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As a child I grew up in a house full of smokers. I was the youngest of six children. My mother smoked Winstons. My father smoked Marlboros. My brother smoked Camels. Two of my sisters smoked. From birth to age 16, I lived in a house with a constant haze of cigarette smoking that I drew in...

I split this off from a thread in the Christianity forum. Setting aside for the moment whether the truth is "malleable," what are the means by which we might access "the truth"? In other words, by what measure do we determine "the truth" from "not the truth"? What do you think of that...

I love this passage. From Einstein's "Religion and Science" published in the New York Times Magazine in 1930: "The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by the kind of religious feeling which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image, so that there can be no church...

This is a little different than the "Favorite Movie" thread. What is your favorite scene in all the movies you've watched? My favorite movie is "Apocalypse Now," but my favorite scene is the conversation between Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and Mr. Jensen (Ned Beatty) in the huge coporate...

There is a surprising number of non-mainstream Christians that participate in this forum (surprising to me at least). I consider myself a non-mainstream Christian, though for about ten years I was a studious born-again, evangelical. I've seen passing comments from other alternative Christians...

Is anyone a parent or guardian to a special needs child. Our beautiful little boy is autistic. I'm interested in hearing others' experiences in dealing with how children with disabilities are treated.

This is one of my favorite parables: A Fable, by Mark Twain Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, "This doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely as it was before." The...

Here are some excerpts from an interesting article by Prof. Steven Falkenberg on the nature of religious fundamentalism: http://www.newreformation.org/fundamentalism.htm

For which books of the New Testament can we identify the authors with a reasonable degree of probability? Here's my take: None of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) Not Acts either, though Luke and Acts were probably part of the same author's work and that author is probably a...

I'm not sure if this is the right sub-forum for this. It seems like it could go here or in "Comparative Studies" or "Philosophy" but this seems as apporpriate a place as those. I've always loved Kafka's short parable "Before the Law." I've especially loved hearing people's different...

Hello all. I act as an "information connoisseur," and professional iconoclast (though my income is derived primarily from providing legal services). I am a practicing lawyer (civil appeals mostly) in South Texas. I am originally from the Pacific Northwest United States. My wife and I got...

In his book "The Way of Myth" mythologist/anthropologist/philosopher Joseph Campbell offers the following observation: "In our world today, all of us are stuck to our folk inflection of the elementary idea, but all we have to do to have a world culture is to turn our folk into a metaphor for...