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Notes

[Notebook: Transfinite field theory DB 56]

[Sunday 18 July 2004 - Saturday 24 July 2004]

[page 136]

Sunday 18 July 2004

An important political problem is the tendency for politics to decline into military dictatorship - a very common state today, openly or clandestinely. One finds that the US military has much more power than is prudent or safe.

[page 137]

Maxwell distribution: particles are nodes; collisions are edges.

Monday 19 July 2004

Russell: Russell It is comforting to read Russell's understanding the relationship between philosophy/theology and government. Also, on reading the history of a field, one can make inventory of one's own answers to the perennial problems besetting us, basically the tendency for peace to degenerate into war, a failure of civilization. Here we see the value of the monasteries, acting as spores to carry databases from one point in spacetime to another. Monasteries spread vegetatively, each sending out 'rhizomes' and taking root at another points. In every case people are seeking peaceful community. In the midst of earthly troubles, they seek it in the heavens. To bring people down to earth one must first of all let them be secure with enough food,, shelter, transport, sanitation and other basic needs.

I am no ascetic. Rather, I think that by following the path of comfort and satisfaction (which is possible in my community with a modest amount of work) I am following something like the optimum established in the 'environment of evolutionary adaptedness' (Cummins page 52) and so getting a bit closer to my humanity somewhat distorted by the weird otherworldly ideas of the old religions. Modern religion is embodied in standards (codes, protocols, laws rights etc), verbal statements directly related to situations in the real world, like how electrical insulators should be tested and the criteria they should meet, or the UN declaration of human rights.. To set and maintain standards is no easy task, but it is still worth the effort, if the standards are firmly based in reality and the state of the relevant art. From this starting point in practical religion, we can begin to develop the general theory of religion, which is theology. Theology is concerned with what can and cannot (should and should not) be done to ensure the religion's own spread and

[page 138]

survival. So the big old religions are the last stage of an evolutionary process which has led a few species to fill the whole religious niche. By drawing the emphasis back to individual religion (as the Reformers did) we ignore the old structure and looking at its elements (people) anew, seek new ways of peaceful organization which are much more complex and error resistant that the old systems that grew up in simpler timers. We are moving toward the time when all barriers between people arising from systematic affiliation will be removed, so that all of us become peers.

Russell page 344: 'St Augustine is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom however he s superior in intellect. He was a passionate man, in youth very far from a pattern of virtue, but driven by an inner impulse to seek for truth and righteousness. Like Tolstoy, he was obsessed, in his later years, by a sense of sin, which made his life stern and his philosophy inhuman.'

The velocity of light maps a metric in space to a metric in time. Space and time are orthogonal (as are the three dimensions of space). Why 3? This would be an excellent question to know the answer to,

Russell page 345: 'It thus came about that Christian theology had two parts, one concerned with the Church, and one with the individual soul. In later times, the first of these was most emphasized by Catholics and the second by Protestants, but in St Augustine both exist equally, without his having any sense of disharmony.' [maybe because of centuries of belief that the state was more important than the individual.]

page 353: God = possibilities of nothing, ie the absence of all constraint. So the transfinite network is our model of nothing,(the vacuum).

Why is space 3D? Structure arises from constraint. What is the constraint operating to create 3Ds of space? Connectivity?

[page 139]

In 3D space any two points can be connected without the wires crossing (?) The necessary crossings in 2D can be 'split' in the third dimension.

Tuesday 20 July 2004

Theology studies the protocol of human communication, from quantum field theory to government to government relationships, and our interface with gaia.

Russell page 515: 'The important aspect of Protestantism was schism, not heresy, for schism led to national Churches, and national Churches were not strong enough to control the lay government. This was wholly a gain, for the Churches, everywhere, opposed as long as they could practically every innovation that made for an increase of happiness of knowledge here on earth.'

Wednesday 21 July 2004
Thursday 22 July 2004

LOVE <==> BLACK HOLE (?)

Information is encoded physically ++> all networks transmit value? The basic role of information is to reduce uncertainty so that agents can act with a higher probability of good success. We define the good as a function of fitness. In human societies fitness is measured by how well we manage to provide things for other people that leads them to give value to u. Economics studies the network of exchange of value without inquiring much into the meaning of the value, that is the 'good' that is linked to by exchange, eg potatoes for money.

