Christianity
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On re-watching The Matrix, twenty years later.
The Matrix was, and is, an incredible film … but now, after all the school shootings, it’s hard for me to watch.
Alan Greenspan, American gun violence, angry young men, Christianity, Colombine, ethics, fear, Grant Morrison, gun control, gun violence, guns, high school, inequality, matrix, moral certainty, morality, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, Parkland, political ethics, political philosophy, school safety, school shootings, school stress, social contract, stress, student safety, students against gun violence, students for gun control, The Invisibles, U.S. politics
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On perspective.
If we didn’t believe that the passage of time allows us to make a better world, then why would we try?
Book of Shem, Christianity, climate change, climate destabilization, club-winged manakins, cycles of time, cyclical time, David Kishik, death, direction of time, entropy, ents, evolution, evolutionary pressure, extinction, fall of man, global warming, good stewards of the Earth, hebrew, Hinduism, human evolution, improvement, Judaism, male nipples, manakins, mythology, optimism, originalism, perspective, progress, religion, Sapiens, the myth of progress, time, time’s arrow, tree communication, tree people, treents, trees, why do men have nipples, why does time move forward, Yuval Noah Harari
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On resurrection.
We are unlikely to live again … but religions themselves get resurrected all the time. As you might expect, the religions that rise from the grave sometimes come back as shambling monstrosities.
Achilles, ancient European myths, Anthony Appiah, Asatru, astrophysics, Birka warrior, Boltzmann brain, Celtic mythology, Celtic religion, Christianity, Daoism, druid, druids, female viking, female viking warrior, female warrior, forgotten faiths, Greek mythology, Ian Johnson, Icelandic poetry, In Search of the True Dao, life after death, lost faiths, Louis Komjathy, milk, mythology, neopaganism, New York Review, Norse mythology, Odin, Odin’s gift, odinism, Odinist revival, Odysseus in the underworld, pagan, pagan revival, paganism, physics, poetry, prejudice, pseudoscience, rebirth, rediscovering lost faiths, rediscovering lost religions, rediscovering Norse faiths, reincarnation, resurrection, Roman propaganda, Sexism, space dust, The Lies that Bind, The Odyssey, the old beliefs, Viking myths, Viking religion, viking revival, viking warrior women, viking women, white supremacists, white supremacy, Wicca, witchcraft, world mythology, world religions
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On power and dignity in defeat.
Winning is pretty easy. It takes effort to get there, but once we’ve done it, most people can act with grace. It reveals more about a person’s character to see how they handle defeat. In the Christian bible, Jesus is a more compelling character than Yahweh. Jesus faces adversity, which sometimes he accepts calmly –…
Americans love a winner, anti-racism, Aryan, Aryan supremacy, ban the box, books to prison, books to prisoners, Christianity, Deadpool, death of Thor, defeat, dignity in defeat, education, equality, equity, felony, George Patton, gods die, growth, heroes, incarceration, Independently Blue, inequality, inequity, jail, jail poetry, Jesus, Jesus losing his temper, Julien Poirier, Laughing Shall I Die, learning, loser, losing, mass incarceration, Midwest Pages to Prisoners, MWPP, mythology, myths, Norse, Norse myths, Odin, odinism, pagan, paganism, Pages to Prisoners, patriotism, personal growth, poetry, poetry in jail, poverty, prison, prison education, racism, racist, Ragnarok, redemption, Reginald Dwayne Betts, suffering, superheros, teaching in jail, Tom Shippey, trials, Viking myths, Vikings, white supremacy, winning, Yahweh
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On parenting and short-term memory loss.
Caring for young children wrecks havoc on your brain. I’ve heard it’s temporary. And, to make a better world, more men need to do it.
Abdel Haleem, Abrahamic faiths, Anthropology of Childhood, attention span, banishment, banishment of Sita, Beverly Strassmann, childhood, Christian, Christianity, contract law, David Lancy, developing brains, Dogon, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Draupadi, Draupadi in the gambling hall, early development, Emily Wilson, emotional development, family, fatherhood, feminism, feminist, gambling, Garry Wills, gender equality, gender parity, gossip, inequality, Islam, Jewish, Judaism, Mahabharata, Mary Beard, memory, Mermaid and the Minotaur, misogyny, Muslim, parenting, patriarchy, Penelope, philosophy, polygamy, polygyny, preschool development, Quran, shirking responsibility, Sita, Telemachus, The Odyssey, value, what matters in life, What the Qur’an Meant, What the Quran Meant and Why It Matters, who should parent, Women and Power, women’s work
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On the death of Thor.
If Thor could meet the white supremacists who praise him now, he’d surely die again of shame.
Aryan, Asatru, Christianity, Else Christensen, fate, feminism, Fenris Wolf, free will, Freya, Freya’s wedding, hate, heathen religions, Icelandic, Jeramy Dodds, Job, KKK, Loki, Midgard Serpent, misogyny, Noah, Norse, Norse gods, Norse mythology, Norse myths, Norse religion, Odin, odinism, Odinist, paganism, poetic devices, Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, racism, Ragnarok, religion, shame, slavery, Thor, Thor’s wedding, Viking, wedding of Thor, white supremacist, white supremacists, white supremacy, Yahweh, ZOG
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On prayer, diversity among deities, and ADHD.
Throughout the ages, humans have worshiped a wide variety of gods — tricksters, schemers, bullies, lovers — and could celebrate those same traits in themselves.
ADD, ADHD, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Atrahasis, attention deficit, Babylon, Bible, Christianity, computer games, deity, Enuma Elish, First Coming, flood, Gilgamesh, God, gods, Hebrews, history of religion, imaginary video games, intelligence, Jerusalem, Kings, Loki, Marduk, Maui, mythology, myths, Nebuchadnezzer, neurodiversity, Norse, Norse mythology, Octodad, Old Testament, ontological argument, origin of the cosmos, origin stories, pantheon, prayer, psalms, Rampage, real-time strategy, religion, Rick Riordan, Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, Starcraft, Stephen Greenblat, The Club Dumas, The Lightning Thief, Tower of Babel, trickster gods, vengeance, Warcraft, worship, Yahweh, YHWH, Zedekiah, Zion
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On storytelling.
Our myths engulf each other… but some stray remnants live on.
amoeba, animal life, Avigdor Shinan, Baal, Babylonian myths, Bible, biology, cellular biology, Christianity, dragons in bible, Eden, evolution, From Gods to God, Genesis, great whales, Jesus, King James, Marduk, mitochondria, morality, myth, mythology, narrative, Old Testament, origin of Bible, origin stories, paradise, polemic, Quran, reframing, religion, Religion in Human Evolution, Robert Bellah, science, sea dragons, sea monsters, storytelling, teleological misconception, Tiamat, Tower of Babel, Umberto Cassuto, Valerie Zakovitch, Yahweh, Yair Zakovitch
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On killer line breaks.
Tracy K. Smith’s poetry collection Life on Mars is excellent, combining bursts of science-fiction weirdness with totally non-speculative emotional clarity. If you chance upon a copy, you might try flipping to her poems “The Museum of Obselencence,” or “Sci-Fi,” or “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” particularly the fifth strophe of that last one; those are…
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On redemption and Christianity in The Book of Strange New Things.
So, I read a couple reviews that didn’t like Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things. The problem was, in the reviewers’ eyes, that the novel as science fiction was bland (e.g. this piece from NPR). And I’ll admit, I wasn’t having fun for most of the time I spent reading it. But at…
Frank Brown Cloud 