Comments on: Does Plagiarism Matter to Christians?

By: David Rahrer

David Rahrer — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 21:29:24 +0000

Q is sheer speculation, and several scholars do not a correct theory make.

Q is a theory based on the evidence found in the Gospels. It is a way of describing what appears to have happened, and it is certainly a concept shared by more than "several scholars." This is taught in conservative and liberal seminaries and bible colleges alike. This is not controversial in major venues. I'm uncertain as to why you would object to it so strongly.

By: Mike the Professor

Mike the Professor — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 15:41:15 +0000

In reply to David Rahrer.

One big difference that last man on earth doesn’t acknowledge is that the NT accounts, even if borrowing from one another, were not done for the purposes of turning a quick buck in an industry and enriching the authors. These people were signing their own death warrants. Completely different from the motivations of these pseudo-Christian celebs. Q is sheer speculation, and several scholars do not a correct theory make. I’ve been in the academic world for 16 years, don’t kid a kidder. Agreed, a lot of stuff is neatly packaged for the pews; my New Testament professor said “The Bible did not fall from heaven in a glad bag.” But the material neatly packaged for the consumption of the average skeptic is some of the most anti-intellectual tripe I’ve ever read and the lock step views many tend to have, coupled with the cheap gratuitous shots such as LMOE gave above, give the most knavish sort of KJV-only closed minds quite a run for their money. By the way, I am not a religious academic and have never taken a single class from a sectarian school, I teach law and fraud–I have a heightened BS meter, LMOE causes mine to smoke.

By: Mike the Professor

Mike the Professor — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 11:22:35 +0000

In reply to Warren Throckmorton. Like really talentless, plagiarized rock songs.

By: Timothy Snider

Timothy Snider — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:16:54 +0000

I apologize for a late comment to an apparent inactive thread, yet I thought I’d add a few thoughts. First, I was involved as an active layperson in a small Baptist church where they ‘called’ a preacher who was pretty slick. He occupied our parsonage and claimed to have his ‘house on the market’ in a major metro center 4 hrs away, but months passed and it never sold. I think his wife joined him for worship maybe 4-5 times in the 18 months he occupied the pulpit. The pastor began making frequent public appeals to pray for his house to sell. I found out the address, got on Zillow and other sites, and began detecting….and then confirming…..that the house was not ‘on the market’ all that often. I started to smell something foul. I’m not sure what set off my sensors (I’m in academia, so perhaps I’m tuned in.) but he gave a sermon one Sunday morning that contained anecdotes I thought were a little too ‘canned.’ I began typing phrases of his sermons into Google search engine, and began getting hits. At first, just soft hits. No smoking gun. But eventually, I began discovering he was recycling sermons…..from Rick Warren, OS Hawkins, Chuck Swindoll. He’d get into a series, develop a rhythm, I’d find the series, and I began printing the original author’s text and taking it with me to church. Before continuing, please note that not even the POTUS gives a speech orally exactly as it is written in the TOTUS. But, this preacher was essentially reading these sermons 98% word for word. I’d pass the script down to my wife; we both just shook our heads. We got a trusted deacon involved. We eventually made an approach to the key staff members and chair of deacons who took the allegation to the preacher. He denied, they believed him, and we made an exit. We were then begged to return by several that were ‘out of the loop’ but sensed we were not being forthright as to our reasons for leaving (we were trying to knock the mud off our shoes). So, we came back. The pattern continued….Sunday morning….Sunday night….some reading this might be waving the Matthew 18 flag. So be it. You’re right, we didn’t really follow the Matthew 18 concepts, but please know this church wouldn’t have known about Matthew 18 to begin with…..this church followed the “Thou shalt not touch the Lord’s anointed” concepts, and we knew it. After 8 weeks of return and still no change, we left again. This time for good. We eventually got the senior associate minister to believe us (months after his wife believed us). Eventually, about half the church left and two other key deacons finally quietly moved this guy out…..plush severance package, no accountability, etc. Eventually, he became a chaplain or something somewhere. I was struck by the fact that with incontrovertible, repetitive instances of evidence, the word of the anointed would trump the facts of the butts in the pews. I just now realized my ‘first’ thought took a lot of space. My second thought was about how Christian musicians will hijack old hymns and call the lyrics and the melody their own as long as they tweak a half note to a dotted half or add an extra ‘the’ or ‘holy’ in the lyrics. More on that if I get any interaction on this other deal.

By: Nickolaus Pacione

Nickolaus Pacione — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 05:01:59 +0000

It’s a big one for me as I was dragged into a plagiarism scandal within the HWA; the players who were vocal about the plagiarist turned around enabling my work to be plagiarized even further. I invite those who are writers to do an anthology who are Christians who minimal quote — the King James Only Movement plagiarized like they f**ked their mothers.