scientific theology

This book is part of a project to develop a new scientific and democratic foundation for a catholic theology to replace current theological hypotheses

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Scientific theology: a new history of creation

Chapter 1: The Gods of history

1. The Gods: superhuman powers and personalities
2. Imperial magnificence
3. From ancient Egypt to the Hebrews
4. Religion and Politics
5. Time and eternity
6. The Christian God of Aquinas
7. The Trinity
8. Simplicity and complexity
9. The world is consistent but uncertain
10. Salvation
11. Creating our own salvation
12. My new vision of God: Insight
13. A note on the Country: God is the 'commons'
14. Atheism
15. The pleasures and pains of divinity
16. God is wild
1.1 The Gods: superhuman powers and personalities

At some point in our evolution we became conscious of our creative ability to act and learn. We can imagine this skill prompted some people to ask who made this world? The answer to this question we call God, although the creator has thousands of other names in different languages. At first this answer tells us very little. It is just a dictionary definition of a God: creator of the world.

It was probably not long after that that imaginative people to start making up more stories about the Gods. We can learn a lot of these stories by listening to people descended through very old cultures like indigenous Australians. Creation myth - Wikipedia

In the beginning there was a close relationship between Gods and people. They often spoke to one another (or imagined that they did) and the Gods gave people advice, as Yahweh did to Moses and Krishna to Arjuna. Bhagavad Gita - Wikipedia

Our most detailed knowledge ancient theology comes from surviving ancient texts. Some, like many Egyptian hieroglyphs, are carved in stone. Most, however, were written on more perishable media. This means that only texts that were considered valuable enough to merit repeated copying have aurvived. We have records of divine speech and action from many of the worlds religions. Egyptian hieroglyphs - Wikipedia

We also have architectural and artistic records stretching back much further than writing. Temples are houses for Gods. The Greeks and Romans made statues of their Gods to inhabit their temples. The Egyptians constructed pyramids to house the bodies of the divine Pharaohs. Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is an archaeological site believed to have been used for ritual purposes about 10 000 years ago. Ancient Greek temple - Wikipedia, Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia

The best known poetic records of divine activity in Ancient Greece are the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer. Aaron J. Atsma: Theoi Greek Mythology

Most of these Gods possessed superhuman powers of one sort or another and were thought to exercise considerable control over sublunary life. The Greek Gods depicted in the works of Homer are very human in their passions, friendships and enmities. Their behaviour is often quite unethical by our standards.

At the beginning of the Odyssey, we overhear the Gods discussing Odysseus's fate. Athena wants to know why Zeus is so dead set against Odysseus. Zeus denies it and blames Poseidon:

No, its the Earth-Shaker Poseidon, unappeased,
forever fuming against him for the Cyclops
whose giant eye he blinded; Godlike Polyphemus,
towering over all the Cyclops' clans in power.
. . .
And now for his blinded son the earthquake God —
though he won't quite kill Odysseus —
drives him far off course from native land.
But come, all of us here put heads together now,
Work out his journey home so Odysseus can return. Homer: The Odyssey

Later theologians slowly transformed the Gods from warlords to rather abstract personalities who were more inclined to have the welfare of humanity at heart.

While the Greek Gods shared various powers, Yahweh, the Hebrew God, was given all the powers of his predecessors and became the one God of Israel, the almighty, embracing all power. Although the Greek God's attributes ranged from warrior to lover, Yahweh was principally a warrior God who fought alongside his people (when he was pleased with them) to guarantee victory .

The unification of God was an important development. Instead of being run by a fragmented board of independent Gods, the world became managed by a single God, who might be expected to implement consistent policies in their dealings.

Although Yahweh is one, they are not universal. Instead, as we read in the Hebrew Bible, they have their chosen people, the Hebrews, and they set aside a land 'flowing with milk and honey' for them if the they remained faithful. The land promised to the Hebrews was not uninhabited, and we read a lot in the Bible about Yahweh's role in the Hebrews' conquest, genocide and occupation of the promised land. Hebrew Bible - Wikipedia

Ideas about the Gods are enshrined in many different stories about what happens behind the scenes to make the world go. Here our hypothesis implies that everything we experience, inside and outside ourselves, is revelation of God. Later we will suggest that the invisible system that drives the world is described by quantum mechanics, an abstract mathematical description of a communication network.

There have probably been at least as many Gods as languages in the history of humanity. In this book we choose Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews as the starting point for the evolution of God to the present moment. The traditional Christian God, descended from Yahweh, is a mysterious other, beyond human ken. Their relationship with us is described by the Christian history of salvation. Here, in contrast, we plan is to bring God down to Earth and make them an observable presence. The Universe is our God and all science is part of theology.

As ideas about the Gods developed, we can see a general move from poetry to science. At the same time the Gods became more distant and abstract. In his days as Yahweh, God was in close contact with their chosen people. With the advent of Christianity, God made one last appearance as Jesus of Nazareth, and, according to the Catholic Church, there has been no new revelation in the 2000 years since.

The Catholic God developed from the fusion of Greek and Hebrew philosophy and theology in the context of the Roman Empire. Because travel within the Empire was relatively safe and easy thinkers and writers, many from the occupied nations, collaborated to produce the God of the Nicene Creed. Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, Roman Roads - Wikipedia

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1.2 Imperial magnificence

It seems natural enough to extrapolate from the powerful human rulers to the powers of God. Monarchs have considerable control over the lives of their subjects, and have traditionally used this control to enrich themselves at the people's expense. Usually they use military force to maintain peace and the productivity of the taxpayers. This practice continues to the present day and we frequently hear of deposed dictators absconding with many billions of their people's money. Paul Richter: Moammar Kadafi's hidden riches

Architecture has often been the means for monarchs to exhibit their wealth and power. Many of the most magnificent buildings in the world were constructed as palaces and temples, and it was not hard for theologians to imagine that the divine heaven must be so much better than these. A brief look at the Universe revealed by modern astronomy confirms this view. NASA: Hubble Space Telescope Images

When we consider the wages and productivity of ancient stone masons and sculptors, we see that many of the religious monuments around the world must have cost billions of dollars (in modern terms) and absorbed a significant fraction of the wealth of the communities that built them. Acropolis of Athens - Wikipedia, Angkor Wat - Wikipedia

Although the regimes responsible for these buildings may have been violent and oppressive, they nevertheless established the peace and productivity necessary to finance the work. These structures themselves, by representing the links between heavenly and earthly powers, contributed to the foundation of peace and social harmony. They are concrete representations of the abstract ideas that led people to cooperate with one another, by consent or through violence, to complete monumental tasks.

The best documented ancient theocracy the world has seen was ancient Egypt, which has written history stretching from about 3000 BCE to the beginning of the 'common era'. During this period Egypt experienced a series of relatively stable dynasties separated periods of civil war and invasion. Common Era - Wikipedia

The Pharaohs established a powerful absolute monarchy which used layers of bureaucracy to control agricultural production, trade, construction, religious practices and the population in general. The Pharaohs ruled by divine right, so that there was a very close relationship between religion and politics which has remained a characteristic of monarchies to the present day. Canadian Museum of History

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1.3 From ancient Egypt to the Hebrews

Toward the end of Genesis God changed Jacob's name to Israel. Then:

. . . God said unto him, I am God almighty; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins.

Later we find Israel's youngest son Joseph exiled to Egypt by his brothers. They were jealous because their father loved Joseph the most and gave him a coat of many colours. As the story goes, Joseph got on very well with the Pharaoh and the children of Israel became well established in Egypt.

The second book of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus tells us that a new Pharaoh feared the growing population of Israelites. He began to oppress them and commanded the midwives to kill their baby boys. Moses was born, was hidden, found and brought up by the Pharaoh's daughter. He went on to lead the Israelites out of Egypt toward the promised land. Moses established his divine right to lead by speaking directly to Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Yahweh was a jealous God. When Moses came down from Mt Sinai and found the people worshipping a golden calf, Yahweh ordered Moses have everyone who had deserted to be killed. Exodus

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1.4 Religion and Politics

Yahweh made no secret of the fact that they expected people to go to extremes to demonstrate their faith in them. In Chapter 22 of Genesis, Yahweh asks Abraham to kill his own son Isaac to demonstrate his faith. Christianity sees this episode as foreshadowing the God's sacrifice of his Son Jesus many years later. Book of Genesis 22:2

Moses wrote the comprehensive set of laws that the Chosen People must obey to fullfil the terms of their Covenant with Yahweh. The inspiring vision of being chosen by the almighty remains with us to this day, a powerful binding force in the Jewish community. Much of this law is not particularly relevant to modern times but the ten commandments remain the core of Christian law. Ten Commandments - Wikipedia

Moses was a prophet, Yahweh's spokesman. Jesus, Christians believe, was God themself. While Yahweh worked invisibly in the background, Jesus was born with a two specific missions: to reveal the conditions under which God would forgive humanity for the insult delivered by the first people; and to become the human sacrifice that would motivate the Father's change of heart. Rather gruesome, but consistent with the personality of a rather violent God whose idea of justice includes an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The Fall, Exodus 21

As well as being a visible God, Jesus revealed much new doctrine. They softened some of the Mosaic prescriptions: You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.' Matthew 5

Further, they reduced whole of the Mosaic Law to a very simple statement, first recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy: love God, love your neighbour. This is a very fertile principle, and underpins many of the advantages we experience today, particularly the islands of peace in which the other benefits of modern civilization flower. Deuteronomy 6:5, Luke 10:25-37: Parable of the Good Samaritan

This principle of Christianity, honestly applied, requires that we tolerate everything except violence. Let people think and say what they like, as long as they do not use force on others. The burden of this book is demonstrate that the most peaceful way to manage our affairs is to understand and imitate the divine Universe which we inhabit. In other words, we are working on a new exposition of what it means to obey God.

