Oh, it was Methodists here too. Everytime I see one of them drink, I give 'em the old squint eye.

It was a very self centered religious ideology, and I don't think it would have bothered me if he was just doing it for himself, but then he had to shit all over atheists for not believing anything. Then it became infuriating that this kid (and author) is *consciously* cherry picking what he likes best from all these…

Japan really did a great job prepping for their Olympic games, didn't they?

Probably…. they certainly didn't think of it as the USSR, but I get the general impression that they were in a position like the mainland British in the overall Commonwealth. Bulgaria was their vacation country, and they had easy access positions of authority if they moved to anywhere else in the Warsaw pact.

Nothing gets Mormons tied up into a knot faster than their own early history.

Fair enough… I work with enough Russians (and a Polish guy once) to know that it a complicated relationship. The Russians certainly thought of the rest of those countries as 'theirs'.

But it was Warsaw Pact. It was certainly within their heavy sphere of influence.

I tried watching the original Solaris when I was trying to teach myself Russian. Hilarious that it was dialogue free for about an hour.

I was just about to write about Lem. I've never seen someone ream philosophers quite so hard in a book as he did in His Master's Voice. I wish that more American sci-fi would take some lessons from his inexplicable, unintelligible, but not necessarily harmful alien life.

It seems the opposite of every value you're taught about parenting.

That certainly explains nicely why various Christians are constantly trying to get prayers put into secular places like town council meetings and then pitching a fit when they're not allowed to have it, or have to share space with different religions. It's not just about supremacy, it's about generating a feeling of…

That's always the weird thing about religions…. they tell you that you have to take it on faith, but then don't really explain why the Prophets get to talk direct to God, or why God would randomly sprinkle some miracles around.

The thing about all that great art is that it was made at a time when the Church was a major (if not simply 'The') patron of the arts, and when the Church actively discouraged any secular alternatives. Being interested in making more secular art just wasn't an option for a long time, or it was done at such a smaller…

I think it is the product of 1800s era America, where people drank about twice more than they do now, mostly cheap whiskey, and alcohol addiction was rampant. A lot of religious Protestants advocated total abstinence, in spite of Biblical drinking, just because they viewed any alcohol use as a gateway. It was an…

This is a good opportunity to ask a question I've always wondered… does it feel wrong, when writing something faith based, to write the part of God? That's always what drives me up the wall with these miracle stories… of course God is good and just, because that's the way you wrote the story. But it skips out the…

I only read the book, but it definitely seemed like the book that someone who is spiritual but not religious would write. Everyone in all the three religions of India is so nice to me! That must mean that they're all true, rather than just that they all want to join.

Membership retention is the new conversion.

There are also more believers in Hollywood that the Christian Right gives credit for. Garner is supposed to be pretty religious, and I think a lot of actors are more religious than we'd expect.

I don't think that Bible story movies are ever going to really get out of their niche audience because the faithful need to have their stories told in certain ways, and the non religious or less religious of us are just utterly sick to death of these stories. I'm honestly shocked that religious people need to see a…

And confused adult Christians too… the pastor and the mother character were struggling with their feelings and needs just as much as the kids.