Niven: Hollywood. Niven

[page 140]

Friday 23 July 2004

The cellular program. achieved by controlling the rate of manufacture of capital equipment that performs certain tasks and produces certain products (product = task_, coupled to a system of constant destruction (depreciation, death) which establishes a regime in which the probability of an event is a function of (maybe among other things) the rate of production of equipment for that task. This is a general economic model.

This is dissipative structure?

Parallel processing: speed is a function of the number of processors (and power of individual processors)

Single processor: speed is a function of the clock period and algorithmic efficiency.

Control process is a source of order (constraint). Destruction (recycling) process is a sink of order. Order (entropy) is conserved between source and sink and so the process works like a reversible heat engine between hot (ordered) and cold (disordered) reservoirs, emitting or absorbing a stream of mechanical (zero entropy, ie certain) energy. Carnot engine extracts the certainty out of the hot reservoir while preserving uncertainty and relocating it in the cold reservoir. The subtlety here revolves around the ideas of order, control and so on. Chaitin shows us that that data compression can remove all semblance of order from a bitstream while not destroying any of the information carried by the data. So if we really want to decide where a datastream is random or maximally compressed and meaningful, we need to know how to decode the data to find its meaning. To do this is to model the environment in which the data stream was generated. The simplest environment is a black body and the resulting data stream is modelled by the

[page 141]

quantum harmonic oscillator.

The shape of the black body curve carries information which is measured by the entropy of the space in which the curve exists.

What we are looking for is peace, that is oases of clam in a Universe of war and black holes. We can see that the environment within our skin is much more stable than the environment outside, and that this stability takes a certain amount of energy to acquire, to maintain thermostasis. The reactions of our chemical process are tuned so that the control paradigm is valid at body heat, 37 degrees Celsius (or so). So perhaps the foundation of peace is social thermostasis, around which social justice might be built. What the human race is looking for is maximum peace for minimum energy consumption. In network terms, this might mean maximum security for minimum cycles, which implies optimum algorithm.

Using Chaitin's ideas of compression, we might say that the content of the black body curve is is equal to the information content of Planck;'s equation. All we have to do is find a representation where the line and the equation have the same information content, ie are determinations of spaces with the same entropy.

Can we say that insofar as they can be represented by clear and distinct ideas (natural numbers) all spaces have equal entropy log0( ℵ0 ) = 1.

Gunpowder is the most powerful political force since democracy and vice versa.

[page 142]

We want to realize some of the value contained in the transformative power of an idea, a tool for moving some element of the universal system from one state to another. A hammer, for instance, provides us with a simple means to exert momentarily quite large forces. What we wish to provide is a tool for reducing chaos to order. This tool is a communication network, wherein, over an extended period of interaction via a set of links, a set of nodes reach some sort of equilibrium.

The heyday of the British Empire shows the power of order. The power of order grows exponentially with the size of the order, as the number represented grows exponentially with the length of the number.

At certain temperatures the power of order overcomes the power of disorder, and at other temperatures vice versa.

Not possible; not probable.

What we seek is an integrated (ordered) view of human existence which serves as an algorithm to guide us all in our actions for the best outcome for all. Something like a high Q in the direction of virtue and heavy damping on vice. Virtue and vice are themselves defined relative to the welfare of the system, measured as an integral of the welfare of its elements.

Meaning breaks the degeneracy of identical physical symbols. So the 's' at the beginning of 'symbols' is different from the 's' at the end of 'symbols'.

Dictatorship is an effort to reduce the variety of a system to the variety of one element of it, the dictator. Such a system is unstable, in that a higher entropy ordering of the elements is available by making them all equal. Equal power = equal probability = maximum entropy (Shannon).

[page 143]

Guidelines: the basic guideline is to maximize structure, ie maximize information, ie maximize entropy. In any given situation, maximizing entropy means making the occurrence of the letters of the systematic alphabet equiprobable.

Monk - monarch ; one who feels free to think exactly what he wants, and by taking a vow of silence, guarantees that he will not get into trouble by expressing these thoughts.

bodybuilding / mindbuilding

One with money can do whatever there is a contractor available for ie an entity capable of executing the necessary algorithm or set of algorithms.

LOVE : DOT PRODUCT : INTEGRAL ==> ow resolution strong attraction (vs high resolution weak attraction) Love is often stronger than death meaning that complexity (order) can determine power (cardinality)

We begin with the transfinite network an then allow random symmetry breaking to give lines through space.

