ERRATA SECTION -- YEAR 2001:

CORRECTION OF MAJOR ERRORS IN ESSAYS ON THIS WEB SITE

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2001-JAN:

Gay Baha'i's: In our essay on the Baha'i Faith, we had mentioned that homosexual Bahai's who had entered into civil unions had been "excommunicated." This is an ambiguous term. Actually, they had their religious rights removed. Heterosexual Baha'i's have also had their religious rights removed if they were married in other than a Baha'i wedding.
Slavery: Our slavery menu contained an error. It originally said that slavery was established by the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). This was incorrect; slavery was not established by the Bible. It had been practiced throughout the Middle East long before the ancient Israelites emerged as a distinct society. The Bible merely regulated, supported and sanctioned an already existing practice.

2001-FEB:

Hinduism: Our essay had described Hinduism as a polytheistic religion, because its followers worshiped multiple gods and goddesses. This is a commonly held belief in the West. But it is not polytheistic. It is a henotheistic religion -- a religion which recognizes a single deity, but which recognize other gods and goddesses as facets or manifestations or aspects of that supreme God. Their supreme deity is Brahman.

2001-MAR:

End of the world prediction: In our essay, we discussed Jerry Falwell's 1999 prediction that Jesus would be returning to earth on or before the year 2009. His belief led logically to his statement in Tennessee that the Antichrist was probably alive today and living on earth. Unfortunately, the casual reader of our essay might believe that his quote on the Antichrist actually referred to Jesus. We have corrected the essay.

2001-APR:

Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions: Our essay implied that the American Medical Association had stated that thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses had died because of their faith group's prohibition of blood transfusions. Actually, the AMA has never conducted a study of the probable death toll from this policy. The comment cited was actually made by a book reviewer in the AMA's journal JAMA. The reviewer said that if the data in the book that he was reviewing was accurate, that thousands had lost their lives.
In our essay on Internet citations we had described the ISO as the International Standards Organization. As one of our visitors wrote: "The name of the group is actually the International Organization for Standardization. The distinction is more important than it would seem, because the body doesn't really set standards; rather, they promote the activities of standardization."

2001-MAY:

Were Jesus' brothers real brothers, step-brothers, cousins or associates? Our essay on the Virgin Birth described the teachings of Islam and various Christian denominations about the precise status of Jesus' "brothers," as mentioned in the Bible. Unfortunately, the information source that we used reversed the teachings of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. We originally followed suit. We corrected the error on MAY-16

2001-JUN:

Were there native American prophets before the European invasion? We had originally written that there were no prophets before 1492 CE. But a visitor to our site listed two: Sweet Medicine of the Cheyenne tribe, and White Buffalo Woman of the Lakota & Dakota tribes. We corrected our essay on JUN-28.

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2001-JUL:

In our essay on Wiccan handfasting, we wrote that Mel Gibson was handfasted in the movie Braveheart in 1955. The movie was actually made in 1995. Mel Gibson was only born in 1956!

2001-AUG:

Our essay on the many diverse religious stories of the origins of the universe contained an error. We wrote that Pagan and monotheistic religions wiped out earlier references to the Great Goddess as creator. We meant that only monotheistic religions were responsible.

Our essay on Asatru (Norse Paganism) incorrectly identified Freya as the goddess who takes the souls of slain soldiers to Valhalla (Odin's great hall). Actually, she is the leader of the Valkyries who take the souls to Valhalla.

2001-SEP:

Our essay on school violence placed a school shooting in Notus IA on 1999-APR-17 instead of where it belongs: Notus, ID on APR-16. We still cannot figure out whether there were zero injuries or whether one student was injured; sources differ. We have a hunch that nobody was shot, but that someone might have been injured while trying to escape from the scene.

Our essay on the primitive Christian movement said that "Jesus" is the Greek translation of Yeshua of Nazareth's name. Actually we get the English name "Jesus" from the Greek "Iesous," which is a translation of the Hebrew "Yeshua."

Our essay on "Who is right about homosexuality" we incorrectly attributed a quotation to Stuart Shepard instead of to the correct author, Mike Haley. Both are employees of Focus on the Family.

2001-NOV:

In our essay on the discovery of the skeleton of a 1st century CE crucified man in Israel, we stated that his legs had not been broken. We don't recall where we found this piece of information. But it is apparently wrong. Archaeologist Dr. Nicu Haas determined that the victim's legs had been deliberately broken.

2001-DEC:

Our essay on the Robin Hood murders in West Memphis TN contained an error in statistics. We suggested a test involving separate polygraph tests on the three alleged perpetrators. The essay had said that if all three men passed their test, then there would be a 99.6% chance that they would all be innocent. Actually, it would only mean that there is a 99.6% chance that they are not all guilty i.e. that the state convicted at least one innocent person. The chances of each man being innocent would remain at 85%.

Our essay on abortion passages in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) had said that Mary was carrying a pre-embryo at the time that she greeted her cousin Elizabeth. This is probably incorrect, because the trip from Galilee to Judea probably took a couple of weeks. By the time she arrived at Elizabeth's the pre-embryo would probably have become an embryo and implanted itself in Mary's womb.

Copyright � 2000 to 2003 incl., by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
From a list originally written: 2000-JUN-12
Latest update: 2003-DEC-26
Author: B.A. Robinson

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