The cult of personality inherent in the concept of a supreme leader of some sort is no longer a suitable foundation for government. What we have come to realize is that a stable and prosperous society depends upon democracy and science. Those who abandon this ideal for monarchy and arbitrary doctrine will eventually find themselves in conflict with reality and unable to survive without radical change. We see this happening in the Catholic Church itself, whose resolute stand against significant roles for women and its protection of people who sexually abuse children has brought its credibility close to zero.

The cult of Jesus' personality has endured since the beginning of the Church, but there has been a parallel development of the scientific and democratic attitude in the Church. As Dalrymple notes

It was a the cross-fertilisation of Christianity with Alexandrian Greek philosophy that drew the developing Christian doctrine away from the strictly Jewish traditions which had given them birth, and which raised the religion—originally a simple series of precepts addressed to the poor and illiterate—to the level of high philosophy. Dalrymple: From the Holy Mountain page 385

Jesus began a movement which transformed Judaism into Christianity. Jesus' principal problem lay with the priestly ruling class. The Scribes and Pharisees had expanded the law recorded in the Pentateuch to a morass of detail which was very hard to follow. Control of the law had made them wealthy and powerful at the expense of the general population. Robert Crotty (2017): The Christian Survivor: How Roman Christianity Defeated Its Early Competitors, Matthew 23

Christianity started very small. Jesus, his twelve apostles and various other friends, some women, began to promote new religious 'good news' in their neighbourhood. From this point of view Jesus was a politician, convincing more and more people that his platform of love and care was better than legalistic approach to human relationships promoted by the Jewish religious establishment.

We may speculate endlessly about why Christianity succeeded so well, but perhaps its winning trait was that (in the early days at least) it included everybody. This enabled it to spread through the Roman Empire and appeal to the diverse populations that the Romans had brought into contact as they pillaged and enslaved the world around them. The Romans built an extensive system of high quality roads to move their troops quickly to trouble spots. These roads served as a sort of imperial internet. The Christians preached a very simple message: love God, love your neighbour. They dropped the Jewish requirement of male circumcision as a sign of allegiance to Yahweh very early in their doctrinal development. Acts 15: The Council at Jerusalem

Jesus was murdered, but their ideas live on. We can imagine that their willingness to die for their beliefs strengthened the resolve of their followers, and we see them spreading Jesus' message throughout the Roman empire.

Christianity spread rapidly, but there was resistance. From the point of view of Judaism and the other established religions of the Roman Empire, Christianity was unorthodox. Some people were worried that these new doctrines would upset their traditional Gods, causing crop failures and other disasters. Christians were sporadically persecuted, but Christianity eventually grew to become the official imperial religion.

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1.5 Time and eternity
Scholars decided quite early on that God is eternal. The attribute first occurs in Deuteronomy 33:27: The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms and they shall thrust out the enemy from before thee and shall say Destroy them. These words may have been written about 700 bce and probably reflect a prehistoric oral tradition.

The attribute of eternity emphasizes the power and permanence of God, the creator who existed before time began. The Hebrews also insisted that Yahweh was a living God. This interplay of life and eternity created a theological tension, since life implies movement and change, while eternity implies immobility and stability.

In the Greek tradition, the earliest known promoters of eternity were Xenophanes and Parmenides, who flourished about 500 bce. Both appear to have held that the fundamental principles of the world were eternal, outside time. Xenophanes criticized the poetic pictures of God produced by Homer and Hesiod, 'who have attributed to the Gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.' James Lesher (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Xenophanes

These Greek traditions reinforce the Hebrew belief that the eternal God is absolutely other than and different from our ephemeral world of time and change. This radical difference between God and the world remains central to modern Christian theology.

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1.6 The Christian God of Aquinas

Christianity spread rapidly through the Roman Empire and interested many of the Mediterranean intelligentsia. They elaborated the Christian message using their own ideas and philosophies. They drew heavily on Plato, often via Jewish writers, particularly Philo of Alexandria. Marian Hiller (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Philo of Alexandria

After 400 years of rapid development, Christian theological speculation fell relatively quiet, partly due to the failure of the Roman Empire. A new burst of theological activity began in the twelfth century. This followed the rediscovery of Aristotle in Europe and the development of the first universities. An important outcome of these events is the synthesis of Christian doctrine produced by Thomas of Aquino. His pre-eminent position in Catholic theology endures to this day. McInerny & O'Callaghan (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): St Thomas Aquinas

The Catholic Church proclaims a body of doctrine about its invisible God which must be taken on faith (precisely because its God is invisible). The Church claims to have the gift of truth and to be be infallible. These attributes enable the Church to exercise a mandate to teach and demand belief which it calls its magisterium. John Paul II: Faith and reason, Magisterium - Wikipedia

The Church is governed by the Code of Canon Law. Canon 252 § 3 provides that:

There are to be classes in dogmatic theology, always grounded in the written word of God together with sacred tradition; through these, students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St Thomas as a teacher. Holy See: Code of Canon Law

The Thomistic model of God is based on Aristotle's doctrine of potency and act. We see this very clearly in his first proof for the existence of God which he takes almost verbatim from Aristotle's argument for the existence of a first unmoved mover. Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I, 2, 3: Does God exist?

Aristotle, like Parmenides and Plato before him, was seeking invariant features of the world which could be written down and remain true indefinitely. His first step in this direction is his theory of matter and form, called (from the Greek) hylomorphism. Hylomorphism - Wikipedia

Aristotle took the notion of form or idea from Plato. Like Plato's forms, Aristotle's forms are eternal: they do not themselves change. Change occurs in the physical world when one form of a quantity of matter is replaced by another, as when a brass sword is recast as a ploughshare. At its lowest level (prime matter) matter has no inherent form, and is capable of assuming any suitable form.

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle generalized matter and form to potency and act. Potency, like matter, is the potential to accept a form. Act (Greek entelecheia, energeia), like form, is what makes things what they are.

The potency-act model allowed Aristotle to include psychology in his modelling of the world. A sense is a potency which is realized by the form of a sensible object. The mind is a universal potency, able to be activated by anything intelligible. Aristotle concluded that the mind is separate from matter because matter, as he conceived it, is not sufficiently versatile to accommodate all the forms found in mind (Aristotle On the Soul: 429a18). Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): The Active Mind of De Anima III 5

Potency-act also gave Aristotle a way to define motion: motion is the passage from potential to actual.

The relationship between potency and act is defined by a single axiom: no potency can actualize itself. It can only be actualized by something already actual. For anything to move, therefore, there must be a first mover which is purely actual. Aristotle sees this first mover as unmoved and divine, enjoying eternal happiness. Aristotle: Metaphysics 1072b25 sqq.

Aquinas saw that this approach could equally well describe his Christian God. He concludes from his proof for the existence of God that God is pure act, actus purus.

Aquinas then goes on to derive the classical properties of God from its pure actuality. The first of these is simplicity. Complexity implies potential, he tells us. But God is pure act, and so must be absolutely simple (omnino simplex), having no parts. He then goes on to derive all the other classical properties of God: goodness, perfection, infinity, omnipresence, immutability, eternity, omniscience, omnipotence, truth and life.

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1.7 The Trinity

Hebrew theologians were very proud of the unity of their God. Unlike other nations that had many Gods, often in conflict with one another, the Hebrews has just one almighty God, Yahweh. They also had an anti-God, who appeared very early in the Biblical story, in chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis. Genesis

This creature, in the form of a serpent, led the first people astray. Satan, although a troublemaker, is in no way as powerful as God. Definitely not an evil divinity, at best an evil angel. So God rules almighty and supreme. Satan - Wikipedia

The Christian revision of Judaism introduced the Trinity. In Christianity, God the Father is corresponds to Yahweh. The Trinity adds two further personalities, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a dogma of the Catholic Church, established by the Nicene Creed and the biblical references that are believed to support it.

The apparent contradiction between a trinitarian and a unitarian God raised enormous problems for early theologians. As with many Christian beliefs, it was understood to be a mystery and one should not ask too many questions. Like the first people in the Garden of Eden, however, curious theologians could not leave the question alone. Aquinas developed the standard model of the Trinity from the work of Augustine. Augustine: The Trinity, Aquinas, Summa, I, 27, 1: Is there procession in God?

An important step toward the Trinitarian model of God is to be found in John's Gospel, where the Son of God is interpreted as the Word of God, an image of the mind of God. The Spirit who appeared at Pentecost as tongues of fire became the third person of the Trinity, understood to be the love between the Father and the Son. The Gospel according to John, Crotty (2016): Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John

Aquinas understands the persons of the Trinity to be differentiated by their relationships to one another. He holds that although relationships are merely accidental among created things, they are real in God. These relationships are established by the generation of the persons from one another, and have special names, fatherhood (paternitas) and sonship (filiatio) refer to the relationship between Father and Son. Breathing (spiratio) and procession (processio) refer to the relationships between Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. The modern Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan has written at length about the early development of the Dogma of the Trinity and commented extensively on the work of Aquinas. Bernard Lonergan (2009): The Triune God: Doctrines, Lonergan (2007): The Triune God: Systematics

Way back in my monastic days, I guessed that the theory of the Trinity may provide a means to link the absolute simplicity of the traditional God to the unlimited complexity of the observable world. This seems to have been a pretty good guess, as we shall see.

Revision of Catholic doctrine is necessary, and our starting point for this revision is the God imagined by Thomas Aquinas. We see this God to be formally identical to the initial singularity predicted by the general theory of relativity. Both of these are without structure, and each of them is understood in their respective fields to be the source of the Universe. Hawking & Ellis: The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7: Is God altogether simple?

