Film Comment: Sinners (2025)

 

Sinners is a movie which is intended to be about racism, cultural oppression, colonialism, black culture, anti-religion, and anti-Christianity. As usual, I can make Christian observations about the film which are probably unintended by the director.

“Son, you keep dancin’ with the Devil, one day, he’s gonna follow you home,” from a pastor father to Sammie, nicknamed Preacherboy, who is aching to become famous for his outstanding blues guitar and singing talent. Sammie hooks up with two morally fluid brothers who are opening a juke joint. This sets up a conflict when two white men and a woman show up that night wanting to join in the fun. The problem is that they are vampires.

One man about to be killed/turned into a vampire begins to loudly quote the Lord’s Prayer. All the vampires join in and help complete the quotation. This seems to be intended to show that Christianity has no power against evil.

A Christian response: the frightened man’s words were just that, words, and they did have no power. There is a difference between knowing and believing. The power is not in the words. They are not a Magick spell. God is not our genie in a bottle. The words have power only as they are used by the Holy Spirit.

Satan can quote scripture. He quoted Psalms 91:11-12 while tempting Jesus to misuse his authority (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13). Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).

Book Comment: The God You Thought You Knew

 

In his book, The God You Thought You Knew, Alex McFarland responds to ten common secular objections to Christianity.

Some of the objections discussed in this book include:

1.     Christianity is judgemental and intolerant.

2.     Evil and suffering exist and a real God would not allow that.

3.     Christianity is totally made up and not based on any facts.

4.     Modern science disproves Christianity.

5.     Religion is not for the educated.

6.     The whole thing is boring and a waste of my time.

7.     Since I do not like it, it cannot be true.

8.     The Bible is full of errors.

9.     Dead people cannot come back to life.

10.  A loving God would not send anyone to Hell.

As with most books such as this, what you get from the book depends on what you bring with you. You may not agree with everything the author says. Luke (see below) advises to think for yourself.

Information you will need to search for this book: McFarland, Alex, The God You Thought You Knew. Exposing the 10 Biggest Myths About Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 2015)

___________________________________________________________________

A general caution: books may give you wonderful new insights and explanations of subjects, but you should never base your Christian beliefs on any one book or the teachings of one person, no matter who they are. All teachings must be consistent with scripture. Read as the Bereans did, with discernment. “… for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11 NASB

Any doctrines must be consistent with the historical full body of Christian thought. Doctrines or teachings inconsistent with scripture in any way must be rejected. You would not eat cheese which had a fuzzy fungus growing on it.

Bonjour, Congo-Brazzaville !

 Bonjour, Congo-Brazzaville ! Bienvenue parmi nos lecteurs du monde entier, venus de nombreux pays, qui visitent également ce blog. J'espère que vous trouverez certains articles utiles et pertinents. Parlez-en à vos amis. Bienvenue à tous.

Ce blog a enregistré 860 216 pages vues depuis mai 2010. Il contient actuellement 1 808 articles. Vous pouvez rechercher ces articles grâce à la fonction « Rechercher dans ce blog ». Une liste alphabétique des sujets abordés sur ce blog se trouve tout en bas de la page, sous « Étiquettes », et indique le nombre d'articles sur le sujet en question. L'outil « Traduire cette page » permet de présenter le blog en plusieurs langues.

La section « Étiquettes » en bas de cette page est utile pour rechercher tous les articles de Saints on the Loose qui abordent un sujet particulier. De nombreux sujets sont abordés sur ce blog. Tous, d'une manière ou d'une autre, sont pertinents pour les objectifs de ce blog. Recherchez le mot qui vous intéresse. Il existe des centaines d'annonces, notamment sur la grâce, la nourriture, Star Trek, la sanctification, PeeWee Herman, l'Espagne, l'étoile de Bethléem, la distraction au volant, l'ekklesia et l'arianisme.

            The Translate tool above can convert this text into Kituba and Lingala.

