middle-ages Christians fabricating documents to try and lend some credibility to their religion. Much the same as the forged passage in Josephus' 'Antiquities'. What angers me even more than these hypocritical Christians back in history trying to make their religion more appealing, is the people who go around spreading this intellectual faeces in the 21st century. The information explaining that it is a forgery is just as readily available as the document itself. You can find it by using Google. So either the Christian telling my reader about it was a liar, or the person who told them was a liar. It all comes down to Christians spreading lies to promote their religion, nothing we haven't seen before.
Wiki page on Pseudo-Dionysius
I'd be inclined to think the guy from my church who mentioned it was genuinely misinformed.
ReplyDeleteYeah I'd say so too. You said he was also a biblical literalist/young earth creationist too didn't you? The people that come up with that propaganda, like Ken Ham, Kent Hovind etc. They're incredible liars, and they seem to enjoy lying to children even more.
ReplyDeleteSo I imagine the guy got the Dionysius idea from one of the fundy propaganda mills. You should tell him he's been lied to.
Not entirely sure. I just overheard him debating with someone about Noah's Ark in the staffroom and that was the vibe I got.
ReplyDeleteYeah the KK's appear to be so convinced in their minds that it's the evolutionary biologists that are liars with agendas. This allows them to see themselves/Bible as right.
The title of this post sounds strangely familiar to my latest one... :-P And isn't it fascinating that Christians have to constantly rewrite or lie about history to prop up their claims of "what really happened?" It just reeks of dishonesty.
ReplyDeleteComplete coincidence lol. But yeah, it's very dishonest and hypocritical.
ReplyDeleteCan you do a post on why some Christians send those forwarded emails that that are obviously hoaxes or are blatant lies? Or maybe who makes them up? (Its modern day dishonesty) Some that I have seen include: claiming that the remains of the red sea chariots have been found thus proving the bible, giants have been found (you posted that one lol), Albert Einstein didn't believe in evolution - you get the picture :)
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's a problem that really has a lot to do with religion. It's simply just an issue of people being gullible in general. They see something in an email and the source to them seems reliable, so they send it round to all their friends. A lot of these chain-mail claims are debunked by snopes.
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