Bikerman

No, the science for these parts is solid. It is mentioned because it is correct. It has been scrutinised many times and passes the test. It is also logically self-consistent unlike the Genesis account. You are supposed to be able to filter. Are you asserting that the YEC was correct to say there is no other mention of Yom with numbers in the OT? Because if you are then you are wrong, and if you are then it means you haven't read it. YOM occurs over two hundred times elsewhere in the Old Testament with ordinals, i.e., first, second, third, etc. In ALL of these cases the reference is to a normal day. It is acctually all irrelevant in any case and I only mention it to give you some indication how much of the bible you don't know. As I said previously, the passage itself clearly defines the word by referring to parts of the day - 24 hour day. It is indisputable, settled beyond doubt by the genesis account itself. No, silly conclusion from a false chain of logic. Day and night (as periods of dark and light) cannot exist without the sun. The words can. Now which parts of that do you not understand. God separates light from darkness, calls it day and night, even uses the words evening and morning. So the day is 24 hours, there is no sun, and the whole thing has just collapsed into the pile of allegorical nonsense that it always was. Which is, of course, the point. The whole account is illogical, wrong in most important details, and in many places actually self-contradictory. What do you expect from an ancient hebrew writer? Accuracy? It is a creation myth, not history. You get half-way there and then can't face the ovbvious concluson - GENESIS IS WRONG. They are not and never have been on equal terms. Science trumps religion everytime. You cannot name one single time when religious has proven correct over a scientific theory - it has never happened and it never will. The notion that there is some parity between the two is wishful thinking. All science is subject to test - including the theories of evolution, stellar formation, dating of the earth, the appearance and order of species. All of it - tested. Religion is not testable because it is a matter of faith. You can't test the bible account because there is no evidence for it. It isn't even logically coherent as you have just seen.Once again QED Case proven. I'm afraid you are just gibbering now. You don't understand the basic science and you certainly don't understand photonic frequencies. Neither did the bible authors which is why they get in such a pickle. Light and heat are two different things caused by the same particles at different frequencies. Ever seen a glow-worm? It is hot? No. Light in the visible spectrum doesn't tranport heat - that is infra-red which you cannot see. So I'm afraid once again the case is lost for you and yet again we have evidence that Genesis is wrong. At -270C they would not die out, they would never have been born. Until the sun is created there can be no life on earth. It isn't a case of continuing, it could never start. Since you have absolutely no evidence that there was a sun before the 4th day then you have absolutely no evidence that there was any life on earth before that time. Repeating a lie does not make it true. You are simply changing the bible account to try and wriggle out of a hole - dishonest of course, because you claim that when others do this they are being 'un-biblical'. The word 'all' means 'all' and your attempt to redefine it will, like the rest of this, simply fail. But again you are just redefining what the Genesis account actually says. Now you say that this is well before the rest of the Genesis account, but it cannot be so because the heavens are created in the Genesis account on day 4. It doesn't actually matter anyway because we know that the earth was formed, not created, and this happened about 4.55 billion years ago - after the sun had sparked into life. So once again the attempt to creatively interpret the bible to suit the known facts is simply doomed before it starts. As I have told you many times - Genesis is a parable, a creation myth, no more true than the Inca or the Indian or the Mayan creation myths. To take it literally was considered stupid in the 5th Century. Today stupid does not seem an adequately strong term. Heed the words of Augustine in 408CE The sound you hear is that very same laughter.....

Type of music? Bagpipe music springs to mind....the naturals all sound flat anyway :-) Seriously, all black?...Chopin - Etudes Op 10. No 5 ? With a tempo of 90 that would be 90*4 beats for a for minute tune. Depending on the time-sig then divide by 3 for 3/4 or 4 for 4/4 or 2 for 2/4 and end up with the number you first started with - around 90 bars...

“Religion - the ability to produce fantastic amounts of equally fantastic crap which can be interpreted to give any answer you want to hear.”Bikerman - 2010

And you would be spot on. Some tests a few years ago used the sort of kit the Egyptians had to hand - log rollers, simply water lubrication, bronze grabbing hooks, rope...nothing flash. They found that 8-12 men are needed to pull a block 2.5-3 tonnes and that about 20 are needed to get it up a 1:10 incline (such as they would have built for ramps). Not a lot really, is it?

