Really? How's your Greek? Hebrew? Knowledge of the first century world from 4BCE to 70CE? Like it or not, New Testament is a recognized field of study in secular institutions and religious institutions alike. It's basically a branch of history which many, many Americans, not all religious, find both fascinating and relevant.

Randi's been doing this for ... what ... 50 years? And yet, somehow, the most he's able to tell us is that one faith healer was fraudulent and that spoon-bending dude might have been using some stage magic? Why do Randi's followers always trot out the same 3-4 examples? Would expect there to be a lot more if Randi were really all that.

Meh. Randi has a couple of youtube videos attacking the Bible, and as a trained professional in the field (Ph.D. in New Testament from University of Virginia) i was not impressed. His opening attack in one of the youtube videos I watched is to attack the location of Nazareth, with lots of chuckles about the tourist industry there and the implication that the town didn't exist. What this really demonstrates is that Randi doesn't have any understanding about the ancient world or the challenges presented by the paucity of evidence for things in the first century. The funny thing is that skeptical claims regarding the New Testament keep being disproven by subsequent archaeological evidence. For example, 100 years ago skeptics told us that Quirinius was never governor of Judaea (or was it Licenius? Can't remember and too lazy to look it up) because there was no extra-Biblical attestation. When extra-Biblical attestation was found, they switched up and started attacking something else. What skeptics generally ignore is that the books of the New Testament are themselves first-century documents, offering compelling evidence for many elements of the first-century, from people enormously better prepared to separate "truth" from "fiction" than we are 2000 years later. They want to dismiss the evidence offered by the New Testament out of hand, because the documents are "religious" and therefore not trustworthy even in very ordinary claims (there was a town called Nazareth, for example) without external verification. If questioning the existence and location of Nazareth is the best Randi's got, I'm not at all impressed.

I used to weight 420 lbs. I had type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, severe sleep apnea (which could have literally killed me dead any night I forgot the CPAP), asthma, high cholesterol, IBS, and was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder. I now weigh 194, have "the best cholesterol numbers [my doctor] has seen in a long time", energy to exercise, no breathing problems, I only poop when I want to now, and most of all I'm happy and stable without medication.

How did I do it, you ask? I realized that the USDA's purpose is to promote American grain-based agriculture (everything but corn, soybeans, and to a lesser degree wheat are considered "specialty crops") and not the health of Americans, and I quit following their stupid, lame, ineffective food pyramid. I save almost $10,000 in medications alone -- forget about all the other medical costs -- and I LOVE my tasty home-made bacon. That nasty corn, and wheat, and high-fructose-corn-syrup, and soybeans? Keep 'em the hell away from ME! I'd rather SMOKE than eat a school lunch -- it's better for me.

Want to lose weight? Grass-fed meats, vegetables (corn is not a vegetable -- except in school lunches!), fruit in moderation as a "treat". No added sugars of any kind. No wheat, corn, or god-help-us-soybeans-that-you-can't-even-eat-without-fermenting-them-because-they're-literally-inevitable-best-suited-for-feeding-pigs, ever.

Since the government started setting "preventative" nutritional guidelines, based on the then-unproven "low fat" theory from Dr. Ancel Keys, in 1977, have Americans gotten thinner or fatter? When the USDA publicly acknowledges that there is no "one true diet" for all humans, regardless of their ethnic background (and how recently that area developed agriculture) I MIGHT listen to them again. Until then, I think it would be insane to listen to them -- insanity being doing the same thing again and again and somehow expecting a different result.

It annoys me that the schools keep trying to tell my children that a low-fat diet is good for them. I can't imagine what I'd do if they started trying to force their hog-feed down my children's throats, but it would not be pretty.

It wasn't free. They sent the mother a bill RTFA.

Robert Heinlein called this Lethe in Time enough for love.". Once again, he's anticipated reality

Lined with tin-foil? Nope. It IS tin-foil. Pope's hat is a potent symbol of his (nowadays nominal) secular authority. In other words, it's a crown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_tiara

Lots of places will scan documents for you on professional-grade scanners, including your local Kinko's. Sometimes, you don't save money by trying to do it yourself -- like when you keep buying another cheap scanner at a couple hundred a pop to avoid getting it done professionally.

Well said. The only thing I would add is that we need to hold the sack of Jerusalem within its historical context. By the standards of the day, it was bloody but by no means unprecedented.

The crusades were in their own way an example of the "good" in Christianity. A thousand years prior, Roman culture would have just plundered the Middle East for mercantilist gain, and felt no real need for an excuse. Christians felt like they needed an excuse, because Latin Christianity in the person of St. Augustine had stated very clear rules for when a Christian could morally participate in a war (the so-called "Just War Theory") and "plunder" wasn't on the list. Also, you seem to be proceeding on the assumption that Islam posed no real threat to Europe, and that a "flanking campaign" was illegitimate. The reality, if you go back and read the writings of people like Bernard of Clairvaux, is that they (a) felt that by attacking the Byzantines, the Muslims had attacked them (b) were acutely conscious of the fact that Byzantium might fall and that they would then have no buffer from the Saracens and (c) they were scared to death of Muslim aggression because Muslims had already conquered chunks of formerly "Christian" territory (i.e. Spain.)

The whole crusades as a criticism of Christianity thing simply doesn't hold up to much scrutiny, but that doesn't stop devotees by proxy of Bertrand Russell from repeating it to the point of nausea. What I wish such people would do is actually learn some real history and stop flapping their gums until they do.

Sources: Ph.D. in New Testament and early Christianity, active interest in subsequent church history.