I think Squeers has just convinced me that Gods are manmade; after trying to digest the Theses supplied in the account and Biography of Karl Marks ; I now realise how a murderer – Paedophile - barbarian can now be known as a Messenger ; And Lucifer is actually the Cumming of Christ ; That was a very ill-informed spurious falsehood account ,but I don’t think it was intended to be a dishonest account of Marx and friends ;-
but it certainly is as close to the truth as the Beagle Mars Lander finding is mark on the red planet ;
( It did not make it ) Smart people allegedly – could not know the difference from Metric and Imperial measurement , and therefore manufactured its demise.

Try an Objective approach , and read Marx own words. And submissions for publications, as well as Personal mail, you will know and be very embarrassed, and probably angry; Karl Marx is not the god of intellectual knowledge and ability , or the saviour of mankind; he is archetypical of , and the antipathy of evil. History proves that.

Condemned by his own words and his deeds, by that shall you know them.

I thought we agreed that gods are a human invention? If we have a abcess on the brain -we all seem to have one. Is this the deniers class? Can we move on .
So what if there are millions of gods .The interesting inventions are the ones that have a lasting effect: they work or at least sort of work. They may be rough edged and even ridiculous to us , but if they work , they work for a reason.
I therefore can't understand why going through old and failed ideas ( that have been tried and don't work) is really helpful- If Marx and others mentioned at length are so important , tell us what their ideas have done for practical peace keeping in our own time and lives ?
A more upto date question surely - Why has Islam retained interest amongst certain cultures over the last 1000 years? What groups of people are taking up this religion and why ? What balance of the force of habit and the force of ideas? What growth is because of the force of failed ideas?

I would think Islam is – Perhaps not so much growing, maybe call it a newer primitive Imperial hubris. Do not consider it as Ideas that makes it grow; consider the consequences if you do not grow with it, or become an apostate of it ; death in any form will follow , and using that formula and what we already know in today’s Media , that is why it is convenient to cause argument and attempt to destroy Christian or Jewish Ideology ; If they were as forth coming in describing Islam in the same manner ; and that is why it is never done – The Fear of retaliation and possible of, and imminent execution.
Islam is a cult , just like the many mutating factors of Crypto Marxism’s Socialist construct , whatever purpose it serves is to destroy , in so much as to gain property that had never been theirs to claim , or possess any ability to construct, or appreciate value and earn something that has value and worth ; The Lazy and brainless Thugs take it by force; or as in the Marxism theses ; by simple Psychology and by statute , due to the occupation of what was our public institutions.

Dear George,

I wrote: "Perelman not accepting the Fields prize does not indicate mental disorder to me. It may be simply good sense in that he felt accepting the prize would move his life in a direction he didn't want it to go. I know of no other reason to ascribe any mental disorder to him."

You know of other reasons. Please tell me. I never heard of him before.

My criticism of Plato was not tongue-in-cheek. I do not buy his theory of forms and agree with Karl Popper that Marx and Plato were enemies of an open society. I would not want to live in a society such as that envisioned by Plato in "The Republic."

I agree with your distinction between pure and applied mathematics. I don't see why it makes any difference if others are not interested in our discussions. They don't have to bother with it.

I also knew Paul Erdoes and have dined with him several times at Syracuse University. He could be quite an amusing fellow. One of his bits was to go down the menu pronouncing the items phonetically. Pineapple upside down cake was memorable. He was a free spirit who simplified his life by subcontracting as much as he could to other people. "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" is his biography.

Dear grateful,

Please substantiate your criticism by an example.

HFR wrote: "If you people haven't noticed yet, we are on the precipice of an abyss into a new religious dark age!"

Dear HFR,

With the domination of rock we don't even have decent music while we dance at the end of the precipice. Tickets have been sold out for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention
12-14 March at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The demand was much greater than expected.

Dear Squeers,

Capitalism has many flaws, but Marxism is no alternative. The environmental destruction in the Soviet and Maoist China was worse than in the capitalist states. Capitalism is blamed for the consequences of industrialisation.

Reckon both the bosses of this OLO, and the participants have got lost in platitudes of already worn-out religous arguments already well explained by us more philosophical historians.

Matter of fact, reckon its about time our OLO's got back to reality and discussed a piece in today's West Australian.

Media report that Israel now has huge pilotless planes able to fly as far as the Persian Gulf.

Might say through its illegal atomic capacity and more such help from certain well-known nations, tiny Israel has become much much more a threat to the Middle East than Iran with its more than 70 millions population.

However, an earlier report stated that China has already talked about backing Iran - which might finish up with what Henry Kissinger warned about to Nixon years ago, that an atomic Israel could bring on WW3.

Dear David,
In Perelman’s biography on http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Mi-So/Perelman-Grigory.html he is explicitly called an eccentric and (almost) a recluse living with his mother. After his success, Perelman gave up mathematics entirely. This is exactly the opposite of what Erdoes did, although both are/were mathematical geniuses.

>>My criticism of Plato was not tongue-in-cheek. <<
Well, words like “Everything has degenerated from original perfection. There is no hope. Everybody hates me. Guess I'll go eat worms.” sounded like that. Besides, I objected to your out-of-hand dismissal of Plato’s (metaphysical) insights via Ideas (Forms| and the cave, not to Popper’s criticism of Plato’s political philosophy in his “Open society”.

I agree that Plato’s political model could not be used as an inspiration for organizing a just (and workable) society, however Western philosophy would not be what it is without his cave allegory.

Presently I am reading (and trying to understand) a paper by a (younger than us) mathematical physicist Shahn Mahd, where he - inspired exactly by this allegory - proposes a “principle of self-duality” for a (yet to be found) “fundamental theory of physics”:

“(W)hile Plato’s conclusion was that his cave was an allegory for a pure reality of which we see a mere shadow, our conclusion is exactly the opposite, that there is no fundamental difference between ‘real’ in this platonic sense and the world of shadows since one could equally well consider ... as ‘shadows‘ of what we previously thoughts of as shadows, and the latter as ‘real’ in the platonic sense.reality.” [Shahn Mahd (Ed.), On Space and Time, CUP 2008]. Self-duality then means that one should consider as actually real neither the reality that is supposed to exist independent of the observer, nor the observed phenomena, but the combined object consisting of pairs, one from each, reality on its own, and observed data about that reality.”

What an impressive CV: http://www.phy.syr.edu/PhysicsMatters/Volume2/Correspondence/David%20Fisher.pdf. I assume - and hope you do not mind me posting it - this is you. Am I right?