So God cares more about sticking to some timetable that the lives of the innocent. Sounds like a bit of a sad git to me - the sort of teacher who doesn't mind what you do in the lesson as long as you get there on time - (we teachers have a phrase to describe this sort of colleague. In the jargon they are known as "crap teachers"). How does an infant repent? And what should they repent for? So this is it? The solution to the problem of evil? God doesn't act because he is on a tight schedule? Are you serious? And Christians have the barefaced cheek to call this beaurocratic time-watching mass of pomposity 'the god of Love'? Do me a favour. "Oops...those techtonic plates I installed cheaply have just failed causing a huge Tsunami that will kill tens of thousands, including many children...what should I do? Stop the Tsunami? Er...what time is it? Nope, can't stop it. It's my day off." What a complete and utter b*****d! And what then happens to all these dead children? Have they proclaimed Jesus as their saviour? No - most of them are too young to talk. Have they been baptised? Some, not many. What happens to the rest? The bible seems pretty clear about it: So off to hell they go to be roasted for eternity. Tell me again about this god of love...?

So, when he kills a few thousand babies in an earthquake, are they supposed to thank him?Is he testing the baby to see if it cries? Hardly a fair test is it? I think we can rule that out in the case of young infants....what have they got to be guilty of ? False dichotomy based on begging the question.If the object has mechanisms then it must be designed. By including that in the question the question is rendered useless because it is already assuming the answer it is trying to ascertain. It is also a simple example to refute. Point to a mountain and ask who designed it.... This is clearly someone who doesn't understand maths and is going to try to impress a lot of other people who don't understand maths either. Probability theory is a bit more complex that equal weighted probabilities. If you have 2 options then there are 3 possibilities, probability indeterminate:Option 1: select choice 1 - there is no way to know how many will do this in advance Option 2: select choice 2 - ditto Option 3: don't select either ditto Yea hah...he can do simple sums... Yes yes.....get on with it....this is statistics for idiots.... Here we go... Complete crap. No educated person thought the world was flat in the 7th century.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth Even if they did then picking some arbitrary figure (30) out of the air means this person is a charlatan. The greeks knew (in about 450 BCE) that the world was spherical.. Chance of Quran being correct 1:1. Total score 0 Complete crap.Also totally dishonest. 10 marks off for cheating and lying. Current score -10 http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/moonlight_wc.html More complete crap. Where does 10,000 come from - clearly this idiot doesn't know the difference between a compound and an element. Someone buy him a periodic table and put him out of my misery.So, let's now analyse this properly. Assertion - everything living is made of water (Surah al-Anbiya 21:30). Wrong. The typical male has about 57-60% water. We can be generous and award 2 out of 116 (number of elements) for getting hydrogen and oxygen. OK...does the quran give any other elements for living things (water is an obvious first guess - anyone who has seen blood might reasonably guess it is partly water). Nope not another element guessed. 2 out of 116 is 1/58th of a correct answer. I would do better than this by firing pins at random into a periodic table - no score. Total score -10 No, these three things show the author of this article is either a complete idiot, or a liar and cheat, and either way he is also pretty ignorant. I think I have seen a video of this idiot on YouTube spouting this sort of nonsense with adoring crowds clapping every word. Dr Zakir Naik I believe his name is. A performing seal masquerading as a science literate know-all. I was impressed by his recollection of the quran and the bible, but the rest of it is high-school level (or below) and his knowledge of science is tragic. The crowds either don't understand or feel compelled to ignore his more blatant nonsense...Idiots led by a charlatan. To save time, let me just quickly say that I have already had muslims bring about 60 so called miraculous predictions from the Quran to another forum, and each one was debunked just as easily as these claims. The quran contains no special insights into science, and it contains no startling or even slightly impressive predictions about the future, or science, or anything else. However, if you really want to line more up then feel free - and I'll just knock them down again. (I've spent a long time looking at this issue for both bible and quran, so I've had some practice :-) )

