Yah, that's quite possible. So much of Survivor is that sticky, unsure sense of how much you can trust people and how much you can push and pull.

I don't think they should have thrown a challenge, but I wish they had. The resolution to this episode was really satisfying, but if any player had it coming this episode, it was Debbie.

Exactly. All contingent on Varner. In some ways a risky move for Sandra, unless she knows Varner well enough to know he won't tell.

Additionally, as far as a personal appeal to one's experience are concerned, any single argument for or against the existence of the Christian God or God in general I have never found "convincing," whatever that means. Not that my experience has any relevance to the other 7 billion, of course.

I don't know what you want me to say. We could go on like this for days. From now on, I'll really try to take pains to address your individual arguments and provide reasons, though I don't think you'll like any of them. I don't really know where to start when it comes to any of your statements. Most of them are…

I'm in agreement with Thomas R and opposed to what StudioTodd is saying, that is to say, I believe in the supernatural. I am not caught up on Hume's flat out rejection of the possibility. But it's possible that the exchange might benefit someone, somewhere, I suppose.

But I am not saying that two different things can both be the case at the same time. One of us is right and one of us is wrong. Just because it's hard to get at the truth doesn't mean there is no truth.

Maybe so. But the answers to the questions you asked are probably not the answers you're looking for. "So what difference does it make whether or not pregnancy is a possible result when a couple has sex? Are pleasure and intimacy not valid enough reasons to have sex?" So Aquinas is trying to understand sexuality and…

"I'm not demanding that you live like me—I'm just saying that any god that would send you into the world with attractions that he would punish you for acting upon is a sick evil twisted bastard, and I don't know why you would follow a god like that."

I agree the whole episode (and the old man's arc in general) seemed a bit mechanical to me, because I felt we all knew from the beginning that the old man who looked like he could be a pedophile to the community could never be the one who did it. I was waiting for this to happen from the beginning. When I saw him…

It doesn't feel immensely unearned to me because I see this series as a show about a family falling apart - in slow motion. There are moments in Kevin's arc that I found tiresome and boring (the cocaine addiction arc), because I've seen these arcs again and again and something about them just proves so painful and…

"Kevin never takes responsibility for anything." How about the alcohol and the cocaine? How about his business (this is more arguable)? I think Kevin frequently takes responsibility. I think he is a bit blind when it comes to this situation, but in general, I think he takes responsibility. His bigger problem is…

Robert is a bad person. But like you, I found Robert's behavior here relatively evenhanded. My dad, who watches this show with me, actually said, "Smart." I found myself agreeing with him. As bad as Robert is to Danny in this show, I wouldn't be surprised or shocked if my dad offered me a similar deall if I were…

I wouldn't think that to say something is perfect or ultimate is to end the discussion. In fact, I think it emerges as a fine provocation to find all the parts of the book that are boring, tiresome, etc.

The rigorous aesthetic standard would be the achievement of making something new that is also at the same time something pleasurable. Genre breaking while producing something really, genuinely enjoyable - that is good art. Linking the goodness to any specific set of traits is what gets us into problems (polyphony,…

I think it's important to be aware of the political, environmental, gender construction that enables and perpetuates the canon, but I think it's a bit beside the point of whether or not the canon is 'right' or whether it can even be possibly 'right' in an objective sense. I believe that claims about art can be right…

This is why I hate Kalinda. Because of plots like this, which seem to have no internal, consistent memory of one another, and proceed onward with one incessant bone after another.

I actually, for quite some time, have been hoping that she would. Hated Kalinda since about season 2, largely because almost every plot that involves her, other than her friendship with Alicia, has been played again and again. I feel as if there is very little new to say about her.

Well, from the perspective of theists, the answer to the question, "What does belief in God and understanding the difference between right and wrong have to do with each other?", is - everything. And it's inevitably 'everything.' Just as your answer to the question should be 'everything.' You used the word…

And as a Christian, a committed theist, I found it beyond saccharin, and for that matter, a saccharin that no Christianity commits itself to it but the most liberal and estranged from the Scriptural text.