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
vol VII: Notes

2019

Notes

Sunday 28 July 2019 - Saturday 3 August 2019

[Notebook: DB 83: Physical Theology]

[page 285]

Sunday 28 July 2019

I am my only hope, which is probably true of all of us insofar as we have the maximum of control over our own internal states which are the principal determinant of our feelings [consciously, they are our feelings]. This concepts very quickly spreads to the social realm, however, since our minds are closely coupled to one another by the intense communication based on the broad bandwidth and meaningful content of our body language, that is our means of communication running from speech through all forms of physical expression to more abstract channels such as this writing. From this point of view the foundation of my hope is my social connection based on faith, that is trust in the honesty of my contacts and charity which depends on the goodwill of these contacts. Where faith and charity break down by lies and exploitation, hope is injured. We see this at work in Trump's attempts to destroy America for his own benefit, a chronic liar (like the Communist Party and the Catholic Church) at the centre of the human communication network.

[page 286]

Monkey: Uproar in Heaven Havoc in Heaven - Wikipedia

I hav never been very competitive. My ancient attitude to exams was that studying for them was akin to cheating and I have probably only pursued one aim in life, to follow the monkey (my Chinese totem) and create uproar in heaven to push back against the immense damage the imperial church and its followers have done to the spirit of the world manifested in the damage 'advanced' civilizations have done to indigenous people due to their superior powers of violence.

Graves page 21: 'A true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history and comparative religion, not in the psychotherapist's consulting room.' Robert Graves: The Greek Myths: Complete Edition

page 22: 'My method has been to assemble in harmonious narrative all the scattered elements of each myth, supported by little known variants which may help to determine the meaning, and to answer all questions that arise as best I can in anthropological historical terms.'

Monday 29 July 2019

What is happening in my neural jungle this morning?

I was a such loved child, the first of eleven, the subject of expectation beyond my talent, but I have kept at it, hoping to replace genius with a century of close application, and sometimes I think I am getting somewhere, often I know that I am not, but there is no going back, I have led a charmed life, supported by many people and supporting many, but I am keen to contribute something to the world by working to record what I have understood in life, in contrast

[page 287]

to the errors of the church that shaped me through school and monastery. This I feel is my fate, to reform the organism that malformed me, not by political power, because I have none, but by conceiving and propagating some clear and distinct idea. [I] have always tried to do things with inadequate means, but now I am trying to recruit a university to help me. Little did I guess when I started here [at Adelaide University] in about 1968 that I would move back gain fifty years later. There is a hope of a happy ending like a tragedy avoided. The task is to naturalize morality and see how the big bang could, in a mere 14 billion years, produce a planet full of beautiful creatures, in the hope that this knowledge will divert us from destroying the beauty of our planet and ourselves.

Tuesday 30 July 2019 2019
First lectures, second semester.
Wednesday 31 July 2019

'I see how tragic it is to be ordinary.' Connasse, Princesse des cœurs - Wikipedia: 14:35

Thursday 1 August 2019

Good morning sore throat. Nothing like a bit of pressure to elucidate priorities, so today will be a day at home to write and think about e23-intelligent-universe.

In a panpsychic universe all force is psychological, but we find ourselves living two worlds, one of mind and logic (the philosophical world) and the other of physics and force (the athletic world). We can use one or other of these worlds to make things go our

[page 288]

our way. The philosophical world works best on at least some people and animals and we need to use force on the whole to deal with the inanimate world and the less biddable animals. Part of the philosophical problem of establishing panpsychism is to link the two worlds, giving supremacy to mind, [eg] to diplomacy over military means.

Looking for the source of evil to cut it off. Very convenient to blame the devil and original sin but neither of these exist. The root lies in the evolutionary process where zero sum is operating, so many have the option to die of starvation or die pillaging. So the general answer must be positive sum + fair distribution, both of which require cooperation rather than competition.

terrorism - security - human symmetry. These problems and their solutions arise in the spiritual realm where insecure people seek to control others to overcome their insecurity.

Figliuzzi Frank Figliuzzi: Why Does Trump Fan the Flames of Race-Based Terrorism?

Devdas: intense Bollywood romance, tragic love. Devdas (2002 Hindi film) - Wikipedia

Heaven and Hell are theological porn.

Let us think that the essence of creation lies in the bifurcation of a quantum of action into potential (essence, structure) and kinetic (being, esse) energy so that we can see that form and motion are in fact equal and opposite elements of action, as we can see (hopefully) the absorption and emission of electrons by an atom.