Saturday 24 July 2004

Related sites

Concordat Watch

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty


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Further reading

Books

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Barks, Coleman, Rumi: Bridge to the Soul; Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart, HarperOne 2007 Amazon Product Description '2007 is the "Year of Rumi," and who better than Coleman Barks, Rumi's unlikely, supremely passionate ambassador, to mark the milestone of this great poet's 800th birthday? Barks, who was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in Persian language and literature by the University of Tehran for his thirty years of translating Rumi, has collected and translated ninety new poems, most of them never published before in any form. The result is this beautiful edition titled Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. The "bridge" in the title is a reference to the Khajou Bridge in Isphahan, Iran, which Barks visited with Robert Bly in May of 2006—a trip that in many ways prompted this book. The "soul bridge" also suggests Rumi himself, who crosses cultures and religions and brings us all together to listen to his words, regardless of origin or creed. Open this book and let Rumi's poetry carry you into the interior silence and joy of the spirit, the place that unites conscious knowing with a deeper, more soulful understanding.' 
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Cox, Harvey, The Future of Faith, HarperOne 2009 Amazon editorial review from Publishers Weekly Starred Review. What shape will the Christian faith take in the 21st century? In the midst of fast-paced global changes and in the face of an apparent resurgence of fundamentalism, can Christianity survive as a living and vital faith? With his typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores these and other questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary. He divides Christian history into three periods: the Age of Faith, during the first Christian centuries, when the earliest followers of Jesus lived in his Spirit, embraced his hope and followed him in the work he had begun; the Age of Belief, from the Council of Nicaea to the late 20th century, during which the church replaced faith in Jesus with dogma about him; and the Age of the Spirit, in which we're now living, in which Christians are rediscovering the awe and wonder of faith in the tremendous mystery of God. According to Cox, the return to the Spirit that so enlivened the Age of Faith is now enlivening a global Christianity, through movements like Pentecostalism and liberation theology, yearning for the dawning of God's reign of shalom. Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith.' Copyright © Reed Business Information 
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Cummins, Denise Dellarosa, and Colin Allen (editors), The Evolution of Mind, Oxford University Press 1998 Introduction: 'This book is an interdisciplinary endeavour, a collection of essays by ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers united in the common goal of explaining cognition. . . . the chief challenge is to make evolutionary psychology into an experimental science. Several of the chapters in this volume describe experimental techniques and results consistent with this aim; our hope and intention is that they lead by example in the development of evolutionary psychology from the realm of speculation to that of established research program' 
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Debray, Regis, God, An Itinerary, Verso 2004 Amazon Product Description 'God, who has changed the lives—and deaths—of men and women, has in turn changed His face and His meaning several times over since His birth three thousand years ago. He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 BC as in AD 400 or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers.

