Posted on 05/17/2010 6:48:20 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Have you seen the trailer for The Adjustment Bureau yet (it's below)? That's the one starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as two people—a candidate for the U.S. Senate and a ballerina—who meet, fall in love and run smack into a mysterious organization that controls the flow of history. Looks pretty trippy, right? Almost like a story by late science fiction legend Philip K. Dick. Well, that's because The Adjustment Bureau, which comes out Sept. 17, is loosely based on a Dick story called "Adjustment Team," although it seems little of his original story remains.
(Excerpt) Read more at scifiwire.com ...
Heinlein wrote about sex the way Robert E. Howard (Conan) did. I.e. he imagined it a hell of a lot more than he did it. Writing about women dropping their clothes and parading about naked is not sex.
Howard died a virgin. Heinlein was married thrice. If it wasn’t for that one scene in Farnam’s Freehold I would have said he never had sex either.
Heinlein kind of, sort of fortuitously tripped over the sexual revolution with Stranger in a Strange Land (only a few years after being accused of being a militarist after Starship Troopers) and clumsily made the most of it.
Yeah, I have to admit Heinlein’s “Boys Own” adventures were his best works. His “adult” novels tried too hard to be trendy and have aged badly.
The “juveniles” dealt with some might serious issues as well and would make some good movies. “Time for the Stars” got mighty heavy in places and there was a lot of killing as I recall.
I disagreed with a lot of the stuff in Starship Troopers. The movie was directed by Paul Verhoeven and should not be taken seriously.
Well, it is explained by his wild despair over Tyrell’s revealing to him the secret of his short lifespan.
The fact is a madman like Tyrell wanted to make his creations immortal if he could but for various reasons (explained in that scene) he simply could not.
RAH was a twisted socialist, an EPIC disaster.
I have to agree with your assessment of Heinlein stories...early stuff is just fantastic, but the later writings are all group marriage/do-your-sister stuff that makes the stories hard to follow. “Citizen of the Galaxy” was one of my very favorites (I have a pdf copy [a large sci-fi library, mostly pdf, in fact] convenient for reading @ work!).
I think lurker's quote is just intended as a summary, and if you think about it Narses, "treating other people as objects" is a pretty good description of sin. Anyway, Christianity has spent 2000 years trying to do something about that, not define the problem! And Lurker, there is only one true Word of God. The problem, as always, is that truth has to be interpreted. There's nothing wrong with that - millions of preachers do it all the time! They have every right to tell you what they think, and you would be well advised to listen, but remember they are interpreting the Word, not giving you the Word itself (in spite of what a lot of them fondly believe). In the end you are responsible for your own soul.
It's a bit like remaking "All quiet on the western front" (one of the greatest anti-war movies of all time) into a Ridley Scott action-packed blood-and-snot-flying-everywhere heroic adventure drama. You could do it, and it might even work (in the sense that people might enjoy it) but its incredibly disrespectful to the author.
There are heretical communions of faith that do not have any of your questions figured out. In Catholic and generally authentic Christian moral teaching, they are figured out as follows:
going to Hell if I make love to my wife without wanting a baby
The sexual instinct in you wants to make a baby every time you enjoy sex, provided you are blessed with healthy physiology. You may nevertheless wish not to have a baby on some indirect, intellectualized level, for example because you don't want to deal with the economic consequence of having one. It is not a sin to consider consequences of your actions. It is however falling short of an ideal, and so a sin. The ideal is not do do things that are improvident, for example, have sex when a baby would not be desired. These are, of course, states of your mind that might be hard to sort out outside of the confessional. I usually lay them out for the priest as they are and ask God to forgive whatever is sinful, if anything.
Use of contraception is, of course, a conscious act, rather than simply contradictory desires. That is sinful regardless of anything else: it is deliberate disruption of sexual act that deepens rather than resolves conflicts in your mind. Don't do it.
If you cannot afford a baby or have medical reasons not to want one, abstain from sex during fertility periods. That would be a rational way to make love to your wife, by respecting her body and yours.
Above all, seek advice of competent people. I detect a confrontational tone in your post, directed at organized religion; that means that your are making a mistake of avoiding advice you need in order to sort out your sex life.
Scotch or Bourbon [or dancing]
... are all fine, so long as you remain in control of your faculties, so drink, if you so choose, in moderation.
Go into a closet and pray
Judging by your main question, you certainly should pray in the bedroom.
