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The issue is muddy; a lot of the tradition of Satan ruling hell is just that, tradition. In the NT, it's more implied that he rules over the earth itself (the prince of the power of the air). Hell isn't even the final horror for unbelievers, the Lake of Fire is.

But that's just it: His ways *aren't* higher. Every time He does something in the OT, it uses only the phenomena that the people of those days would be aware of: flood, fire, locusts, etc. He never does anything that truly demonstrates His superiority and His knowledge of things that we have no knowledge of. It's similar to Hitchens' point: the creation account never mentions microbes or dinosaurs or such things, because the people who wrote Genesis didn't know those things existed and thus didn't know that God would have needed to create them. Everything God does is limited to the knowledge of the people creating Him. There's nothing "high" about His doings at all.

Really, we do. If there had been a global flood:

1. Most, if not all, plant life would have been destroyed, which means that the herbivores leaving the Ark would have nothing to eat.

2. Those herbivores would quickly have been killed by the carnivores, who also would have nothing to eat.

3. Only two of each animal is not enough to repopulate the earth, especially because of the skewed predator/prey ratio (see point 2.)

4. The Ark itself just does not work in terms of fitting all the animals, let alone their waste, food, etc.

The Biblical account is impossible, if we are to take it literally. And if it's not literal, it means nothing in this context anyway.

The problem with anyone insisting that "Christian morality" is a thing is that no Christian moral statements are original to Christianity. The laws of The Pentateuch (which were Jewish anyway, before Christianity claimed the OT as their own) are based in large part on Hammurabi's laws. Jesus' Golden Rule was written before him by Plato, Hillel, etc. There is no truly original moral code in the Bible. As Christopher Hitchens said: "Name me a moral action that a believer can perform and an unbeliever can't." You can't do it.

Nearly all the Gnostic writings, for starters. Until we found Nag Hammadi we had almost none of them left.

Are you guys ever gonna get to the Pirates sequels? Also, it'd be interesting for you to do a commentary on the 2011 The Thing comparing it to the 1982 one.

Whenever people bring up how none of us deserves His compassion, we all deserve to burn, etc. etc., I really do wonder: why can't He just do what He commands us to do and just forgive? Why all this pointless rigamarole with the cross and salvation that ensures that some will burn, rather than just Him doing what we're ordered to do?

That's crap. To go along with avatar's argument, the Bible never condems slavery, rather openly endorsing it. Are you going to tell me humans were making a faulty moral statement when they decided slavery was wrong?

Regardless of whether it's "enough" or not, you can't deny that God gave (allegedly) far more evidence to a bunch of illiterate first-century Palestinians.

CG fire still doesn't quite work for me. It was the only flaw in Gravity's VFX that I noticed.

How did everyone else feel about Frozen, if anyone saw it? I just saw it, and was pleasantly surprised at how strong the female characters were. And the animation was gorgeous. Music wasn't so spectacular in most cases, but "Let It Go" is a lock for Best Original Song at the Oscars.

It's a Wonderful Life and White Christmas, mostly. I decided to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special last year, and it almost killed me. Definitively the worst viewing experience I've ever had.

No. The entire film is building to the ending it has—she's conquered her fear, grief and guilt and is ready to live again. Not only would that ending be totally uncinematic and cruel, it would be completely the wrong ending for the film. The reason The Mist's ending works so well is that the whole film is building to that hopelessness. Gravity is not.