My Best Curt Jester Post Impression

B16: “You can’t slap my hands King Abdullah, I have cat like reflexes!”

King Abdullah: “Ah yes, but parochial school nuns with rulers have not prepared you for this smack down!”

Most Beautiful Thing I've Read in a Long Time

Why did I leave?

Christ is the Victor

It’s easy as an apologist to get burned out. There is a lot of ignorance, hate, and bad things happening. Sometimes there is a temptation in despair. We have to remember that the war has been won. Christ is the victor. So clear some room, play the music below, and shake what God gave ya.

Everyone’s a moralist

I have often had the thought that those that condemn religion due to it imposing morals are in fact being moralistic themselves.

Everyone who advocates sex education is advocating the imposition of a set of values, but only conservatives seem to realize it. In fact, they’re quite up front about it, while liberals like Daniel tend to believe in some imaginary demarcation between ethics and policy that exists only in their heads. (Mollie Ziegler)

Testimony of Gratitude

painted by Juan Sánchez Cotán, 1602

A few years back, the National Gallery held an exhibition of Spanish still-life paintings. One of these paintings had a physical effect on the people who sauntered in, stopping them in their tracks; some even gasped. I have never seen an image have such an impact on people. The painting, by Juan Sánchez Cotán, now hangs in the San Diego Museum of Art. It showed four fruits and vegetables, two suspended by string, forming a parabola in a gray stone window.

Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us. Once you have seen it, and concentrated your attention on it, you will never take the existence of the humble cabbage—or of anything else—quite so much for granted, but will see its beauty and be thankful for it. The painting is a permanent call to contemplation of the meaning of human life, and as such it arrested people who ordinarily were not, I suspect, much given to quiet contemplation.(Theodore Dalrymple)

The above quote comes from an atheist that makes some good points. I recommend reading the whole article.