My turn to take the book quiz!

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?

Paperback, because their more fragile that way and I hate dust covers but without dust covers, all books look the same, but paperbacks all look different and it's much more difficult to kill people with paperbacks than with hardcovers, I think people have done enough killing with and over books, way too much than it should have been, that's for sure.

2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it…

Outside the Cave

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

'The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao,
the tao that can be named is not the eternal name'

Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching

Another good one is this

'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun'

the Teacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem, Ecclesiastes

Another good one:

'And every soul shall be paid back fully what is has done, and Allah knows best what they do'

Muhammad, 'The Companies:70' Qu'ran

Also:

'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neigbor as yourself. I am the Lord'

Moses, Leviticus 19:18

4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be…

Nietzsche, to ask him if I'm right about him

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…

World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts or The Complete Plato, these are the 2 most sacred books in the world to me

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

read the book to me in a soothing female voice while i was reading along with her

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…

the archives at Staley Library where I used to work at Millikin Univ

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…

people say i look live wolverine, he's been alive almost 150 years, he's indestructible, a killing machine, he gets the hottest chicks, and they get killed by creed so that he can get with other ones, if you think about it, the perfect arrangement

9. The most overestimated book of all times is…

any book somebody is ready to kill for

10. I hate it when a book…

falls apart and can't be repaired, i always hear taps in my mind when this happens

.

Stop the Reduction

while researching my response, i came to this website which was kinda interesting

http://biblia.com/jesusbible/john.htm

thought i would share it with you all, kinda a pentecostal interpretation of this gospel, but an interesting read because of it's numeric analysis

as far as the definition of christianity goes, i'll let ya'all argue that amongst yourselves. but i do think that one of the metaphysical soteriological criteria for whatever the true religion turns out to be, must somehow include this as a requirement

'the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength' - (who can tell me where that is in the book?)

with God being understood in a monistic or mono-panentheistic way. (panentheism means that all is in God, so this would logically entail the love your enemies commandment as well as pretty much all the other ones, at least i think it does). i guess the only question left is what description you assign to your definition of God? and this is where all the killing and fighting and arguing and writing and dialoging and sharing and all that stuff, both good and bad, comes in (depending upon your method of persuasion and conversion, which all of the above are forms of.)

but don't listen to me about this stuff, i'm always trying to reduce christianity to this one commandment. (does that make me jewish in a extremely non-robust sort of way?) i wrote a huge paper to that effect my super senior year, with a little Taiosm, Platonism, and Nietzscheanism thrown in for that added spice.

sorry to change the topic here as well, but i have a questions you don't have to answer it, but i am myself in a sharing mood, so here ya go.

This class with my religion professor, whose an expert in Buddhism (he meat with the damn vice-ambassador of japan last week), has really made me aware of how belief is primary over other religious elements in the Abrahamic religions, and how other things, like ritual and practice, are primary over belief in Eastern religions.

that's why in the 'west' you can never go to church or do anything specifically about your religion, but as long as you believe, you can legitimately call yourself a christian, but you can't be an islamic christian. but in the 'east', if you never practiced your faith or did rituals and all that other stuff, nobody would believe you are religious, because that stuff is primary over there over belief, and you can be a confucian buddhist.

i guess i dont' have a question really, but something to think about, especially as these things stand in relation to each other over here. so i guess catholicism is kinda more 'eastern' with it's stronger emphasis on practice and ritual than lots of brands of protestantism, but still western because correct belief is essential as well.

that's my two cents, and don't let me reduce your religion to some sort of general monotheistic moral maxim, which i'm starting to realize i am very inclined to do.

ps - good etiquette is seeing the differences in value judgments between people, recognize if you have a lower value about a specific thing than the other person does, and then to act so that your value for that thing matches your neighbors, regardless of it really does or not. i'm tired, goodnight

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