SCOTUS obviously is under the dominion of Satan. Well, at least the non-Catholic members. Oh, and the female Hispanic one. And maybe that Kennedy, we're watching him.

I'm sure Santorum would say I get my energy from Satan.

We do cling so bitterly to our sky fathers and boom sticks.

Why is it absurd to assume that part of the troubles the US is facing is due to the work of Satan.

Oh, I forgot, this is the 21st century, and truely modern people don't believe in Satan anymore. They are just too sophisticated for that.

"To doubt the possibility of such a being out of hand is to regard Christ and/or the evangelists as either maniacs, liars, or very, very, very mistaken."

This is very interesting phrasing if you're familiar with C.S. Lewis' "trilemma". He argued for the divinity of Jesus by asserting that there were only 3 possibilities, pithily summarized as "Mad, Bad, or God": Jesus was either crazy, or malicious, or divine. The typical atheist response (including from Richard Dawkins) is to assert that it's really a "quadrilemma" with a fourth, less inflammatory choice: Wrong.

So interestingly, Blatty is essentially asserting the same quadrilemma, which in fact is an argument used by atheists *against* the divinity of Jesus.

THe earliest known fragment of the Gospels is a portion of the John, that has been dated to around 125AD. Most historians and theologians consider John to have been the last Gospel to have been written. Even if the one fragment that survives, just happens to have been from the first copy of John that was written down, this provides evidence that the earlier Gospels were written within the life span of people who were alive at the same time as Christ.

Unless the letters of Paul are complete fabrications of people who lived later, they were all written within 30 years of Christ's death, and Paul quite clearly believed in the Divinity of Christ.

ds:

And as usual the atheist argument is spurious. "Wrong" cannot be a fourth option to C.S. Lewis trilemma because that would have meant Jesus was crazy. Anyone who is not divine and actually believes himself to be God is clearly wrong, but would also be pathologically delusional.

Unfortunately your argument is based on the faulty premise that the New Testament is historically reliable and accurately records everything Jesus said.

Also, C.S. Lewis did not include a fourth option to his Lunatic, Liar, or Lord "trilemma," and that is that the Christ many people know and worship today is a character of "Legend." If the divergent portrayals of Christ by the New Testament authors can be understood as based on oral tradition, political and religious ideology, there are a MULTITUDE of other explanations for why Christ is attributed by the New Testament authors as referring to himself as the Son of God. Christ's followers can be completely wrong about who he is, was, whatever, regardless of whether he actually said he was the Son of God or not. Paul's argument that over 500 witnesses saw him after he rose from the dead is outdated and easily dismissed. Similar statements can be made for Roman Emperors whom many claimed to have seen in person, after their death. Doesn't hold up to water. Additionally, many people of many non-Christian faiths have died for their belief in the literal reality of their religion.

Please obtain at least a basic understanding of Biblical textual criticism before publicly making such an uninformed statement again. You probably won't agree with the authors, but I highly recommend Richard E. Friedman, Bart Ehrman, or James D.G. Dunn for a start.

Faith in Christ is just that- faith, and when you start trying to explain the rational-historical basis for it to those outside of your brand for Christianity, you just end up giving them more methods and means to poke holes in your systematized theology.

When Iran refers to its enemy -- the United States -- as "The Great Satan", they're at least being metaphorical.