My last blog argued that the false dichotomy is the plague of human thought, especially thought about Jesus. Here is another example: Ricky Gervais' 'testimony' of how he found out that God doesn't exist. I think that he was the British precursor to Steve Carell on the original version of the Office. He was also very funny as the museum director who couldn't verbally compose any of his frustrated encounters with Ben Stiller despite having a PhD (A Night at the Museum). I guess he just wasn't a people person.

http://www.rickygervais.com/bestlife.php
 

Deepak Chopra and The Third Jesus – Part I

The false dichotomy is either the most common mistake that plagues clear thinking, or Deepak Chopra has written a new book that re-tells a very old story about Jesus.

I recently returned from a week with my family in Southern California. The time was almost without the slightest lack. But there was one, and it got me thinking. My family visited Disneyland (predictably, I know) for three days. On the last day we spent some time at California Adventure, which is the sister park on the Disneyland site. It is geared much more to older children, teens and adults, but there was also plenty to do with my children, ages 5 and 7.

The economic headlines aren’t good these days. Apparently a life is getting more expensive to maintain for those who still have one. The system takes less than five sentences to describe: humans move food too far from where it grows, so its price depends on factors external to food, such as the price of oil, which depends on rich powerful people in the realm of political affairs, which means that the price of food mostly increases due to the greed and pride of a very small number of human beings out of 6 billion.

"The gospel of sin management produces vampire Christians who want Jesus for his blood and little else." (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy)

I awoke today to an overcast sky on my way to spin class at our local rec center. For the uninitiated, a spin class is a boot-camp style workout where the participants mount bikes that don't work (according to the ordinary definition of a bike) but have a nob that the user turns to add tension to the wheel mechanism and thus more pain to their experience. Meanwhile a fitness nazi yells into a microphone at those who are unable to talk back for fear of 'oatmealing'.