God & Freewill, Theists & Atheists

God and freewill, two things that will forever perplex me. I see them as basically on the same level, theological concepts. God is the faith of the theists. And freewill is the faith of the atheists. I don’t mean this in a necessarily dismissive way. I actually am affirming the notion of faith. We humans aren’t [...]

PKD’s Exegesis: 2 vol. release in 2011

For any PKD fans, there is good news. A new version of his Exegesis will be released next year. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/books/30author.html It sounds like it will be a more complete version and will be published in two volumes. I have a copy of the first publication of the Exegesis (In Pursuit of Valis). It’s a very nice book [...]

The Elephant That Wasn’t There

I was talking to someone the other day who was telling me about a recent family visit (by the way, her telling of it reminded me of the type of story David Sedaris writes). It was her older sister who was visiting and they were discussing the past. The older sister claimed that she used to [...]

Wonder vs the Wonder-Killers: two related thought experiments

I was thinking about two issues tonight. Both of them were thought experiments.  - – – The first issue is about sociopaths. I guess I was thinking about it because I just posted a blog where I mentioned Max Weber’s Iron Cage (Self & Other in the Movies: Redemption or Destruction?). Weber was theorizing about how bureaucracy and [...]

Self & Other in the Movies: Redemption or Destruction?

“Man’s greatness comes from knowing he is wretched.”  ~ Blaise Pascal Walking through the cemetary last night, my friend mentioned the movie District 9. It turned out we both had watched it this past week, but my friend didn’t finish watching it because he didn’t like it. So, we discussed the merits (or lack thereof) [...]

God: Suffering and Longing Posted on Dec 30th, 2008 by Marmalade God’s Goodness is man’s suffering by which I’m not implying the good and bad as theological beliefs.  Its the ideal of Goodness (via our longing for it) that creates dissatisfaction of this world.  Even so, this tendency to idealize and to long is natural [...]

Renaissance the Movie and Tim Boucher’s Thoughts on God

Renaissance the Movie and Tim Boucher’s Thoughts on God Posted on Dec 26th, 2008 by Marmalade This blog is a two for one deal.  I’ll offer you both a movie and a blog. On this fine Christmas, I watched a very unusual animated neo-noir movie titled Renaissance.  It was enjoyable even if not precisely appropriate for [...]

From Horror to Gnosis: Pessimism, Culture, Monomyth

From Horror to Gnosis: Pessimism, Culture, Monomyth Posted on Dec 25th, 2008 by Marmalade I’ve had many ideas rolling around in my head this past week or so. I’ve at least mentioned most of them in my recent blogs, but there are still some I’ve been meaning to get around to.   Even though I’ve [...]

Quotes: the Gothic, the Gnostic, and the Rational

Quotes: the Gothic, the Gnostic, and the Rational Posted on Dec 24th, 2008 by Marmalade The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson pp. 18-19: At the same time, however, this demonology is the only avenue open to the transcendental.  “You can raise issues in the horror genre that you can’t raise so easily in [...]

God’s Fake Fakes

God’s Fake Fakes Posted on Nov 13th, 2008 by Marmalade Here is an excerpt from PKD’s essay titled How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later: In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are [...]