Dear david f,

I am not a historian, so I don’t know whether ancient Greek mathematicians considered those who worked with the square root of 2 as a number, albeit in a generalised sense, with the same disdain as Dawkins treats those whose world view is built around a concept that does not fit into his world view. I only know that contemporary mathematicians don’t think that to work with irrational numbers is against being a rational person.

>> the concept is now regarded as valid by only a small minority of philosophers and scientists <<

I don’t understand what is the difference between valid and invalid notions, though I agree that in natural science there is no place for the concept of God, whatever some philosophers and other thinkers mean by it.

You cannot define the concept of God like, for instance, you cannot define that of a set in mathematics, although I am old enough to have known a professor of mathematics who had no use of the concept of set, probably because he did not understand where and how it was used in “modern” mathematics.

Being diagnosed with cancer many years ago didnt turn me to religion and of all the people Ive known who were diagnosed, some of who died, none of them suddenly became religious.

Dear David,

In the world of facts, "whoever fears God will stand forever" is indeed nonsense, so if your aim is to describe the world where we live, then it's a "Fail". Taken literally, children would comment: "What, this poor fellow will never be able to sit?".

But just as the attitude of having a number which is the square-root of -1 helped mathematics and physics enormously, having the attitude of "whoever fears God will stand forever" has helped millions to significantly overcome our arch-enemies: greed, lust, envy, hatred, arrogance and ultimately selfishness itself.

The word used by the psalmist for "fear" (which is where Bach picked the idea), is a progression of three levels: the lower is indeed 'fear' as used in everyday speech; the middle means awe and reverence; while the highest means "seeing [God]".

On the lowest level, the "Whoever" that fears God is the human, which obviously does not stand the death of their body and mind, but ultimately whoever "sees" only God everywhere and in every thing, who in other words have shed their identification with the ephemeral - What is left once that identification is gone, is that which you truly are which remains eternal, was never born and will never die.

"whoever fears God will stand forever" has helped millions to significantly overcome our arch-enemies: greed, lust, envy, hatred, arrogance and ultimately selfishness itself.
In reality this has never helped anyone and exactly to the same degree as a a placebo has not really helped anyone.
greed, lust, envy, hatred, arrogance still exist despite what fear God may have implied.

> "whoever fears God will stand forever"

If one has to be afraid of one's God then the God must not be a good God. Just thinking.

Jesus "Blessed are the peacemakers."

Some distance away.

Spectator I: I think it was "Blessed are the cheesemakers".
Mrs. Gregory: Aha, what's so special about the cheesemakers?
Gregory: Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Life Of Brian