Sells:

HI Peter,

George's post Monday, 7 April 2008 1:33:10 PM fits well in with my thoughts and approaches,as you know. Here, I can see Thiest maintains the position as does a secular human whom believes in a more systematic approach to an "open" knowledge system, rather than a "closed", wherein dogmatism [decree and doctrine] can overwhelm a people. Think of The Little Red Book, for istance, and being indoctrinated on how to read it and interpret it. Likewise, Mien Kemp?

Dogmatism with an elite interpreting creed towards an unquestioning populous dangerous: Highly dangerous.

Oliver,
Quite amusingly, through her 'pesher' technique, Thiering claims that Jesus lived on for some forty years after the crucifixion, married twice, fathered three children and helped to organise the growing Christian movement from behind the scenes. Thiering's novel approach to scriptural interpretation has been largely discounted by current scholarship. She feels compelled to perform an exegsis in finding a Christianity suitable for moderninity, devoid of mythology or the supernatural . A major critisism is that by taking what is simply a more sophisticated version of the traditional allegorical method, she can with a simple snap of her fingers make all those inconvenient traditional tenets of the Christian faith disappear.

Perhaps it is far better, in recognizing that myth is present in the Bible and seeking to interpret it, there will be a greater and lasting value than an attempt to pretend that the ancient authors of the New Testament were like sophisticated, modern intellectuals, and only used the language of myth and miracle in their 'code' in order to provide some milk for the spiritually immature.

Those theologians who are intellectually liberal enough to be able to throw off the blinders of traditional dogma are often captivated by their own modernistic form of faith so they cannot imagine an "historical Jesus" who did not look pretty much like them, parroting enlightened 19th-century ethical monotheism. Their Jesus was uninterested in theological dogma - instead he promoted "the higher righteousness" and "the infinite value of the individual soul"

Albert Schweitzer seemed a little more on the ball by showing J. C. actually turns out to be as alien to our day as he was to his own. The reinvention of Jesus becomes equally an embarrassment to the dogmatic trinitarian and the liberal religionist, a creature of his own age stamped indelibly with the assumptions of that age. As Schweitzer pointed out, once Jesus has been reimagined in this way, historical criticism is invariably replaced by novelizing, psychologizing, and rationalizing

Relda,

Thanks. Another interesting post.

I do read Thiering critically. She does reference, but not as well as I would like.

There are statements and dates posited without support cited. In AI computer programming, it can happen that a field is not staticly present. For a Bank, for example, there may be no "term' field, but this can be derived from the lodgement date and maturity date. If Thiering is filling in the spaces via a Constructionist approach; she should very clearly say so.

That said, I suspect that the historical Jesus was a very different person to the personalities of the Latin and Orthodox churches. Politics, after-the-fact writings, ignorance and councils have produced accretions and distortions.

It would be hard to show Jesus was compatible with modernity, except to say he has a leader struggling among fighting inter-ethnic factions under the thumb of the super-power of the day: The Kittims, wherein Rome set-up perhaps the least suitable high-priests of the Jews, the Herods and the Annas.

It is hard to tell what is authetic, but Jesus' claimed reply to Pilate, regarding rendering "unto Caesar", for me, is interesting. It would separate him from the zealots, whom demand an immediate a Jewish church and a state.

Perhaps, Jesus was thinking more in terms of organic growth through the gentiles, rather than a head-on conflict, which he knew would futile, as latter the 60s and 130s demonstrated to the case.

Hello George,

Greetings friend...

"Multiverse, if it exists apart from our universe, still belongs to the physical world, and manifolds “reside“ in them as little as the telescope you look through at Alpha Centauri “reside“s in that stellar constellation."

I would almost agree. However, the above might not conform with QM,wherein, if memory serves, not all of the intdeterminate state collapses into reality via observation. Thus, one might spectulate phase-space or singularity, analogous to a membrane between universes. This posit is slightly different to saying the eye sees only part of the EMS. [Come to think of it, that would mean some co-ordinates of the manifold would exist in an indeterminate realm - strange :-) and other co-ordinates in multiple determinate physical realms of different universes.] Can co-ordinates exist within infinite indetermancy? Hmm.