How do we relate romance to philosophy — physically represented

[page 289]

information.

I disastrously disappointed my parents by marrying the wrong woman in secret, divorcing her in secret and then having other relationships with children born out of wedlock trashing the traditional world of my upbringing, the first big mistake being to try to be a priest. So many human relationships are mistakes unless the people involved are able to conform to one another. The arrangers of marriage think they can do better.

Friday 2 August 2019

The biggest issue in politics (and evolution) is the tension between solipsism and cooperation. On the whole the tendency of religions seems to be to promote cooperation at the expense of individualism and the most salient manifestation of this is the demand that people / believers / soldiers etc give their lives for the cause, something that has entered modern consciousness very forcefully in the popularity of suicide bombing as a form of martyrdom promoted both by force and by propaganda. We might see the ancient source of this behaviour in Christian martyrologies, and although the Christians seem to have more or less given it up, perhaps because they are conscious of their dominant ideological position, it is pursued enthusiastically by minority religions trying to break into the mainstream. The religious consequence of natural theology is respect for the divine universe by individual and collective effort to reduce our ecological footprint. My little contribution has been to mothball my old car and go by public transport, "virtue signalling"? Martyr - Wikipedia, Suicide attack - Wikipedia, Virtue Signalling - Wikipedia

The astrologer: "Are you using the gifts you were born with to their full effect?' Hard to tell because of the random element in insight

[page 290]

which is my main tool in seeking to create a natural theology. A lot of the content of natural theology revolves around the psychology of myself and the world, trying to see how the random element in quantum mechanics and the random elements in mental creativity are coupled. This coupling, I feel, is characteristic of networks in general and the the relevant examples here are my personal neural network (brain) and the quantum network that drives the universe.

An important question: am I good enough to pease myself, and should I be asking a question like this at my age? It really comes down to can I stand by my ideas? There was a big hiatus around the time of the renaissance / enlightenment when the revolutionaries had rejected the dogmas of the Church but did not yet have a firm foundation on which to build new dogma. The first inklings of this did not really come until the theory of evolution laid down a new paradigm for our existence and provided a new foundation for ethics based on the nature we were bequeathed by the era of evolutionary adaptation. My work, if it has any foundation, is to build a reasonable and scientifically respectable [ethics] on a theory of evolution expanded onto the network paradigm. Roy Porter: Flesh in the Age of Reason

Saturday 3 August 2019

A disturbing thought. Real numbers are a fiction. Real numbers have proven very useful in the physical sciences as Wigner, Noether, Newton and many others have pointed out, but it may be that they have deceived us into a false understanding of the world. Kronecker was not happy with them

[page 291]

but the real attack on them could be said to have begun with Cantor's discovery of set theory and transfinite numbers, Planck's discovery of the quantum of action and Whitehead and Russell's contention that the whole of mathematics can be developed from logic [maybe both the content and the argument], which is an inherently discrete process. Th root of the problem is that from an algorithmic point of view the limiting processes. Nevertheless the intuitive argument for continuity based on the apparent the continuity of motion is very strong and has held the field against the claims of discreteness, leading to endless trouble in fundamental physics. The intellectual problem appers to be that logical argument, that is logical continuity seems to be a form of action at a distance. So, for instance, a movie is a set of scenes separated by 'cuts' which are discrete but nevertheless fit together to for a logically satisfactory narrative. This continuity requires memory, since the watcher of the movie stitches the scenes together by remembering them all and seeing how they fit together despite their discreteness. This narrative structure is repeated throughout the universe as we (and it) put things together out of discrete and stable parts like bricks stored in out minds or in the mind of the universe. Limit (mathematics) - Wikipedia, (ε, δ)-definition of limit - Wikipedia, Eugene Wigner: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Neuenschwander: Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem

Break here because big slabs of text are somewhat indigestible but no doubt when I begin writing again will fit in with the story. Meanwhile listening to a concert by America which comprises a linked series of discrete songs each musically continuous within itself as, for instance, we imagine an atom or an electron to be. In the text the songs are separated by the html code for a break "br". Contrariwise, we define a particle or scene as something apparently continuous, ie stored in memory like the individual letters of a sentence or the frames of a movie scene or, at a finer grain, like the individual bits that comprise the digital representation of the scene.

The point here is thet arguments for continuity, like the ε - δ argument assume the existence of continuity.

