Thanks Pogi,

I'm quite impressed about what is being taught in high school these days :)

Just a couple of points: when Christianity was being invented and assembled, those lands were not Arabian: that came some centuries later, through invasion from Arabia. The people there were a mixture of Jews, Levantines, Afro-Egyptians, Syrians, Yazidis and Kurds and spoke Syriac, Aramaic, Kurdish languages, and many other languages.

My misquote of Santayana was deliberate: it may pay you to read it again.

As an atheist, I'm comfortable with the notion that, to the extent that I have any ethics, they may spring to a large extent and INDIRECTLY, and through a number of historical filters, from some basic Christian ethical principles. As I'm sure yours have also, Pogi.

Cheers,

Joe

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Hi David !

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Still no news from Peter Sellick alias Sells, despite his vibrant declaration of good intentions on Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:34:51 PM :

“ I will engage with you if you engage with me ! ” :

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17351#306885
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Though he continues to avoid contradictory debate on his own articles, it is amusing to see that, at the same time, he posts comments on articles written by authors who share the same or similar religious beliefs as those he has been preaching here regularly every month for the past 12 years :

Here is the latest example :

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17954#318882

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Dear Yuyutsu,

I confuse nothing. The concept of God exists. However, there is no reason to assume that God exists.

' Runner, if you would like to learn where your religion comes from, please watch the following linked movie'

Geoff

I only need to read your posts to see you are totally clueless when it comes to truth. Strange how Christophic and Jew hating you have often shown yourself to be.

Dear Yuyutsu,

To what extent can you identify with this (following loosely Robert Barron, Catholicism, A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, Image Books 2011):

- When Moses asked for the name of the mysterious speaker from the burning bush, he received the following answer: “I am who I am” (Ex 3:14). Moses was asking a reasonable enough question. He was wondering which of the many gods—deities of the river, the mountain, the various nations—this was. But the answer he received frustrated him, for the divine speaker was implying that he was not one god among many, not this deity rather than that, not a reality that could, even in principle, be captured or delimited by a name.

Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest theologian in the Catholic tradition, rarely designates God as ens summum (the highest being); rather he prefers the names ipsum esse (to be itself) or qui est (the one who is). Aquinas goes so far as to say that God cannot be defined or situated within any genus, even the genus of “being”.

He expresses the difference that obtains between God and creatures through the technical language of essence and existence. In everything that is not God there is a real distinction between essence (WHAT the thing is) and existence (THAT the thing is); but in God no such distinction holds, for Godæs act of existence is nor received, delimited or defined by anything extraneous to itself. A human being is the act of existence poured, as it were, into the receptacle of humanity (essence), but God’s act of existence is not poured into any receiving element. To be God, therefore is to be “to be”. -

George writes: "Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest theologian in the Catholic tradition..."

How is it possible to have a "greatest" in a discipline in which everything is made up?

I, for example, have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many who believe it.