Hi Yep, those seem reasonable apart from the sand scaffold bit. Ramps rather than scaffolds would have been used. No really. Sand will stand tremendous compression forces without binding together - as long as there is no water or other binding agent. The fact that the pyraminds are not 100% perfect tends to point to a human origin - 95-97% just means that they got really good at it. Yummy, I like maths. What are you going to teach me? A solution to the Reimann hypothesis? The Goldbach conjecture? Is that it? That's arithmetic, not really maths. I am very disappointed... What has the distance got to do with it. They wouldn't fit one block, nip 150 miles upstream, then say 'next please' and wait for it. They would have been sailing the blocks down the Nile as fast as they could quarry them. There would have been convoys of boats going back and forward all day.As for the boats being able to carry 16,000 kg = easy peasy. I'm, not really impressed to be quite honest. Why don't you start with what we DO know and then see if there are still some things you think are impossible?(it also looks like Von Daniken's influence still persists...a lot to answer for, that man.) http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/pyramidworkforce.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/great_pyramid_01.shtml

Quite wrong. The conclusion I draw is the same as the YECs. YECs are crazy people but they occasionally sumble on a good argument by accident. In this case the argument is: There is nothing inconsistent in providing the only literature I think you will read. It is my experience when dealing with creationists that they don't read science - any science. Therefore I try to provide links to creationist literature when possible. It is rarely possible because YECs don't do science, but this is linguistics and textual analysis so they might be able to manage that. The reason for that article was that it seemed better balanced than most - they take one side or the other on dogmatic grounds. I would have thought that it was obvious that the strongest argument is that by the YECs - the one quoted above. OECs and others have no substantive answer to it and simply cop-out by saying 'just because it is always used like that in the OT, doesn't mean it is this time'. That is no sort of argument - even for a creationist. Then, of course, the thing is actually resolved by the passage itself. Recall So not only is the word Yom used, it is actually defined for us in the text - the light of a 24 hour period - which you will recall I gave as one of the meanings. It is not possible to maintain that Yom means anything other that what it means in normal Hebrew - a literal day.If you are willing to read non creationist links then the following makes the case quite clear and quite conclusive: http://www.cai.org/bible-studies/how-long-were-days-genesis-1 I know you would like science not to be the issue, but it is. Science works, is subject to test, and is the most perfect system for gathering knowledge about the universe that we have yet invented. In any conflict between science and religion about facts then religion is wrong, no question about it. This has been demonstrated time and again over the last 500 years. So you want to rule out stars? But it doesn't say which stars on day 4. Using your own argument it is logical to assume that it would have only meant the stars known about at that time (which were actually planets in a few cases). Therefore there is no contradiction in reading 'let there be light' to refer to the rest of the billions of stars that were not known about. Why you think that light implies heat I am not sure. Heat is not 'an obvious property' of light. Heat refers to very specific frequencies of electromagnetism that are NOT visible, so this argument is a non-starter. Conclusion - either God created most of the stars in the first day, or he created some unspecified light. Either way the earth would have been a frigid ice covered globe with a temperature two hundred degrees below zero... Blame the Jesuits, not me. All I gave you was standard (and current) Roman Catholic doctrine on the matter. There cannot be any prehistoric animals prior to creation - it is so obvious that a child could see it.a) Any animals that existed before Genesis 1 would have been eternally frozen blocks. b ) Any animals that existed before Genesis 1 would, by definition, be known about by God because he must have created them. The bible is the inspired word of God and it is not conceivable that Moses (or whoever really wrote Genesis) could have got something so badly wrong. The animals concerned cannot have existed AFTER creation - who would create them?

If you want the Compiler Bible then you wany Principles of Compiler Design, by Alfred Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman If you mean compile as in accumulate, and you just want general info, then there is a huge amount of good stuff on the web, as long as you filter selectively (if it is an .edu .ac.uk then that is a good start)

Uni (Manchester) is a long time ago and many of the books I used then (even if I could remember them) would now be out of date. I use various texts when teaching - it depends on the level. At A level standard I am teaching to a set syllabus so I would tend to use a standard course text - such as the AQA A level text. This would be supplemented with various material - some I just know, others from appropriate websites and some from my own text books upstairs in my study. They include: and about another 50 assorted books. If you tell me what level you want then I can be more specific...

