this is an interesting thought.

why?

because several backers of evolution have stated the condition by which evolution could ever occur, would only be if the earth itself was at least a trillion years old.

they stated that 4.5 billion years old was way too young and undeveloped for the conditions of evolution to occur on this present planet.

and although they did not believe in the idealism of a God, they claim it was some what miraculous that life not only existed, but is being sustained on earth in its current status.

but they did confirm, they felt the earth was only a few billions years old. this is why they were confused that evolution could be the reason for our current condition and status of life.

FWIW, The Urantia Book says that our area of space, our area of the Universe, was organized 987 billion years ago. That's just shy of a trillion years.

Old european mathematics had no zero, and also no 10 because of no zero. 123456789, 123456789.
Things numerical must have been difficult to work out back then, probably only done by learned scribes and notaries; and also probably top secret unless you were in the guild.

You can't put zero in your pocket, but if you do have money or anything valuable in your pockets, government corporations and banks can leave zero in your pockets.

You can leave zero but you can not put zero, funny that.
Minus zero means nothing, but minus infinity is a conumdrum. If infinity exists and you take it all away, do you have zero, or nothing or void ?

Tom I also liked your caveman bob tales. Makes sense, and entertaining.

There is a group of 'nuns' called (I think) the sisters of perpetual indulgence, or something like that; sounds like a good place to start our new religion.
I'll pray for a sister to indulge with; Obviously not my sister - yuk.
We could make effigies of unseeable entities to bamboozle the acolytes. I do like wine, and bread, but they are taken so how about bourbon and steak. And put some whoopee weed in the incenser.
Everyone would come whether they believed or not. I'd spare a couple of hours a week at least, to commune with the spirit ! Haleluja !


The big bang just means that 'god'?? should have pulled the choke out a bit more and given it another shot !!

I've read and seen some pretty wacky religions in science fiction and fantasy. I've also heard of some pretty wacky religions in real life (anything to get tax exempt status and convince people to send them money).

I'm pretty sure, if we put in the right paperwork, we can claim anything we want as a religion and write our doctrine as we see fit. Our success will be determined by how many people follow our religion and since people are already primed to be sheeple, shouldn't be hard to do.

We just gotta remember to have a system of rewards and punishments that occur after those people are dead. That way they can't call 'foul'.
We will need to write our 'book' in such a way that we play on people's insecurities, promise a benefit and have just enough accuracy to make them think the words are written for them.
We can even pick a color to represent the words of our God and say God said them. Red is already taken but we could use forest green. Lots of people like green. The Holy Weed is green. We could even invent The Disciples of Munchies and tell their story in our book. We could tell the stories of the Divine Drunken Stupor. Finally, at the end of the book we can predict the Great Raid and the resultant Unity of Party.

You bring up an interesting point re:numbers. You are likely aware then, that Leonardo Bigollo Fibonacci introduced numerals 1-9 to Europe in the 12th century. He obtained them from North Africa who, in turn, obtained them from India.(cf. Secrets of the Great Pyramid, Tomkins, Peter 1971, pg. 192). He is ascribed to have 'created' the Fibonacci series which results in the Golden Mean, or Ratio, or Section.
However, the Egyptians (and other earlier civilizations) used the Ratio in their architecture and mathematics. So, presumably, he was just stating known facts.
The above mentioned book also features an 105 pg. appendix (Notes on the Relation of Ancient Measures to the Great Pyramid) by Livius Catullo Stecchini which is a most interesting read, opening many doors of understanding the Ancients' viewpoint of science, specifically, cosmology and concomitantly, religion.—IM

Hi IM, thanks for reminder, I'd forgotten about that.
Imagine trying to do modern maths with roman numerals, I think I would go (or become more) insane, or go epileptic looking at all the capital letters needed even for simple equations. There would be few short cuts to take, everything would have to be carefully read and thought out and checked and transcribed. Who had the time to do that - wealthy slave owners and clergy.

As to a new religion, the work has already been done many times over.
Just spread out all the pages of all the existing religious books and texts, and throw several hundred or thousand darts randomly at the array of pages, and adopt whatever passages they strike, then sort all those out chronologically or however they seem to make the most believable story, and the most frightening endings for any recalcitrants.

Divine drunken stupor - what a line ! So self contained.
I can imagine ye olde german style beer halls full of feasting drinking worshippers partaking in the flesh and blood, all in moderation of course, lest you forget yourself and blaspheme against the doctrine. Or covet your neighbour's wife's donkey.
And then the inquisition will get you, so you'd better not get too wasted in case you can't answer the questions correctly.

I like the colour green, and it could be handy for using the duality thing - yellow and blue. Instant ambiguity and potential conflict. And if anyone wants to argue, just say you are applying the wrong primary, or the blue/yellow ratio isn't right.

I think we've got this Tom.

