I made a comment on Mike Duran’s latest post: “What Does the Bible Say about Haunted Houses?“. Posting it here for safekeeping. Lots of good points here, Mike. The effects of Babel echo to the present day. God doesn’t direct the nations as they are now…that’s more under the control of the Elohim council, which … Haunted Houses and Babel
I was asked by a friend what I thought of the video on this page: Heavenly Fire – The John 10:10 Project. On the whole, I like what it says, despite the American evangelical bent of what’s expressed there. The explanation of the sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields and how they interact is accurate, as … Made for Each Other
Spotify’s cancelation confirmation screen has some creative content design: “Found art”: Life is waiting:
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
Note: This will probably be the last review post I’ll publish for a while. In the early days when I was recovering from shoulder surgery, I tried to read as much as I could but there’s a limit to that when you’re in pain and/or on painkillers. It was much easier to watch TV to … Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 42
In all my decades of church going, I’ve never heard a pastor or priest preach on this parable. There are reasons for this: it doesn’t provide the Hallmark feels that parables like the Prodigal Son do; pastors can be lazy, and organizing a sermon with this material requires some work to brush away some assumptions; … The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
Anything based on Enlightenment principles, including “human rights,” isn’t courting disaster, it’s slapping the start button on a judgement time bomb. If we want to get to the fundamentals of it, human rights are products of men’s minds, implicit agreements to use force a certain way. The bigger the parties involved, the more complex and … Catacomb Resident: The American Lie
Here’s where a lot of people might get tripped up, on both sides of the religion debate. The idea that a religious concept is good for people, but not so much for God, requires a little parsing. The rituals exist for men, not for God. God isn’t pleased with ritual itself, but rather, if anything, … Catacomb Resident: The Necessity of Ritual
Futile Philosophy 4 (mirrored on archive.org): Futile Philosophy 4 23 October 2021 If you rely on what your senses and reason tell you, you’ll never understand reality. From our human capabilities, we surmise that nature is totally unconcerned about us, if not outright hostile at times. This is false. Jesus boldly spoke to supposedly inanimate … Catacomb Resident: Futile Philosophy 4
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
What Catacomb Resident is explaining here is similar to Alvin Plantinga’s sensus divinatus, the faculty that senses and processes ideas about metaphysical things as a form of a priori knowledge, just as philosophically legitimate as the physical senses or logic. Our sensus divinatus is damaged by default because of the Fall, since we are tied … Catacomb Resident: Futile Philosophy 2
Futile Philosophy 1 (mirrored on archive.org) Futile Philosophy 1 20 October 2021 This may be a little too cerebral for some readers. It’s normally pointless to discuss philosophical basics. Most people don’t understand the discussion, and those who do often don’t actually walk by it, and cannot seem to translate it very well for those … Catacomb Resident: Futile Philosophy 1
There was a meme image, screenshot from a Twitter post, I saw a while back. It was a woman mentioning the fact that Jesus never told women to cover up but told men to pluck out their eyeballs to avoid sexual temptation. The implication is that the onus is all on men, though the idea … Catacomb Resident: Indecent Exposure
America Defiled (mirrored on archive.org) One thing to note here is that the covenant of Noah and its seven laws were made with all humanity, meaning. A nation (people) following the Noahic laws, even if the nation isn’t especially Christian, could expect some reasonable blessings, because Noah addresses core human behavior and consequences. In other … Catacomb Resident: America Defiled
I came across this anonymous writer, Catacomb Resident. Much of what he (she?) has posted about aligns closely with my religious beliefs, which are at the same time common and familiar, but rare, and rarely expressed in the same way CR does it. He encourages theft of anything he posts, so I’ll be doing a … Catacomb Resident: Know Him
I never quite liked intelligent design theory completely. It has interesting points but it rationalized things in a vacuum, as we have no other universe to compare statistical notes, or, if we’re feeling actually scientific: no other universe with which we can experiment, observe, conclude, duplicate the results. The theory also implies that God is … In-Meh-lligent Design
Prescience, from Eugenics and Other Evils. Granted, his time, there was no national health experts the way we have them now. They were more local, within striking distance. The scope was smaller but the observations remain the same. It was best presented perhaps by the distinguished doctor who wrote the article on these matters in … G.K. Chesterton on Health Experts
1. Removing delineations between the Old and New Testaments. A good reason for the removal of the Old and New Testaments as categories or delineations has two parts. The first is superficial: God’s revelation and dealings with men are neither old nor new, but looking at the writings from a high level, those dealings are … Two Ways Christianity Could Be Better
A part of one of Ed’s recent blog posts, and then one of his comments: Don’t be a sucker for the philosophical arguments to support any part of this conflict. Obey what your convictions demand within the context; don’t listen to any other voice. Christ is a Person, not a body of ideas. He lives … God and Ontology
The final boss(es) from my favorite game. I had trouble finding a decent-sized version of both the three-tier statue and Kefka, so I cobbled this together from three different images: the statues, the sun and sky background, and the crazed Kefka himself. The images are from the iOS version of the game, so the pixels … Image: Final Fantasy VI Statue of the Gods and Kefka