Good Omens ate my brain.

Hi guys. I'm still working on the Esther and Herodotus study, but I thought I would take the time to recommend the newish mini series Good Omens, which can be seen on Amazon Prime. If you don't have Prime, you can sign up for a free month, then cancel. I'm not promoting Amazon, just the show.

Good Omens is based on a book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It is about an angel and a demon who live and work on earth, becoming quite human and forming a bond between them. Together with four children (one of whom is the antichrist), a witch, two witchfinders, and a retired Jezebel, the angel and the demon try to avert god's divine plan. They come up against the four motorcycle persons of the apocolypse and must figure out how to stop armaggedon from happening.  It's sweet, funny, and definitely blasphemous.

I absolutely adore this show. I've actually watched it all the way through 5 times now! It's got everything I love in television/movie watching, It's visually interesting, has good music, a great cast, and the story is lovely and very amusingly British. It is also very quotable. I'm seriously addicted to looking at Michael Sheen and David Tennant look at each other.

Go watch it!

Mr. Holmes, movie review (spoiler)

I thought I would take a small break from Genesis to talk about the philosophy of promoting reality over imagination. This week I went to see the movie Mr. Holmes starring Ian McClellan. In the story, Holmes is an old man at the end of life, experiencing chronic forgetfulness, fearing approaching senility. He wants to remember his last case and write what really happened, instead of the fictional account that Watson wrote.

While he is trying to remember, he becomes involved with the lives of his housekeeper and her son. The boy admires Holmes and encourages him to recall the past and write the story. The past and the present converge in a crisis. Holmes finally remembers that his last case ended tragically because he placed more importance on facts, logic, and reality than on human feeling and imagination.

At the end of the movie, Holmes finds redemption in telling someone a pleasant fiction that will heal an old pain, instead of the more hurtful truth,  which he was in the habit of speaking  regardless of the consequences. He also begins to consider the needs of his housekeeper and her son above his own, unlike his previous relationships with Watson and Mrs. Hudson.

This movie got me thinking. I am a very fact oriented person and have been chafing at the restrictions imposed on my ability to speak freely in public about atheism and the bible, because of circumstances of life and personal relationships. At times I wonder why I don't just be brutally honest and take whatever losses may occur. Then I think about how lonely it can be to be right at all costs. That was the lesson Holmes learned.

So, I write this blog  instead.