Ben Zurcher

Filmmaker. Writer. Silicon Slopes Poser. Wannabe Baller. Cute Dog-Holder.

[Mike Pesca @pescami]

Ordinary Abundance. This is the greatest thing I've read in weeks. No kidding. This should win a Pulitzer in a category not yet invented. https://t.co/iqnoACNt6z

[Fandom Pulse @fandompulse]

Ender's Game author Orson Scott Card on the problems with how religion is portrayed in current fantasy and science fiction:

"In our culture, intellectuals have become so uniformly a-religious or anti-religious that our fiction, with few exceptions, depicts religious people in only two ways: the followers are ignorant and stupid and easily fooled, and the leaders are exploitative and cynical, manipulating others' faith for their private benefit.

I know some people who fit those descriptions. But they are in a tiny minority. Most religious people I know are smart, well-educated, independent-minded, stubborn, honest, and generous -- at least as much so as the average intellectual, and usually more.

The hostility toward religion among American intellectuals arises, I think, from a clear awareness that it was against a publicly religious culture that their own culture rebelled. Now that rebellion is completely successful in terms of capturing control of all the public instruments of transmission of culture -- the universities, the media, and the literature and art -- but it has become such a shibboleth of intellectual life to snipe at religion that, like the aging "revolutionaries" of the old Soviet Union, they mindlessly continue to "rebel" in order to defend their tight grip on the establishment. Indeed, those intellectuals are the establishment. And what was once a daring and rebellious stance is now just another example of lockstep conformists mindlessly echoing ideas that they haven't examined.

That's when contemporary fiction mentions religion at all. Most of the time, in and out of speculative fiction, religion simply doesn't exist. Characters don't believe in God or even think about believing in God. Nobody talks about religion. Nobody belongs to any kind of church. Religion simply doesn't exist. ...

This is, I think, a serious lapse, a dishonesty in our contemporary literature. It is most seriously dishonest because in fact, even the supposedly a-religious intellectuals behave exactly as religious people always have. That is, the behavioral and cultural patterns that we have always associated with religions are indistinguishable, except by vocabulary, from the behavioral and cultural patterns of the a-religious intellectuals. They band together with fellow believers, feel sorry for or hostile toward unbelievers, immediately punish heretics -- intellectuals who, having once been accepted in the 'faith,' dare to question its premises -- anoint their priests and theologians (psychologists and therapists being their ministers, scientists and, more usually, science popularizers being their doctors of atheology), and insist on their absolute right to put forth their religious ideas with public funding and the authority of the state behind them, while doing their utmost to silence or marginalize the beliefs of others.

Most fiction has become, in short, an instrument of propaganda for the established religion of our time, which differs from other religions only in the particular content of the faith and the vocabulary used to describe it. Naturally, the true believers are sure that the real difference is that their beliefs are objectively true. But then, true believers have always believed that. This is not what distinguishes them from other established religions, but rather what makes them fundamentally identical to them.

The honest depicter of human life will include the religious aspect of that life. This is not to say that stories need to be about religion, any more than stories about our contemporary culture need to be about cars. But the cars need to be present, at least by implication, and if a character doesn't know how to drive, we'd need to know why."

Is this why Hollywood stopped adapting his books into films?

[Ben Zurcher @benzurcher]

@BradWitbeck @RigdonNancy3 Preach, Brad 💪

[The Philippine Star @PhilippineStar]

Happy Palindrome Week!

Today marks the start of the ten consecutive palindrome days, which means the dates in M-DD-YY format will still read the same backwards.

[Tony Jones @Tjonesonthenba]

Exactly. The entire western conference other than golden state did musical chairs to avoid the rockets. The jazz were just the team that said F it, tanking isn’t us. If it goes down, it goes down. I admire that, to be honest

[USU Football @USUFootball]

Preach @CBSSportsNet 🙌

#AggiesAllTheWay

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣|
I spend way too much
time editing tiny
things in videos that
nobody will notice
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(\__/) ||
(•ㅅ•) ||
/ 　 づ

[Ben Zurcher @benzurcher]

Shout out to the random stranger for the free second-row seats. Shout out to Grayson Allen and Trae Young for not fighting while I was shooting this #summerleague https://t.co/CJc6Cj4O4W

[Ricky Rubio @rickyrubio9]

It’s not over, this is just the beginning. Just wait and see.

[𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗵𝘂𝗿 𝗩𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘆 @BYU_VictryStory]

"No, [Utah] can't tie the series tonight. I'm not even sure they can win a game...The Jazz just don't have enough weapons."

Hey Chuck, did you watch a single Jazz game the 2nd half of the season? How do you get paid to analyze basketball? #InsideTheNBA #UTAatHOU #TakeNote

[Michael Lee @MrMichaelLee]

Ricky Rubio got a playoff win before the Timberwolves

[Ben Zurcher @benzurcher]

Dope Tech: Camera Robots! https://t.co/AYaXB4VBCq

[SLC Dunk @slcdunk]

Joe Ingles is what you’d get if you created the perfect City League player in a lab:

- Balding
- Dad bod
- Elite trash talker
- Camps out on the 3 point line
- Annoyingly slow but effective layup
- Always 2 seconds away from a fight

Give this guy a New Balance signature shoe.

[WSVN 7 News @wsvn]

Time lapse view of "Starman" in Space. Following the @SpaceX #FalconHeavy launch.

[Tim MacMahon @BannedMacMahon]

The ceiling for Donovan Mitchell? “He controls it,” his mentor Chris Paul says. “He’s that good.” https://t.co/LJkSMZJCYX

[BossLogic @Bosslogic]

Saw this dope photo taken by Tony Dejak of @KingJames falling into the seats and it looked like some sort of renaissance composition, I wanted to bring that to light :) 👑 23

[Ben Zurcher @benzurcher]

@joss Relevant (and unsettlingly accurate): https://t.co/Rp9ySDmhGD

[Ben Zurcher @benzurcher]

@mgalgs Yes sir :) Keep pumping those prices for the rest of us.