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1.8 Simplicity and complexity

There is nothing to be said about an absolutely simple God which has no features to describe except that it exists. This fact is captured by the ideas of apophatic theology and the via negativa. Aquinas, referring to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite wites:

Once we know that something may exist, the next question to ask is the nature of its existence, so that we may know what it is. But since we cannot know what God is, but what it is not, we cannot study God's nature, but rather what they are not. The first thing to study, therefore, is how God is not; second, how God is known by us; and third how God may be named.

We can study how God is not by removing from it features which are not appropriate, such as composition, motion and other similar things. First therefore we study God's simplicity by which we remove composition. . . . Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - Wikipedia, Apophatic theology - Wikipedia

The simplicity of the classical God raises a significant obstacle to identifying Thomas's God with the immensely complex world that we inhabit. Nevertheless, this obstacle may fall to the mathematical theory of fixed points.

We begin with the assumption that God is everything that exists. There is nothing that is not God, ie nothing outside God. This definition removes a difficulty in the Catholic notion of creation. If God is the fullness of being, ie everything that can possibly exist, how can they create something that is other than itself?

The Catholic God, like Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible, is a living God. This raises a theoretical problem for theologians, including Aquinas. Thomas, following Aristotle, defined life as self motion. He also accepted Aristotle's definition that motion is the passage from potency to act. So to say God lives is to say they move and therefore contain potential, which contradicts the idea that God is pure act.

To get around this, Aquinas invokes another form of motion, proper to intellectual beings, from act to act, which is also proper to God. The life of God is, he says, a motion from act to act and no potential is involved. Aquinas, Summa I, 18, 3: Is life properly attributed to God?

Modern physics sees potential energy as equivalent to kinetic energy. Aristotle thought that no potential could actualize itself, but modern physics tells us that is not so. Potentialities and actualities are each capable of transforming into the other. This is a consequence of the conservation of energy. They are in effect the motions from act to act that Aristotle and Aquinas first imagined in intellectual processes. We see this transformation in a pendulum, which, in the absence of friction, converts potential energy to kinetic energy and back again forever. Conservation of energy - Wikipedia

Mathematically, we interpret the motions of life in God as mappings. Since God is all that there is, any mapping within God must be from God to God, as Aquinas realized. Fixed point theory tells us that under certain wide conditions, we can expect systems mapping onto themselves to have fixed points, that is points x which are unchanged by the mapping f, that is f(x) = x. Since the symbols f and x may refer to anything, this idea has wide application, perhaps even to God. There seems to be no logical reason why abstract mathematics should not apply to God.

There may be different fixed points corresponding to different mappings. If there is no limit to the number of mappings, there need be no limit to the number of fixed points. The ancients thought there was a radical difference between motion and stillness. Fixed point theory tells us that stillness is part of motion, simply those points of the motion that do not move, like the centre of a wheel.

This mathematical theory opens up a new way to understand God. No longer is God necessarily an invisible other, so majestic as to be totally beyond our ken. God becomes everyday reality, visibly with us every moment of our lives. We are intimate parts of the divine Universe, and every one of our experiences is revelation from God. I am a fixed point in the divinity, temporary, it is true, but fixed for my lifetime like all the other particles and structures in the Universe.

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1.9 The world is consistent but uncertain

Aquinas and the Church consider that God is completely immutable. This is the basis of their eternity. Divine omniscience means that everything that happens is already known in God: God knows the changing world without changing. Aquinas, Summa: Is God altogether immutable?

Most ancient theologians and philosophers seem to have thought that no matter how messy the world might look to us, it is all under the total control of a benevolent God acting with a consistent overall plan. We call this divine providence. Aquinas, I, 22, 3: Does God have immediate providence over everything?

This raises another problem for the divine Universe. Not only does the Universe change, but many of its changes appear to be unpredictable. This leads us to explore another mathematical discovery, Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Kurt Gödel I: On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems I

The renovation of Catholicism proposed here is based on the scientific article of faith that the world is consistent. Centuries of effort have taught us that the world is not easy to understand. Often it takes many people and much time to understand particular sets of data. In the process of discovery we have learnt repeatedly that apparent inconsistencies evaporate in the face of better understanding. As Galileo realised, the formal heart of this endeavour is mathematics, which is very closely related to logic. The Assayer - Wikipedia, Whitehead & Russell: Principia Mathematica

Mathematics is a universal language limited only by self-consistency, although people also study inconsistent mathematics. It begins with an infinite number of 'letters' (the natural numbers) and explores the transfinite number of ways these numbers can be assembled into ordered strings. Our development of a new model of God will be founded in mathematics, but expressed in pretty plain English, with enough references for readers who want the full story. Chris Mortensen: Inconsistent Mathematics

Mathematics is abstract and formal, interested mainly in logical possibility rather than practicality. Logical possibility means consistency. We imagine an infinity of numbers, but we do not ask if there is enough matter in the Universe to accurately represent every number. In mathematics we like to ignore the fact that in the real world all information is represented physically. The essence of mathematics is meaning or correspondence. When we count sheep we attach a number to each sheep as they run through the gate, saying to ourselves 1, 2, 3 . . .. When the last sheep goes through, we know how many are in the mob, say 257. One of the most expressive expressions in mathematics is the three dots ". . . " which mean "and so on", maybe forever. We represent the infinite set of natural numbers by writing {1, 2, 3, . . . }.

We deal with physical problems by assigning physical entities to symbols representing numbers. So we may say distance (d) = speed (s) × time (t). When we move measuring distance, speed and time we find that this little equation is true, and very useful. Eugene Wigner has commented on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. Here we feel that it is not so unreasonable, since both mathematics and the world are both consistent and fill the full space of consistency up to the border with inconsistency. Further, we know that all action in the Universe is quantized, moving in little atomic steps measured by Planck's constant, h. Big actions comprise many little actions, and they too are discrete event, like the lifetime of me or a sheep. These events can be naturally numbered, giving us a mathematical grip on the world. Are we winning or losing the battle against the coronavirus? Count the cases and count the deaths and you will know. Eugene Wigner, Melissa Davey: Australia coronavirus updates live:

Once mathematics was more or less confined to arithmetic and geometry, but it saw an enormous expansion in the nineteenth century. This was a consequence of the development of mathematical logic which expanded the field of mathematics from numbers to symbolism in general. A symbol can be any definite structure with a name. This led to our current technological age of communication through computer networks. This expansion was codified by David Hilbert, who promoted the formalization of mathematics. The mathematical imagination broke free of the limitations of physical representation to show us what is possible in any consistent system.

Hilbert thought every mathematical problem could be solved, but it turned out that if mathematics is consistent, there must be the regions of incompleteness discovered by Gödel and the regions of insoluble problems discovered by Alan Turing, both a source of uncertainty. Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, Alan Turing - Wikipedia

The uncertainties in mathematics may correspond to the uncertainties in reality. A most interesting feature of quantum mechanics is that the Universe is digital, and there are regions of uncertainty between the digits. This region is very small, measured by Planck's constant, but this uncertainty makes a consistent description of nature possible. Motion, consistency and uncertainty appear to be linked in the observable features of God. The model developed below will cast more light on this linkage. Feynman, Leighton & Sands FLP III:01: Chapter 1: Quantum Behaviour

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1.10 Salvation

What is salvation? Am I saved? In this book I am contrasting two notions of God and, consequently, two histories of salvation. In both the end point is the same: the secure feeling that life is worth living.

The Catholic story is predetermined. The Church believes that God is the invisible, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent power behind every event in the Universe. God knows and controls all, past, present and future. Consistent with this predetermination, Catholicism establishes a rigid framework of acceptable belief and behaviour that it claims to be mandated by its God. At the same time it maintains that we have free will so that we can be held responsible for our actions. Those who follow the mandated regime will be rewarded by an eternity of bliss in heaven. Those who do not, an eternity of pain in Hell.

We have already touched on the sources of the Catholic history of salvation. This story was created and codified in the first three centuries of the Church's existence. The standard version, we might say, is the Nicene Creed, first promulgated in 325 and slightly revised in 381. This doctrine was created at the request of the Roman Emperor Constantine for the political purpose of uniting his empire.

The Hebrew Bible begins with the creation of the world and the first people. It records that the newly created people soon fell out with their creator by disobeying the command not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God punished this crime with pain, work and death. Genesis 2:16-17

Christianity completed the Hebrew story by adding a (delayed) happy ending. The Fall was no longer the final act. Instead, God relented from their harsh judgement of humanity. Their divine Son become human and was sacrificed on behalf of humanity to give satisfaction to the Father. This sacrifice moved the Father to repair the damage he wrought on his creation in a fit of petulant anger, not immediately but (we are told) later.

Sacrificing to the Gods is an ancient tradition. The idea, no doubt, is that by giving the God something the God will give something in return. What will we give God? What we like the most, in many cases roast meat. Human sacrifice seems to have been relatively rare, although embraced enthusiastically in Aztec culture. Christianity embraced it by interpreting the crucifixion of Jesus as the sacrifice of a human God to an invisible God. In fact Jesus' crucifixion was probably just the routine Roman disciplinary murder of a political activist. Human Sacrifice in Aztec Culture - Wikipedia

The basic Christian story is recorded in the New Testament of the Bible. This story fitted nicely with the contemporary consensus that people have an immortal soul, an explicit belief since ancient Egypt. Catholicism believes that the murder of Jesus also restored the bodily immortality that existed before the Fall. This conquest of death is symbolized by the resurrection and celebrated by John Donne in his poem Death be not proud. This alleged conquest of death is the raison d'etre of Christianity. Soul - Wikipedia, John Donne: Death Be Not Proud, Resurrection - Wikipedia

Although our debt to God is paid, repair of the damage to the world is delayed. Sometime in the future, the Church tells us, the world will end. The dead will rise again and be united with their bodies. The world will be made perfect as it was before the Fall. The good will enjoy an eternity of bliss in Heaven. The bad an eternity of pain in Hell. All this will be done by God with no help from us. A comforting story, perhaps, but not easy to believe. Catholic Catechism I, 2, 2, 7: 'From thence He will come again to judge the living and the dead', Book of Revelation - Wikipedia

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1.11 Creating our own salvation

If the world is divine, we may see salvation in an entirely different light. There was no original sin, no Fall, no destruction of human nature by a petulant God behaving like a jilted king. Instead of being only a few thousand years old, we see that that Universe has existed for about fourteen billion years. We see that life has evolved from the simplest physical particles to ourselves and the enormously complex Universe that created us. We are not puppets of a vain divinity that created us for its own glorification, but intimate elements of the real divinity.

