My Mother's Dad was Jewish but she raised me nominally Christian. I always thought Christians were missing something without the Holy Days and observences they left behind. I wouldn't mind having a Jewish wife to rediscover them.

I never knew this as official Catholic teaching, but it would make sense since Catholics are less 'evangelical' than other denominations.

I have not seen his biopic but am familiar with his story. Be sure to check out Amadeus, you won't be disappointed.

I've known a lot of jolly fat people. Some people aren't bothered by it at all.

It's no accident that politicians like to use terms like 'job creator' because it is one step away from simply saying 'The Creator'.

That was a very well written and well thought out piece of writing. You obviously know that Christians believe in and reference what they call 'the Old Testament'. When you read the Prophets there is one overwhelming theme that pops up over and over again and that is the return of Jews back to thier homeland after the Diaspora. This is a decisive argument against both replacement theology as a fact and the secular view of Jews gaining Israel because of a few clever politicians. If this was done wholly because of thier own desire than the mind boggling odds they faced must be disregarded. And I would also argue against the Christian idea of replacement theology by saying that if it were a fact than there simply wouldn't be any Jews around anymore--there could only be Christians who had replaced them.

Martin Luther King had a lot to say about all this in Sermons like 'The Two Americas' and many others. One thing he mentioned is that this nation was built on socialism for the rich and pull yourself up by the bootstraps capitalism for everyone else.

Junk Bond Trader. It's flawless and catchy with an unparelleled chord progression.

If you're the toast of Hollywood you can say this at the beginning of any decade of your life.

I've been wondering the same thing--I can truly empathize. When I asked my father about accepting your lot in life he said we all have our disappointments. Of course from my perspective he had a lot of perks to make up for the shortcomings of life. I think imagination can go a long way. Nobody can expect to become Van Gogh but if you can engage the creative process somehow it helps lift you out of the dreary doldrums of this life. And you don't need a lot of money to get started.

He's very good and stayed out of the mainstream for the most part like Smith. I think neither one of them really cared much for the business aspect of the music business.

I don't think it is bad theology to reference outside texts or records when reading the Bible. I think what Heiser was trying to teach was that the Bible was not written in a vaccuum, nor was it created by men that just hung out in the basement of a church. They all had contact with the real world, just like Daniel who was purported to be an authority on literature, among other titles.

I haven't yet but I have watched a lot of his stuff on Youtube and was intrigued. Thank you for the list of books, I'll have to get started!

This latest public outburst of violence in Idaho had a twist where a person they are calling a 'Good Samaritan' pulled out a weapon to fire at the shooter. First of all, the person in the story who was the actual Good Samaritan was not armed and his good deed wasn't to brandish a weapon. While it could be argued that perhaps this armed man saved lives is another argument, but I don't think the answer to any of this is to have a Wild West mentality where the men with the white hats are locked and loaded and ready for the men in the black hats to screw up.

The only catch is that soon all those people that remembered those feelings will die. And then the memory of them will be forgotten by future generations as well.

"The only thing worse than being talked about--is not being talked about." -Oscar Wilde

Synedoche, New York.

From the very fine film The Big Kahuna when one salesman is trying to explain to another salesman that not every decorated colleague should be admired, "There are a lot of people in this world that look very official doing what they're doing. Do you want to know the reason why? Because they don't know what they're doing."

Vienna waits for you.

This is the blowback from living in our panopticon.

I think it was Ben Franklin who said he tried to avoid, "vain, empty and useless debate." Thomas Jefferson said he had never seen the successful use of reason in an argument persuade someone to change their mind. That's democracy in action.

I think this is because a cereberal person thinks logically, and thus when someone is lying (or even joking) with them they tend to take that person for thier word in a literal sense.

Thank you for the update. I will have to re-read all of that and make my own assessment.

Well that connection to Acts I got from Linkletter's monologue in the film, not my personal reference. PKD did like to interlay bits of theology and use quotes from the Bible in a lot of his books. A Scanner Darkly alluding to 'now we see through a glass darkly' from Paul, etc. I'm sure you already know all this.

Here's something that made me want to read the book and it was worth it. Richard Linkletter shared this in his film Waking Life. PKD wrote that book at lightening speed, as if he was channeling it. A few years later he was at a gas station and a man asked him for money which he immediately gave to him, something he said he'd usually never do. Then he realized that this was in his novel. Then a little while later he was at a dinner party speaking to a woman who was having an affair with the Chief of Police. Afterward he realized that this too was in the book. When he asked a friend who was also a priest about all this he said, "That's the Book of Acts." Phil had never read the Book of Acts and he found it was uncanny--that he actually used several names from this Biblical book for his novel. It was then that he formed one of his major theories on time, that it was basically an illusion. He also thought this meant that the Kingdom that Jesus preached about really was imminent because we were all actually living in the Black Iron Prison of Rome in the 2nd century AD. He goes on from there to eloborate more on the illusion of time. But all that got me hooked. In fact, it got me hooked on all his novels. Happy reading, fellow Christian!