This is one advice among many. The scripture also records countless examples of people seeking advice from people with spiritual authority, and communal prayer.
Well, I’m a bit late to this thread, so I’ll just say that I really like Philip K. Dick’s books. I read most of them as they came out, and reread them over the years.
He is a crazy but brilliant writer. I strongly recommend trying the books (not for every taste, but brilliant).
I’ve only seen a few of the movies, and I think they are mostly way below the level of the books with the exception of Blade Runner.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is very different from the movie version, Blade Runner. Both are excellent, but different. For once, although Hollywood failed expectedly to really do the book, it did a brilliant movie instead.
I like all of Dick’s books, including the earlier California novels, which I presume are autobiographical. The one exception is the last few, which go over the line into pure craziness.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said is where Dick STARTS to really go over the edge into madness (not that he wasn’t somewhat crazy all along), but it is in some ways his best book ever.
The next few are also good, but they edge into insanity and pointlessness at the end.
I take it you are basing your questions on some Evangelicals I know.
First of all, the Bible is not primarily about what is not allowed, spoiling your pleasure. The Ten Commandments are one of the few places where negatives are used, and I think we can agree on most of it: it’s not really nice to steal, kill people, wreck other people’s marriages, and the like.
But the Bible, including the Old Testament, is more about what to choose if you want to be happy. Choose God.
Moreover even the negative commandments are not designed to deprive people of pleasure, but to make them realize what to avoid if they want to avoid being unhappy, as well as turning away from God. Because committing sins doesn’t really make you happy, not in the long run.
But as for some of your questions, no, the Bible does not say that it is evil to drink in moderation or to dance. Some Evangelical groups swear off drinking and dancing, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s voluntary. Nothing wrong with it, if that’s what they want to do, but it is not required by the Bible or by traditional Christianity.
I don’t notice that such people are noticeably less happy because they don’t have a glass of wine with their lunch. Personally, I generally have one beer a day, or wine or gin & tonic if that’s what’s being served. I’ve gotten drunk twice in my life, and didn’t find it much fun.
What’s noticeable is that most of the good Christians whom I know, Protestant or Catholic, generally enjoy life as much as or more than those without any religion.
Every one of the Ten Commandments, all of which I agree with btw, can be boiled down to one thing: Don't steal.
Murder? The unjustified theft of a life.
Theft? Well, that's just....theft.
Coveteousness? That's "pre-theft", no matter if it's your neighbors ass, his fields, or his wife's ass.
False witness? That's the theft of the Truth.
God's name in vain? That's the theft of the respect owed to God.
I don't have a problem with God, nor with Jesus. I have a problem with the dozens of varieties of "doctrine" floating around out there. From one denomination to the other they're often mutually contradictory or just plain silly.
L
Well, I’ve sometimes had lunch with Evangelicals at conventions, and I had a glass of wine while they turned theirs upside down.
And I once had dinner with a few old Evangelical friends, and they didn’t mind my having a beer even through they had all vowed to stay off of it. They agree to respect my faith, and I respect theirs.
This was faculty from Evangelical colleges. They have to vow not to drink, and they generally keep that vow whether or not they think the Bible demands it, because it’s important to keep your word.
I can respect that, and I’m not sure it doesn’t set a better example for the students than the falling-down-drunk that I saw all too often in my dorm when I was an undergraduate. I would prefer to teach the students self-control, how to drink without abusing it, but abstinence is probably second best.
To each their own. I have friends who don't touch the stuff and I have friends who enjoy a couple of adult beverages with us. They're all our friends.
They don't mind if we do imbibde and we don't mind that they don't.
And I do agree about those who over-indulge. Mrs. L and I have a rule about when it's time to leave a function. The first time someone repeats themself to us it's time to go.
It's never failed us.
lol And a cute teddy bear thrown in!
“Blade Runner was a loss”
Oy, you can say that again.
I had heard of this movie so many, many, many times, so when hubby joined netflix I had him get it.
Totally boring, sorry.
I can see it was very stylish and maybe one had to watch it at the time, but I was very underwhelmed by it.
And Harrison Ford, what is with that guy, he can be good and at other times he can be sooooo wooden. In Blade Runner, and also in Presumed Innocent he was just awful.
I’d like to say it didn’t stand the test of time, but I also read “A Pilgrim’s Progress” because I realized that every character in every 19th c. novel I’d ever read had read it.
That religious polemic was written in the 1600s and it was still, 300 years later, a great read.
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