We remain children of God in the software engineering sense, but now we must take responsibility for ourselves and live like adults. This is possible because the divine world is not arbitrary. There are laws of nature to guide our engineering and social design. If we prepare the ground properly, plant the seeds and supply them with water, we can be pretty sure that they will grow. On the whole, as we improve our skills with practice, our efforts become more productive. Prayer and arbitrary sacrifice, although psychologically comforting, are not necessary for success.

The most powerful means we have to save ourselves is cooperation. We can expect better results when many people put their heads together and pool their talents and skills for their common good. Most of the benefits we enjoy in the developed world require the cooperation of millions of people across the globe. The power of cooperation is such that even though Catholicism is based on fictional data, the cooperation engendered by the commandment of love has enabled billions of people to live longer and healthier lives.

The power of cooperation is ubiquitous in modern society. Although we have a certain amount of political friction, we have managed to create huge industries like education, health care, manufacturing, construction and communication where we work together in relative harmony to increase our collective health and welfare. The driving force behind this cooperation is the benefit that arises from it, both for business and for human welfare.

Cooperation breaks down when some people gain too much at the expense of others. Our worst disasters are the wars which occur when cooperation breaks in the face of greed and violence. Pirates, warlords, dictators and their ilk find it easier to rape and pillage their neighbours than to produce goods for themselves. The result may be some profit for a few, but loss and destruction for many. Acemoglu & Robinson: Why Nations Fail

Cooperation does not simply happen. It must be created by entrepreneurial spirits who can see the possibilities and assemble the political and and social resources necessary to achieve valuable common goals. Despite the prevalence of violence around the planet, we are making good progress in this direction. One of our biggest obstacles is the hatred engendered by the theological differences that this book seeks to erase. Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

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1.12 My new vision of God: Insight

The work reported here started about fifty years ago. I was led to reject the fundamental premise of Catholic theology by Bernard Lonergan's book Insight. Insight is treatise on metaphysics, that is on decoding the meaning of reality. When I first read Insight I was a believing Catholic headed for the priesthood. Lonergan showed me that I was on the wrong track. Bernard Lonergan: Insight: A study of human understanding

In my monastic days, I kept track of scientific developments but I did not, in the beginning, relate them to the philosophy and theology I was being taught. I read Thomas Aquinas in Latin and trusted him, even though this meant putting some scientific ideas to one side.

This changed when I read Lonergan's Insight. Although I found his book difficult it captured my interest enough to make me read it a few times, and I began to see a flaw in the Thomistic argument for the existence of God. The Catholic theological hypothesis, I began to see, might not be verifiable. I saw that Lonergan was trying to prove the existence of God by showing that the Universe sends meaningless messages which he called empirical residue. The argument seemed weak, and I began to feel that Lonergan was in the same position as I might become, a person prepared to sacrifice his feelings in order to keep his job in the Church.

Aquinas' proofs for the existence of God (= the non-divinity of the Universe) might be called physical. He starts each proof from a physical observation and uses his metaphysical model of the world to show that this physical observation implies that the Universe cannot account for itself. Lonergan moves the question into psychological space:

The existence of God . . . is known as the conclusion to an argument, and while such arguments are many, all of them, I believe, are included in the following general form.

If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore God exists. (op cit, page 695)

Lonergan's purpose is to relocate Thomistic metaphysics in our current scientific and political culture. I think he succeeds to the extent that to go beyond him, one must go beyond Thomas and the classical Catholic world view.

Through Lonergan, I began to see that it is possible, in the spirit of Occam' s Razor, to perform major corrective surgery on the Catholic model of God. Making God and the Universe distinct introduces both unnecessary complexity and consequent errors. It is consistent with both logic and experience to make God and the Universe one. Simply put, God is visible. Every experience of life is part of the vision of God. Every element of the Universe is divine. Every event is revelation, even if we do not understand its meaning.

Lonergan updates Aristotle's potency—act model, deriving potency and act not from a study of physical change from a to b, but of psychological change, from ignorance to understanding. He begins with the assumption that being (true reality) is detected with the intellect. He remains wedded to Aristotle in his belief that our senses are not intelligent. At most they provide input for intellectual processing (op cit, page 348).

Lonergan's proof for the existence of God then follows the same track as Thomas:

. . . the five ways in which Aquinas proves the existence of God are so many particular cases of the general statement that the proportionate Universe is incompletely intelligible and that complete intelligibility is demanded. (op cit, page 678)

The proportionate Universe contains proportionate being. Proportionate being may be defined as whatever is known by human experience, intelligent grasp, reasonable affirmation (op cit, page 391).

Lonergan claims that the proportionate Universe is incompletely intelligible because it contains empirical residue. The empirical residue . . . (1) consists of positive empirical data, (2) is to be denied any immanent intelligibility of its own and (3) is connected with some compensating higher intelligibility of notable importance. (op cit, page 50)

Lonergan approaches the empirical residue through

inverse insight: . . . while direct insight meets the spontaneous effort of intelligence to understand, inverse insight responds to a more subtle and critical attitude that distinguishes different degrees or levels or kinds of intelligibility. While direct insight grasps the point, or sees the solution, or comes to know the reason, inverse insight apprehends that in some fashion the point is that there is no point . . . the conceptual formulation of an inverse insight affirms empirical elements only to deny an expected intelligibility (op cit, page 19).
An example of an inverse insight is Newton' s conceptualisation and formulation of the first law of motion: . . . a body continues in its existing state of uniform motion in a straight line unless that state is changed by an external force. Newton's expression is to be contrasted to the ancient view (developed from situations where friction is operative) that continued motion requires the continual application of force.

Almost as soon as I read Lonergan, I became fixed on the idea that the proper framework to understand the world was established by the mathematical theories of computation and communication. This insight paralleled Lonergan's move from a physical to a psychological interpretation of the terms potency and act. A couple of readings later, I saw that Lonergan's empirical residue was model dependent: it does not correspond to anything in reality. This has turned out to be the most important discovery of my life.

Lonergan's misunderstanding is at least as old as Parmenides: he mistakes an abstraction for reality. In an abstract way it is true, as Lonergan says . . . that (1) particular places and particular times differ as a matter of fact, and (2) there is no immanent intelligibility to be grasped by direct insight into that fact.

The physical models which we use to summarise the relationships of events in the Universe are formal algorithms or symmetries, rather like the laws and universals of old, which represent features of the world which remain fixed while other things change. These symmetries are broken and made concrete in every particular instance.

The existence of symmetries does not imply that there is no intelligibility in the relationships of real events such as the impact of a particular hammer on a particular nail at a particular time in the construction of a particular house. The world, like God, is concrete. There are no unbroken symmetries. Every event has a pedigree that extends back to the beginning of time, and this line of descent explains it, that is reveals its intelligibility.

That the world is not completely understood by us does not mean that it is not intelligible. It just happens that neither Lonergan nor any other person understands it in its entirety.

If the attempt to prove that God is other than the Universe falls down there is no reason to believe that the Universe is not divine. Nor is there any reason to believe that there is an absolute distinction between the entities symbolised by matter and spirit, sense and intellect or soul and body. These distinctions are simply elements of models, that is some frame of reference that we use to represent a seamless world.

Theology is the traditional theory of everything, which we may call God or the way things are. On the assumption that the Universe is divine, we learn things about the divinity by studying the Universe. All science is embraced by theology. Unlike the traditional God, which is held to be absolutely simple, the messages coming from the true God are astoundingly complex.

Each of us is a very detailed structure made of about 100 trillion cells each of which itself comprises about 100 trillion atoms. How can we simplify this immense complexity to devise a meaningful approach to action? The answer, I think, lies in our evolution. The Universe began as an absolutely simple entity of pure action. At this point classical theology and natural theology agree.

Observation, communication theory and quantum theory all apear to show that all the beauties (and horrors) of the world are the results of the creative processes that have brought the world from an initial singularity to its present state. If we can understand them properly, we can use this understanding to improve our relationships with one another and with our global life support system.

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1.13 A note on Country: God is the 'commons'

I was fortunate to be born in Australia and to learn a little about the theological traditions of the original human inhabitants of this continent. It is now generally agreed that these first immigrants arrived here at least 60 000 years ago. No doubt they brought much more ancient culture with them. DNA reveals a new history of the First Australians

Catholic theology is built upon the deposit of faith, the collection of historical writings which are considered to be the definitive source of Catholic doctrine. This deposit is infinitesmally small, less than a million words, compared to the huge amount of information contained in our world.

As I now see it, Australian indigenous theology sees everything as coupled to the Land or the Country, our environment. This environment dictates a large proportion of our behaviour, particularly everything coupled to survival, running from war to love. Country, in other words, plays the role played by God in Christianity. When we identify God and the Universe, we expand the concept of the Country to include every observable feature of the Universe. Our deposit of faith is no longer a tiny collection of ancient writings, but everything that we experience in our world. Our faith is strengthened by the fact that the world, unlike many texts, does not deceive us. Nature does not lie, although it is often hard to understand, so we can deceive ourselves by misunderstanding. Climate denial is not natural, it is a human response to bad news.

When we compare the doctrine of the Church with the Bible, its reputed source, we see the creative development of meaning which has been used by the Church to justify the revelation it sees in the text. Here our text is the events of the Universe, and science is our attempt to see meaning in the relationships of these events to one another.

