natural theology

We have just published a new book that summarizes the ideas of this site. Free at Scientific Theology, or, if you wish to support this project, buy at Scientific Theology: A New Vision of God

Contact us: Click to email

Notes

Sunday 6 December 2020 - Saturday 12 December 2020

[Notebook: DB 85 Science]

[page 301]

Sunday 6 December 2020

The limiting factor on me is me insofar as I have to wait for my ideas to come and cannot force them as much as I would like to. Every now and then a piece of my jigsaw pops into my mind in the form of a clear and distinct idea that can be expressed in text such as this and I can then set about merging it into my overall picture. The idea that comes to mind is the notion of half-life, when a state is able to tunnel through a potential barrier and emerge on the other side as a clear and distinct particle. I like to interpret this as a network phenomenon marking the completion of a computation process that come to a halt with a definite answer. In the case of the decay of U238 this process takes billions of years. At the other end of the scale are things that occur in nanoseconds and this diary suggests that something worth writing down emerges in my mind every day or so.

Monday 7 December 2020

Is spirit a thing? Is soul a thing? Is a spirit a thing? a soul?

[page 302]

War - pointless stupidity somehow endowed with glory. Crotty & Holbrook. Martin Crotty & Carolyn Holbrook: The Anzac legend has blinded Australia to its war atrocities. It's time for a reckoning

Spirit and covenant. Elon Gilad: How did Jews Come to Believe in a Messiah? A Brief History

Tuesday 8 December 2020

. . .

The aim of the spirit is to cut like a Gordian sword through the knots that are blocking human development. Gordian Knot - Wikipedia

Still struggling with the last chapter. What is it to be? An introduction to the next book? And what is that? The theory of everything: a technical exposition. I must take it on but can I do it? Must try building on what I have done. This time a series of articles that add up to a book. But still, what goes into the last chapter? A summary? An ad for the future? What is my basic point? The spirit is in us and we are in the spirit. How parts fit together. An algorithm. Everything is in the network. Look at the brain and write the theorem that wins the millennium prize. Carlson, Jaffe & Wiles: The Millennium Prize Problems

A more practical approach is to use the truth contained in the Catholic history of salvation, for there is a little truth in it, reinterpreted to establish the truth of this model. The foundation is the psychological model of the trinity. If god can be three, god can be transfinite, q.e.d. Next question: how do we apply this to

[page 303]

physics and the standard model? We just reinterpret quantum field theory as we have reinterpreted the Catholic history of salvation, leave the story unchanged, give it new meaning as the writers of the new testament repurposed the work of the writers of the old testament.

What we are saying is that the spirit of god, the human spirit and the spirit of every creature [particle] are the same, awareness of being. What changes is the content of that awareness, ranging from the quantum of action whose content (essence) is existence to the universe whose essence is a transfinite hierarchy of orthogonal existences whose individual essences are defined by their local network of communication. Somehow we fit this to feynman diagrams, path integrals, pure act, unmoved mover, the trinity, god and myself. The symmetry with respect to complexity connects all these spirits into one spirit. An act is an act irrespective of its complexity, and like a running motor or a living being, it is a geodesic, the [dynamic] geodesic of timeline existence. Rattling around in my consciousness, but the picture is clearing and chapter 8 is an expose of Yang-Mills if only I could get hold if it and express it in words and psychology rather than numbers.

Much of this book touches on the bitterness and pain that arises from the misappropriation of the loving human spirit by political forces exploiting the love of others for their own good, persons who feel that they are entitled to ask others to give their lives knowing that the love built in by our evolutionary history has made it possible to exploit people this way and the fact that people give their lives for a cause has been falsely glorified through the ages, most particularly in the idea that Jesus-god was such a person that he gave his life at the request of his father for a largely vacuous reason [since it was the father who had visited arbitrary punishment on the people he had created with curiosity, leaving them in ignorance of his planned sanction against their exercise of this curiosity].

[page 304]

God the Father took advantage of the Son's loving [human] nature and ripped him off.