[page 292]

Continuity is where nothing happens. There is no information there, no clear and distinct symbols. Insofar as the gravitational structure of the universe [is continuous] it has no structure in itself, only in what it contains. It is the symmetry, the nothing, bounding the universe [the only structure being the orthogonality the space-time dimensions and the Minkowski metric. Orthogonality - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia

Is there anything [else] I want to do? Not really, so go on with this, keep writing and the ideas will come (or not) but meanwhile thanks to the generosity of my nation I am an old age pensioner who wants for nothing (except to get rid of this cough).

Quid est hoc quod est homo sapiens esse [What is it to be a Homo sapiens]?

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

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, Revised Edition 2006 'The Evolution of Cooperation provides valuable insights into the age-old question of whether unforced cooperation is ever possible. Widely praised and much-discussed, this classic book explores how cooperation can emerge in a world of self-seeking egoists-whether superpowers, businesses, or individuals-when there is no central authority to police their actions. The problem of cooperation is central to many different fields. Robert Axelrod recounts the famous computer tournaments in which the “cooperative” program Tit for Tat recorded its stunning victories, explains its application to a broad spectrum of subjects, and suggests how readers can both apply cooperative principles to their own lives and teach cooperative principles to others.' 
Amazon
  back

Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1895, 1897, 1955 Jacket: 'One of the greatest mathematical classics of all time, this work established a new field of mathematics which was to be of incalculable importance in topology, number theory, analysis, theory of functions, etc, as well as the entire field of modern logic.' 
Amazon
  back

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' 
Amazon
  back

Dodd, J E, and G D Coughlan, The Ideas of Particle Physics: An Introduction for Scientists, Cambridge UP 1991 Jacket: 'This book is intended to bridge the gap between traditional textbooks on particle physics and the popular accounts of the subject ... Although entirely self contained, it assumes a greater familiarity with the basic physics concepts than is usually the case in popular texts. This then allows a fuller discussion of more modern developments.' 
Amazon
  back

Eddington, Paul, Yes Minister, BBC Books 1984 From Publishers Weekly 'The British TV series Yes Minister (shown here on PBS) began as an innocuous spoof on the vagaries of politicians and civil servants. Its popularity increased as it developed a deepening satiric perception of how the British are actually governed: Ministers are kept in the dark by their civil service advisers as much as possible; their sole domain is "making policy," while the civil servants get on with running the country and making sure the politicians get the blame. In turning their scripts into a book, the authors have gone beyond a simple recounting of the episodes. Presented as actual memoirsthe diary of James Hacker, Minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs, augmented by material from his two civil service advisers, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard WooleyYes Minister is an amusingly literate, sharply satirical account of the exchanges of quid pro quo necessary to run any government. The book surpasses its TV origins and stands firmly on its own merits.' 
Amazon
  back

Esquivel, Laura, Swift as Desire, Anchor 2002 From Publishers Weekly 'The princess of modern Latin literature (second only to Isabel Allende) has written yet another quirky and sensual story with a moralistic twist, its cute-as-can-be characters arguing and loving with equal passion. But Esquivel's fourth novel lacks that certain something that enthralled readers of Like Water for Chocolate. Her writing is choppy, clich‚-laden and has the feel of a translation (no translator is credited). Yet it invokes chuckles and sighs, and if a reader craves more of the sweet wackiness that made the author's first book so appealing, Swift As Desire certainly delivers.' 
Amazon
  back

Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths: Complete Edition, Penguin Books 1993 ' In a work that has become a classic reference book for both the serious scholar and the casual inquirer, Graves retells the adventures of the important gods and heroes worshipped by the ancient Greeks. Each entry provides a full commentary which examines problems of interpretation in both historical and anthropological terms, and in light of contemporary research.' 
Amazon
  back

Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
Amazon
  back

Misner, Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . ' 
Amazon
  back

Neuenschwander, Dwight E, Emmy Noether's Wonderful Theorem, Johns Hopkins University Press 2011 Jacket: A beautiful piece of mathematics, Noether's therem touches on every aspect of physics. Emmy Noether proved her theorem in 1915 and published it in 1918. This profound concept demonstrates the connection between conservation laws and symmetries. For instance, the theorem shows that a system invariant under translations of time, space or rotation will obey the laws of conservation of energy, linear momentum or angular momentum respectively. This exciting result offers a rich unifying principle for all of physics.' 
Amazon
  back

Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
Amazon
  back

Porter, Roy, and Simon Schiama (foreword), Flesh in the Age of Reason, W W Norton and Company 2003 Jacket: 'How did we come to a modern understanding of our bodies and souls? What were the breakthroughs that allowed human beings to see themselves in a new light? Starting with the grim Britain of the Civil War era, with its punishing sense of the body as a corrupt vessel for the soul Roy Porter charts how, through figures as diverse as Locke, Swift, Johnson and Gibbon, ideas about medicine, politics, and religion fundamentally changed notions of self. He shows how the Enlightenment ... provided a lens through which we can best see the profound shift from the theocentric otherworldly Dark Ages to the modern, earthly, body-centered world we live intoday.' 
Amazon
  back

Prigogine, Ilya, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences, Freeman 1980 Jacket: 'How has order emerged from chaos? In this book, intended for the general reader with some background in physical chemistry and thermodynamics, Ilya Prigogine shows how systems far from equilibrium evolve elaborate structures: patterns of circulation in the atmosphere, formation and propagation of chemical waves, the aggregation of single-celled animals. In an effort to understand these phenomena, he explores the philosophical implications of the work that won him the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.' 
Amazon
  back

Shirer, William L, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Touchstone Books 1990 Jacket: 'Since its publication in 1960, William L Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the twentieth century's blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic 
Amazon
  back

Links

Adam Cross, The Albany pitcher plant will straight up eat you (if you're an ant), C. follicularis is the only species in the genus Cephalotus, which is the only genus within the family Cephalotaceae. Its nearest living relatives are rainforest trees from tropical South America, from which it is separated by some 50 million years. Indeed, it is the only carnivorous plant among the 70,000 species, a quarter of all flowering plants, that make up one of the largest evolutionary plant groups, the rosid clade.' back

Angelo Campodonico, Bonum ex integra causa. Aquinas and the sources of a basic concept, '"Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex particularibus defectibus" . Aquinas finds this clause first of all in Dionysius' De divinis nominibus, which he read in the early years of his academic career when he was an assistant of Albert the Great in Cologne. We must remember that during the Middle Ages Dionysius was considered an auctoritas: he was considered a disciple of Saint Paul, a Saint. Therefore the content of his works was highly considered by medieval theologians. In particular: the fourth chapter of the De divinis nominibus, in which we find that clause, concerns goodness and evil.' back

Christopher Caldwell, The Problem With Greta Thunberg's Climate Activism, ' Climate activists in Western Europe had already been radicalizing for some time when record heat engulfed the Continent last month. The high reached 109 degrees in Paris two Thursdays ago. Yet many environmentalists have come to believe that extreme weather alone will never spur Europeans to give up fossil fuels. Nor will talking about it. Provocations and disruption are needed.' back

Connasse, Princesse des cœurs - Wikipedia, Connasse, Princesse des cœurs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Connasse, Princesse des cœurs (also titled The Parisian Bitch) is a 2015 French-Belgian comedy film written and directed by Éloïse Lang and Noémie Saglio, and starring Camille Cottin. Plot The capricious thirty-year-old Camilla, comes to think she would be the right wife for a proper English prince. Once that idea comes to mind she stops at nothing to get close to him and demonstrates a staggering audacity.' back

Devdas (2002 Hindi film) - Wikipedia, Devdas (2002 Hindi film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Devdas is a 2002 Indian romantic drama film directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and based on the 1917 Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Devdas. This is the third Hindi version and the first film version of the story in Hindi done in colour. The film is set in the early 1900s and follows Shah Rukh Khan as Devdas, a wealthy law graduate who returns from London to marry his childhood sweetheart, Paro, played by Aishwarya Rai. However, the rejection of this marriage by his own family sparks his descent into alcohol, ultimately leading to his emotional deterioration and him seeking refuge with a courtesan played by Madhuri Dixit.' back

Dextrorotation and levorotation _ Wikipedia, Dextrorotation and levorotation _ Wikipedia, the free encylopedia, 'Dextrorotation and levorotation (also spelled laevorotation)[1] refer, respectively, to the properties of rotating plane polarized light clockwise (for dextrorotation) or counterclockwise (for levorotation), seen by an observer whom the light is approaching. A compound with dextrorotation is called dextrorotatory or dextrorotary, while a compound with levorotation is called levorotatory or levorotary. Compounds with these properties are said to have optical activity and consist of chiral molecules. If a chiral molecule is dextrorotary, its enantiomer will be levorotary, and vice-versa. In fact, the enantiomers will rotate polarized light the same number of degrees, but in opposite directions.' back

