{"id":3497,"date":"2006-04-01T10:48:10","date_gmt":"2006-04-01T10:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/letter-of-the-day.html"},"modified":"2006-04-01T10:48:10","modified_gmt":"2006-04-01T10:48:10","slug":"letter-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/letter-of-the-day.html","title":{"rendered":"Letter of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

From one Cory T:<\/p>\n

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To start I must state that, if someone were to describe me as a reader it would be a gross understatement, somewhat akin to \u2018Tolkien wrote a nice<\/em> book\u2019. More apt would be: I am a connoisseur of fine literature, and take great pride in my collection, and choice of authors. To say that I am extremely selective in my choices would be another mistake. So when I say that the only reason I have heard of you was your name popped up in my research of Mr. Dan Brown\u2019s book, should say something! Needless to say I was less than pleased with your recount of his book. I have been looking into you and can only laugh, ahh\u2026 naivet\u00e9, but I didn\u2019t expect much after reading your credentials. The public school system is about as accurate as that bible you\u2019re thumping. One only has to turn your own \u201cproof\u201d back upon yourself to put you in a corner. The Dead Sea Scrolls are real, despite the churches\u2019 claim that they are not. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Um…okay. <\/em><\/p>\n

More, after the jump, if you dare.<\/p>\n

Go check out The Holy Fool, who’s got something to say about all this!<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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And nothing in this world has claimed more lives than the justification of \u2018Our religion is the right one you\u2019re going to hell join us or die!\u201d more people have died at the hands of someone claiming to do the work of \u2018God\u2019 the church, or to be His representative than all the viruses, crimes, nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, or anything else I can think of.If I may paraphrase a quote in the forward of The Hobbit<\/em> \u201cWe are brought up to praise all the wrong heroes, thieves carrying crosses\u2019, murderers planting flags, let us at last praise the colonizer of dreams.\u201d  <\/span>This is not the exact quote as I don\u2019t have it here in front of me but it is accurate as far as I can remember. It also says a lot. Why do we have a Columbus Day? He did not find America. He was a huge slaver and rapist, and gold digging thief. Why not celebrate Norse day or Alaskan migratory tribe day? They are not popularly linked with the discovery of America. In school kids are still taught that Columbus found America when in fact he was lost in the Caribbean. <\/p>\n

Let us return to the bible, if we are to believe it then you should be dead for cutting your hair. Or eating a ham sandwich, does that mean everyone who eats a ham for thanksgiving or Christmas is going to hell? If that is the mindset of our God then I wonder why the devil didn\u2019t get along with Him. Ever read Memnoch the Devil<\/em> by Ann Rice? I haven\u2019t seen your book Defaming the devil, why Ann rice is going to Hell<\/em>. Yet you choose to pick apart Dan Brown stating \u201cThe Da Vinci Code phenomenon continues to amaze. Its central allegations percolated for years in the pages of quack-history books, attracting little attention. Along came author Dan Brown, who slapped the label "fiction" on them and \u2014 presto! \u2014 millions of readers started asking, "Wow, is this true?" The short answer is, of course not.\u201d<\/em> <\/span><\/span> <\/span>Ann paints the devil in a very questioning light, yet I don\u2019t see you rushing to call her a \u2018Quack\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
            <\/span>The truth is: it is just a book, and a fictitious one at that. But that doesn\u2019t mean that there is no truth in the underpinnings of the story. And just stating that \u201cThe Bible says so\u201d doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s true. The bible is a 2000 year old product of man. NOT GOD. \u2018God did not fax the bible to earth\u2019, it is written by man and thus prone to errors just like man. P.S. the current English King James Version of the bible is also the scientifically proven most inaccurate. And as I didn\u2019t see Aramaic on your list of qualifications\u2019, I\u2019m guessing you\u2019re probably just as inaccurate, especially judging by your firm belief in it. <\/span><\/div>\n
            <\/span>Before I leave you with this, I will say one thing. Before you write me off as some wacko non believer, know this: I have a deep love for God, and know for a fact that he does exist, just read the Genesis Prayer<\/em>, BUT I am firmly against Religion, especially organized religion. As I said before, it has caused more death, strife, pain, and suffering, than the (evil concept of the) devil could ever hope for. So in closing I\u2019m sorry for the length, of my letter but please, indulge me and read it through. Dan Brown is not a bad guy he just wanted to tell a story that he believes has more that a few ties to real life. Just as I\u2019m sure you believe that the bible is entirely concrete, and unquestionable. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From one Cory T: To start I must state that, if someone were to describe me as a reader it would be a gross understatement, somewhat akin to \u2018Tolkien wrote a nice book\u2019. More apt would be: I am a connoisseur of fine literature, and take great pride in my collection, and choice of authors.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLetter of the Day - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/letter-of-the-day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Letter of the Day - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From one Cory T: To start I must state that, if someone were to describe me as a reader it would be a gross understatement, somewhat akin to \u2018Tolkien wrote a nice book\u2019. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}