Can I really believe my own story?

Often I think that I am completely wrong (and this might be true) but in a way the closest thing to exactly true is exactly not true, so I feel that following my errors far enough I will stumble on the true.

Feynman page 57: 'Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space-time is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and the laws will turn out to be simple like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities. But this speculation is of the same nature as other people make – 'I like it', 'I don't like it' – and it is not good to be too prejudiced about these things'. Richard Feynman: The Character of Physical Law

Feynman page 60: Conservation of charge is managed by discrete changeds ± 1, ± ⅔ ± ⅓.

page 63: If anything is charged it must be conserved locally.

From the point of view of my project the Old Testament is the work of Thomas Aquinas, the last principled review of Christian theology.

Wednesday 9 December 2020
Thursday 10 December 2020

[page 305]

The Trinity presents the mystery of how the absolutely simple god of tradition can be three. Aquinas produced an answer based on relationship and procession. The same mystery exists with respect to the initial singularity and a universe with a potentially transfinite number of elements, since finding a consistent relationship between one and three presents the same problem in principle as finding a consistent relationship between one and transfinity and so we can speculate that the same solution, whatever it is, applies. The key step forward may be to formulate Aquinas' doctrine of the trinity in terms of quantum theory, ie in Hilbert space, and the initial step might have to do with tensor products of states, that is the matrix representations of superpositions. Could it be true that all the states in the universe are time division multiplexed in the ultimate hardware, the energy of the initial singularity viewed as a harmonic oscillator.

Is god infinite? Is action infinite? Per se? How do the quantum of action and the velocity of light get fixed values when they may be purely logical entities, ℏ = not, or thereabouts. Perhaps I am beginning to feel a bit like William Blake. William Blake: All Religions are One (1788 A): electronic edition

Walking thoughts: Quantum mechanics of the Trinity. How does it work? Put god into 1D Hilbert space and then let it interact with itself to create two fermions and some bosons. How does standard field theory describe this? No idea. It just assumes the existence of the relevant particles. So read some Zee. What we are looking for is how to create particles with their various properties. Physics needs a deeper layer closer to god to do the creation and it is most probably the source of general relativity whose kinematics we know but what can we say about the dynamics [except perhaps that it must be explained by quantum theory]? Anthony Zee: Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell

[page 306]

Feynman says it is all mathematics and no mechanism but of course the particles are the mechanism and they are given. What we need to do is explain how the mechanisms evolved and we can do it abstractly with the variation and selection paradigm with some memory. The basic idea is that the bosons and fermions shape one another to make [the network foundations] of more complex systems beginning with photons and [electrically charged] particles. The idea that future discoveries [developments] have to look after their own foundations is just good housekeeping. This system is supporting the fact that quantum mechanics predates space-time so that all interactions are by contact rather like click together lego blocks which work by a combination of kinetic and potential energy, ie elasticity and memory managed by potential wells [and perhaps potential is a statistical mechanical phenomenon, derived from pure numbers / entropy because the gods naturally multiply by reflecting in eachother].

Gravitation is the first manifestation of potential and kinetic energy. So we just have to make up an ur-story and then develop it just like the Dreamtime.

All the path integral and Feynman diagram stuff does not come in until we have a network complex enough to have a large number of connections. How do we weaken the actions in higher order diagrams? This cannot be by distance, and so must be by concatenation of low probability actions

We want it all to be digital and all actions quantized [like god] which means things are quite coarse at the quantum level although the physicists maintain that space and time are continuous on a very fine grain [or is it the transformations are continuous but the states transformed are digital?]. It seems, however, that real numbers only have a proper use when we apply the law of large numbers in the theory of probability [or continuous transformations in Lie groups]. Lie Group - Wikipedia

How does the universe get a grip on itself? We have lots of "little" gods, quanta of action, interacting with one another and maintaining their independence by

[page 307]

being orthogonal to one another and yet interacting like vectors in Hilbert space. We may quantize this by using groups made of roots of unity which can be ordered to form phase based computational sequences like the network of Turing machines we model by establishing correspondences between [permutations of] natural numbers and Turing machines.