            This blog has been viewed from at least one hundred and forty-seven countries: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia/Kampuchea, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo - Kinshasa), Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany,  Ghana, Greece, Guam, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast/Core d'Ivoire, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg,  Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of the Congo (Congo - Brazzaville), Reunion, Romania, Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Togo, Tunisia, Turkiye, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam,  Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

        Some references say that there are 197 countries on Earth, but many people will say the number is 195, the number of members of the United Nations, plus Vatican City and Palestine, who are not UN members.

 

 

Science in Antiquity: Part 2

 

Many modern people have a very limited view of history. They can only see or think about five or ten years into the past. They see history as boring and they think of the ancients as ignorant and backward. This was not actually not true. What the ancients lacked was the modern accumulation of facts. An ancient Israelite would have been very puzzled and culture-shocked to have been dumped into the modern world, but he or she could have eventually learned to drive a car or to cook on a stove or to use a cellphone.

The ancients were just as intelligent as we are but the accumulation of scientific facts had not yet reached a critical point. Human knowledge took centuries to double, fact by fact. As knowledge accumulated, the rate of accumulation began to speed up. Every answer exposes a new question. Buckminster Fuller spoke of the Knowledge Doubling Curve which was relatively flat for centuries, then began a slow climb, and then went into an explosive upward thrust.

By the end of the 19^th Century, knowledge was doubling once per century. By about 1945, the rate of doubling was about every 25 years. By 1982, the rate was about every 12-13 months. By 2020, the doubling was occurring about every 12 hours. With at least 50,000,000,000 devices now operating and with the rise of artificial intelligence, the rate may now be in minutes.

 

9 March 5 BC/BCE: Chinese astronomers describe a comet which they observed.

24 BC/BCE: Strabo visits Thebes (modern Luxor/al-Uqsur, Egypt). On this trip (24-20), he finds the ruins of Heliopolis (the biblical On). Genesis 41:45. He described the Earth as a sphere and said gravity pulled things to the center.

(b. ca 25 BC/BCE – d. ca 50 AD/CE) Aulus Cornelius Celsus is a Roman medical encyclopedist who wrote about subjects including skin disorders, fevers, kidney stones, eye anatomy, dentistry, jaw fractures, cancers, diet, surgery, and medicines. He taught correctly that fevers were the “effort of the body to throw off some morbid cause.”

10 May 28 BC/BCE: Chinese astronomers recorded the earliest known dated record of a sunspot, a black spot on the sun. Exactly how the sunspots were viewed is not known, since telescopes were not invented until the 1570’s and direct viewing of the sun will damage the eyes.

78-37 BC/BCE:  The Han Chinese genius, Jing Fang, is a music theorist, mathematician, and astronomer. He explained lunar and solar eclipses and musical octaves.

The Classical Arguments for the Existence of God

 

There have been many attempts made to prove the existence of God but none have been definitive or inarguable. Some have pointed out that even if definitive proof existed that would not be enough. Knowing is not the same as believing.

There are three classical arguments for the existence of God. Argument to most people carries

the idea of an angry exchange of words sometimes leading to a physical altercation, but there is also an understanding of the word from a classical legal background. Ancient orators (the forerunners of attorneys) and their descendants, modern scholars, professors, and attorneys offered arguments on numerous subjects, giving persuasive statements for or against a particular matter or understanding of a subject. Modern lawyers present closing arguments to a jury at a trial.

The three classical arguments for the existence of God are the ontological, cosmological, and the teleological. The English-language word ontology is derived from the Greek words ὄν or ὄντος (being, that which is) and λογία (word, study). The English-language word cosmology is derived from the Greek words κóσμος (order, arrangement, or adornment) and λογία. The English-language word teleology is derived from the Greek words τέλος (end, aim purpose, goal, finality) and λογία.

The Ontological Argument says that since we can conceive of a perfect being, then God must exist. The weakness here is that we can also conceive of H.P. Lovecraft’s extremely complex mythology of ancient gods like Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, or Cthulhu but that does not mean that they actually exist.

The Cosmological Argument says that everything in the universe has a cause and that there must be a first cause, which is God. The weakness here is how to explain how God can be an uncaused cause. To say that God caused himself is just talking in a circle and does not answer the objection.