" I am not sure what you mean by religiosity"

I mean a faith in "a" religion rather than belief in a a god; because the data about a god is filtered by religous interpretations. Had you believed in another god [not meaning any offence, conjecture only], I would have used the same term.

-God and Maths:

Yes, I thought you would be inspired by pure maths towards belief in a god, because you are comfortable with the highly abstract and not tethered to visible. Moreover, models of non [terrestial] reality are manifest for you.

Cheers,

O.

Oliver,
Thanks again for your feedback. Let me repeat, differentiable manifolds are pure mathematical concepts used e.g. in the mathematical model that Einstein’s GR is built on; standard QM is modeled on (linear) Hilbert spaces, not manifolds. Co-ordinates are n-tuples of numbers assigned to points of a manifold allowing us, among other things, to verify the adequacy of the model for a particular physical situation. They do not “exist” anywhere except in the mathematical world of Penrose and other (mathematical) Platonists; measurable quantities within QM are something else. Superstring theory is again modeled on manifolds, the Calabi-Yau for instance, but this I am not much at home with. And, besides, neither superstring theory nor its variation, a multiverse with many branes (that our universe is supposed to be one example of, no “membranes between universes”), are physical theories as established and accepted as GR and QM. There is no point in speculating about them if one cannot grasp the very non-trivial mathematics they are based on, basing our speculations on only popular literature. GR and QM are well understood (mathematically) and verified (through experiments), nevertheless there are many unresolved philosophical questions connected with how to interpret their findings. In case of superstring theory all is even more complicated and open.

>> faith in "a" religion rather than belief in a a god; because the data about a god is filtered by religious interpretations. <<
The belief in the existence of an objective (material) world would not make much sense if one could not observe it, measure it, form theories of it in order to understand it.. The belief in God - or what you like to call the Reality that is beyond observation and description through falsifiable scientific theories and/or modeled by mathematics - does not make much sense (except as a vague concept of natural theology as with Einstein or Paul Davies), cannot be concretised, unless you adhere to a particular religious interpretation, model of that Reality. (ctd)

(ctd)
(a) You can express the same thought in many different languages;
(b) the same physical phenomena have been explained through different scientific (and pre-scientific) theories;
(c) our awareness of God can be expressed in many particular religions.

(a) In case of languages there is not “right“ or “wrong“ language in which to explain a thought;
(b) in case of scientific theories, we know from history that they all aim at the same truth (about a particular set of phenomena), but they have not all been equally truthful;
(c) in case of religions the situation is much more complicated because not only rational factors, but also history, cultural tradition, life experiences of individuals etc. are part of the criteria of truthfulness.

There are simplified or just naive ways of seeing which scientific theory is “right” and which is “wrong” (e.g. Einstein is right, Newton is wrong), and there are even more naive, stubborn, fanatical, ways of seeing which religion is right and which is wrong because of the additional factors, mentioned above, which in case or scientific theories are negligible (Thomas Kuhn notwithstanding).

So
(a) I can express simple thoughts in about six languages, no preferences about the “right one”;
(b) I partly understand a few scientific theories, have an opinion about their truthfulness often based on the authority of experts in the particular field.
(c) I adhere to one particular model of God, namely the Christian one, “filtered by (its) religious interpretations”, have an opinion about the truthfulness of this or that feature of this model, often based on the authority of the pope and other philosophers and theologians.

You see, in the Middle Ages nobody doubted the existence of God but they would have called it a delusion if you tried to tell them something about galaxies and bacteria (because they did not have telescopes and microscopes obly faith). Today nobody doubts the existence of galaxes and bacteria, but some speak abou the “God delusion” (because they do not have faith only telescopes and microscopes). I like to combine the best of both these worlds.