Superpositions are time ordered sequences of roots of unity which perform tasks like photons exchanging energy with electrons. We have to express all this in terms of Yang-Mills. Gerardus 't Hooft: 50 Years of Yang Mills Theory

Friday 11 December 2020

I am a thoroughly unfinished work, a fifty year pregnancy yet to yield an outspring, but I remain hopeful about my dreams of reality much mangled by people who make nuclear weapons and believe a fantastic theology.

How do we quantize the Trinity? My mind is a blank. What does this mean? Nothing to feed on. I am looking for the true god. I know who / what the true god is but it can only be revealed by evidence, not fantasy. Why amI so hooked on physics? Because it is evidence based but the theory corresponding to the evidence is unconvincing. Why? Because I am in love with Thomas Aquinas and want to build on him. Because I think quantum mechanics is close to the truth and want to coopt it to theology. What must I do to achieve this? The only thing I can think of is networks and communication. The trinity is an atom of communication. An atom is an atom of communication, vey complex, so I want to dig deeper into simplicity. How? It must begin with

[page 308]

gravitation and the notion of symmetry. How do we unite the symmetries of quantum mechanics and space-time? Feynman would look for a calculation. Here is where I have to start but I am getting nowhere.

We want Yang Mils and quantum gravity, that is where the answer lies hidden down in the basement in the heart of god.

I live on a superposition of emotions which are representd by dynamic vectors in a complex multidimensional (Hilbert) space. When some of them communicate, then I act to emit a particle of action (eg a sentence). This is part of my scale invariant vision of the quantum theory of myself which if I can understand it as my act of god I can go up and down the spectrum of being, but I want to get gauge theory in there somewhere, computation by phase, so we conceive communication in the transfinite computer network a a computation by phase [eg speech is a phase based communication mode]. Phase is a representation of the spirit of god.

Saturday 12 December 2020

Feynman page 164: 'Probability amplitudes are very strange, and the first thing you think is that the strange new ideas are clearly cock-eyed. Yet everything that can be deduced from the ideas of the existence of quantum mechanical probability amplitudes, strange though they are, do work, through the long list of strange particles, one hundred percent. Therefore I do not bleieve that when we find out the inner guts of the composition of the world, we shall find these

[page 309]

ideas are wrong. I think this part is right, but am only guessing.

'On the other hand, I believe that the theory that space is continuous is wrong because we get all these infinities and other difficulties and we are left with questions on what determines the size of all the particles. I rather suspect that the simple ideas of geometry, extended down into infinitesimally small space, are wrong. Here, of course, I am only making a holes, and not telling you what to substitute. If I did I should finish the lecture with a new law.'

Speaking in personalities, an aspect of my dream would be to unite the minds of Thomas Aquinas and Richard Feynman.

Feynman in effect operationalized the network model. The path integral explored the whole of amplitude space to find the actual path between two given states. The Feynman diagrams superposed all the channel thus found to contribute to a particular measurement which concentrated on particular point in the network system, eg the Lamb shift between two otherwise identical states. Lamb shift - Wikipedia

't Hooft page v: "'Gauge theory has indeed grown into a pivotal concept in the Theory of Elementary Particles, and it is expected to play an equally essential role in even more basic theoretical constructions that are speculated on today with the aim of providing an all embracing picture og the universal laws of Physics.'

Veltman: Photons of light are "on the mass shell", those of electric and magnetic fields are not (page 17). Martinus Veltman; Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics

[page 310]

Why can't I understand fundamental physics? either I am dumb or the physics is in some way inconsistent so my mind rejects it. Of course I would like the second explanation but I am swimming against a strong tide here but somehow can't avoid it. So what am I to do? The same answer as always, keep trying.