The Teleological Argument: is generally considered to be the strongest of the three.  This is also known as the argument from design. This argument points to the apparent order, purpose, and complexity of the universe as strong evidence pointing to an intelligent designer. This argument often mentions the fine-tuning of physical constants which must be the way they are for the existence of life, and of multiple complex biological systems which must all function correctly together the very first time or the organism will not be viable. The weakness here is that this argument can point but cannot prove. It can only define a degree of probability.

This argument cannot answer numerous objections. Was God designed by another designer who also had a designer who also had a …? Are there other designers creating other universes? Do suffering and natural disasters show God to be cruel or evil? Does the designer care at all about what he designed? Do we so much want to see design that we see it when it is not really there? Does the apparent presence of design point to the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition or to some other deity? Every one of these questions and objections and many others have been brought up over the centuries and have led to the development of the field of apologetics.

Apologetics absolutely cannot prove the existence of God. What it seeks to do is to find and explore every possible provable fact which adds to the probability of the truth of the Judeo-Christian tradition. There are literally thousands of these provable facts. Do not expect any of this to convince a true confirmed skeptic.

One can easily get bogged down in all the arguments, but I believe that the point of apologetics can be summed up by a line from the Jean-Pierre Jeunet secular comedic film masterpiece, Amelie: “When the finger’s pointing at the sky, only a fool looks at the finger.” 

The field of apologetics attempts to pile facts upon facts to raise the probability of God’s existence to the point at which even hostile total skeptics have to admit that it is at least a viable argument.

Hello, Dominica!

Hello, Dominica!  Welcome to the world-wide group of readers from many countries who also visit this blog.  I hope you find some of the posts useful or meaningful. Tell your friends about this blog. Everyone is welcome.

The Translate This Page gadget directly above the “Total Pageviews” Counter has the capability of translating the English text of this blog directly into numerous other languages.

The Labels section at the bottom of this page is useful in searching for all Saints on the Loose blog posts which mention a particular subject. Numerous subjects are mentioned on this blog. All, in one way or another, are pertinent to the purposes of this blog. Search for any word of interest to you. There are hundreds of listings including grace, food, Star Trek, sanctification, Pee-Wee Herman, eisegesis, Spain, Star of Bethlehem, distracted driving, ekklesia, and Arianism.

This blog has been viewed from at least one hundred and forty-five countries: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia/Kampuchea, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany,  Ghana, Greece, Guam, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast/Core d'Ivoire, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg,  Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Togo, Tunisia, Turkiye, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam,  Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Minced Oaths

 

On 7 May 2025, I posted Holy Smokes! about the white or black smoke which the Roman Catholic Cardinals in the Papal Conclave use to signal the status of the election of the next pope. The post mentioned minced oaths in discussing the situation and I promised to talk about that later. Well, here it is.

Minced oaths are phrases which can sound blasphemous but which are altered or disguised to be less explicit. They use indirect language, softened phrasing, or euphemisms. Think of the British exclamation Zounds!, which replaces God’s Wounds!  The usage also exists in other languages but is very extensive in the English-language. Examples include: dang, darn, dagnabbit, gadzooks, gee whillikers, jeepers, blimey, good heavens, Holy Moly, Holy Cow, Holy Mackerel, Great Scot, Golly, and many more. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_minced_oaths

 The idea of not saying the name of God out loud because of its sacredness is an ancient Jewish concept. When the holy name, the Tetragrammaton JHWH,  יהוה, occurs in their sacred texts, Jews still today substitute Adonai ,אֲדֹנָי , meaning Lord, or Ha-Shem, הַשֵּׁם, meaning the Name, or Elohim, אֱלֹהִים, meaning God.

Saying the holy name of God out loud is considered to be disrespectful, sacrilegious, and offensive. Many observant English-speaking Jews carry this even further, writing the word God as G-d.

James, the brother of Jesus, warned against the careless use of words. James 3:2-10. Being able to control one’s language is considered to be a sign of spiritual maturity.