We can all see, if we stop to look, that the world is an amazing and creative place. So creative, the theory of evolution tells us, that it created us and the world we live in. In most theologies, God, however conceived, is the creator, controller and destroyer of everything we experience. This includes the material things of the world like vegetables, animals and minerals, and spiritual events like love and hatred, birth and death, wealth and poverty. This position is consistent with a divine Universe.

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1.14 Atheism

Does God exist? There are many, sometimes called atheists, who say there is no God. Whether they are right or wrong depends absolutely on what they mean by God. There are probably as many varieties of atheist as there are of theist: a one-to-one correspondence.

We say God is identical to the world. The corresponding atheists, since they are practically obliged to admit that they exist, must deny that the world has any qualities that would justify calling it God. A common property of God is necessary existence. And if we assume that the world does not exist necessarily, we might ask why it exists, and are led back to assert the existence of some cause of the world, which people commonly call God. Is this cause identical with the world or not? There is really no way to tell.

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1.15 The pleasures and pains of divinity

Aristotle began the modern development of models of God by inventing his first unmoved mover. This entity, he concluded, must comprise pure action. After describing the unmoved mover he writes:

Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible Universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure. . . . If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is. Aristotle: Metaphysics 1072b14 sqq

Aquinas developed Aristotle's idea of divine bliss, and added the Catholic dream of the beatific vision: the event, after death, when we see God 'face to face', a vision which fulfills our every desire. Aquinas, Summa, I II, 3, 8: Does human happiness consist in the vision of the divine essence?

But, if the world is divine, and all our experiences are experiences of God, it is clear that the life of God is not all bliss. There is pain too. There are hundreds of millions of people on the planet whose life is little better than death. Theologically, this is called the 'problem of evil'. Why is there evil? Why can't an omniscient and omnipotent God create a world without pain?

These questions suggest a misunderstanding of the nature of pain. The general Catholic idea, developed from the original sin described in Genesis, is that pain is punishment for sin. This may seem consistent. We all feel pain, and we are all sinners. Pain in itself, however, is not punishment, although the disciplinarians and torturers of this world have found that it can be used for that purpose. In general, pain is a warning that something is wrong and an invitation to correct the error. We learn a lot from pain in our early years when we blunder about the world on unsteady legs, or learnt to run so fast that we are out of control. Pain - Wikipedia

Pain, in other words, is a medium of control. It serves to protect living systems from harm. The science of control and communication in living things and machines is called cybernetics. A key concept in cybernetics is feedback, which comes in two varieties, positive and negative. Cybernetics - Wikipedia

Negative feedback tends to keep systems on course. A deviation from the desired course generates a signal which prompts the system to move back to the right course. This sort of control is necessary to stay in one's lane while driving. Positive feedback, on the other hand, sends a signal that increases the deviation from a particular course, leading to a 'chain reaction' or explosion. Pain is negative feedback.

There are two ways to remove pain. One is to dull the senses. This is necessary if the pain is pathological, but one must at least feel the pain in the first place to steer back onto the right course. The other and better plan is to remove the source of the pain. One of the social roles of religion, as we shall see, is to identify people in pain and act to help them. Such action brings us a little closer to the heavenly ideal imagined by the early theologians.

There can be little doubt that a large proportion of the pain we suffer is caused by other people. Governments routinely use torture to extract information or deter various form of behaviour (like seeking asylum). There is worldwide epidemic of domestic violence which has probably been with us since time immemorial and is only now coming to widespread attention.

Pain relief is not available for many people due to poverty, malice, government inaction or simple corruption. We seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others or watching it, often simply in the name of sport. In most sports the ability to master pain is a condition of winning. All of these sources of pain can be minimized if we cease to treat pain as punishment and see it as a pointer to a better state of mind.

One of the most important sources of pain relief in the social sphere are the news media. We say that no news is good news. On the other hand, bad news is generally good for the media since it draws attention, sales and clicks. Bad news is effective if it leads those with the relevant power to correct or prevent the reported bad news.

As I will note frequently, my motivation for this project is the flood of bad news coming from the Roman Catholic Church from its attempts to hide widespread violence against children, its entrenched belief that women are subhuman and its consistent denial of reality in favour of ancient mythology.

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1.16 God is wild

We are, on the whole, scared of wild things. A wild thing, let us say, is one that acts in its own best interests. Many see fear of God as a gift or virtue, since it makes us behave ourselves. A hungry lion has tendency to kill and eat any available prey, including nearby humans. Attack a snake, and it is likely to bite back. A cyclone or earthquake will go its own way and there is very little we can do to stop it. Our only recourse is to run away or to build structures strong enough to resist destruction.

We are inclined to view civilization as the opposite of wildness, but many of our attempts to civilize ourselves lead to an increase rather than a decrease of danger. There is no doubt that our health is improved by adequate supplies of energy for heating, cooking, and so on. But many of our sources of energy are also sources of danger, as nuclear accidents and pollution from carbon fired power stations demonstrate. George Woodwell: A World to Live In

We have similar problems with food production. Using the energy that we obtain from fossil fuel we are able to clear huge areas of forested land to make it available for cropping, horticulture and grazing. We have been able to build huge dams, aqueducts, pipelines and pumping stations for irrigation. We have learnt to increase our yields with pesticides and fertilizers, but we are now beginning to see the prices we are paying for these works of civilization. We have reached the point where we are threatening the wild ecosystems which make our lives possible.

The answers to these problems generally revolve around scientific understanding of the wilderness and of the roles of those wild systems which we have destroyed either through ignorance or greed. There is no doubt that the application of scientifically based methods, free of the waste and stupidity that often result from the control of the political decisions by financial interests, will enable us to feed ourselves without destroying the planet.

Ultimately, controlling ourselves to respect the divine wilderness in which we live is a problem for global religion informed by scientific theology. At best our attempts to civilize the world are local. The Universe as a whole goes its own way and there is nothing we can do about it. We must learn to obey this almighty God, or else large scale pain and suffering is quite probable. We now turn to the detailed development of the theology of a wild God. In the process we will learn that wildness is the most profitable and gentle foundation for survival.

(Revised Sunday 13 June 2021)