Everything comes down to phase and phases are transmitted unchanged at the velocity of light which is equivalent to contact interactions. How do phases change? Change of phase is equivalent to regular passage of time, but orthogonal rays are made so by distinct energies but there is a limit to orthogonality insofar as two rays are only orthogonal if they differ by a quantum of action in the product of energy by time which establishes the Hausdorff character of Hilbert space and digitizes everything as Feynman would like. Hausdorff space - Wikipedia

A handy little insight which might help to overcome the difficulties which Yang-Mills have with unitarity.

Sitting in the park of inspiration new the 250 kV substation hoping for a bit more inspiration (as if) but we see that the incorporation of Lorentz transformations into physics to account for phase changes caused by relative motions of quantum systems. Does this

[page 311]

make any sense since it would blur the orthogonality of relatively moving reference frames and then what? Read Veltman more carefully. Martinus Veltman: Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules p. 20

How do we get from roots of unity to logical propositions? Do we want to? We are looking for ways to make superposition of vectors [rays] in Hilbert space into turing computations. Is this what we should be looking for? Should we think that as the universe complexifies, the data flow through the initial singularity increases since it is the initial hardware of the universe? Say again amplitude equals spirit the source of cosmic unity and the way the trinity is held together like all other composite particles. Is this consistent with my experience in this park?

Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

Further reading

Books

Carlson, James, and Arthur Jaffe & Andrew Wiles, The Millennium Prize Problems, ClayMathematics Institute and American Mathematical Society 2006
1: The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture: Andrew Wiles
2: The Hodge Conjecture: Pierre Deligne
3: The Existence and Smoothness of the Navier-Stokes Equation: Charles L Fefferman
4: The Poincare Conjecture: John Milnor
5: The P versus NP Problem: Stephen Cook
6: The Riemann Hypothesis: Enrico Bombieri
7: Quantum Yang-Mills Theory: Arthur Jaffe and Edward Whitten 
Amazon
  back

Doyle, Arthur Conan, A Study in Scarlet, IAP 2009 Amazon Product Description 'A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the first story to feature Sherlock Holmes.' 
Amazon
  back

Feynman (1965), Richard, The Character of Physical Law, Penguin Press 1992 ' Collecting legendary lectures from freewheeling scientific genius Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law is the perfect example of Feynman's gift for making complex subjects accessible and entertaining. Here Richard Feynman gives his own unique take on the puzzles and problems that lie at the heart of physics, from Newton's Law of Gravitation to mathematics as the supreme language of nature, from the mind-boggling question of whether time can go backwards to the exciting search for new scientific laws.'  
Amazon
  back

Graves, Robert, Claudius the God and his Wife Messalina, Vintage:Vintage international 1989 'Picking up where the extraordinarily interesting I, Claudius ends, Claudius the God tells the tale of Claudius' 13-year reign as Emperor of Rome. Naturally, it ends when Claudius is murdered--believe me, it's not giving anything away to say this; the surprise is when someone doesn't get poisoned. While Claudius spends most of his time before becoming emperor tending to his books and his writings and trying to stay out of the general line of corruption and killings, his life on the throne puts him into the center of the political maelstrom.' 
Amazon
  back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
Amazon
  back

't Hooft, Gerardus, 50 Years of Yang Mills Theory, World Scientific 2005 ' On the 50th anniversary of Yang-Mills theory, this invaluable volume looks back at the developments and achievements in elementary particle physics that ensued from that beautiful idea.During the last five decades, Yang-Mills theory, which is undeniably the most important cornerstone of theoretical physics, has expanded widely. It has been investigated from many perspectives, and many new and unexpected features have been uncovered from this theory. In recent decades, apart from high energy physics, the theory has been actively applied in other branches of physics, such as statistical physics, condensed matter physics, nonlinear systems, etc. This makes the theory an indispensable topic for all who are involved in physics.An international team of experts, each of whom has left his mark on the developments of this remarkable theory, contribute essays or more detailed technical accounts to this volume. These articles highlight the new discoveries from the respective authors' perspectives. The distinguished contributors are: S Adler, F A Bais, C Becchi, M Creutz, A De Rujula, B S DeWitt, F Englert, L D Faddeev, P Hasenfratz, R Jackiw, A Polyakov, V N Popov, R Stora, P van Baal, P van Nieuwenhuizen, S Weinberg, F Wilczek, E Witten, C N Yang. Included in each article are introductory and explanatory remarks by the editor, G 't Hooft, who is himself a major player in the development of Yang-Mills theory. 
Amazon
  back

Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...' 
Amazon
  back

Veltman (2003), Martinus, Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics, World Scientific 2003 'Introduction: The twentieth century has seen an enormous progress in physics. The fundamental physics of the first half of the century was dominated by the theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation and the theory of quantum mechanics. The second half of the century saw the rise of elementary particle physics. . . . Through this development there has been a subtle change in point of view. In Einstein's theory space and time play an overwhelming dominant role. . . . The view that we would like to defend can perhaps best be explaned by an analogy. To us, space-time and the laws of quantum mechanics are like the decor, the setting of a play. The elementary articles are the actors, and physics is what they do. . . . Thus in this book the elementary particles are the central objects.' 
Amazon
  back

Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on. Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena. Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory. Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.  
Amazon
  back

Links

Academictorrents.com, About - Academic Torrents, 'Mission Personal Statement +This service is designed to facilitate storage of all the data used in research, including datasets as well as publications. There are many advantages of using bittorrent technology to disseminate this work. Distributed storage and content delivery provided by anyone. Files can be securely downloaded from other users of the system. They can share the file for a day or a year. Mirroring the content can be done from a desktop computer anywhere. Everyone surrounding this computer will have local access to the data automatically and securely. Bundles of files, not just papers, or any size can be disseminated in this way as long as at least one person can become a seed for that data. ' back

Al Jazeera and Agencies, Afghan civilian deaths from US air raids rose by more than 300 percent, ' Deaths of Afghan civilians in air raids carried out by the United States and its allies “increased dramatically” since 2017 when Washington loosened its criteria and escalated attacks on the Taliban, according to a report released on Monday. The number of civilians killed annually in US and coalition air attacks soared by 330 percent to some 700 civilians in 2019, said Neta C Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. More civilians died in 2019 than any other year since the beginning of war in 2001, according to the report.' back

Al Jazeera and Agencies, Saudi activist al-Hathloul appears in court, UN calls for release, ' Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul appeared before a special “terrorism court” in Riyadh on Thursday, her family said, on charges United Nations human rights experts called “spurious” as they called for her immediate release. Al-Hathloul has been held since 2018 after being arrested along with at least a dozen other women’s rights activists. Saudi officials have said the arrests were made on suspicion of harming Saudi interests and offering support to hostile elements abroad.' back

Albert B. Hakim, Hell, Population Zero: Daring to Hope that All Will Be Saved, 'The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994, contains what may be the most recent official word on the existence and meaning of hell: The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in the state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.” The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.' (1035) back

Australian Associated Press, police chief commissioner 'concealed priest's sex abuse cries', inquiry hears, 'A former Victorian police chief commissioner was the architect of a conspiracy to conceal sex abuse crimes by a Catholic priest, another former police chief has told the royal commission. Mick Miller, the chief commissioner between 1977 and 1987, said his immediate predecessor, Reg Jackson, tried to stop former officer Denis Ryan investigating abuse by Mildura priest Monsignor John Day. “It is my opinion that chief commissioner Reg Jackson was the architect of the Victoria police’s response to Denis Ryan’s investigations into Monsignor Day,” Miller told the child abuse royal commission on Tuesday.' back

Ben Oquist, How does coal fit in with this innoation agenda?, 'Even if Paris fails and renewables have to compete against fossil fuels without ongoing policy support, they will be worth trillions in the medium term. Trillions with a T, not Billions with a B. Bloomberg New Energy Finance's highly credible 'Energy Outlook 2015' says the global post-subsidy renewables market will be worth about US$8 trillion to 2040. A government that continues to unquestionably support coal is inherently anti-renewable energy, and also innovation. Backing coal sends a terrible signal to innovators and investors in renewable energy, telling them that this is one area where the ideas boom is not welcome. back

