Oliver,
Funny, you mentioning UNIX in this context. Well, I am an avowed adherent of the user friendly Mac OS (in opposition to the mainstream, virus-friendly, OS) that runs on UNIX. You certainly know more about these things than I.

Is this not somehow similar to the situation we discuss? I do not know if Latin is a less precise language for philosophical topics than Attic Greek, but certainly the latter (plus Armenian), is the original language of the New Testament, and Latin, plus other, more modern languages, just "user-friendly" translations, "running on" the languages of the bible. It is this user-friendliness that depends on the cultural and psychological background of the given individual and congregation. However, as the average Macintosh user does not have to know anything about UNIX, only the serious maintenance programmer does, so the average "liturgy user"/worshipper does not have to be aware of the nuances of the original languages, only the serious exegete and "liturgy programmer" do.

Sorry, Arimaic, not Armenian!

Charming people these theologians. Peter here says "The less control the hierarchy has on what happens on Sunday morning the more variability we can expect and, unhappily, the more crimes are committed against Christian worship." In this article, Peter has his brain twisted up in religious mind control techniques, as he discusses the most appropriate and effective means to bake a person's brain within a religious incubator.

But what is this complete acceptance and promotion of worship? Isn't worship how people learn to be stupid and get proselytised by being relieved of their commonsense? Isn't it all about shutting the eye of reason and forgetting the only and the right thing to do which is using our intelligence? It is just amazing how so many people fall for all this deception but it is also painful to imagine that so many poor sods will never be able to rise above this fictional view of life. i.e. A fictional view of life implies fictional people so why do people need the real world when they can have an inexorable and schemingly designed fake one with teddy as a perpetual broadcaster?

There simply is no teddy (god) and our existence is both a natural phenomenon and one to be treasured. In the real world just begin to view each of us as incredible, rare, one-of-a-kind works of art, to be valued and urged to live as fully as possible to the potential of our being. Love is not related to a need for worship especially this infantile teddy worship.

Oliver et al.,
If I might just stick my 2 cents worth in, just for informations sake, my partner is Assyrian and I have been subject to learning by association.
What I can say with some degree of certainty is that the original Aramaic (correct spelling) texts are greater in length and have been subject to various bastardisations over time due to errors in translation by various well intentioned souls.
A recent innovation is the commencement of services in english, due to the larger number of younger Assyrians who may not have the strength of their mother tongue. My first exposure to this is scheduled for this coming weekend, so I will be in more of a position then to comment on proceedings.
Their is a dearth of iconography within the The Holy and Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East due to it's being one of the first created, around 70 A.D., I believe. Thaddeus obviously was speaking with a learned people.
Unfortunately, these indigenous people of Iraq, are now a nation without country, but the practice of their faith including all the liturgy that involves has ensured a strong sense of community where ever Assyrians might congregate. In Sydney alone, a very small population has managed to create 2 churches, a cathedral, community nursing homes, various schools, property holdings.
Liturgy then, while a small part of faith, might be construed as necessary for the maintenance of identity.

Oliver, on Monday, 16 April 2007 posted this ... "My critique of Sells on many topics is his is an "inside" world and religion [any religion] is not subjected to objective forsenic scunity by denominationists in the same way as in the 1950s/60s, Solid State cosmologists had recognise that that 2.7K degrees background radiation supported the Big Bang."

One cannot ignore this bit of funny stuff, Oliver.

The big bang alpha/omega idea is another worshipped religion with its fingers of teddy pointing to Earth, because it interprets everything as if we are the centre of the universe. As I've said on previous occasions, the BB theory is hastily based on the will to believe rather than its opposite ..... the will to find out. The redshift of galaxies via the doppler effect and the 2.7K degrees background radiation do NOT support the BB hypothesis of finite universal causality. Worship of finite universal causality is not about love of forensic evidence because worship can only misinterpret or ignore or deliberately distort evidence.

Even though I'm here writing this with the Einstein Factor on ch 2 running in the background, it surely is time to set aside Newton and Einstein with their finite universal causality and finally let INFINITE universal causality prevail.

Keiran,
The Big Bang is a theory accepted by practically all physicists/cosmologists, religious believers or unbelievers, the same as Darwinian (or neodarwinian) evolution is a theory accepted by practically all biologists, believers or unbelievers. On the other hand, it is certainly true that Big Bang is used as a teddy, as you call it, by some naive believers to support their faith, the same as Darwinian theory is used as their teddy by some atheists (e.g. Richard Dawkins) to support their "unfaith". This, however, should not be the reason for rejecting any of the two theories that are widely accepted by the corresponding specialists. Besides, Big Bang theorists do not "interpret everything as if we are the centre of the universe". At most you could see it as interpreting everything as if our universe were the centre of the multiverse, the reason for this having nothing to do with belief or unbelief in a transcendental God, but with the fact that this all we know about our physical world, that speculations about a multiverse are (still?) just that, speculations.