The top four picks this year were Shannon Doherty. Andy Taylor, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin.
I was thinking of the top picks who checked out right before the year began. People like former Pope Benedict, Jeremiah Green, Pelé, and Barbara Walters, each picked for their 2023 lists by at least 10 players, but who all died in the last three days of 2022.
Okay, I see what you mean. But you have to admit, if the orange one checks out in the near future, we wouldn’t mind having the next year’s list messed up.
Of the 12 people who walked on the moon, how many are still alive? Anyone got a list?
Yeah, he’s selfish that way.
mmm
Four people who have been on the moon are alive.
Four are still living:
Buzz Aldrin (2nd person to walk on the moon, born 1930)
David R. Scott (7th person, born 1932)
Charles Duke (10th person, born 1935)
Harrison H. Schmitt (11th person, born 1935)
Guillermo “Willie” Hernandez, Detroit Tigers closer and 1984 AL MVP, has exited the game at 69.
Oh, damn, I hadn’t seen this before. Another of my literary giants gone. Her Booker Prize winner Possession is my desert island novel, and I periodically re-read her luminous short stories.
NOT dead, but Tom Baker was just photographed for the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who. He looks very thin.
I hope he has a good, uh, nevermind
I first heard about him on This American Life. As an atheist who was brought up in the Unitarian Universalist church (we pray, “To whom it may concern”), I thought that the notion of hell was not merely preposterous and silly, but actually quite monstrous. How could a supposedly benevolent god subject people to horrific punishment for eternity for even the most heinous crimes or sins committed on earth? It’s unbelievably disproportionate.
So I wasn’t surprised that a thoughtful person would conclude there was no hell. What shocked me was how absolutely essential the notion of hell was to almost everyone else in his community, both clergy and lay, and how few people were swayed by his arguments. I had naively thought that many, if not most, Christians didn’t truly believe that hell was literally real. Of course, I know that many liberal Christians don’t, but I thought that Pearson might have had more success, given his stature, persuading people with what were, to me, quite sensible positions.
So I was gratified to learn that he ultimately found a place in the United Church of Christ.
I’m a born-again Christian, and I don’t believe in hell for exactly that reason. Infinite punishment for finite sins is simply wrong, and you’d have to destroy any normal meaning of ‘love’ to have such an afterlife be consistent with the notion of a loving God.
Almost deserves a thread in Great Debates, but here is how I look at it.
One does not go to Hell for committing sins. Hey, we are all sinners. One is in Hell for rejecting belief in God, or that there is no God. God desires that we all reach Heaven. The worst sinner can end up in Heaven if they repent their sins and believe in God’s mercy. That doesn’t mean they will escape earthly punishment, but eternity is waiting. Those two guys who were crucified alongside Jesus? The one ended up in Paradise, although he knew that his sins had condemned him. Not sure about the other one, we may not have the whole story on him. And I don’t think Hell is the lake of fire, or demons tormenting you, it’s a place of despair, knowing you are not with God. You know, a forever dreary place.
Now, I need to get back in the handbasket I have created for myself by herding this thread. Is anyone getting ready for 2024?
That seems less in keeping with the idea of a loving God. A loving merciful all-powerful God would forgive a human being for failing to worship him.
The two thieves bracketing Jesus were Gestus and Saint Dismas (feast day March 25, but you don’t need to shoplift the food to celebrate it).
Viewed one way, Dismas, by sticking up for Jesus when he was being mocked by Gesus manifested the divine mercy that we can too by championing the bullied. Divinity = God, so that’s where your soul fits after death.
Alternatively, Gestus was just making a joke, and Jesus reacted by saying “very funny asshole. Enjoy Hell on me.”
I tried to read C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, which presented a dismal view of limbo but seemed to suggest that individuals who were not fully evil still had a path to heaven simply by enduring the fields of Asphodel long enough for their fundamental merit to be recognized.
Would somebody be so friendly and fight my ignorance about that handbasket that has been mentioned so often in this thread? It is cultural reference I don’t know where to grasp.
You really don’t know? Okay, it’s from a saying about how one is “going to hell in a handbasket” .