Dan Zak, A Kraken is loose in America, ' Perhaps the Kraken is something less shadowy, less slithery, less imaginary. America is enduring roughly a Pearl Harbor’s worth of death per day, minus the explanatory power of a military attack from the sky. It is in a state of financial emergency, minus the clarity of a stock-market crash. Evidence of a real crisis abounds; somehow that’s no match for suspicion of an invented one. Look around, though. We are definitely in the grips of something, and it is pulling us under. . . . Our Kraken, our selves. America was founded on certain myths and beliefs relating to freedom, individualism and righteous rebellion. Now these myths and beliefs are encircling our necks.' back

David B. Green, Why Did 74 Million Americans vote for Trump? This Sociologist Has thr Answer, ' The role of evangelicals in bringing Donald Trump to power is well-documented. I ask Hochschild to explain how he fits into their religious vision. She believes the president “taps into a religious paradigm,” something that secular liberals just don’t see. “Here’s my speculation: [Trump] taps into the figure of a rescuer. [Imagine that] you’re in the back of the line, you’re stuck. Other people are getting ahead. [He says:] ‘I will rescue you and make you great, bring you to the front of the line.’ “And then, in another chapter to this deep story, [Trump says] ‘Look, I’m surrounded by many enemies, – pharisees, the mainstream press, the Democratic Party, the deep state. Everywhere you look, an enemy. And I am suffering for you.’ Who does that sound like?” She continues: “I honestly think that Trump is appealing – unconsciously – to evangelicals by tapping into their understanding, their expectation, of rescue by a savior. And I think his getting COVID – this was his crucifixion.” ' back

David Marr, God's warriors locked in barbaric futile battle against marriage equality, 'When Crosby Textor asked Australians in 2014 if they supported or opposed allowing same-sex couples to marry, they found support high across the faiths as well as Australia: Total support: 72%. Catholics: 67%. Christians generally: 59%. Anglican and Uniting: 57%. The bishops aren’t speaking for their flocks. And while the Australian Christian Lobby blasts marriage reform with startling ferocity, pollsters make it clear these preachers speaks for few of us.' back

David Pope, Political cartoons, Fairfax cartoonist back

Demographic transition - Wikipedia, Demographic transition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Demographic transition model (DTM) is a model used to represent the process of explaining the transformation of countries from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth rates and low death rates as part of the economic development of a country from a pre-industrial to an industrialised economy. It is based on an interpretation begun in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson [1] of prior observed changes, or transitions, in birth and death rates in industrialized societies over the past two hundred years.' back

Denial - Wikipedia, Denial - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.' back

Elon Gilad, How did Jews Come to Believe in a Messiah? A Brief History, ' It is only in the books of the Second Temple period that we begin to see explicit reference to an anticipated messianic figure. For example, in the final chapters of the Book of Zechariah, a group of prophecies belonging to an anonymous prophet attached to those of the eponymous prophet by a later scribe –, we find the statement: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass” (Zechariah 9:9).' back

Farrah Tomazin, Gay conversion legislation puts Andrews on collision course with churches, ' A Victorian government plan to crack down on churches using prayer to change LGBTI people has been branded as the biggest threat to religious freedom in years, placing Premier Daniel Andrews on a collision course with the nation’s faith groups. Days after introducing a long-awaited bill to criminalise gay conversion practices, Mr Andrews and Attorney-General Jill Hennessy have been accused of “over-reach” as a contentious debate regarding human rights and religion looms in Parliament.' back

Gorana Grgic, Trump talks as if the Wesr is at war with Islam - so d extremists, 'Less than a day after US president Barack Obama made a speech to call for unity and push against divisive rhetoric in the wake of San Bernardino terrorist attack, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump did precisely the opposite. His call to ban all Muslims entering the US has been interpreted as everything from "unhelpful" and "unhinged" to basically the verbal equivalent of "Abu Ghraib on steroids".' back