You obviously have a problem reading. Let me spell it out for you:The word YOM means 24 hour day (or sometimes 12 hours - referring to the day, not night) EXCEPT in some circumstances where it is used metaphorically - just in the same way that we use the word 'day' metaphorically in phrases such as 'The Day of The Jackal'. When used like that it is obvious from the textual context. Genesis is NOT using it like that. Even it you think it was then the clincher is that when the word (Yom) is used, as in Genesis 1, with a number, it ALWAYS means day as in 24 hour period. geddit? But you didn't read the rest did you? Typical fundie .. only see what they want to see. Read the rest - or if you can't be bothered I've explained it again above. But since the text is kind enough to tell us, then we can work with this 24 hour period. I agree - literal or not the text does not work scientifically therefore it is a parable/metaphor/story. Again you need to read what is actually written and not stop at a comma or full stop just because it suits you up to that point. Read the whole thing. These uses of YOM are not unique, they are very common - found in many parts of the bible. Everytime the word is used, except for in obvious metaphoric use in parables, IT MEANS 24 hour day. I didn't say the sun was the only source of light - I said exactly the opposite. You really do have a problem reading don't you? I can't use much simpler words - I'm already simplifying as much as I can.Yes, let there be light indicates the creation of the universe - the stars would be part of that. Therefore we have starlight. The point is that it would not be of much use. It depends how deep. The thing you probably don't know is that visibility is not the issue. At different frequencies photons also mean heat. Without the sun this planet would have a temperature somewhere around -270 degrees centigrade. Nothing lives in that. Again you have a problem with plain english. The question is perfectly formed and valid. The fallacy results from the fact that omnipotence is disallowed since it is inherently paradoxical. Now, you seem to be saying that the bible means some different form of 'omnipotence' so would you care to tell us what that actually is? Like when it appears in Revelation 19:6? You don't have to 'derive' anything. You are assuming that a word means something different. You are happy to play fast and loose with the text when it suits you. The word 'all' means 'all' - it doesn't mean 'except x,y,z' - that is your invention. It is also silly to presume it meant NOW. When is NOW? 2000BCE? 10000BCE? 1CE? 2010? The meaning of 'all' is emphasised repeatedly in the Genesis account:

Not sure about the intellect - you are welcome to what you can find

I didn't quote a single person. I cited the common view amongst Hebrew Scholars.The word Yom can mean a 24 hour period, a 12 hour period, or an period of a longer time. It is nearly always used to mean 'day' - as in Yom Kippur (Day of atonement) or Yom Teruah (day of shouting). It is occasionally used in a more poetic way to mean an 'era', but when that is the case then there are hints from the context - just the same as in English. So when we say 'Concorde was fantastic in its day', it is clear that the word doesn't mean a 24 hour period from the context. In Genesis we see a distinct usage. It doesn't say 'on the first day', it says Day 1 (yom ehad). When Yom is used this way is means 24 hour period. Click here for link to supporting material Exactly the same applies to Hebrew. The use in Genesis is clear and fits with most use in the rest of the bible - it means 'Day' literally. Where it is used in the bible to mean 'period' then it is obvious from the context. Why, because you say so? Hardly evidence, since you haven't a clue what you are talking about. Which, as previously explained is wrong. It is a day. Also the concept of day (or night) is meaningless without the sun, since it is then an entirely arbitrary figure. Yep that is what it says. So 4 days into creation we have the sun and moon. Fine, agreed. The answer is easy - it IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. See...problem solved. It makes no difference at all. Even if we take your assumption to be true (ie that the first 4 'days' mean some period of time greater than a day then the story still doesn't work, as I have already shown). The fact is, though, that the storyteller is born when there is a sun and his choice of the word Yom is made in that context for the whole account, not just from day 4. IT MEANS DAY! Of course there can be light without the sun. Light is just photons within the visible spectrum - we can get it from stars and other phenomena. That isn't really the point. Plants do not grow without much more than starlight can provide. When God creates the plants there is no sun - hence they die. Since you also say that this period is more than a day, that just means they all die, rather than just some or most. Pretending that there was already light is 'not biblical' since on day 4 we read that the sun is created "to give light on the earth.". It follows that before this the earth did not have light on it. There are no inaccuracies in what I have quoted. There is no fallacy in the question. The fallacy is in the concept of omnipotence. Fortunately many people DO know the difference between a logical fallacy of composition, and a fallacy of premise, so they know that the fallacy is with the notion of omnipotence, not the question which merely highlights the paradox involved. Another fallacy. The bible does not mention lots of things. It doesn't say that any specific animals were created, so using your 'logic' no specific animals were created....other than some generic 'wild animals'. It doesn't mention that an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere was created, but we sort of assume it was, otherwise the story makes even less sense. There is no reason to believe that the word 'all' means anything other than 'all' the animals, and your interpretation in 'not biblical'. All means 'every-one', 'every example'. Why do you insist that it doesn't? Get a dictionary. Again you are fundamentally wrong. Prehistory is that period before written history (hence the name...geddit?).You cannot prove to me that you had any great-great-grandparents. Is it therefore logical to assume you didn't? This is what we call the 'appeal to ignorance' fallacy. I think Genesis 2 can wait - you haven't understood Genesis 1 yet.

