Personal Reactions to “Love in the Garden of Eden
On a beautiful summer day, when I was six or seven, my grandfather took me swimming. This gave me the opportunity to examine every feature of his body. Previously I had already noticed that, unlike any other human being I had laid eyes on, grandpa distinguished himself by growing extremely bushy and wavy eyebrows. Not long before this swim outing I had heard somewhere that human beings had evolved from ape-like creates. Now I discovered my grandpa
Love and Fraud over the Internet
You have seen it in the movies. Your friends recommended it to you. You may have tried it yourself. But just how much love and fraud is involved in internet dating. Dahlia Lithwick reports on the frontier of hook-up land and provides some interesting facts in Slate. What is the success rate of internet dating? If you want to know, read her article.
Judas: From Traitor to Loyal Friend
Was there ever a greater case of slander? The reemergence of the Gospel of Judas suggests that poor Judas has been made into one of history
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.
Last July, Cardinal Christoph SchMy Sperm as Big Business
Until a few weeks ago, I was an innocent virgin as far as the brave new world of fertility clinics was concerned. Now I am thinking about quitting my day job and becoming a professional sperm donor. Granted, I don’t have the brains of Albert Einstein or the athleticism of Roger Federer. But the first is dead and the second is presently too busy playing tennis to spend his days filling test tubes with genetic material. That leaves me to fulfill the wishes of infertile couples all over the world. In former times only sultans could father 170 children; now anyone who is deemed a genetically superior human being by a fertility clinic can become the biological father of hundreds of children. But after reading the facinating story about fertility clinics in a recent issue of the NY Times (see below), I am a bit worried about 200 children knocking one day on my door, asking me to babysit my uncountable number of grandchildren 
Is Christianity Compatible with Republican Values?
I always found it curious that fundamental Christians preferred in large numbers Republicans over Democrats. After all, the core values of the democratic party seem to be much more in tune with Christianity. At least one evangelic pastor woke up recently and remembered that Christians are supposed to support peace and not war. Read this interesting Op-ed piece in the NY Times of January 20, 2006.
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