This is not to say that second-graders are incapable of having their lives changed by say, one's parents' divorce, a molestation by a trusted religious figure, or the kidnapping and enslaving of one's entire family by the northern Sudanese.

But did it really CHANGE YOUR LIFE? You didn't even have a life then. You were in second grade. And everyone liked Star Wars.

Barfman was the poor man's Harvard Professor. And the middle-class man's. And the rich man's. He was just A Harvard Professor, really. And he quit this site in kind of a huff.

Wblake, I'm an ex-Mormon. My facts come from personal experience, and my personal library, not Wikipedia. Since you were once a missionary, walking around for two years at the impressionable age of 19 or 20 repeating over-and—over-again that the Church is true, the Church is true—it's your grasp of the facts that's…

If you can't even say how a movie was "life-changing," wouldn't it be safer to say it was actually "slightly perception-altering"? I don't know. This whole topic is kind of pissing me off. I've yet to hear a truly convincing life change.

"Life-changing" means it actually changed your life.
If it just made you look slightly differently at one idea, I don't see how that qualifies. Jon Krakauer's book INTO THE WILD literally changed my life—because of that book, I moved to Alaska, hitchhiked all over, moved into the woods there; later lived out of a…

I love that last paragraph. Good response.

Dammit, two comments I meant to post in this thread somehow got posted beneath the next comment, the one by Green Pea-ness. They're mostly directed at Leto II, so check 'em out, yo!

Now, one way of spotting apologetics is that their research is NEVER verified by people outside that group. This is because their information is ultimately faith-based, and ultimately wrong. Apologetics with F.A.R.M.S. (Foundation for Ancient research and Mormon Studies) may come up with amazing conclusions about…

Leto II, I'm really not trying to be insulting or condescending to you here—If I had talked to you five years ago, it would have been Brother Leto this, Brother Smith that. I'm not talking about this to you as some outsider, but rather as someone who grew up in the same culture, was raised to believe the same things,…

Decent point. But still: not a book, a book REVIEW.

Then, look at the Book of Mormon: it features steel and cultivated bees and scimitars and horses in the Americas and compasses 600 years (and more) before Christ, before steel existed, before bees had been cultivated, and before horses had come here with the Spanish. It's written in the style of the King James Bible,…

Leto, I was raised Mormon, and most of my family and in-laws are Mormon. But eventually I just had to admit to myself that there's nothing to it that withstands any sort of rigorous scrutiny, even though losing my religion was an absolutely being-rending process that took up most of my 20's, and that's not an…

I own the book (LIFE OF PI), but have not yet read it, and these discussions and James Woods' review sure don't leave me hurrying to.

Caribou: SWIM
Caribou: SWIM
Caribou: SWIM

Who are you quoting, Grey Man? And who are you talking to, me or Boi Gringo? Why are there quote signs around "angry," "stupid," and "turgid"? None of used those words. Your comment is nearly indecipherable and looks a bit pathetic following my attempt to directly address all of SBS's accusations.

So is he still going to do the ROBOCOP reboot after this?
I'd heard he'd rather kill that project than do it in 3-D, and I'd heard it had been delayed until 2011, but is it now over and done altogether?

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a feeling that I ever seek out: nihilistic emptiness. That's the stuff I usually try to stave off because my brain chemistry finds it so attractive. Hey, at least it's not the Bible.

By the way, I liked your comment, Boi Gringo. Knowing I had someone on my side helped motivate me to type all that. That's partly your fault.

"Scientists don't know for sure how the universe started. You might as well say the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it."