D S M

>> But does it address the issue? Do we care if there even is an issue, or do we just want to pontificate about our favourite subjects? <<

Excellent questions and I do believe that you last question pertains to much of the discussion on this thread.

Am very distressed at the results in following article. Granted Australia is not in as ignorant a state as the fundamentalist driven USA. However, religion has to take its share of blame for the lack of scientific understanding of many Australians:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/30/2968669.htm

"Did humans live at the same time as dinosaurs?

The answer is of course no, but about a third of Australians got it wrong in a recent survey.

The survey results are being used to highlight what is being described as a disturbing ignorance about science.

Dr Cathy Foley, president of the Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, says Australians have a long way to go before having good scientific literacy.

"We asked six basic questions in a survey of 1,500 people and only 3 per cent or 4 per cent of them got them all correct," she said...

... Dr Foley says science literacy should be about people being able to use science in a number of ways.

"One is to make good decisions when they are going to the polls... and be able to understand the issues which are also scientifically based - energy, food security, climate change, nanotechnology," she said.

"Another is our whole ability to understand and embrace how wonderful our world is dependent on some level of appreciation of science, while a third thing is just the way of the culture we think has come from a scientific basis.

"For example, Copernicus finally figured out the Earth goes around the Sun and it really changed the way we thought about ourselves and it has gone on and on in that way ever since."

________________________

Religion does not help anyone change a light bulb let alone apply critical understanding of many issues that impact on our every day lives.

Dear George,

Excellent quote. Truly excellt. Yet, what if Edison gave up on his 56th attempt to make a light bulb.

"Never let go the reign of the wild colt of the heart" Zen Buddhist proverb

Thank you for your contributions,

Dear David,

Babarba Theiring maintains that Jesus' birth before his parents final nuptuals would have been a issue for the Jews. She claims that the liberal Sadducees would accept an extranuptual child as a David, yet the stricter Pharisees would not. James the Brother of Jesus would have had clearer creditials.

Theiring also suggests that the OT and NT enjoined as early as 49. I think this is spectulative. Burton Mack gives an account closer to your own. There were many gospels after c. 70, having localised harmonisations. In the forth cenntury we have a selective collected works, build around Athanasian thought. Th issue of the nature of Christ's divinity was problematic. For example, if Jesus is the Son of God, literally, he is perfect. Achievement of a result by a perfect being is not a challenge. Mortals certainly cannot emulate Him, by their very nature. The Muslims of later centuries had problems of the issue God's substance, say:

"He is the One God; God; the Eternal, Uncaused Cause of all being. He begets not, and neither is he begotton and there is nothing that could be compared with him." - Koran 112

Obviously, the Koran runs agains the grain conventional Christianity. Albeit, an Arian like Newton would be less troubled.

Thanks for outlining Martin Luther's perspectives. I am reminded of his "Table Talk". I have suggest to our friend George that I would lile to clergy engage the laity in discussions on faith, yet George reminds me that might require specialised knowledge not ordinary possessed by the typcial clergy member. I guess discussing QM or transliterations of the Dead Sea Scrolls could be problematic. On the other, the clergy member might enjoy the learning excercise too.

Hello Severin,

Hope you have covered and are feeling better.

Dear Squeers,

Apart from the histographies detailed by david f, regarding the schicism between Jewish-Christianity and the Christian-Christian, after the First Jewish-Roman War, we have the actions Vespasian and Hadrian, driving a divide. The various gospels were written generations after Jesus, and, were debated much later indeed, between 190 and 391, 325 being significant.

Above, there is no intent to offend. It is History. For two hundred years during thr process of institutaionalisation and the laying down of Christian doctrine these matter were debated.

How about GK Chesterton having the last word; he seems to speak somewhat for all sides:

"The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere grown of this one. He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame. Whether we praise these things as natural to man or abuse them as artificial in nature, they remain in the same sense unique".

Dear Oliver,
You do realise I was being facetious above? I'm well aware of the Bible's magpie construction and "poetic licence" (how's that for understatement). I also know a little about Roman history, mainly about Nero's reign, and have enjoyed the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius and "Gravesius" and a smattering of others. I like Pliny's "nothing is certain except that nothing is certain etc.
Have enjoyed your posts :-)

Dear Squeers,

"You do realise I was being facetious above?"

I had hoped that was the case. In my most recent reply, I was being cautious, just in case. Thanks for the clarification.

Agree fully. Roman history is intersting.

I guess the folk in 4,000 CE will have the advantage of a visual record of today.

I appreciate your thoughtful contributions.