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Further reading

Books

Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Crown Business 2012 "Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- . . . -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail." —George Akerlof, Nobel laureate in economics, 2001  
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Acemoglu (2012), Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Crown Business 2012 "Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- . . . -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail." —George Akerlof, Nobel laureate in economics, 2001  
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Augustine, Saint, and Edmond Hill (Introduction, translation and notes), and John E Rotelle (editor), The Trinity, New City Press 399-419, 1991 Written 399 - 419: De Trinitate is a radical restatement, defence and development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine's book has served as a foundation for most subsequent work, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.  
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Crotty (2016), Robert, Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John, David Lovell Publishing 2016 ' The Gospel of John has always been a difficult book to interpret. The differences between John and the Synoptics have always been a stumbling block for students. There have been rather simplistic attempts at exegesis: Jesus changed water into wine at Cana because he did not want the bridegroom ridiculed; he washed the feet of the disciples as an act of humility; he brought Mary and John together as mother and son at the foot of the cross because he wanted his mother cared for in her old age. This book takes up these problems. It demonstrates that the present text has followed a long and tortured journey from Jewish Gnosticism to a Christian Gnostic compendium, later extensively edited by Roman Christianity. The result is a surprising re-reading. The book throws light on a different Jesus to the canonical one (he is not human), a different Mother (she is Sophia, a divine emanation), a different Sister Mary (she is Eve), a different Mary Magdalene (she is the Beloved Disciple), a new Judas (he is not a betrayer and was the first to receive the Gnostic Eucharist) and a festering confrontation between Peter and the Beloved Disciple. The Roman Christians disagreed on all these interpretations and heavily edited the gospel in order to silence its Gnostic statement. This book will show how the gospel of John should be read at the present time to take account of this complex tradition history. 
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Crotty (2017), Robert, The Christian Survivor: How Roman Christianity Defeated Its Early Competitors, Springer 2017 ' The book puts the current interest in historical Jesus research into a proper historical context, highlighting Gnosticism’s lasting influence on early Christianity and making the provocative claim that nearly all Christian Churches are in some way descended from Roman Christianity. Breaking with the accepted wisdom of Christianity’s origins, the revised history it puts forward challenges the assumptions of Church and secular historians, biblical critics and general readers alike, with profound repercussions for scholarship, belief and practice. About the Author Robert Brian Crotty is the Emeritus Professor of Religion and Education at the University of South Australia. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University, and a Visiting Fellow at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge University. Professor Crotty was educated in Australia, Rome and Jerusalem. He has research degrees in Ancient History, Education, Christian Theology and Biblical Studies. He is an Élève Titulaire of the École Biblique in Jerusalem. In Rome and Jerusalem, he studied under some of the great scholars of early Christianity, including Ignace de la Potterie, Marie-Émile Boismard and Pierre Benoit and studied Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Syriac in order to further his intimate understanding of biblical texts. He has authored or edited some 33 books, multiple book chapters and journal articles in the areas of Theology, Biblical Studies and World Religions.' 
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Dalrymple, William, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, Flamingo" Harper Collins 1997 Amazon reader review: 'From the Holy Mountain deserves to be put along side such other classics of the genre as the Road to Oxiana and a Time of Gifts. It is erudite, witty, scholarly & compassionate in its treatment of the subject of Christian Minorities in the Middle East. This book means so much to me as I travelled in the very same areas covered at approximately the same time the research for the book was undertaken. I can confirm the total accuracy of the authors assessments. The book both confirmed and provided illumination as to what I had seen with my own eyes and heard from the communities depicted. This remarkably accomplished work deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the Middle East.' Anthony 
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Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants" -- a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.' 
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Hawking, Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' 
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Homer, and Robert Fagles (Translator), Bernard Knox (Introduction and Notes), The Odyssey, Penguin Classics 2006 'Robert Fagles's 1990 translation of The Iliad was highly praised; here, he moves to The Odyssey. As in the previous work, he adroitly mixes contemporary language with the driving rhythms of the original. The first line reads: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns/ driven time and again off course once he had plundered/ the hallowed heights of Troy." Hellenic scholar Bernard Knox contributes extensive introductory commentary, providing both historical and literary perspective. Notes, a pronouncing glossary, genealogies, a bibliography and maps of Homer's world are included.' Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
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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' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, and Robert M Doran and H Daniel Monsour (eds), The Triune God: Doctrines (Volume 11 of Collected Works), University of Toronto Press 2009 Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI. 
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Lonergan (2007), Bernard J F, and Michael G Shields (translator), Robert M Doran & H Daniel Monsour (editors), The Triune God: Systematics, University of Toronto press 2007 De Deo trino, or The Triune God, is the third great instalment on one particular strand in trinitarian theology, namely, the tradition that appeals to a psychological analogy for understanding trinitarian processions and relations. The analogy dates back to St Augustine but was significantly developed by St Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan advances it to a new level of sophistication by rooting it in his own highly nuanced cognitional theory and in his early position on decision and love. . . . This is truly one of the great masterpieces in the history of systematic theology, perhaps even the greatest of all time.' 
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Lonergan (2009), Bernard J F, and Robert M Doran and H Daniel Monsour (eds), The Triune God: Doctrines (Volume 11 of Collected Works), University of Toronto Press 2009 Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI. 
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Miles, Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.' 
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Mortensen, Chris, Inconsistent Mathematics, Kluwer Academic 1995 'The argument from pure mathematics for studying inconsistency is the best of reasons: because it is there. . . . It is always dangerous to think that a physical use will never be found for a given piece of mathematics. Nor is present-day mathematical physics anomaly free: witness the singularities at the beginning of time or in black holes, delta functions in elementary quantum theory, or renormalisation in quantum field theory.' p 8-9. 
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Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.' 
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Sandars, N K, The Epic of Gilgamesh: An English version with Introduction, Penguin 1972 Introduction: 'Throughout the action we are shown a very human concern with mortality, with the search for knowledge for an escape from the common lot of man. The gods, who do not die, cannot be tragic. If Gilgamesh is not the first human hero, he is the first tragic hero of whom anything is known. 
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Whitehead, Alfred North, and Bertrand Arthur Russell, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge Mathematical Library), Cambridge University Press 1910, 1962 The great three-volume Principia Mathematica is deservedly the most famous work ever written on the foundations of mathematics. Its aim is to deduce all the fundamental propositions of logic and mathematics from a small number of logical premisses and primitive ideas, and so to prove that mathematics is a development of logic. Not long after it was published, Goedel showed that the project could not completely succeed, but that in any system, such as arithmetic, there were true propositions that could not be proved.  
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Woodwell, George M., A World to Live In: An Ecologist's Vision for a Plundered Planet, MIT Press 2016 'Woodwell calls for a fundamental rethink to ensure the protection of the global commons. In contrast, most current climate policy efforts such as the Paris Agreement, which aim to stabilize carbon at levels that prevent global climate change, he advocates a return to the much lower carbon level of the late 19th century. In his solution, reduced fossil fuel use plays a role, of course, but he also advocates for vast reforestation and afforestation to kick-start environmental and climate recovery. More generally, he calls for closed-cycle industrial systems with no leakage of waste arguing that there are no safe thresholds for any toxins that can accumulate in the environment. It may seem unlikely that the world will follow the path, but Woodwell is to be commended for clearly outlining the threats and sketching a bold solution.' 
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Papers

Goedel, Kurt, "On formally undecidable problems of Principia Mathematica and related systems I", in Solomon Fefferman et al (eds), Kurt Goedel: Collected Works Volume 1 Publications 1929-1936, , New York, OUP, 1986, page 145-195. back

Links

Aaron J. Atsma, Theoi Greek Mythology, 'Welcome to the Theoi Project, a site exploring Greek mythology and the gods in classical literature and art. The aim of the project is to provide a comprehensive, free reference guide to the gods (theoi), spirits (daimones), fabulous creatures (theres) and heroes of ancient Greek mythology and religion.' back

Acropolis of Athens - Wikipedia, Acropolis of Athens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Acropolis of Athens (Ancient Greek: Ἀκρόπολις Akropolis; Modern Greek: Ακρόπολη Αθηνών Akrópoli Athenón [akroˈpoli aθiˈnon]) is an ancient citadel located on an extremely rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historic significance, the most famous being the Parthenon.' back

Acts 15, The Council at Jerusalem, '5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.” 6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.' back

Alan Cooper, Ray Tobler and Wolfgang Haak, DNA reveals Aboriginal people had a long and settled connection to country, 'Historic hair samples collected from Aboriginal people show that following an initial migration 50,000 years ago, populations spread rapidly around the east and west coasts of Australia.' back

Alan Turing - Wikipedia, Alan Turing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. . . . ' back

Ancient Greek religion - Wikipedia, Ancient Greek religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopdia, 'Many of the ancient Greek people recognized the major (Olympian) gods and goddesses (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera), although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to posit a transcendent single deity. Different cities often worshiped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature.' back

Ancient Greek temple - Wikipedia, Ancient Greek temple - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Greek temples (Ancient Greek: Ναός, Naós "dwelling", semantically distinct from Latin templum ("temple") were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in ancient Greek religion. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them.' back

Angkor Wat - Wikipedia, Angkor Wat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Angkor Wat (Khmer: . . . "Capital Temple") is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world, with the site measuring 162.6 hectares . . . It was originally constructed as a Hindu temple of god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple toward the end of the 12th century.' back

Apophatic theology - Wikipedia, Apophatic theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Apophatic theology (from Greek ἀπόφασις from ἀπόφημι - apophēmi, "to deny")—also known as negative theology or via negativa (Latin for "negative way")—is a theology that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God. It stands in contrast with cataphatic theology.' back

Aquinas, Summa: I, 9, 1, Is god is altogether immutable?, 'I answer that, from what precedes, it is shown that God is altogether immutable. First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable. . . . ' back

Aquinas, I, 22, 3, Does God have immediate providence over everything?, 'I answer that, Two things belong to providence -- namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects.' back

Aquinas, Summa I, 18, 3, Is life properly attributed to God?, Life is in the highest degree properly in God. In proof of which it must be considered that since a thing is said to live in so far as it operates of itself and not as moved by another, the more perfectly this power is found in anything, the more perfect is the life of that thing. ' back

Aquinas, Summa, I II, 3, 8, Does human happiness consist in the vision of the divine essence?, 'If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than "that He is"; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 14, 8, Is the knowledge of God the cause of things?, 'Now it is manifest that God causes things by His intellect, since His being is His act of understanding; and hence His knowledge must be the cause of things, in so far as His will is joined to it. Hence the knowledge of God as the cause of things is usually called the "knowledge of approbation." ted above it follows that He occupies the highest place in knowledge.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 27, 1, Is there procession in God?, 'As God is above all things, we should understand what is said of God, not according to the mode of the lowest creatures, namely bodies, but from the similitude of the highest creatures, the intellectual substances; while even the similitudes derived from these fall short in the representation of divine objects. Procession, therefore, is not to be understood from what it is in bodies, either according to local movement or by way of a cause proceeding forth to its exterior effect, as, for instance, like heat from the agent to the thing made hot. Rather it is to be understood by way of an intelligible emanation, for example, of the intelligible word which proceeds from the speaker, yet remains in him. In that sense the Catholic Faith understands procession as existing in God.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God altogether simple?, 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XII, vii, 'But since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise than as it is. For motion in space is the first of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first kind of spatial motion; and this the first mover produces. The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is in this sense a first principle.' 1072b3 sqq back

Aristotle - Metaphysics, Internet Classics Archive | Metaphysics by Aristotle, 'ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. ' [960a22 sqq] back

Aristotle_2, Metaphysics, Book XII, vii, 'But since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise than as it is. For motion in space is the first of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first kind of spatial motion; and this the first mover produces. The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is in this sense a first principle.' 1072b3 sqq back

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Book XII, vii, 'But since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise than as it is. For motion in space is the first of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first kind of spatial motion; and this the first mover produces. The first mover, then, exists of necessity; and in so far as it exists by necessity, its mode of being is good, and it is in this sense a first principle.' 1072b6 sqq back

Aristotle: 1072b14 sqq, Metaphysics book XII, 'Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure. . . . .If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.' back

Aristotle: 1072b14 sqq, Metaphysics book XII, 'Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure. . . . .If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.' back

Bernard Suzanne, Frequently Asked Questions about Plato, 'Tradition has it that this phrase (1) was engraved at the door of Plato's Academy, the school he had founded in Athens. But is this tradition trustworthy?' back

Bhagavad Gita - Wikipedia, Bhagavad Gita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Bhagavad Gita . . . , often referred to as simply the Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture in Sanskrit that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata (chapters 25 - 42 of the 6th book of Mahabharata). The Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna.' back

Book of Genesis 22:2, Go and sacrifice [your only son] . . ., '1Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." 2He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." 3So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.…' back

Book of Revelation - Wikipedia, Book of Revelation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Book of Revelation (often called the Revelation to John, Apocalypse of John, the Revelation from Jesus Christ (from its opening words), the Apocalypse, The Revelation, or simply Revelation) is the final book of the New Testament, and consequently is also the final book of the Christian Bible. Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: apokalypsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation" (before title pages and titles, books were commonly known by their incipit (first words), as is also the case with the Hebrew Torah).' back

