How Christian Dominations Reacted to Modern Science
The followers of Jesus have been fighting about the proper way to interpret his teaching from the very beginning. Since Jesus did not write down his philosophy the writers of the ghospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that made it into New Testament had signficant interpretative flexibility to write up his message, making it all the easier for church leaders to disagree on what should be official doctrine. If you don’t agree (and it does not matter here whether you are right or wrong) and if you have leadership skills you simply split with mother church. Today there are at least 300 different Christian demoninations, with every single one telling their children that they are being taught the correct faifth, and this means that there must of been hundreds of groups that broke away from the mother church over the past 2000 years.
God and the Human Brain
The reason why people who are convinced of the existence of God are called believers and not knowers is that there is so little direct evidence that God is in charge of our lives. If God appeared in the sky over Manhattan and announced for all New Yorkers to hear that he or she (God may be a she after all) was going to lift the Empire Sate Buidling and to drop it in Mecca, and made good on his or her deed, nobody could dispute the power of this giant. The spy satellites now encircling the globe would record this amazing deed and those who still think it was a hoax could travel to New York and Mecca to verify God’s action. Psychologists have recently conducted experiments that shed light on why people all over the world subscribe to the idea that there is a God who micro-manages our fates although God does not appear in public outings of the kind I just described. Sharon Begly reported on these illuminating experiments in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.
The Top 101 Screenplays of All Time
The the writer’s guild of America polled their members to come up with a list of the best screenplays of all time. Take a look at the full list.
1. CASABLANCA
2. THE GODFATHER
3. CHINATOWN
4. CITIZEN KANE
5. ALL ABOUT EVE
6. ANNIE HALL
7. SUNSET BLVD.
8. NETWORK
9. SOME LIKE IT HOT
10. THE GODFATHER II
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Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer
When I reported to friends and family that I was encountering a big obstacle, I was often told: “I will pray for you.” I did not mind people praying for me. I figured that even if it would not help and was not going to hurt. I just read an article in the NY Times that changed my view. If you want to continue pray for me, feel free to do so, but just don’t let me know about it. Click on the more button to find out why.
Capote
As a biography of a major writer of the 20th century America Capote is an artistic failure. The film covers only a short period in Capote’s life when he researched and wrote In Cold Blood. The script utterly lacked a central requirement of a good biography: make us understand the person better. All we learn about Capote is that he was almost as cold-blooded as the murderers he interviewed in his pursuit of a story that could make him a famous writer. I suspect many critics have sung high praises for this mediocre film because they identify with the fellow writers. This is made easier because the best scenes in the film are when Capote entertains fellow writers in New York salons. Capote leaves no doubt that making a film about a world-class writer is a nearly impossible task. The most electrifying moment of the entire film occurs when Capote reads a few passages from his book In Cold Blood. You immediately think: What amazing language! How did he think of stringing these words together! The film itself never comes close to the quality embodied in these passages from the book. I am looking forward to reading In Cold Blood. The script utterly lacked a central requirement of a good biography: make us understand the person better.
Walk the Line
If I had grown up in Nashville listening to country music, it would have been easier to appreciate Walk the Line, a chronicle of the first 30 something years of Johnny Cash’s career. Raised on Rock, Pop and Soul and Classical Music, I could not connect very well with Cash’s music, except for the occasional tune whose lyrics stood out. But even the die-hard country fans were not given the same treat as we fan of Ray Charles could experience last year with the stunningly good Ray. Walk the Line lacked the craftsmanship of Ray that would have given us deeper understanding of artistry behind the music. Whereas Ray was fundamentally about music, Walk the Line is about the amazing love story of Johnny Cash and June Carter that outshines his music. Reese Witherspoon deservedly won the Oscar her performance as June Carter.
Donald Trump vs. Mark Singer
As far as I am concerned Mark Singer won this pairing hands down. The story gets particularly funny at the end.
Singer writes: Never having met Timothy O’Brien, the Times reporter who finds himself on the receiving end of a five-billion-dollar libel-and-defamation suit from Donald Trump, I don’t presume to know whether he’s having fun yet. But I doubt that I’m alone among members of the Fourth Estate in experiencing a twinge of envy. Talk about pennies from Heaven! Overnight, sales of O’Brien’s book “TrumpNation,” the vivisection of the alleged mogul which prompted the litigation, moved it from 123,329 to 466 in the Amazon.com rankings.
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Last July, Cardinal Christoph SchComedy Central on Cheney’s Hunting Mishap
The shooting was fertile ground for Jon Stewart, the host of “The
Daily Show,” the popular fake news program on Comedy Central. On
Monday night one of the show’s correspondents, Rob Corddry, introduced
as a “vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst,” said that “according
to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the
brush,” and “everyone believed there were quail in the brush,” and
“while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that
today, Mr. Cheney insists he would still have shot Mr. Whittington in
the face.”
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