What do sin and zero have in common?
Both are imaginary.
Neither of them exist as a quality or quantity.

Religion, as far as I can see, is a dictatorship.
Thinking is controlled to the point where imagination cannot be used to change daily life.
There is no room to express a reasoned argument against a particular directive within religion.
It is democracy which has freed up thinking, and allowed great advance.

Past civilisations, where religion ruled everyday life, didn't really get very far.
They had potential, but that was it.
And I would not like to live in a place where dictatorial religion controls government.
Would you?
As with all dictatorships, the principles of religion won't stand up to serious scrutiny.
In the end, it all comes down to control and money.

So for those who like living life as a 'follower', who like to 'donate' to a pseudo government, please go on doing so.
You will probably be happier that way.
But you must recognise that many others don't share your views.
Modern communication allows us to have input from almost the entire world, and knowledge is expanding in the community,
As a result, people are beginning to walk their own walk, and they do so in a thoughtful way.
I for one think this is much healthier, and closer to being ideal.

My normal approach in life is to avoid shining a light on the inadequacies of others.
I prefer instead to illuminate a better path forward.
In the above text I can see I have deviated from this principle.
But at my age, I think I can be a little lax sometimes.

Alan,
Which belief system has a leader that cannot err?

Ipso Facto,

Try getting anywhere without zero.
Zero is one, if not the greatest, of all discoveries.

As I see it....
What we think of as zero cannot exist.
In reality, it is a position in time?
And as everything is in motion, it never stays in one place.
It cannot be 'pinned down'.
If we visualise MOVING from positive quantities through to negative quantities. we can imagine there being a 'crossover' point?
That is zero for us, and we can PASS by or through that (imaginary) point.
But we cannot stay there.
We cannot get a foothold.
In mathematics, a zero point exists only in this intellectual sense.
It is not a physical amount.

Dear Ipso Fatso,

You stated: “What we think of as zero cannot exist.” With as much truth one can say “What we think of as three cannot exist.” Both zero and three are abstractions. Neither zero nor three is a physical amount. If zero and three designate points on a line one has as much reality as the other. However, we can think of zero sheep as well as three sheep. I have zero sheep in my house. The previous sentence has a clear meaning. Negative numbers can also have meaning with or without assigning them to real quantities. I have -3 dollars means that I owe 3 dollars.

I love numbers and the mystery that surrounds them. The primes, rationals, irrationals, transcendentals, the prime pairs, perfect numbers, different orders of infinity etc. I am reading “The Theory of the Riemann Zeta-function by Titchmarsh. It explores the conjecture that all non-trivial solutions of the function lies on the line z = -1/2.

Mathematicians have worked on the conjectures and have made approaches to proving it. So far no one has come up with a proof. It may have no practical explanations if it is proved, but it is great fun.

If the digits of a number add up to 3 or 9 or a multiple of three or nine it is divisible by 3 or 9. That's one entertaining number fact.

You may enjoy A Mathematician’s Apology by G Hardy.

"A Mathematician's Apology is a 1940 essay by British mathematician G. H. Hardy, which offers a defence of the pursuit of mathematics. Central to Hardy's "apology" — in the sense of a formal justification or defence (as in Plato's Apology of Socrates) — is an argument that mathematics has value independent of possible applications. Hardy located this value in the beauty of mathematics, and gave some examples of and criteria for mathematical beauty. The book also includes a brief autobiography, and gives the layman an insight into the mind of a working mathematician."

Error in previous post.

It should read:

It explores the conjecture that all non-trivial solutions of the function lies on the line z = 1/2.