And in this case, shaking my head was necessary because there was no one sitting next to us so we could not have passed the plate down and the elder just stood there and wasn’t moving.

I’m reading Judges 1 and I can’t find anything about God not supporting Israel; in fact, the opposite. The verse (19) claims that God was still with them while they were conquering. I don’t see where exactly you have this notion that God gave the “enemy” iron but not the Israelites. Either I’m missing something or you are. I see nothing about sin at all. Please tell me where you get the idea that God withheld help from the Israelites deliberately.

But you are splitting-hairs. My main point is that God was NOT with the Israelites helping them conquer anybody. The Israelites were under the impression that God was with them helping them. That goes against everything I understand God to be. Why would a God who is love (which is vastly different than simply a God who loves) help one group of people conquer another? What makes the other people the “enemies”? People (the Israelites in this case) have used God (or gods) to justify their actions, such as warring against another group of people (”Well, God is on our side so we can do this.” ) Utter nonsense. God is no respecter of persons.

By the way, we both missed the fact that Joshua was dead at this time, so I’ll have to go back over that and correct it a bit. lol

Um … last time I checked, Catholic teaching was that the full body and blood of Christ is “fully present” “under” both “species,” a bunch of definitely hair-splitting Catholicese jargon that means the bread becomes the body AND the blood, and the cup becomes the body AND the blood, so if you get one, you’ve had both. It makes zero sense to me, but that was the claim I’ve heard, and I can’t believe they didn’t cover it in RCIA class or something. It seems to be a major point of Catholic apologetics every time a Protestant takes them to task for not allowing every member to partake of the cup.

Personally, I’m a lot more friendly to transsubstantiation than I am to that doctrine.

Communion came and it quickly became awkward. We, as Catholics, aren’t supposed to receive communion anywhere else; I, as an ex-Campbellite, refuse to receive communion at one of their churches. They kept trying to give us their communion, but I had to shake my head. I’m know that everyone behind us saw us refuse communion, but we weren’t trying to make a show out of it.

Shaking your head isn’t necessary. Just silently pass the plate on to the next person.

Fact is, most churches of Christ I know are absolutely freaked out and horrified that a non-member might take communion. They sometimes make announcements about it, and they sometimes make a huge show of passing the plate over people who aren’t members. They would love to have those people policing themselves and not partaking. I’ve always thought this was weird … a damned person isn’t any the more damned for taking communion. I’ve always felt the truth was we have “theologically closed” communion, but “open communion” in practice: i.e., technically people shouldn’t partake if they aren’t members, but nobody else should be policing them are paying attention, because they are supposed to be communing themselves, and I Corinthians says examine YOURSELVES, not everybody else. And the more educated folks I know agree with me.

I’m laughing at the Douay-Rheims Bible. No telling how that got there; a lot of times places like that are basically using “lost and found” Bibles. It could’ve been left accidentally by a visitor. For that matter, it might be a deliberate PLANT by some zealous proselytizing Catholic. For the record, the only Douay-Rheims Bible I’ve ever held was in the library at a university student center run by Churches of Christ.

from God actively helping Joshua conquer Canaan (but couldn’t because the enemies used iron =/)

Read closer. God didn’t continue to help them because of their sin. They lost because the enemy had iron, but that’s just the way God’s choice to cease helping them manifested itself in the physical world: God gave the enemy iron, and not the Israelites. If they’d been obedient, maybe God would’ve given them the iron.

This doesn’t invalidate your main point about reasons to believe the Bible isn’t inspired, but it is a tidbit you’ve apparently missed.