Notbeold , did you use to be Cubcougar?

notbeold,

'Imagine trying to do modern maths with roman numerals, I think I would go (or become more) insane, or go epileptic looking at all the capital letters needed even for simple equations. There would be few short cuts to take, everything would have to be carefully read and thought out and checked and transcribed.'

I had a job site super once who didn't know how to compute the diagonal of what was in a sense, a giant rafter spanning a driveway to a condo we were building. After much trial and error doing it his way, I scratched out the math for him on a 2X6. I only got sh***y assignments after that.

I like the old Native American philosophy: If it couldn't be handled with moon phases or seasons, it was just, 'a long time'.

Yes, it's odd why it took so long for mathematics to take root in Europe. The Persians and Egyptians had been doing it for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. The Chaldeans had star charts calculated to one degree of arc 6,000 years before C.E. That's why Stecchini is so interesting.—IM

No, never been cubcougar, always notbeold.
Don't tell me there is someone else as mad as me. I pity the fool.

IM, I just flipped thru an old book of mine: 'Ur of the Chaldees', by Sir Leonard Woolley, 1954, Penguin Books; I thought there may be some mention of mathematics but it is mainly archaeology info. and nothing about any maths.
Interesting how it mentions the origins of the 'Noah flood' story though.
The epic of bilgamese / Gilgamesh mentions Ur, and the great flood, and the dimensions of the big boat built by Uta Napishiti to survive the flood with his family and artisans and animals.

I'm sure mathematics is a derivative of geometry, from art and symbology origins. A language to enable others to accurately copy designs without having the original design in front of you.
Remember Spirograph - imagine trying to copy one of those designs/scribbles, without the gear sets and hole plates to make it easy.

Go way back to a scribe's stylus and lengths of string or trammels to give radii and arcs relative to central points at specific distances and spacings to get the required intersections, to get the designs started. Someone with time on their hands worked out Pi, and those other magical numbers early on, just amazing for the age they were developed. Stone masons probably had a big hand in it too.

Addition to a new religion: boat building, cruising and sailing; I like boats.

notbeold 9:44 AM

Wikipedia is my best friend:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy

Goto subsection Mesopotamia.

Yeah, it's amazing what one can accomplish with a little bit of holding your tongue just the right way.

Can't remember the source right now, but read that the Mayans calculated pi to the fifth decimal point 1500 years ago.

Love boats too. Live on ocean front. Almost bought a ferro-cement 37 ft. sailboat last year. But ya know what they say: might as well dump buckets of money into the chuck.—IM

IMFrisson,
In these forums URLs with HTTPS break.
When posting a URL code, delete the 'S' from HTTPS and the link will work most times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy
Yields "Page Not Found" because of the S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy
Remove the "S" and the link works...
Yer Welcome...
Edit to note that the "S" in IMG code works and does not need to be deleted.

Thx. I shoulda checked it before walking away from it. I guess I have to correct it on the other thread now. Ta—IM

re-edited—IM

The reason there was no 0 (zero) in early European mathematics was because the roman numeral system was used. The arabic system found it's way into Europe by 1000ad and by 1100ad was found vastly superior to roman numerals.

The roman number system was NOT based on place value. If they wished to express the concept ‘nothing’ they would use the word “nullus” (Latin for null or none). Eventually an Italian mathematician named Fibonacci (1200ad) wrote a book called the Liber Abaci where he began to convince people that the new number system was superior to Roman numerals.

Fibonacci is famous for inventing the The Fibonacci Sequence. Fibonacci sequences appear in biological settings, in two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, such as branching in trees, arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple and the arrangement of a pine cone. Very interesting study.

I checked out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_astronomy
very interesting, and informative.

One doesn't truely believe in God by blind faith. God has to open our eyes to his reality before we truly believe. One has faith in a friend or family member because they have a relationship with them. They know how they act and react, thus they have faith (confidence) in the person themself.

If one has an open heart God will reveal himself. Until this revelation comes people can believe in a higher power but never have a true understanding of God.

First, I'm not attempting to invalidate anyone's belief so consider my respones as purely personal to me.

I know that heart doesn't always work resonably. When my heart controls me I find myself making stupid mistakes.
What is significant to me is when my heart and reason are in alignment.
Pure reasoning can be cold and unemotional. I'm not a robot. Pure reason can't work either. There has to be a middle ground.

My belief in God works both in my heart and in my mind.
It doesn't have to be one or the other.
There is a way to believe in God and science at the same time.
I know.

The thing that prevents the contentment in belief is often the conflict between reason and religion.
When you realize there doesn't have to be a conflict it opens inner peace that seems to elude many.

Religion is going to demand that you believe with your heart and ignore your mind because religion has an agenda other than contentment.
People get so caught up in religious doctrine they lose focus on the basic need to find contentment in belief in God.
Its kinda sad, really.