Oliver (continued),

(e) Why is there only one differentiable structure on a paracompact manifold of dimension less than four but there are several distinct ones on the seven-dimensional sphere? You cannot answer this, even understand what it means, unless you familiarise yourself with non-trivial mathematics, and that cannot be done overnight. The same about the meaning of the belief in God Incarnate (Christ) which you cannot understand unless you familiarise yourself, and accept, the premises of Christian theology. Of course, there is an essential difference: there is only one mathematics but there are many theologies - or what you would call the rationalised foundations of a non-Christian religion - even many versions of Christian theology.

As to your last posting: Neither Dirac nor Einstein were mathematicians. Einstein had to learn and use existing mathematics (Riemannian geometry) to express his new insights in physics, Dirac for the same reason was forced to improvise, to create something new that from the pure mathematcal point of view was very suspicious (c.f. the Dirac function) until Laurent Schwarz came and created the proper mathematics behind it (distribution theory). Your comments on Penrose's triangle of worlds are interesting, and, as I understand them, incorporate a number of non-trivial metaphysical problems. For instance, if you accept the existence of a mathematical world independent of the physical world as well as the human mental world (and pre-existing it) but still needing a kind of mental counterpart, are you not lead to accept a "Supermental World" that exists and existed independent of both the physical and human mental worlds?

Cheers.

"What would we do without hypothetical questions?"

On reading George's contributions I can now at last see the benefit of Oliver's.

He and his mate West really have adopted the role of the cuckoos in Sell's nest. I wish they would just state their case for non-belief and fly away. They are simply not getting what Sells has to say.

Amongst the faithful, of all faiths, there is a wide spectrum of understandings of what our faith is, how we came to it, and how we respond to it in life. This is the rich soil of such discussions as I see it.

Sells: "Christianity becomes privatised, spiritualised and Gnostic. Does this not describe the church of our day?"

Keeping one's belief as a self-satisfied quiet achievement measuring ourselves against a defined list of do's and don'ts; keeping clean. (privatised) .... letting our belief fly high as an aesthete indulging his senses and becoming far removed from the ground with no need to wipe the dust from their feet, as everyone loves her (spiritualised) .. pain in the arse elites who would not know of dust in their realm of belief (Gnostic) ....

Kierkegaard wrote of the inevitable despair of the aesthetes and the ethical, with the latter more likely to have a hard landing. The third classification is the religious with a sub-classification of those who set the agenda in their beliefs - privatised, spiritualised and Gnostic. He writes of the efficacy in the human life in which there is a humble, aware, living faith alive to the God relationship made incarnate, in the body, through Jesus. It is the stuff of dust and grit. Reality marked by drama and peace.

George,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I have read Popper. Some kinks but a good benchmark. I have some work related tasks begging attention but will reply.

Popper critiqued Marx, Alder and Freud, for each is prone to constructionism of the confirmations back to instance (first confirmation). Suggest, the Churches are equally guilty. Worse still, the confirmations are made on the interpreations or accounts of third parties.

If memory serves Popper spoke of religionism in terms of the individual vis~a~power. The individual is less power full than God. Inequality. Secularism and rationality are seen in terms of interaction/exchange. Equality. Extending Popper, one might see the Churches usurping the God role for political purposes.

Einstein was a physicist. Known. Dirac, held a degree in mathematics and preceded Hawking at Cambridge.

If one hears a voice from the alleged supernatural saying it is God. It is, or, is not. In either case the listener cannot validate the source. While falsifiability is problematic, either way, one does not know.

More later. Thanks.

Sells,

There is a NT reference to Jesus being a carpenter in Mark. You didn't know this?

Boxbum,

I have said of myself, based on the evidence, one must treat Belief in God, as a [highly] degraded heuristic. There is a minute possibility, but I can't see it. When I ask for non pre-packed answers, I am ignored. So you can'r resolve these issues either.

e.g., Would not the loss of divinity be more of a sacrifice than crucifixion?

e.g., How do you know Moses was communing with God.

e.g., Is there not another (El) generation in the OT godhead.

The above matters are significant, not trivial

Boxgum,

My interest in the past few threads goes back to Sells' questions, "How Does God Exist"? Herein, I felt to immediate focus one the Christian god was the improper course. There are many issues to be resolved first. It was an excellent title with a biased content. One needs to know the architecture of how religions are framed in history and triangulate several disciplines on parent theory [as I was taught for my PhD] before focusing in a dicrete topic. Sells' work "assumes" there is a god and more particularly that that god is someone called, Jesus. He has jumped a zillion steps.

The Jesus thing is not receiving any special attention/approach. Had Homer wrote the Gospel of Paris, claiming the latter was god, and, Socrates, blogged the Athenians, holding Paris "a priori, is a god in a trinity"; I would, say, stand back friend, we have look at manner matters before one can make these claims.

In socio-biology there the terms Kin Altruism and By-Product Mutualism. Cacooned you and Sells seem to have adopted the former, the position on a "Kin", a particular religious reference group.

In the search for knowledge, West and I instead, we, we compare notes, perhaps, Sells can learn from non-relious history. Maybe, there are models in religionism helpful to science. Thus, a twenty-first century amalgalm might be better than either ancient superstitions [Sells] or rigid positivism [Hawking].

In some ways, I prefer an Abelard to a Popper, but, not in everyway. Abelard like Newton really changed the way people think.

Mutualism. Its not shapes or colours. Rather, the multiplication of classes (Piaget), blue squares and red triangles.

Were West and I to fly away, you and Sells (read Kin) can indulge in cross-affirmation, until the cows come home, and beyond.

As I.F.Stone notes, for some, there a penchant towards self rhetoric; and, others, dialogue. Our Greek counterparts lived 2,500 years ago. The insular and the progressive.

Tweat. Tweat.

Hi--

Man, I might have really screwed up. Some of you know that I wrote a novel that has received great reviews, and that author proceeds are donated to prevent child abuse. Well, anyway, I went to this newsgroup to tell them about my novel winning a 2006 ebook competition. The people there started an argument about whether I had the right to tell them about my novel -- they called my post spam. The argument lasted a long time.

Apparently emotions got charged -- not mine, as I was having fun and thought it was all a philosophical debate about what is or isn't spam -- and then some of the newsgroup members who have never read by novel posted insults about me and it on the Mobipocket site. They followed the directions for posting reader book reviews, but instead called me names and pretended that they had read the novel. I could tell that they hadn't because none of the posts included any info except from blurbs that authors had written or the reviews. It has caused a five star rating to drop to three already. I hope they stop.

The insults can be found at:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...p?BookID=30929

The newsgroup is:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec...e4535e57ea3554

This could definitely hurt sales. I feel especially bad about my mistake on behalf of the abused kids I work with in my treatment program. Following is an excerpt of my last post which must have really gotten them the most ticked off:

Robert Eggleton
"Rarity from the Hollow