Why? Because you say so? If you want a fuller explanation then I can give one but the physics starts to get complex. At the lowest scales everything exists as fields - non-material and very much like your idea of a force field. There is the electromagnetic field, the gravitational field and the proposed Higgs field. These all interact to produce what we see as solid atoms, tables, people and the rest of the visible universe. Where there are disturbances or 'ripples' in the field then you get mass - 'stuff'. Those ripples are affected by the fields to give them mass, charge and the other quantitative stuff that all matter has. I didn't say anything was impossible - I never do. I say that it is quite possible, but that we haven't yet done it. That is simply the pressure of molecules of air pushing on your hand. Stop the molecules and you stop the feeling - a piece of cardboard will normally do the job. That is a nonsense argument based on two logical fallacies.a) Begging the question. It does not follow that because something is perceptible that it can be neutralised. In fact we know that matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed. b ) False generalisation. Just because two entities or phenomena share one characteristic (they cannot be seen) does not mean that they share others. Gravity IS made of particles according to quantum physics - and remember, at the ultimate scale EVERYTHING is just fields.

I have been a theist, and debated theism with many people over the decades, including some very knowledge and intelligent people. One issue that is never addressed to my satisfaction is the basic problem of evil. Simply put - why would any benign God allow bad things to happen to good people? It is a very straightforward question, yet theologians wrap themselves up in semantic knots trying to answer it - and always either fudge or fail. A common answer - that humans have free-will and evil goes with the territory - is a fudge. It is perfectly possible for free-will to exist without natural disasters that kill children, infants and other obviously 'innocent' people. Catholics would say that the infant is not innocent because of original sin, but that doesn't explain why they would be killed by God... Epicurus (philosopher_) summed up the problem nicely:

That's Riverside College, Kingsway, Widnes WA8 7QQ Tel : 0151 257 2020

LOL..this is one of those decisions, I think, when knowledge can help but not ultimately resolve the issue. Opinions can obviously vary. It is my opinion that decisions which are based on rational justification and are consistent as far as it is possible to be so are ALWAYS preferrable to decisions not based on such justification and/or require special pleading. Anyway, I think I've said most of what I wanted to regarding the original point which summarises to: a) Things are better than they have ever been for most people (in terms of life expectancy, leisure time, violence, autonomy and wealth) so lets not buy into a false premis to start with. b ) Respect for the beliefs of others is not a good prescription because it is based on 2 demonstrably wrong assumptions: i That all views are, in this respect (pun intended) equal ii That no view is objectively wrong or morally repugnant (Either that or you have to say that you respect views which you know are wrong....and I think that is a nonsense). If we insert 'the right to hold' it all works. So instead of respecting views we respect the right to hold views, that is at the same time more rational AND more useful, since it protects everyone equally without some assertion of post-modernist relativity where nothing is wrong and all is equally valid. That is tosh and always was. c) The right to free speech is paramount amongst rights. In the words of someone wiser than me: "Free speech is the freedom I defend to the last - when all else has been sacrificed. The reason for this is that with that one freedom I can win back all the others."