Canadian Museum of History, Mysteries of Egypt, 'From time immemorial, humanity has searched for the meaning of life, trying to reconcile its mortality with a profound desire to attain immortality. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in ancient Egypt. The pharaohs’ journey to eternity has been preserved in Egyptian art, architecture and writings.' back

Cannibalism - Wikipedia, Cannibalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal. The expression cannibalism has been extended into zoology to mean one individual of a species consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food, including sexual cannibalism.' back

Catholic Catechism I, 2, 2, 7, 'From thence He will come again to judge the living and the dead', '680 Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil. 681 On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history. 682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.' back

Catholic Catechism, p1, s2, c1, a1, p7, The Fall, '391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." ' back

Christine Anu & Jeremy Marou , My Island Home - Keppel Vibes II, back

Christopher Shields (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), The Active Mind of De Anima III 5 , ' After characterizing the mind (nous) and its activities in De Animaiii 4, Aristotle takes a surprising turn. In De Anima iii 5, he introduces an obscure and hotly disputed subject: the active mind or active intellect (nous poiêtikos). Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima iii 5, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê ousia energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; DA iii 5, 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body (DA ii 1, 413a3–5). back

Common Era - Wikipedia, Common Era - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The expression "Common Era" can be found as early as 1708 in English,[and traced back to Latin usage among European Christians to 1615, as vulgaris aerae, and to 1635 in English as Vulgar Era. At those times, the expressions were all used interchangeably with "Christian Era". Use of the CE abbreviation was introduced by Jewish academics in the mid-19th century. Since the later 20th century, use of CE and BCE has been popularized in academic and scientific publications and more generally by authors and publishers wishing to emphasize secularism or sensitivity to non-Christians, because it does not explicitly make use of religious titles for Jesus, such as "Christ" and Dominus ("Lord"), which are used in the BC/AD notation, nor does it give implicit expression to the Christian creed that Jesus is the Christ.' back

Conservation of energy - Wikipedia, Conservation of energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form, for instance chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite. back

Creation myth - Wikipedia, Creation myth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally, it does not imply falsehood. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true. In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense.' back

Cybernetics - Wikipedia, Cybernetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship.' back

Deuteronomy 6:5, Love God with all your heart, '5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.' back

Egyptian hieroglyphs - Wikipedia, Egyptian hieroglyphs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Egyptian hieroglyphs (Egyptian: mdw·w-nṯr, "god's words") were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. . . . Early hieroglyphs date back to somewhere between 3,400 and 3,200 BCE, and continued to be used up until about 400 CE, when non-Christian temples were closed and their monumental use was no longer necessary.' back

Erin I. Castellas and Jo Barraket, How social enterprises are building a more inclusive Australian economy, 'Social enterprises are organisations that aim to address social issues, such as homelessness or social exclusion, using strategies from business. For example, by running cafes to train and employ homeless or disadvantaged youth, social enterprises can harness business for social outcomes. . . . There are 20,000 social enterprises in Australia, and this number is growing. This growth is in part driven by local and state governments, as well as some large corporations, deciding to source goods from companies that meet social and sustainability criteria.' 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

Exodus, Exodus, King James Version, Exodus 3:7 'And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.' back

Exodus 21, These are the laws you are to set before them:, '22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurelye but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.' back

Feynman, Leighton & Sands FLP III:01, Chapter 1: Quantum Behaviour, 'The gradual accumulation of information about atomic and small-scale behavior during the first quarter of the 20th century, which gave some indications about how small things do behave, produced an increasing confusion which was finally resolved in 1926 and 1927 by Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Born. They finally obtained a consistent description of the behavior of matter on a small scale. We take up the main features of that description in this chapter.' back

Fixed point (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Fixed point (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a fixed point (sometimes shortened to fixpoint) of a function is a point that is mapped to itself by the function. That is to say, x is a fixed point of the function f if and only if f(x) = x.' back

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia, Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill" in Turkish), is an archaeological site atop a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of modern-day Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m in diameter. It is approximately 760 m above sea level. The tell includes two phases of ritual use dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. back

Genesis, The Book of Genesis, 'Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the first section of the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. Its title in English, “Genesis,” comes from the Greek of Gn 2:4, literally, “the book of the generation (genesis) of the heavens and earth.” Its title in the Jewish Scriptures is the opening Hebrew word, Bereshit, “in the beginning.” ' back

Genesis 2:16-17, The tree of knowledge, '16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' back

Hebrew Bible - Wikipedia, Hebrew Bible - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, The Hebrew Bible . . . is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic. The term closely corresponds to contents of the Jewish Tanakh and the Protestant Old Testament (see also Judeo-Christian) but does not include the deuterocanonical portions of the Roman Catholic or the Anagignoskomena portions of the Eastern Orthodox Old Testaments. The term does not imply naming, numbering or ordering of books, which varies (see also Biblical canon).' back

Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, Hilbert's program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, Hilbert's program, formulated by German mathematician David Hilbert, was a proposed solution to the foundational crisis of mathematics, when early attempts to clarify the foundations of mathematics were found to suffer from paradoxes and inconsistencies. As a solution, Hilbert proposed to ground all existing theories to a finite, complete set of axioms, and provide a proof that these axioms were consistent. Hilbert proposed that the consistency of more complicated systems, such as real analysis, could be proven in terms of simpler systems. Ultimately, the consistency of all of mathematics could be reduced to basic arithmetic. back

Holy See, Code of Canon Law, 'To our venerable brothers, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons and to the other members of the people of God, John Paul, bishop, servant of the servants of God as a perpetual record. During the course of the centuries the Catholic Church has been accustomed to reform and renew the laws of canonical discipline so that in constant fidelity to its divine founder, they may be better adapted to the saving mission entrusted to it. Prompted by this same purpose and fulfilling at last the expectations of the whole Catholic world, I order today, January 25, 1983, the promulgation of the revised Code of Canon Law. back

Human Sacrifice in Aztec Culture - Wikipedia, Human Sacrifice in Aztec Culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Human sacrifice was a religious practice of the pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya and the Zapotec. The extent of the practice is debated by modern scholars. Spanish explorers, soldiers and clergy who had contact with the Aztecs between 1517, when an expedition from Cuba first explored the Yucatan, and 1521, when Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, made observations of and wrote reports about the practice of human sacrifice.' back

Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, Hylomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Hylomorphism (Greek ὑλο- hylo-, "wood, matter" + -morphism < Greek μορφή, morphē, "form") is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which analyzes substance into matter and form. Substances are conceived of as compounds of form and matter.' back

The Assayer - Wikipedia, The Assayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Assayer (Italian: Il Saggiatore) was a book published in Rome by Galileo Galilei in October 1623 and is generally considered to be one of the pioneering works of the scientific method, first broaching the idea that the book of nature is to be read with mathematical tools rather than those of scholastic philosophy, as generally held at the time. . . . "Philosophy [i.e. physics] is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth." ' back

James Lesher, Xenophanes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosophically-minded poet who lived in various parts of the ancient Greek world during the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE He is best remembered for a novel critique of anthropomorphism in religion, a partial advance toward monotheism, and some pioneering reflections on the conditions of knowledge. Many later writers, perhaps influenced by two brief characterizations of Xenophanes by Plato (Sophist 242c–d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 986b18-27), identified him as the founder of Eleatic philosophy (the view that, despite appearances, what there is is a changeless, motionless, and eternal ‘One’). In fact, the Xenophanes who emerges from the surviving fragments defies simple classification.' back

James Lesher (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Xenophanes, 'Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosophically-minded poet who lived in various parts of the ancient Greek world during the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE He is best remembered for a novel critique of anthropomorphism in religion, a partial advance toward monotheism, and some pioneering reflections on the conditions of knowledge. Many later writers, perhaps influenced by two brief characterizations of Xenophanes by Plato (Sophist 242c–d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 986b18-27), identified him as the founder of Eleatic philosophy (the view that, despite appearances, what there is is a changeless, motionless, and eternal ‘One’). In fact, the Xenophanes who emerges from the surviving fragments defies simple classification.' back

Joe Sachs, Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'In order to adequately understand Aristotle's definition of motion it is necessary to understand what he means by actuality and potentiality. Aristotle uses the words energeia and entelechia interchangeably to describe a kind of action. A linguistic analysis shows that, by actuality, Aristotle means both energeia, which means being-at-work, and entelechia, which means being-at-an-end. These two words, although they have different meanings, function as synonyms in Aristotle's scheme. For Aristotle, to be a thing in the world is to be at work, to belong to a particular species, to act for an end and to form material into enduring organized wholes. Actuality, for Aristotle, is therefore close in meaning to what it is to be alive, except it does not carry the implication of mortality.' back

John, Gospel, chapter 1, '1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' 2 The same was in the beginning with God.' back

John Donne, Death, be not proud, '
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.'
back

John Lennon, Imagine, back

John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the relationship between faith and reason. , para 2: 'The Church is no stranger to this journey of discovery, nor could she ever be. From the moment when, through the Paschal Mystery, she received the gift of the ultimate truth about human life, the Church has made her pilgrim way along the paths of the world to proclaim that Jesus Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).' back

Joshua, Joshua 10: 12-13, '12 At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
Sun, stand still at Gibeon,and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” 13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.' back

Joshua: 10:12-13, Joshua 10: 12-13, '12At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” 13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.' back

Kurt Gödel I, On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems I, '1 Introduction The development of mathematics towards greater exactness has, as is well-known, lead to formalization of large areas of it such that you can carry out proofs by following a few mechanical rules. The most comprehensive current formal systems are the system of Principia Mathematica (PM) on the one hand, the Zermelo-Fraenkelian axiom-system of set theory on the other hand. These two systems are so far developed that you can formalize in them all proof methods that are currently in use in mathematics, i.e. you can reduce these proof methods to a few axioms and deduction rules. Therefore, the conclusion seems plausible that these deduction rules are sufficient to decide all mathematical questions expressible in those systems. We will show that this is not true, but that there are even relatively easy problem in the theory of ordinary whole numbers that can not be decided from the axioms. This is not due to the nature of these systems, but it is true for a very wide class of formal systems, which in particular includes all those that you get by adding a finite number of axioms to the above mentioned systems, provided the additional axioms don’t make false theorems provable.' back