Gordian Knot - Wikipedia, Gordian Knot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia, ' The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem (untying an impossibly tangled knot) solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot ("cutting the Gordian knot"). back

Haarez Editorial, Elite Israelia School Teaches Silencing, 'Students at the Hebrew Reali High School in Haifa learned an important life lesson this week. To mark International Human Rights Day, which is Tuesday, the director of B’Tselem, Hagai El-Ad, was meant to address them. But when students and right-wing activists denounced the meeting, the principal of the school’s upper division, Mendi Rabinovitz, postponed it.' back

Hamid Dabashi, What is Isreael's secret weapon against Iran?, ' Both the ruling Islamic republic and the settler colony of Israel will ultimately fail to silencing the will of Palestinian and Iranian peoples. The repressed but defiant will of nations, Palestinians under the boots of Israeli soldiers and Iranians under the cruelties of their ruling regimes, will prevail.' back

Hausdorff space - Wikipedia, Hausdorff space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In topology and related branches of mathematics, a Hausdorff space, separated space or T2 space is a topological space where for any two distinct points there exist neighbourhoods of each which are disjoint from each other. Of the many separation axioms that can be imposed on a topological space, the "Hausdorff condition" (T2) is the most frequently used and discussed. It implies the uniqueness of limits of sequences, nets, and filters. Hausdorff spaces are named after Felix Hausdorff, one of the founders of topology. Hausdorff's original definition of a topological space (in 1914) included the Hausdorff condition as an axiom. .' back

Internet Archive, Digital Library of Free Books, Movies . . . , Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, and more. back

Jim Stanford, So much for consensus: Morrison government;s industrial relations bill is a business wish list, ' So what to make of that short-lived spirit of togetherness that purportedly sparked this whole process? In retrospect, it seems to have been just an opportunity for the Coalition government to pose as visionary statesmen during a time of crisis. Now, mere months later, the government is back to its old ways – and the pandemic is just another excuse to scapegoat unions, drive down wages and fatten business profits.' back

John Ross, UNSW quantum comuting breakthrough names as one of the year's top 10 physics feats, 'Physics World, the magazine of the UK’s Institute of Physics, has named the advance — in which the team managed to wire up the basic components of an industrially friendly quantum computer — among its “Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015”.' back

Lenore Taylor, Austalia signs up for clear carbon trading rules, hinting at policy change, 'IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said “the right carbon price” had to be at the centre of reducing emissions and “given the slump in energy prices, there has never been a better time to transition to smart, credible and effective carbon pricing”. “Policy makers need to price it right, tax it smart and do it now,” she said, back

Lie Group - Wikipedia, Lie Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a Lie group . . . is a group that is also a differentiable manifold, with the property that the group operations are compatible with the smooth structure. Lie groups are named after Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie, who laid the foundations of the theory of continuous transformation groups. Lie groups represent the best-developed theory of continuous symmetry of mathematical objects and structures, which makes them indispensable tools for many parts of contemporary mathematics, as well as for modern theoretical physics. . . . One of the key ideas in the theory of Lie groups is to replace the global object, the group, with its local or linearized version, which Lie himself called its "infinitesimal group" and which has since become known as its Lie algebra.' back

Martin Crotty & Carolyn Holbrook, The Anzac legend has blinded Australia to its war atrocities. It's time for a reckoning, ' Australia had been created during an age of elevated propaganda about empire, monarchy and the glory of battle. War was held to be the truest test of the character of men and nations. In this era of “new imperialism”, the peaceful union of Australia’s six British colonies carried a taint of illegitimacy because no blood had been spilled (the frontier wars with Aboriginal peoples did not count). The British journalist Alfred Buchanan wrote in 1907 that he pitied the little Australian […] looking to nourish the flame of patriotic sentiment, [for …] the altar has not been stained with crimson as every rallying centre of a nation should be. So, by the first world war, it was believed that a good showing in battle would expunge the convict stain and prove Australians worthy members of the British empire.' back

