Regardless of type, however, the mechanism of a religion works like this: children, from the time they can communicate, are taught to see reality in a certain way. They are indoctrinated with a pre-defined belief structure and value set. Naive, open ...
Many modern Christians think of the New Testament as a book outside of history, something that was just suddenly there. Historians of Christianity, able to trace its gradual authorship and formation, nonetheless typically find themselves describing t...
If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about w...
Deeply immersed in a constant bubble bath of sin, you cannot communicate with Jesus Christ unless you are ready to get out of the bath. John 1:9
I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significan...
I have learned things from the game. Much of my knowledge of locations in Britain and Europe comes not from school, but from away games or the sports pages, and hooliganism has given me both a taste for sociology and a degree of fieldwork experience....
That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the s...
Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came t...
Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact- phone calls, faxes, e-mail- without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties ofte...
Everything was so much sharper without the Link fogging me--sights, sounds, smells. It was exhilarating and shocking and terrifying. I knew my emotions had grown too strong. They were dangerous to the Community. They were dangerous to me. But still, ...
According to Benedict's scheme, the community reads through... the entire book of Psalms every week. The monks are therefore exposed... to all the despairing, doubtful, bitter, vindictive, jingoistic, nationalistic, and seemingly racist passages in t...
Advertising is far more than just a communications industry. It's a problem-solving industry that also teaches you about life, how it encourages you to focus your thinking and produce something of genuine value. Why? Because that will make the advert...
After the service was over, I whispered to one of my fellow staff members, "If I commit suicide, I'll tattoo a message on my body. People will read the message on my body, if my dead body alone is not communication enough. I will make my message clea...
Before he could stop himself, Carlos pulled Michael down into a kiss, letting his lips and tongue communicate everything he'd been bottling up for days – months, if he was being honest with himself. Michael responded with a tenderness that begged t...
Being a Dream Girl is never going to be about what you look like or how much you weigh. After all, our physical appearances are just reflections of our inner worlds. What makes you a Dream Girl is your emotional sensitivity, your self-awareness, and ...
I remembered Papa talking about Stalin confiscating peasants' land, tools, and animals. He told them what crops they would produce and how much they would be paid. I thought it was ridiculous. How could Stalin simply take something that didn't belong...
Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cootervil...
In places where government priorities and market imperatives create a world so capricious that to help a neighbor is to risk your ability to feed your family, and sometimes even your own liberty, the idea of the mutually supportive poor community is ...
It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities...
Think of the power we could have if all the energy and effort in the world – or maybe even just your energy and effort? – that goes into drinking were put into resisting, building, creating. Try adding up all the money anarchists in your communit...
[On scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss] [Carl Friedrich] Gauss told his friend Rudolf Wagner, a professor of biology at Gottingen University, that he did not believe in the Bible but that he had meditated a great deal on the future of the human soul and ...