Diane Bernard, She wentundercover to expose an insane asylum's horrors. Now Nelie Bly is getting her due, ' Bly’s covert operation exposing abuses at the asylum at Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island, pioneered a path for women in newspapers and launched what morphed into serious investigative journalism. The account by the 23-year-old “girl detective” shocked the public with its depiction of brutality and violence.' back

Eli Rosenberg, Two artists built seesawsacross thr U/S.-Mexico border. The video of kids playing on them went viral, ' Two architects in the San Francisco Bay area are responsible for the installation over the weekend of the three seesaws that briefly graced a small stretch of the nearly-2,000-mile swath of land where the United States abuts Mexico. Videos of the seesaw have drawn millions of views after one was posted on Twitter by Mexican actor Mauricio Martinez.' back

Emotional labor - Wikipedia, Emotional labor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Emotional labor is a form of emotion regulation that creates a publicly visible facial and bodily display. While emotion work happens within the private sphere, emotional labor is emotional management within the workforce that creates a situation in which the emotion management by workers can be exchanged in the marketplace Example professions that require emotional labor are: nurses, doctors,waiting staff, and television actors. However, as the U.S. economy moves from a manufacturing to a service-based economy, many more workers in a variety of occupational fields are expected to manage their emotions according to employer demands when compared to sixty years ago.' back

(ε, δ)-definition of limit - Wikipedia, (ε, δ)-definition of limit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In calculus, the (ε, δ)-definition of limit ("epsilon-delta definition of limit") is a formalization of the notion of limit. It was first given by Bernard Bolzano in 1817. Augustin-Louis Cauchy never gave an (ε, δ) definition of limit in his Cours d'Analyse, but occasionally used ε, δ arguments in proofs. The definitive modern statement was ultimately provided by Karl Weierstrass.' back

Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, 'The first point is that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it. Second, it is just this uncanny usefulness of mathematical concepts that raises the question of the uniqueness of our physical theories.' back

Frank Figliuzzi, Why Does Trump Fan the Flames of Race-Based Terrorism?, ' If I learned anything from 25 years in the F.B.I., including a stint as head of counterintelligence, it was to trust my gut when I see a threat unfolding. Those of us who were part of the post-Sept. 11 intelligence community had a duty to sound the alarm about an impending threat. Now, instinct and experience tell me we’re headed for trouble in the form of white hate violence stoked by a racially divisive president. I hope I’m wrong.' back

Havoc in Heaven - Wikipedia, Havoc in Heaven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedi, ' Havoc in Heaven, also translated as Uproar in Heaven, is a Chinese donghua feature film directed by Wan Laiming and produced by all four of the Wan brothers. The film was created at the height of the Chinese animation industry in the 1960s, and received numerous awards. It earned the brothers domestic and international recognition. The story is an adaptation of the earlier episodes of the Chinese novel Journey to the West.' back

John W. O'Malley, Does Church Teaching Change?, ' This keener sense of historical change took three forms in the council, captured in three words current at the time—aggiornamento (Italian for updating or modernizing), development (an unfolding or evolution, sometimes the equivalent of progress), and ressourcement (French for a return to the sources). A basic assumption undergirded the council’s employment of these three modes in which change might take place: the Catholic tradition was richer, broader, and more malleable than often perceived in the past. The bishops who appropriated that assumption did so not as an abstract truth but as a license to undertake a thorough examination of the status quo.' back

Karoun Demirjian, New spy chief Ratcliffe made his name during the Trump inquiries by backing the president, ' Ratcliffe, who was first elected to the House in 2014, sits on the powerful House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, both of which are investigating Trump for suspected financial crimes, foreign collusion and obstruction of justice. It is from that perch that Ratcliffe last week steered one of the more memorable Republican exchanges with former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during public hearings, accusing him of violating “every principle in the most sacred of traditions” of prosecutors by writing “180 pages about decisions that weren’t reached, about potential crimes that weren’t charged or decided.” ' back

Limit (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Limit (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a limit is the value that a function or sequence "approaches" as the input or index approaches some value.[1] Limits are essential to calculus (and mathematical analysis in general) and are used to define continuity, derivatives, and integrals.' back

Louisa Loveluck and Mustfa Salim, Yazidi women raped as ISIS slaves face brutal homecoming choice: Give up their child of stay away, ' The Islamic State had tried to wipe out the Yazidis, whose faith mixes elements of Islam with pre-Islamic beliefs. Five years on, the genocidal campaign against the already isolated religious minority casts a long shadow, challenging the faith’s long-standing tenets and piling pressure on the religious establishment to navigate the needs of survivors.' back