Régis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment. Debray contends that, in order to discover how God's fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we ought first to bracket the philosophical questions and focus on empirical information. However, he claims that this does not lessen its significance, but rather gives new life to spiritual issues. God: An Itinerary uses the histories of the Eternal and of the West to illuminate one another and to throw light on contemporary civilization itself. 50 b/w illustrations.'  
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Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prologomena and copious indexes: Volume 1. Confucian Analects, the Great Learning and the Docrine of the Mean, Adamant Media Corporation (December 29, 2000) Language: English ISBN-10: 1402184867 ISBN-13: 978-1402184864 2000 'This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1893 edition by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. Second edition, revised' 
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Niven, David, Niven: The Moon's a Balloon. Bring on the Empty Horses, Hodder & Stoughton General Division 1986  
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Prothero, Stephen, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World - and Why Their Differences Matter, HarperOne 2010 'Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Stephen Prothero 'On my last visit to Jerusalem, I struck up a conversation with an elderly man in the Muslim Quarter. As a shopkeeper, he seemed keen to sell me jewelry. As a Sufi mystic, he seemed even keener to engage me in matters of the spirit. He told me that religions are human inventions, so we must avoid the temptation of worshipping Islam rather than Allah. What matters is opening yourself up to the mystery that goes by the word God, and that can be done in any religion. As he tempted me with more turquoise and silver, he asked me what I was doing in Jerusalem. When I told him I was researching a book on the world’s religions, he put down the jewelry, looked at me intently, and, placing a finger on my chest for emphasis, said, "Do not write false things about the religions." As I wrote God is Is Not One, I came back repeatedly to this conversation. I never wavered from trying to write true things, but I knew that some of the things I was writing he would consider false. Mystics often claim that the great religions differ only in the inessentials. They may be different paths but they are ascending the same mountain and they converge at the peak. Throughout this book I give voice to these mystics: the Daoist sage Laozi, who wrote his classic the Daodejing just before disappearing forever into the mountains; the Sufi poet Rumi, who instructs us to "gamble everything for love"; and the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, who revels in the feminine aspects of God. But my focus is not on these spiritual superstars. It is on ordinary religious folk—the stories they tell, the doctrines they affirm, and the rituals they practice. And these stories, doctrines, and rituals could not be more different. Christians do not go on the hajj to Mecca; Jews do not affirm the doctrine of the Trinity; and neither Buddhists nor Hindus trouble themselves about sin or salvation. Of course, religious differences trouble us, since they seem to portend, if not war itself, then at least rumors thereof. But as I researched and wrote this book I came to appreciate how opening our eyes to religious differences can help us appreciate the unique beauty of each of the great religions--the radical freedom of the Daoist wanderer, the contemplative way into death of the Buddhist monk, and the joy in the face of the divine life of the Sufi shopkeeper. I plan to send my Sufi shopkeeper a copy of this book. I have no doubt he will disagree with parts of it. But I hope he will recognize my effort to avoid writing "false things," even when I disagree with friends.' 
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Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosoph, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon & Schuster 1945 Amazon ditorial reviews: Ray Monk: 'A History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell...writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context... The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written.'  
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Safi, Omid, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism, Oneworld Publications (May 25, 2003) Language: English ISBN-10: 185168316X ISBN-13: 978-1851683161 2003 Amazon editorial review From Publishers Weekly 'Safi, a Colgate University professor, assembles a diverse set of essays by and about "progressive" Muslims. The essays vary in topic and in effectiveness, but generally seek to challenge the images of Islam held by both xenophobic Westerners and extremist Muslims. Safi's introduction, though showing insight into many problems today's Muslims face but rarely discuss publicly, is clunky, citing sources from Gandhi to Bob Dylan. Part I offers hard-hitting essays that are sure to be controversial in their discussion of what scholar Tazim Kassam claims is a "curtailment... of civil liberties such as freedom of inquiry and the expression of dissenting opinions" in the U.S. after September 11. There are also some triumphant essays. Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle superbly analyzes Islam's categorization of homosexuality as a sin in an essay that is long overdue and probably the only scholarly work of its kind. Gwendolyn Simmons's piece demands the establishment of feminism as Islamic in a touching essay-cum-memoir that connects her growth as a Muslim female to her experience as a young African-American during the Civil Rights era. The incomparable Amina Wadud offers an excellent article on racial tensions between immigrant and indigenous Muslims, while Marcia Hermansen pens the volume's bravest and most honest contribution, addressing the increasing conservatism of her American Muslim students-a topic previously not discussed outside the Muslim community. This collection is recommended for those who yearn for realistic information about Muslims, and for Muslims who are disgruntled with current Islamic leadership.' Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
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Smart, Ninian, Dimensions of the Sacred - An Anatomy of the World's beliefs, University of California Press 1999 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'Smart, one of the grandfathers of the study of the history of religion (along with Huston Smith and Mircea Eliade), offers a very interesting treatise on how the human animal has attempted to impose meaning on the paradox of the human condition: we are finite and time-bound, yet we are able to conceive of the eternal and the infinite. Smart walks the reader through a great mass of research, and for that alone we should be grateful. Through a series of chapters devoted to six dimensions of the world?Ritual, Mythic, Experiential and Emotional, Ethical and Legal, Social, Material?Smart delineates characteristics of religious worldviews. Two chapters, one on Doctrine and Philosophy and a final one on the Political Effects of Religion, provide bookends for his discussions. On the whole, Smart provides an extremely useful scheme for understanding the interrelationship among the various worldviews. A kind of anatomy of spirituality, designed to advance understanding of the practical and theoretical aspects of a variety of world religions, Smart's book is important reading for any serious student of religion.' Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
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Smith, Huston, The World's Religions, ISBN-13: 978-0061660184 2009 Amazon product description: 'Huston Smith's masterpiece explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Emphasizing the inner—rather than the institutional—dimension of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.' 
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Smith, Wilfred Cantwell Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History, Princeton University Press 1977  
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Links
Adi Shankara - Wikipedia Adi Shankara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Adi Shankara (788 CE - 821 CE?), also known as Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, was an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta.