Well as a Brit I can detach myself from that, but not, of course, from actions that are at least as bad, in their way, over history. The question is whether you think it is right from a modern outlook, and most decent people would say no, it is not acceptible. You could argue that most 'decent' people have always thought that. The difference is, unfortunately, societies have been very slow to change the definition of what a person is - and unfortunately is doesn't take too much for people to be prodded back into defining another group as 'not like us and therefore not quite people' mentality, which is just one more reason to support free speech and oppose any proposed restrictions...

Hwere's another way of looking at it. I am the network manager for a large business - this is make-believe so make it any business you like. My graphic design/advertising department want Macs. I know that I can offer them the same, or better functionality using a pc platform at a lower cost and without any of the attendent problems with interfacing new kit onto an existing network. Am I going to make it an issue? No. They know what kit they want and why. It is because people train on them and people learn to trust them - much more so than with a pc. The home user is not always an enthusiast for technology and anxious to explore the computer. Many regard it as a professional tool - writers, graphic designers, creative visuals of all sorts. They like it partly because of what you think is a vice - restricting what bits you can plug into it. What that does (or certainly has done over time) is make the platform more stable. You ask any IT network manager and they will tell you stories of hardware incompatibilities where they shouldn't exist, according to the specs for the standard. You get a graphics card designed for a particular motherboard implementation, and built cheaply, fitted to another model and maybe even generation of motherboard with another bus configuration or some other important change, a load of other extension that have exactly the same issue, and it leads to sub-optimum and often unfit for purpose machines. That is a fair description of pc history. Apple have managed to minimise that experience for their users and that is a big reason for their popularity amongst the more creative/artistic users. Keeping control over peripherals is making sure, as much as you can, that dodgy incompatible kit isn't used in the build or expansion of the machine..doesn't always work (as the new Iphone 4 seems to show) but it does have a better record as far as many users are concerned, and I'm not going to argue with that, even though it means more work for me...

It sounds to me like anwiii is a paranoid fantasist. I haven't a clue who thenewguy is and why should that be any of my business? It isn't me, obviously, and I don't know if it is someone I know differently in another forum or not.* It seems to me like they raised a question about my consistency, which I thought I answered, and then anwiii started a bizarre sidetrack into accusing me of some foul play or other in not knowing thenewguy is a dodgy account...I'm putting the blocking facility to use, so I won't be replying either.* None of my business - if they don't want to tell me (and they haven't pm'd me) then that is their privilege. There is no prior knowledge on my part and I have no reason to believe it is anyone I know. They probably quoted my real name out of courtesy since it is in my signature quite clear for anyone to see.....

Thought you might :-) I like this way of generating it. You can use the normal method of just connecting the sides but this way brings it to life by showing how order emerges from apparent random choices. The lecturer who gave me it knew it would be right up my street, and it got me interested enough to do some more reading and learn a bit about the whole interesting story. Since then, of course, everyone now has seen the Mandlebrot set - seems to crop up regularly. My other favourite is of course the Koch - which bangs home the bounded infinity (and is also pretty) :-) http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/koch.html

Thats exactly the same explanation I normally start with - the good old difference/logistics equation. Just to add - the equation is of a type used by biologists for simple models of populations. The R corresponds to the 'fecundity' or 'randiness' of the animals and 1 is full population, 0 is extinction. The 1-X represents environmental constraints - food, competition etc. In fact they were using the thing for years and just disregarding the results when it seemed to go bad. Not unlike the way that mathematicians are first taught to solve polynomials and ignore the ones that have no real solutions - just junk - when in fact they are probably the most interesting :-) Here is something that should astonish readers (it blew my mind when one of my lecturers asked me to code it on an old BBC microcomputer back in 1982)... Draw a triangle - any size and shape (as long as it IS a triangle of course). 1. Choose a point completely at random somewhere in the triangle and put your pencil down to make a point. 2. Repeat the following 2 steps 3. Choose one of the vertices (corners) of the triangle at random 4. Move your pencil halfway from where it is to that vertex (corner), put it down and draw a point. 5. as many times as you can Rvalkass might know this (in fact I bet he does), but I bet nobody else can tell me what you get after repeating this a few thousand times. I was gobsmacked when I came back to the computer after an hour and saw what was on the screen - in fact I thought it must be an error in the graphics chip... If you want to try it, or try to work it out, then don't scroll down. If you can't be bothered then scroll down to see what results - and it works everytime..

