The Hobbit (1977) A hobbit is recruited by a wizard and thirteen dwarves to steal back the dwarves’ stolen treasure from the dragon Smaug. Any cinematic treatment of what’s probably the greatest children’s book ever written isn’t going to live up to the source material, but I will say this dated, all-animated version is much … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 46
After Earth After an injured Ranger Corps officer and his son survive a crash landing on a depopulated Earth, they must contend with the hostile environment and feral Ursa creatures to survive. There was something incomplete going on here, like M. Night Shyamalan just gave up halfway through directing the thing. I want to invoke … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 43
The Secret of Kells In an isolated monastery in medieval Ireland, and orphan helps prepare for a barbarian Viking invasion, alongside a legendary script illuminator and a mysterious forest fairy. An animated film for children that isn’t from Hollywood, Disney, Netflix, or Studio Ghibli…though it was distributed by GKIDS Films. At first I thought it … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 37
The subject of the pre-modern view of the supernatural coincides nicely with the most recent post over at History for Atheists, Jesus Mythicism 8: Jesus, History and Miracles. Humean skepticism and falsifiability is so ingrained in how we think that it’s near impossible for even reasonably intelligent people to even conceive that others in the … Catacomb Resident: Futile Philosophy 3
The Minds of Men | Official Documentary by Aaron & Melissa Dykes A rather exhaustive documentary on the MKUltra program. The link leads to a timestamp later in the video that offers a decent summary. It “feels” like all that research went nowhere, but you can be sure there were things discovered about the mind … Links of Possible Relevance, Part 44
Dropping in here for a moment between writing PBS and living a normal work-family life. Upon a recent visit to amazon.com I saw one of their “recommended books”: Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible. Despite something of an embarrassing cover featuring a photo of that Nazi treasure hunter … Two Books of Note
It’s a common question but there’s a lot of philosophical assumptions behind it, much like the loaded question logicians have pointed out. One has to take a step back to really address it properly. Julie Borowski, who isn’t much of a skeptic from what I can see, asked this on her personal Facebook page. I … “How Do You Know Your Religion Is the Correct One?”
Here’s a certain kind of fallacy I’ve noticed that is a specific form of the appeal to consequences fallacy, where one person leverages a premise’s favorable or unfavorable state of affairs to a certain conclusion. The current affluence fallacy appeals to a person’s present sensibilities and comfort levels to imply that a different situation would … The Appeal to Current Affluence Fallacy
Consider the first two paragraphs of this post, “How to Discourage Artists in the Church” from The Gospel Coalition: Many Christian artists live between two strange worlds. Their faith in Christ seems odd to many of their friends in the artistic community—almost as odd as their calling as artists seems to some of their friends … Why Your Pastor Thinks Your Painting Is Stupid
From The End of Christendom: Against the new leviathan, whether in the guise of universal suffrage, democracy, or of an equally fraudulent triumphant proletariat, he (Kierkegaard) pitted the individual human soul made in the image of a God who was concerned about the fate of every living creature. In contrast with the notion of salvation … Muggeridge on Political Power
I’ve mentioned a few times on here, and in a roundabout way in the review of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, about non-Aristotelian epistemology. This is sometimes called Middle Eastern (ME) or Hebraic epistemology. ME epistemology utilizes divine revelation as a legitimate, basic form of knowledge, the same way we accept sense perception or memory … A Quick Thought on Non-Aristotelian Epistemology
Ravi Zacharias’ Can Man Live Without God explores the moral and material, not spiritual, consequences of atheism, particularly on a cultural scale. I think Zacharias intends to explain that atheism (he terms it “antitheism”), flowering to its logical consequences, intrinsically leads to philosophical and existential despair. The book’s audience seems to be people of various … Book Review: Can Man Live Without God
To add to my image of long-suffering but borderline dorkdom, I had the thought to add the text of incantations I’ve seen in Bleach episodes somewheres online (probably Facebook), not because I think fictional magic is cool, as I have no strong affections either way for it, but because those particular ones are nicely written. … Necromancer? I Barely Know Her!
The other night on PBS there was a documentary on post-Soviet Russian families. A father, speaking to someone offscreen, said that his children don’t read much because there’s no interest in books any more. I didn’t see what happened after that but I inferred that when the father was younger, when the hammer and sickle … Time to Bring Back Book Banning
Read Part 1 here. The New Testament books make up for a smaller section of canon yet they read much more densely because of the theological implications of the words and actions of a Jewish preacher named Yeshua bar Yoseph, which is the original Aramaic name for Jesus Christ. Instead of the religious regulations, historical … Book Review: The Bible, Part 2
“If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.” -Madeleine L’Engle A few months ago I read an interview with an agent working within the CBA industry. For those not in the know — and I was one of those until very recently — CBA is the “Christian” Booksellers Association*, the … Bad Religion vs. Bad Art vs. Sanitized Art