The CEO was/is a man named Michael Sherrod who was quoted and paraphrased as saying:
"We are not looking for people who are inwardly focused,” says Sherrod. Rather, he wants people who are experts in their field, whether that is real estate, restaurants, parenting, sports, technology, or business."
Which is nice. I guess.
But it makes it strange that they pay a bigot called the Knoxville Evangelical Examiner to write on theological issues. Particularly strange given his own biography:
Dan received his BA in religion and education at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. With more than 40 years of both personal and academic study in the Bible and related fields, Dan is uniquely qualified to provide intellectually challenging insight into all topics concerning religion and spirituality.
I mean, you can just about see the train wreck coming. The Knoxville Evangelical Examiner writes a whole page of useless tripe, aimed, ultimately at proving his point that Christianity is the only valid world religion. That is his prerogative, although it seems rather narrow minded of a journalist, private citizen or otherwise. Our interest in this piddle is confined to one small section of this page. To wit:
GOD’S WORD WAS NOT WRITTEN IN AN HISTORICAL VACUUM!
The Avesta-Yasna
The discerning reader will note "examiner" Daniel's placement of the Bhagavad Gita as one of the great and seminal texts of Buddhism. The same Daniel Hopkinson who is reputed, in his own biography, to be a graduate of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. The same Daniel Hopkinson who has "...more than 40 years of both personal and academic study in the Bible and related fields". The same Daniel Hopkinson who is "uniquely qualified to provide intellectually challenging insight into all topics concerning religion and spirituality."
The same Daniel Hopkinson who identifies the Bhagavad Gita, one of the great seminal world religious texts, A HINDU TEXT, identifies it as a great Buddhist text. Ooops.
Well, you might say, probably just an editing error, he obviously meant to include it in the section on Hinduism.
Let us just look a little further, for say, Danny's explanation:
The discerning reader will note "examiner" Daniel's placement of the Bhagavad Gita as one of the great and seminal texts of Buddhism. The same Daniel Hopkinson who is reputed, in his own biography, to be a graduate of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. The same Daniel Hopkinson who has "...more than 40 years of both personal and academic study in the Bible and related fields". The same Daniel Hopkinson who is "uniquely qualified to provide intellectually challenging insight into all topics concerning religion and spirituality."
The same Daniel Hopkinson who identifies the Bhagavad Gita, one of the great seminal world religious texts, A HINDU TEXT, identifies it as a great Buddhist text. Ooops.
Well, you might say, probably just an editing error, he obviously meant to include it in the section on Hinduism.
Let us just look a little further, for say, Danny's explanation:
A Buddhist: I am sorry for that, although that is not my opinion, but the information that the Bhagavad Gita was a Buddhist writing appears in many of the writings and sources online that I have encountered. When it appeared so many times in those other writings I was working through, I felt it necessary to include it in my reading and study as well. Thank you for clarifying this fact for us all. Wikipedia calls it “an important Sanskrit Hindu scripture”. If you feel that it does not do a descent job of giving an overview of the Buddhist, is it religion or philosophy, then why not consider writing a better overview for Wikipedia; they used to solicit clarifications and updates right on the site itself.
So, our uniquely qualified examiner, using internet sources misidentifies one of the world's greatest and most important religious texts? It seems Danny, besides being an ignorant dolt using this site to promote his agenda that Christianity is the only truly relevant religion, is not the brightest light ever to graduate from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He also does not know anything about proper research techniques. Citizen Journalism takes quite a hit from Mr. Hopkinson's inept scribbling.
As for the rest of that mess of a page on world religions? It reveals his true intentions:
So, our uniquely qualified examiner, using internet sources misidentifies one of the world's greatest and most important religious texts? It seems Danny, besides being an ignorant dolt using this site to promote his agenda that Christianity is the only truly relevant religion, is not the brightest light ever to graduate from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He also does not know anything about proper research techniques. Citizen Journalism takes quite a hit from Mr. Hopkinson's inept scribbling.
As for the rest of that mess of a page on world religions? It reveals his true intentions:
These other sacred writings have historically been interpreted figuratively-symbolically-allegorically as opposed to literally and this practice was adopted by the rabbis of the Mishraic Period and the early church fathers, and became the norm in the Catholic Church.
Danny also likes to quote annonymous "scholars", and believes as the excerpt above demonstrates that the Catholic Church is complete bollox as far as its interpretation of the Bible goes. In later posts he makes clear his hatred of Freemasonry too, taking on Albert Pike's "Morals and Dogma". However, given the complexity and stream of consciousness nature of the writing in Pike's book, and his freedom in borrowing from an imense range of sources dealing with myriad religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, it is obvious that the task is way over Danny's head.
So, like any bigot determined to prove his point, he deletes posts which prove him to be incorrect in his interpretations of Pike's work and its meaning.
He seemingly used his attack on the Masons to increase the number of hits to his page as they reported his numerous errors, only to have many of their posts deleted. Danny does not like to be shown to be wrong. You see Danny gets paid for "hits" and "advertising":
These writers are vetted and paid based on how many pageviews and advertising clicks their articles can produce. The pay is not a lot. It starts at a $2.50 for every thousand pageviews. The median amount each examiner s making right now is $25 a month, although Sherrod has written a check for as high as $1,700. Anschutz is bank-rolling the whole project. He is the only investor (the amount is not being disclosed)
So attacking some group to garner responses as Google News gets spammed by examiner.com, like Freemasons, or Catholics, or Hindus, or Buddhists, drives up Danny's hits and makes him more money.
Very Christian of you Dan. Perhaps you better do some more reading up on that too.
Danny also likes to quote annonymous "scholars", and believes as the excerpt above demonstrates that the Catholic Church is complete bollox as far as its interpretation of the Bible goes. In later posts he makes clear his hatred of Freemasonry too, taking on Albert Pike's "Morals and Dogma". However, given the complexity and stream of consciousness nature of the writing in Pike's book, and his freedom in borrowing from an imense range of sources dealing with myriad religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, it is obvious that the task is way over Danny's head.
So, like any bigot determined to prove his point, he deletes posts which prove him to be incorrect in his interpretations of Pike's work and its meaning.
He seemingly used his attack on the Masons to increase the number of hits to his page as they reported his numerous errors, only to have many of their posts deleted. Danny does not like to be shown to be wrong. You see Danny gets paid for "hits" and "advertising":
These writers are vetted and paid based on how many pageviews and advertising clicks their articles can produce. The pay is not a lot. It starts at a $2.50 for every thousand pageviews. The median amount each examiner s making right now is $25 a month, although Sherrod has written a check for as high as $1,700. Anschutz is bank-rolling the whole project. He is the only investor (the amount is not being disclosed)
So attacking some group to garner responses as Google News gets spammed by examiner.com, like Freemasons, or Catholics, or Hindus, or Buddhists, drives up Danny's hits and makes him more money.
Very Christian of you Dan. Perhaps you better do some more reading up on that too.