Messiah - Wikipedia, Messiah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A messiah (literally, "anointed one") is a saviour or liberator of a group of people, most commonly in the Abrahamic religions. In the Hebrew Bible, a messiah . . . is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil. However, messiahs were not exclusively Jewish, as the Hebrew Bible refers to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, as a messiah for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. The concept of messianism originated in Judaism.' back

Michael Peppard, Orthodox Rabbis: Christianity "neither accident nor error", 'Positive statements about Christianity by rabbis from past centuries form a large part of the new statement, in keeping with the Orthodox style of repeating the teachings of sages. And it is rounded out with a culminating call to partnership in ethics, "a common covenantal mission to perfect the world." Jews and Christians share "the ethical monotheism of Abraham; the relationship with the One Creator of Heaven and Earth, Who loves and cares for all of us; Jewish Sacred Scriptures; a belief in a binding tradition; and the values of life, family, compassionate righteousness, justice, inalienable freedom, universal love and ultimate world peace." ' back

Original sin - Wikipedia, Original sin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Original sin, sometimes called ancestral sin, is, according to a doctrine proposed in Christian theology, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a "sin nature," to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt by all humans through collective guilt. Those who uphold this doctrine look to the teaching of Paul the Apostle in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 for its scriptural base, and see it as perhaps implied in an Old Testament passage Psalm 51:5.' back

Paul III - Council of Trent, Decree Concerning Original Sin, '1. If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and through the offense of that prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and thus death with which God had previously threatened him, and, together with death, captivity under his power who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil, and that the entire Adam through that offense of prevarication was changed in body and soul for the worse, let him be anathema.' back

Rolf Landauer, Information is a Physical Entity, 'Abstract: This paper, associated with a broader conference talk on the fundamental physical limits of information handling, emphasizes the aspects still least appreciated. Information is not an abstract entity but exists only through a physical representation, thus tying it to all the restrictions and possibilities of our real physical universe. The mathematician's vision of an unlimited sequence of totally reliable operations is unlikely to be implementable in this real universe. Speculative remarks about the possible impact of that on the ultimate nature of the laws of physics are included.' back

Rowena Mason, Kevin Rawlinson and John Harris, Jeremy Corbyn praises Stop the War coalition as a vital democratic force, 'Corbyn defended those who, like him, had opposed military intervention. He told the assembled supporters: “Does that mean those people are, somehow or other, closet supporters of Isil? Absolutely not, absolutely not. What it means is that there are an awful lot of people that want to see a different way of doing things and recognise that every war ends with a political process. Why don’t we start with the political process now, rather than have the war in the first place?”' back

Tzach Yoked, Is War Actually a Great Boon for Humanity? An Interview With Historian Margaret MacMillan, ' War is not “simply an absence of peace,” MacMillan writes, adding: “We cannot ignore war and its impact on the development of human society if we hope to understand our world and how we reached this point in history.” ' back

Waleed Aly, Attacks by Tony Abbott, Donald Trump: Arch conservatives offer nothing but guff. , 'And of how we should hardly be surprised that Islam's Reformation has turned so bloody and so ugly given that Christianity's Reformation claimed somewhere between 5 million and 15 million lives in the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War alone.' back

William Blake, All Religions are One (1788 A): electronic edition, 'Through aphoristic declarations and accompanying emblem-like designs, Blake argues for the essential unity of all religions as expressions of the "Poetic Genius" within all human beings. As the quoted phrase suggests, All Religions are One implies the unity of the artistic and religious imagination. Several of the numbered "Principle[s]," the term used as a heading to each text plate, assert a causal connection between inner spirit and outer body. Because of shared graphic styles, themes, and genre, All Religions are One is closely associated with There is No Natural Religion of the same year.' back

www.naturaltheology.net is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2020 © Jeffrey Nicholls