Martyr - Wikipedia, Martyr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, "witness"; stem μάρτυρ-, mártyr-) is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, refusing to renounce, or refusing to advocate a belief or cause as demanded by an external party. In the martyrdom narrative of the remembering community, this refusal to comply with the presented demands results in the punishment or execution of an actor by an alleged oppressor. Accordingly, the status of the 'martyr' can be considered a posthumous title as a reward for those who are considered worthy of the concept of martyrdom by the living, regardless of any attempts by the deceased to control how they will be remembered in advance. Originally applied only to those who suffered for their religious beliefs, the term has come to be used in connection with people killed for a political cause. back

Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Although initially developed by mathematician Hermann Minkowski for Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, the mathematical structure of Minkowski spacetime was shown to be an immediate consequence of the postulates of special relativity.' back

Onsager reciprocity relations - Wikipedia, Onsager reciprocity relations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In thermodynamics, the Onsager reciprocal relations express the equality of certain ratios between flows and forces in thermodynamic systems out of equilibrium, but where a notion of local equilibrium exists.' back

Ophelia (2018 film) - Wikipedia, Ophelia (2018 film) - Wikipedia, the free ecyclopedia, ' Ophelia is a 2018 British-American romantic drama film directed by Claire McCarthy and written by Semi Chellas about the character of the same name from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Based on the novel by Lisa Klein, the film follows the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective. It stars Daisy Ridley in the title role, alongside Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, George MacKay, Tom Felton and Devon Terrell.' back

Orthogonality - Wikipedia, Orthogonality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Orthogonality occurs when two things can vary independently, they are uncorrelated, or they are perpendicular. back

Patrick Wood, Tim Costello chides 'fearful' Chrstians amid religious discrimination debate, ' Some of the most prominent voices in religion in Australia are driven by fear, and Christians in particular have an unfounded anxiety about being persecuted, Baptist minister and social justice advocate Tim Costello has said. The senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity said a "toxic" debate around asylum seekers in the past decade had "damaged the Australian soul" and contributed to a paralysing fear of others that had crept into public discourse. "It worries me that some of the loudest voices in terms of faith seem to have the most fear," he told the ABC.' back

Rebecca Solnit, Emerging from Darkness, the Edward Snowden Story, 'An open letter to Edward Snowden back

Senthorum Raj, How Grindr has transformed users' experience of intimacy, 'Bodies are cropped, filtered and framed for consumption. Whether you're looking for a relationship or a one-night stand, being on Grindr is serious emotional labour' back

Suicide attack - Wikipedia, Suicide attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A suicide attack is any violent attack in which the attacker accepts their own death as a direct result of the method used to harm, damage or destroy the target. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign such as the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II, and more recently as part of terrorist campaigns, such as the September 11 attacks.' back

Tara Isabella Burton, For Marianne Williamson and Donald Trump. religion is all about themselves, ' New Thought, which flourished in the mid-1800s, was heavily shaped by the Transcendentalist philosophers of the previous generation, writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who believed that the human self was the closest thing we have to a reflection of the divine. For these thinkers, organized religion — indeed, every mainstream institution — inhibited people from trusting their divinely sanctioned intuition, which they saw as the most direct path to truth. “All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought,” Emerson wrote in 1842, in his essay “The Transcendentalist.” ' back

Technology in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy - Wikipedia, Technology in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The fictional universe of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams is a galaxy-spanning society of interacting extraterrestrial cultures, so the technological level in the series is highly advanced, though often unreliable. Many technologies in the series are used to poke fun at modern life.' back

Tim Naftali, Ronald Reagan's Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon, 'The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh. back

Virtue Signalling - Wikipedia, Virtue Signalling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values. Academically, the phrase relates to signalling theory and describes a subset of social behaviors that could be used to signal virtue—especially piety among the religious. In recent years, the term has been more commonly used within groups to criticize those who are seen to value the expression of virtue over action.' back

Walter Scott, Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to device., ' "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to device." This commonly quoted line from Walter Scott was published in 1808 in the poem Marmion. Walter Scott is known for his writings of both poems and novels, including Rob Roy and Lady of the Lake. Marmion was written to help memorialize the battle of Flodden Field. It was purchased by the publisher sight unseen.' 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