10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Why Kids Abandon Creative Play
The observation that play gets short shrift as children come of age in the Western world is surely as old and as perennial as that civilization itself. The Bible puts it thus: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that 1 am become a man, I have put away childish things." Turning their attention to the phenomenon, psychologists have asked what might be the causal factors.
In the early 1900s, for instance, G. Stanley Hall argued that as children... 1 
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notes27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Adventists Live Longer
In America here, life expectancy for the average woman is 80. But for an Adventist woman, their life expectancy is 89. And the difference is even more pronounced among men, who are expected to live about 11 years longer than their American counterparts. Now, this is a study that followed about 70,000 people for 30 years. Sterling study. And I think it supremely illustrates the premise of this Blue Zone project.
This is a heterogeneous community. It's white, black, Hispanic, Asian. The only t...
1 Habits and characteristics of Adventists that may lend to their longer lifespans.
12 JUL 2012 by ideonexus
Neil deGrasse Tyson's Reading List
1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”
3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”
4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satiric... 1 notes
notesEight books everyone should read to understand the forces at work in the world.
24 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Political Arguments Cannot be Religious
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including tho... 1 notes
notesBecause revelatory knowledge is not universal in a pluralistic, democratic country.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Bible was Like Wikipedia
The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible’s authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as “the literal word of God.” If we take a nonmetaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window into human nature and our cultural origins, and can be used as a source of solace and inspiration. Someone who believes in a person... 1 notes
notesWritten anonymously by many authors, which produced an oracle quality about it that allow it to become a tool for manipulation.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Advances of Science are Prophecized
Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten touching the last ages of the world: "Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased"; clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by Divine Providence, to meet in the same age. 1 notes
notesDaniel predicts the rise of science and knowing in the Bible.
08 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
William Tyndale Translates the New Testament into English
In the sixteenth century the scholar William Tyndale had the temerity to contemplate translating the New Testament into English. But if people could actually read the Bible in their own language instead of arcane Latin, they could form their own, independent religious views. They might conceive of their own private unintermediated line to God. This was a challenge to the job security of Roman Catholic priests. When Tyndale tried to publish his translation, he was hounded and pursued all over ...
1 ...and was met with stiff resistance by the church.
19 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Galileo Defends Nature as Truth
It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which senseexperience s... 1 notes
notesExplaining why the Bible must be contradictory at times, he reveres nature as the word of God.