OK let me see if I understand this.You are saying that God gives the ultimate philosophical answer to the question of self - as discovered by Descartes 2 millenia later. Yes?And you say that the reason for the jealous God in the OT is frustration because he has the answer and the non-believers won't listen, and instead they spend their time mucking around with idols and stuff which won't solve the problem, or even address it properly.Is that a fair summary, before I continue? (and I'll just ask one further question - why do you mention Jesus when we are deep into the Hebrew bible here (OT) ? Is it just as a reminder that the two are part of the same as in normal Christian theology, or is there a deeper point?

Well, not really - all part of the same. Why is it cheating? Surely if you can travel for a year and go 20 years into the future (and you can do better than that if you go fast enough) then that must count as time travel? Yes, you are only slowing the clocks down, but that is still time travel - you are travelling at a different rate in the time dimension. The way I imagined this to get started is quite a good little mental picture - you might find it useful. You travel in spacetime. Spacetime is space and time all wrapped up into one. Your speed through spacetime is always the same - the speed of light. We spend all our time doing nearly all of that travel through time (we don't move fast enough to really count when it comes to moving through space. The fastest human speed achieved is about 25,000mph in Apollo 10. Compare that to 187,000 miles per second, and you see how slow it is. Since the speed through spacetime is always the same, the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time (although to you it is no different because your life is measured against spacetime, as is everyone else). The difference is only obvious when someone else doesn't move through space as fast as you. They are then moving through time much quicker than you. Get it? It is a handy little mental model to explain what is going on. This is where the maths is useful, and the maths for time dilation is easy peasy - watch and I bet you can follow it no bother. Let V be the speed through space of you. Let V1 be my speed through space. (I need to use velocity rather than speed, because otherwise we might not be moving apart as fast as we are moving - we might be moving at angles to each other). So your velocity is V and mine is V1. We want to know the speed that our clocks are ticking. Another way of saying that is we want the rate of change of time. Rate of change, in maths, is written as a greek letter Delta (Δ), so the rate that your clock ticks can be written as ΔT and mine can be written as ΔT1. That's all we need. The formula for calculating the different rate is: ΔT1 = ΔT/(square root(1 - V2/c2) If I has a square root sign that would be perfect. Still, you can see it isn't very hard. The extra term ( c ) stands for the speed of light (our speed through spacetime).(I can actually show you how to get this forumla just using pythagoras and a right triangle, but that is another time). So you might see from this formula that the important bit is the V2 - your velocity squared (we could swap, it doesn't matter, since this will work whether you are V or V1) As your velocity gets closer to the speed of light - c - then that last bit of the formula gets closer and closer to c2/c2 which is 1. (anything divided by itself is 1). And look what happens then. You get ΔT/sqrt(1-1) in other words ΔT/0 which is not possible - or we can say it is infinite - you cannot divide anything by zero and get a sensible answer. Theoretically, if you could move at the speed of light then no time would pass for you at all. You could fly right round the universe and no time would have elapsed for you. Now you can't, because it isn't only time that goes wacky, length and mass also go wacky and they both use the same formula. So if you use L for length instead of T for time then the forumla is the same. Likewise, use M for mass and the formula is the same. That means as you get close to the speed of light, your mass goes up and up towards infinity and your length gets longer and longer towards infinity. Remember that this is from my viewpoint - you don't feel any change at all. So I see you stretch out in length, I see your clock go slower and s l o w e r and I see you getting heavier and heavier (or I would, if i could weigh you). See, it's much better with the maths

I don't know what you are talking about. Since the last post (some time ago) I have been working on a website. I haven't got a clue who newguy is and no, it wasn't obvious it was a fake because I haven't used this system much, other than to post, so I wouldn't even know where to check. Report what you like - I'm quite happy that I have nothing to be worried about. If I knew him then why would he jump straight onto my posts? My friends tend to know me better than that. I thought he was one of yours, not mine.