Keiran,
Firstly, I think your example of knots in "celtic fibre,... islamic ceramic tile" would not have convinced the outraged taxpayer about the usefulness of knot theory (topological classification of embeddings of the real line in the Euclidean space) any more than the reference to the sailor's knot. Yes, he has the right to express his opinion, so has the fundamentalist with very naive ideas about science, or the atheist with very naive ideas about religious symbols. Otherwise, I agree with everything you wrote about the need to communicate, except for the need of a "teddy" that you seem to think only religious people have. Many Christians (though not all) base their beliefs on reason (philosophy, not necessarily that of science) and so do many atheists. However, not all (in both cases), and even those who do may sometimes need a comfort factor - like an emotionally loaded posting - to support their preconceived ideas. That is understandable but should not be confused with an expressed opinion that can be rationally analysed.

There are three ways in which I can try to communicate, say, a mathematical idea: (a) to a fellow mathematician "at the same eye level", (b) trying to explain to a layman a particular mathematical concept, (c) listening to somebody's emotional outbursts about how mathematicians know nothing about real life, how his/her teacher could not explain anything to him/her, how boring and against common sense mathematics is etc. The last example, of course, is not a communication of an opinion only of mental dispositions. I have encountered in my life all these three kinds of communication when the symbols in question were either mathematical or religious.

George,

Greetings…

With Sells, I was not adopting Argumentum ad Hominem in that I was directing thrust against “The Man”, to prove an argument. My emphasis was on he, himself, the poor priest and the weak author.

George, had you been with us for the past three threads, you would have observed, debate is stifled, because Sells argues from self-righteous authority and wont address the real issues, he taunts.

“How does God exist?”, should consider the Axial Age and Alexandrian “God Factories” ( H.G. Wells). What sort of theologian is this Sells? ...What if a cartographer claims the Earth is flat in an article, “How is the Earth shaped?”. Someone shows the author a picture of “Blue Planet steeped in its dream” , from space, and relates the stories of pilots and passages... Even gives the author a plane ticket. Then, the silence descends. He “moves on” as THE “authority” on the next topic.

“The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all thy Piety or Wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it” - Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

We then go through the cycle again.



“Theocrasia”

George, theocrasia, reviews how religions evolve over time and tend to meld [ Amun-ra: Amun+Ra]and/or adopt borrowings.

-Q- Why is the Christian god and other gods (e.g., Mithras) seemingly built from the same LEGO blocks, from the 300 BCE to 100 CE? You commented on this matter in your own words. [That is why cited you.].

Also, FYI:

http://www.bartleby.com/86/36.html

Just found the above site. I have a ‘40s edition of the Wells’ book, wherein, Alexandria takes centre stage. Feel Wells does a far, far better job than Sells in outlining, “How Does God Exists?”, for forum discussion. I don’t expect Sells to match one of the World’s best writers; but, he could progress the Wellian parameters regarding the Architecture of How Gods are Created. A contemporary historian like McNeill would not flinch at Wells’ histories. One could call-in anthropology to support Wells too.

[cont… before I leave]

aqvarivs,
You remind me of the old lady who was ridiculing silly math teachers sitting down with high school students and telling them some nonsense about "a plus be square", when everybody knows that you cannot add letters only numbers! Well, the old lady would be well advised to just ignore high school algebra if she cannot understand algebra and it just upsets her. I think you should do the same with religious symbols.

Also, if you do not understand the word "offensive", instead of picking on the Eucharist try to caricature Mohammed (ask the Danish cartoonists how to do it efficiently) or try to ridicule publicly some group of people because of their looks, race, sexual orientation etc. You will, see that the reaction you get might be very different from that of a Catholic who will probably just pray for you. Perhaps then you will understand.

Oliver,
I suppose I must mostly agree with you. However, I do not think Sells' article was about cultural anthropology, and neither were my postings. Compare: What I have just written has nothing to do with the hardware (and internet connection) I am using although I could not communicate with you without them. And, of course, I would have to agree with everything a computer technician would tell me about my iMac. The same as I have to accept what anthropologists tell me about how people came to such abstract ideas as we have today in mathematics or theology.

