Lady Bird (2017)

Set in Sacramento, the movie has very interesting and realistic characters and an intriguing story. Particularly the relationship between the protogonist and her mom is well done and nuanced.

.. Minor spoilers ..

Minor gay interest film. One of Christine "Lady Bird" love interests is a closeted gay boy that leads her on.

At one point in the film, she picks up a porn magazine of boys and we actually see erections. (No sex acts though.)

One reason it is R rated, plus some depictions of heterosexual sex.

Naz & Maalik (2015) rating: 8/10

Two young Muslim boys/men in Brooklyn make their way through life. They are friends and secret lovers. But the police/FBI find them as possible sources of information. Their interactions with law enforcement starts out innocent, but then becomes fraught with danger and suspicion.

Excellently acted by the two charismatic and attractive leads. The script is well done.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3385334

Noah (2014) rating: 7/10

How could I possibly like a biblical movie? This one is so absurd that you understand that the story is total science fiction!

Logan Lerman and Emma Watson are in it. And even Anthony Hopkins. You really don't need to watch it at regular speed, except for a few sections you can understand what's happening without the dialogue.

The Art of Happiness In a Troubled World by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler

I liked the first book in this series so much because it was such a new concept: the idea of a religion which did not look down upon other religions or even on not believing. It look a secular approach to showing how compassion and empathy could improve your life, rather than being instructed to do so as a moral and religious imperative. This book attempts to update and improve on the first. Cutler does a reasonable job with informing on the latest in happiness psychology and research. He is able to extract some nuggets from the Dalai Lama over his several interview visits. But I couldn't help but think that I might have gotten more out of a reread of the original book.

Society without God by Phil Zuckerman

The author spent some time in Scandinavia where belief in Christianity would seem to be strong with nationalized Christian churches. Actually, Denmark and Sweden are the world's most secular nations. Despite this, they consistently rate as the happiest nations in the world.

The author has some interesting theories on why it turned on this way. The Danes and Swedes national religion actually has little in the way of competition. Supported by the government, the church is somewhat complacent compared to the heavy marketing, including Us vs Them message of the American churches.

An interesting question delved into by the author is the question of fear of death. The secular Danes and Swedes seem to have a healthy attitude towards death. They do not fear it, and understand it to be simple ceasing to exist similar to animal death. The author then makes the point, that this is probably a better attitude than the fear and uncertainty caused by the 'question' of heaven or hell.

[It's actually one hell of a crazy marketing tactic: create something which cannot be verified called a soul and say that it survives in another plane of existance where it's immortal, but it can either suffer forever or take it easy forever. In fact, it plays on the human aversion to loss. Does one accept this next to impossible explanation for existance or accept a more mundane one that the end is the end, and lose out on the possibility of heaven? Diabolical. And if it works on a community, it makes the population hugely more piable for enforcing norms. I.e. thou shalt not covet they neighbors wife or risk hell, etc.]

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Don't believe in God? This is a great book for you. Believe in God, but don't mind being disabused of the notion of God or think it can't be done (you've been indoctrinated to such an extent that there's no way you think you can be convinced otherwise), then you've nothing to lose by reading this (though you might want to read The Selfish Gene first to give yourself the full chance of being convinced). Dawkins who wrote The Selfish Gene and is an expert on evolution is an atheist. He takes a strong stand against the idiot zealots and encourages other non-believers to do the same. Stop letting these crazy people run the planet and spread their crazy ideas. I was pumped just by the preface.

It's actually quite funny in parts. People have made all kind of weird, illogical arguments for the existence of God. With well written prose, Dawkins pretty much takes apart all the faulty reasoning (circular, non-sequitur, etc). In fact, he points out that the founding fathers of America were in fact extremely secular for the day and fought to remove references to religion (Christianity) in founding documents. Overall he does a great job at systematically discussing and refuting all the reasons people have given for why God exists. He also discusses why religion came about (homo sapiens tendency to personify unexplained agency), but isn't needed and is in fact bad for humanity. (A key reason is that it indoctrinates children into accepting religious tenets as truth without question/thinking. This primes them for atrocities such as suicide bombing or setting abortion clinics on fire.)

One of the main reasons people have for the existence of God, is that things are too complicated to have come to be without some higher intelligence. As a scientist and key proponent of evolution, Dawkins obviously disagrees. Complex organisms have taken a long time but slowly evolved to become more complex. Looking at the end result or culmination of evolution -- people, trees, even the smallest ant, it's quite truly wonderous, but it's the end of a process which survival advantages benefited ancestors and propagation of their genes. Those less wonderously adapted to survival simply did not survive, but they have even left fossils behind as proof of their existence. There is no need for a God acting in 7 days. Dawkins excoriates people who are too lazy to understand the science appropriately and would rather cling to old superstitions which were used to explain the world before science came to understand it.

# # #

Personally, I think it's just the idea of heaven which sustains religion (okay, in conjunction with early childhood brainwashing). People are just too blindly hopeful of something magically like life after life to accept the true deadness of death. Wishful thinking. Hey people snap out of it!