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Honestly, while John Williams' scores are superb, I really don't need to hear them - or imitations of them - ever again. This especially applies to games, where you might be hearing the same musical motifs for much longer than in a film. So I'm all for shaking up the audio landscape of Star Wars...

Ha, I love Last Action Hero, mainly because it's a great example of a film with a wonderful screenplay that somehow doesn't quite work on screen. I think because the kid just isn't very good, unfortunately. I'm not very good at thinking in terms of acts - in the case of The Batman it felt by...

No, that's not correct - they're still awarded, though not by the monarch really, of course. For example, since we're talking about films, Ridley Scott got one this year. Obviously they should have been discontinued a long time ago, but that applies equally to the monarchy itself, and yet here...

It means they didn’t really do anything for that specific production. So in the case of an original IP creator it’s basically a courtesy title. If someone is a director and executive producer then it’s just a way of making them seem that much more important. It’s basically the production...

He’s never going to actually answer. He only ever makes posts like that one.

It’s the Gospel of James, so fair enough, it’s not *super*-late. However, there are two important things to bear in mind here. First, scholars agree that none of the gospels and associated works that are outside the New Testament have any value as far as giving us facts about the historical...

I really don’t see what any of this has to do with the topic at hand. I didn’t use the word “fantasy”. You said that it is “common knowledge” that James was not really Jesus’ brother, but while this may be a common belief in some traditions, it is not knowledge, and my saying that is not a...

Not really! It isn’t stated anywhere in the New Testament. It’s a much later tradition, invented as part of the later doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity (since if she retained her virginity perpetually then Jesus can’t have had any biological siblings). In fact there’s no historical basis...

According to whom, though? Are you asking what orthodox Christian’s believe? Or what the authors of the Gospels or other parts of the New Testament believe? Or what other Christian groups believe? Or what other religions entirely believe? Or what is actually likely to have been the case...

Well, if you’re asking what the orthodox Christian view is, no, he doesn’t. The Holy Spirit doesn’t act as Jesus’ father in the act of conception. That would result in Jesus being half human and half divine, like Gilgamesh. But he’s not - he’s fully human and fully divine, which means that all...

The imagery in Revelation 13 is explained in Revelation 17. It specifies that the seven heads represent seven hills, and the ten horns represent ten kings. That means it's Rome, which is built on seven hills. The use of the name "Babylon" also indicates Rome, because "Babylon" at that time was a...

If Jesus was born in 6 BCE, how can you say that Dionysius Exiguus “made no mistake” in saying he was born in 1 CE? And does this theory depend on identifying the two beasts of Revelation 13 with John the Baptist and Jesus? Because I think that’s going to be a tough sell. And which work of...

Well, I watched the Fourteenth Doctor specials. That didn't take long! Their sheer quality of both the writing and the acting really showed up the weakness of the Chibnall era. Davies seems to know what he's doing so much more securely. All three were strong, and it was great seeing Neil Patrick...

Yes, the notion of dialectic as a dynamic process is Hegelian. I don’t think you’ll find it in ancient or even medieval thinkers.

I don’t know about him in particular, but this seems an odd general observation. I can understand saying that someone’s personal ethics are irrelevant to (say) their work in biology or astronomy, but how can it be irrelevant to their work in ethics?

Yes, atoms were supposed to be different shapes, explaining the different properties of different substances. Though it's a long time since I last studied this stuff, I must admit! Origen supposedly thought that the resurrection body would be spherical, as it's the perfect shape, but in fact he...

Not really, because ancient atomists thought that atoms were always surrounded by void, whether they were in a solid state or not. Democritus thought that the fact that atoms are surrounded by void is why you can cut an apple with a knife: the knife goes through the void between the atoms of the...

Surely that was Whitehead, wasn’t it? I’m convinced that either Plato or Aristotle was the greatest thinker of all time, but I’m not sure which. The fact that both came along in the same place at the same time is astonishing, even more so than the coincidence of Newton and Leibniz. But count...

Yes, but remember that Christian tradition does not hold that Jesus was omniscient *in his humanity*. Mark 13:32 states that there are some things he does not know. Traditionally, Jesus in his human nature knows everything that a human being is capable of knowing, because his humanity is...

Since I have been summoned I’ll just say a couple of things, bearing in mind that I’m not an expert on this context. That’s not going to stop me pontificating, though. First, remember that Jesus and his associates would have spoken not Hebrew but Aramaic. Second, remember that the setting of...