Georgie. Very glad you have found a way to pigeon hole me. Much better to find my humour to be ridicule. That way a genius such as yourself doesn't have to lower himself. Or actually attend to the question presented. You see Georgie I've been a Roman Catholic since birth and after 50 years if I find the nature of Christianity to hold quite a bit of paganism. So be it. It's not like I've lived in a vacuum or a thoughtless life. If you would like to argue that perception try to be a man about it and not go off in a huff.
And do boy, try to attain a sense of humour. It's a good thing.

The centrality of the body in Christian theology.
It isn't the question of the resurrection. That's just one more example of "Gods power". It's the idea of the necessity of early Christianity to have an example of consuming "the body". An act played out each Sunday. Easter comes but once a year.

Relda,

Good luck with finding the underpinnings of “spirituality”. I think QM and Phase Space might help pay for a ticket to a wider approach to Science. After 150 years of tight muscles, it will take Science a decade or two limber-up.

Jesus’ tricky little anecdotes [chreiai], have Attic Greek origins [not Bible School Koine]. Perhaps, the good Pastor Niebuhr didn’t know how these anecdotes work [?]. I think I would have liked Karl [not a Sells]. He was really involved in liberal beliefs.

[Roman historians sometimes took Attic Greek satire in Greek poems and plays as literal history. Until recently false Greek histories
were accepted, because of these mistaken Roman source (to us) writers.]

Still see any crucifixion in terms of human martyrdom. Far short of detachment [divine sacrifice] from a godhead. The real question is,” how would God forgive sin?”. Sacrifice yes/no? [yes, reeks of primitivism to me] BUT, if sacrifice; I posit, the loss of divinity is supreme. Making Jesus divine does not fit the bill. Also, the dividend rwould have universal not particular salvation. God doesn’t say, “I’ll ‘av a' ‘alf”.

Know you are a guy. My wrong profile of you was female, 62, studied Humanities at the University of Melbourne.

Aqvarivs,

It is unlikely Pilate would have crucified someone on Passover. Maybe, if a Jew killed a Roman? Passing The Body/Blood was an affront to the Romans. It symbolised cannibalism.

The Blood thing may have roots in blood sacrifice (OT) and Mithraism (blood of sacred bull). Friend, think about with millions on tonnes of bread and millions of litres of wines served over the past two millennia. The (one) Body/Blood of Christ has been “recycled” many thousands of times. Think about it.

Oliver,
In riposte to a challenge, I ask, in similar fashion of the Greek polemic, "Are any left that still adore Juno's divinity?" Is this "to throw odium on the person to whom it is addressed" or "to embarrass an opponent and to deprive him of the power of feigning ignorance of our meaning" or to provoke "indignation”?

“Jesus’ tricky little anecdotes [chreiai], have Attic Greek origins [not Bible School Koine].” Quite true, for at the heart of Greek Philosophy were two fundamental assumptions: that an inner meaning lies hidden behind all external phenomena, and that love for a sensual and temporal object is capable of gradual metamorphosis into love for the invisible and eternal.

As with Jesus, Niebuhr can be depicted as someone who expertly plays the game and wields his weapons as well as or better than his opponents. The native informant distinguishes seemingly neutral questions seeking information from aggressive ones, that is, those which "desire to prove something" either in attack or defence of something. The responsive chreia, with attention to the question asked which prompts the sage to answer, often answering a question with a question – a response encompassing the paradox of our own dilemma.

For the ancients, the chreia embraced the advisory, judicial, and the celebratory. A system of education persisted largely unchanged century after century despite the rise of Rome and later of Christianity and ended only with the rise of industrialism, with its need of scientists and engineers more than literate and rhetorically trained leaders. Almost lost is the 'Socratic' method of censure and protreptic with its goal to transform the student, to point out error and to cure it.

As said to Epictitus , “Convince me that logic is necessary”, to which he replied, “Do you wish me to demonstrate this to you?” A reply in the affirmative issued Epictitus's reply, “How, then, will you know if I impose upon you... Do you see how you yourself admit that all this instruction is necessary, if, without it, you cannot so much as know whether it is necessary or not?”