Luke 10:25-37, Parable of the Good Samaritan, '29 . . . he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. . . . 36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbuor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 [He] replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” ' back

Magisterium - Wikipedia, Magisterium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The magisterium of the Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to establish its own authentic teachings. That authority is vested uniquely by the pope and by the bishops, under the premise that they are in communion with the correct and true teachings of the faith. Sacred scripture and sacred tradition "make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church", and the magisterium is not independent of this, since "all that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is derived from this single deposit of faith." ' back

Marian Hiller, Philo of Alexandria (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), '. . . Philo produced a synthesis of [the Greek and Hebrew] traditions developing concepts for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought, especially by Clement of Alexandria, Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and by Origen.. . . In the process, he laid the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today. Philo's primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity.' back

Marian Hiller (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Philo of Alexandria , '. . . Philo produced a synthesis of [the Greek and Hebrew] traditions developing concepts for future Hellenistic interpretation of messianic Hebrew thought, especially by Clement of Alexandria, Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and by Origen.. . . In the process, he laid the foundations for the development of Christianity in the West and in the East, as we know it today. Philo's primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity.' back

Matthew 22:35-40, The Commandment of love, '35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.' back

Matthew 23, A warning against hypocrisy, 'Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2 Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.' back

Matthew 5, Sermon on the Mount, '38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.' back

McInerny & O'Callaghan (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), St Thomas Aquinas, 'Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) lived at a critical juncture of western culture when the arrival of the Aristotelian corpus in Latin translation reopened the question of the relation between faith and reason, calling into question the modus vivendi that had obtained for centuries. This crisis flared up just as universities were being founded. Thomas, after early studies at Montecassino, moved on to the University of Naples, where he met members of the new Dominican Order. It was at Naples too that Thomas had his first extended contact with the new learning. When he joined the Dominican Order he went north to study with Albertus Magnus, author of a paraphrase of the Aristotelian corpus. Thomas completed his studies at the University of Paris, which had been formed out of the monastic schools on the Left Bank and the cathedral school at Notre Dame. In two stints as a regent master Thomas defended the mendicant orders and, of greater historical importance, countered both the Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle and the Franciscan tendency to reject Greek philosophy. The result was a new modus vivendi between faith and philosophy which survived until the rise of the new physics. The Catholic Church has over the centuries regularly and consistently reaffirmed the central importance of Thomas's work, both theological and philosophical, for understanding its teachings concerning the Christian revelation, and his close textual commentaries on Aristotle represent a cultural resource which is now receiving increased recognition. The following account concentrates on Thomas the philosopher.' back

Melissa Davey, Australia coronavirus updates live:, ' Confirmed cases per day" Sources: cumulative and daily figures are from Johns Hopkins University. For Australia, more up-to-date figures from state and territory health departments are used for the totals, but not for the chart. Australian data last updated 2020-04-17, Johns Hopkins University data last updated 2020-04-16. Recovered cases removed due to unreliable data.' back

Michael Westaway, Claire Bowern, David Lambert, Joanne Wright and Sankar Subramanian, DNA reveals a new history of the First Australians, 'A new period of community based research with Aboriginal people was forged through the sensitive and highly consultative approach pioneered by geneticist Sheila Van Holst Pellekaan. Her work with Aboriginal people set the standard for later scientific studies in Australia. We can now provide an example of work undertaken in partnership with Aboriginal Australian people from all parts of Australia, from the deserts to urban and regional centres. The details of the research are published today in Nature.' back

NASA, Hubble Space Telescope Images, 'Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space . . . . Above the distortion of the atmosphere, far far above rain clouds and light pollution, Hubble has an unobstructed view of the universe. Scientists have used Hubble to observe the most distant stars and galaxies as well as the planets in our solar system.' back

Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Nicene Creed (Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Νίκαιας, Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) is the profession of faith or creed that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It forms the mainstream definition of Christianity for most Christians. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea (present day Iznik in Turkey) by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325. The Nicene Creed has been normative for the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox churches, the Anglican Communion, and the great majority of Protestant denominations.' back

Pain - Wikipedia, Pain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone." It motivates withdrawal from damaging or potentially damaging situations, protection of a damaged body part while it heals, and avoidance of similar experiences in the future.' back

Paul Richter, As Libya takes stock, Moammar Kadafi's hidden riches astound, ' During his 42 years in power, Kadafi steered aid and investment to benefit his own family and tribe, but denied support for much of the country, especially the eastern region that historically resisted his family's despotic grip on power. Obama administration officials were stunned last spring when they found $37 billion in Libyan regime accounts and investments in the United States, and they quickly froze the assets before Kadafi or his aides could move them.' back

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - Wikipedia, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Greek: Διονύσιος ὁ Ἀρεοπαγίτης), also known as Pseudo-Denys, was a Christian theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century (writing before 532), probably Syrian, the author of the set of works commonly referred to as the Corpus Areopagiticum or Corpus Dionysiacum. The author pseudonymously identifies himself in the corpus as "Dionysios", portraying himself as the figure of Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul mentioned in Acts 17:34 This false attribution resulted in the work being given great authority in subsequent theological writing in both East and West, with its influence only decreasing in the West with the fifteenth century demonstration of its later dating.' back

Ralph McInerny & John O'Callaghan, St Thomas Aquinas (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) lived at a critical juncture of western culture when the arrival of the Aristotelian corpus in Latin translation reopened the question of the relation between faith and reason, calling into question the modus vivendi that had obtained for centuries. This crisis flared up just as universities were being founded. Thomas, after early studies at Montecassino, moved on to the University of Naples, where he met members of the new Dominican Order. It was at Naples too that Thomas had his first extended contact with the new learning. When he joined the Dominican Order he went north to study with Albertus Magnus, author of a paraphrase of the Aristotelian corpus. Thomas completed his studies at the University of Paris, which had been formed out of the monastic schools on the Left Bank and the cathedral school at Notre Dame. In two stints as a regent master Thomas defended the mendicant orders and, of greater historical importance, countered both the Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle and the Franciscan tendency to reject Greek philosophy. The result was a new modus vivendi between faith and philosophy which survived until the rise of the new physics. The Catholic Church has over the centuries regularly and consistently reaffirmed the central importance of Thomas's work, both theological and philosophical, for understanding its teachings concerning the Christian revelation, and his close textual commentaries on Aristotle represent a cultural resource which is now receiving increased recognition. The following account concentrates on Thomas the philosopher.' back

Resurrection - Wikipedia, Resurrection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Resurrection is the concept of a living being coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus, an example of resurrection, is the central focus of Christianity. back

Revelation - Wikipedia, Revelation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.' back

Richard Zach, Hilbert's Program (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'In the early 1920s, the German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) put forward a new proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics which has come to be known as Hilbert's Program. It calls for a formalization of all of mathematics in axiomatic form, together with a proof that this axiomatization of mathematics is consistent. The consistency proof itself was to be carried out using only what Hilbert called “finitary” methods. The special epistemological character of finitary reasoning then yields the required justification of classical mathematics.' back

Richard Zach, Hilbert's Program (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'In the early 1920s, the German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) put forward a new proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics which has come to be known as Hilbert's Program. It calls for a formalization of all of mathematics in axiomatic form, together with a proof that this axiomatization of mathematics is consistent. The consistency proof itself was to be carried out using only what Hilbert called “finitary” methods. The special epistemological character of finitary reasoning then yields the required justification of classical mathematics.' back

Roman Roads - Wikipedia, Roman Roads - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Roman roads (Latin: viae; singular: via meaning way) were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. . . .At the peak of Rome's development, no fewer than 29 great military highways radiated from the capital, and the late Empire's 113 provinces were interconnected by 372 great roads. The whole comprised more than 400,000 km (250,000 mi) of roads, of which over 80,500 kilometres (50,000 mi) were stone-paved.' back

Satan - Wikipedia, Satan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Satan (Hebrew: הַשָּׂטָן ha-Satan), "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible. In Christianity the title became a personal name, and "Satan" changed from an accuser appointed by God to test men's faith to the chief of the rebellious fallen angels ("the devil" in Christianity, "Shaitan" in Arabic, the term used by Arab Christians and Muslims).' back

Soul - Wikipedia, Soul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The soul, in many religious, philosophical and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal and, in many conceptions, immortal essence of a living thing. According to most of the Abrahamic religions, immortal souls belong only to human beings. For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Jainism and Hinduism) teach that all biological organisms have souls, and others teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This latter belief is called animism.' back

Ten Commandments - Wikipedia, Ten Commandments - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue (Greek: δεκάλογος), are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, and adultery. Different groups follow slightly different traditions for interpreting and numbering them.' back

Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I, 2, 3, Does God exist?, 'I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . ' back

Wikiquote: Galileo Galilei, Galileo Galilei - Wikiquote, 'Philosophy is written in this grand book, which stands continually open before our eyes (I say the 'Universe'), but can not be understood without first learning to comprehend the language and know the characters as it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is impossible to humanly understand a word; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.
from Italian: La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro, che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi agli occhi (io dico l' Universo'), ma non si può intendere, se prima non il sapere a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri ne quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezzi è impossibile intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro labirinto. back

Yahweh - Wikipedia, Yahweh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Yahweh (Hebrew: יהוה‎) was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. His exact origins are disputed, although they reach back to the early Iron Age and even the Late Bronze his name may have begun as an epithet of El, head of the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon, but the earliest plausible mentions are in Egyptian texts that place him among the nomads of the southern Transjordan' back

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