His works in Sanskrit, all of which are extant today, concern themselves with establishing the doctrine of Advaita (Nondualism). He also established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the Mimamsa school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism.' back

Albert Einstein Thermodynamics - Wikiquote 'A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts. Albert Einstein (author), Paul Arthur, Schilpp (editor). Autobiographical Notes. A Centennial Edition. Open Court Publishing Company. 1979. p. 31 [As quoted by Don Howard, John Stachel. Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909 (Einstein Studies, vol. 8). Birkhäuser Boston. 2000. p. 1]' back
Axial Age - Wikipedia Axial Age - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term the axial age (Ger. Achsenzeit, "axistime") to describe the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, during which, according to Jaspers, similar revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India and the Occident. The period is also sometimes referred to as the axis age.

Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key axial age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophy and religion, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China. Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared. Jaspers' approach to the culture of the middle of the first millennium BC has been adopted by other scholars and academics, and has become a point of discussion in the history of religion.' back

East-West Schism - Wikipedia East-West Schism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'The East–West Schism, sometimes known as the Great Schism, divided medieval Christianity into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively. Relations between East and West had long been embittered by political and ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes. Prominent among these were the issues of "filioque", whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the eucharist, the Pope's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of Constantinople in relation to the Pentarchy.' back
Islam - Wikipedia Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] ( listen)[note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (which is called the Sunnah in Arabic, and demonstrated in collections of Hadith). Islam literally means "submission (to God)." back
Martin Luther - Wikipedia Martin Luther - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Martin Luther (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest and professor of theology who initiated the Protestant Reformation.[1] Strongly disputing the claim that freedom from God's punishment of sin could be purchased with money, he confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the emperor.' back
Prosperity theology - Wikipedia Prosperity theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Prosperity theology (also known as prosperity doctrine, the health and wealth gospel, or the prosperity gospel) is a religious belief found among "tens of millions"[1] of Christians centered on the notion that God provides material prosperity for those he favors. It has been defined by the belief that "Jesus blesses believers with riches" or more specifically as the teaching that "believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the 'sowing of seeds' through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings." In the words of journalist Hanna Rosin, the prosperity gospel "is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity."[1][2] It arose in the United States after World War II championed by Oral Roberts and became particularly popular in the decade of the 1990s.[1] More recently, the theology has been exported to less prosperous areas of the world, with mixed results.' back
Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'The Protestant Reformation was the European Christian reform movement that established Protestantism as a constituent branch of contemporary Christianity. It began in 1517 when Martin Luther published The Ninety-Five Theses, and concluded in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia that ended years of European religious wars.' back
Simple vow - Wikipedia Simple vow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In the Canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, public vows are either simple vows or solemn vows. Professed members of religious orders take solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (the vows of religion), while members of religious congregations take simple vows. The practical difference lies in the vow of poverty. While in simple vows, a person maintains the right to own goods (but cedes their administration), in solemn vows a person renounces the right of ownership of goods.' back
Sweet spot - Wikipedia Sweet spot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'A sweet spot is a place, often numerical as opposed to physical, where a combination of factors suggest a particularly suitable solution. In the context of a racquet, bat or similar sporting instrument, sweet spot is often believed to be the same as the center of percussion.' back
The Brights' Network The Brights' Net - Home Page 'What is a bright?

A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview

A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements

The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview' back

The JESUS Film Project The JESUS Film Project 'Called by some "one of the best-kept secrets in Christian missions," a number of mission experts have acclaimed the film as one of the greatest evangelistic tools of all time. Since 1979 the "JESUS" film has been viewed by several billion people all across the globe, and has resulted in more than 225 million men, women and children indicating decisions to follow Jesus.' back
Yoido Full Gospel Church - Wikipedia Yoido Full Gospel Church - Wikipedia 'Yoido Full Gospel Church is a Pentecostal church on Yeouido Island in Seoul, South Korea. With about 1,000,000 members (2007), it is the largest Protestant Christian congregation in South Korea, [1] and in the whole world. Founded and led by David Yonggi Cho since 1958, it is one of the most internationally visible manifestations of Korean Christianity.' back

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