Keiran,

Thought we had lost you!

A bigger clanger was when I was studying psychology at uni., and working in a bank, wherein, I wrote about a Freudulent cheque. Yep, I know the difference between a transistor and a galaxy. Oops.

I am not a lobbyist of the BB, but, from what I have read infinities, regarding the BB, do exist in the maths schools. Of course, mathematicians need to on guard not fall into the same trap as the Euclian geometricians of centuries past. It rests, on the professionalism not to so. Besides, Science has worked differently, since c. 1750.

It is valid to maintain a belief in the STEADY state universe, if you test and accept the supporting the evidience. But, I would not hold that mathematicians are scared of timelessness and infinities. There build and argue models and make forecasts, to be tested. If someone can point to some trillion year old matter, the cosmologists would be obliged to explain it.

BB vs. SS. I see a forum for debate. I do not see "teddies". Cosmologists and quantam physicists are into weird and real unrealities. For the older ones, infinity was their favourite Ben Casey symbol :-).

Common matter is made up of elementary particles. As best I known, matter "was" created from energy when our universe cooled. A pysical object will increase its mass upon acceleration, significantly so, at a fraction of c.

Newtown in (co-)developing calculus, allowed us better to understand numbers, rather, than just use numbers. Perhaps, Mandelbrot sets allude to the development new forms of mathematics?

Phase space would conjecture multiverses. Is it not a teddy to not even entertain the possibility? Or, do we have the War of The Teddies?

Thanks.

O

George,

In the US 35% of [hard?] scientists is a significant minority.

I have finished Dawkins' "The God Delusion". Not impressed. He would have been better to have edited an anthology having chapter specialists. Like Sells, I found him too missionary.

Some key threads were the OT god was a misognist warmonger and that good does not require a theistic foundation. His points about virgin birth [why not Joseph, if Jesus represented the House of David] and divinity [Nicaea] are general knowledge. "How" he writes concerns me,
a toally lack of tact, even if I agree conclusions. People, who don't share his opinions are adversaries. Again, like "our oponents" Sell. But, Dawkins sits on the no-God pole.

One redeeming feature for me was he felt no-one can be logically absolutionist about being an atheist. I agree. I suspect Darwins and I are 6.5 on his 7 point scale. I hope Sells is at least a 1.1. Herein, I feel, neither religionists nor athiests should regard themselves infallible in thought and judgement. That is why I advocate evidence weighted concurrent positive and negative heuristics.

Sells,

As asked, elsehere, if God exists, what is the greatest probability, God Exists [in some/any form] or Jesus is God?

Sells,

Are you a 1.0 on the Dawkins scale? That is, an entrenched absolutist? Infallible? If not, you should have no resistance to replacing/supplementing lithurgy with forsenic histographies. Even, before Nicaea, it would be interesting to investigate characters, that, now, merely subsist,shadows, such as, Alexandrandos (aka Paris) and Joshua (aka Jesus). Just the same, a generation either side of Nicaea deserves a fresh look, first.

"Under a misunderstanding about the ministry of all believers, all distinction is erased between clergy and laity, the clergy do not distinguish themselves with vestments and hand over as much of the service as possible to lay leaders." - Sells

The above reads as elitist. Guess, the Orthodox Church with its Holy of Holies, is more extreme to Sells' posit. I have an Anglican Minister friend in training [Moore College], when visiting an Orthodox found himself, under reprimand for standing/going where he should not. Superstition?

Of course, we have High Court Judges and their Santa Clause suits. Luckily, academics now minimise the wearing of their gowns.

Minimising power distance is good. We need mentors and students.Not leaders and follows. Scrooge was wrong. It's not just bah; but bah, bah, bah.

The debate over liturgy is not new. Around the time of Justine the Martyr, the syncretion of The Law of Moses [OT stuff, rites] and the Creeds of the Nazarines [NT stuff, non ritual] was a topic of much discussion. The pre-second temple Jewish faith, because of exclusivity, upset, at different times, the Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks and the Romans. As Gibbon notes, with the temple gone, "the times", then, were," a changin'".

Hadrian expelling the Jews to Pella is significant. This happened just as surely as the world was not created 6,000 years ago. But, how can Christians hold these as falsehoods?

What continues to surprise is the way Sells seems to deny history.