untitled
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 23:09:26 -0400
From: Mike Ryder <mike@mryder.com> Add To Address Book
Subject: Re: SOME CLOCK _ AND STILL TICKING - but when will it explode?
To: [Family member B]
Hi there
well I know I said I was going to think about what I should say, and I
guess I'm still thinking.
I'm sure you have gathered by now that I don't hold much faith in
numerics. I wonder what your opinion is of the age of the
earth. In other words, how close the dawn of creation was Adams
birth, if indeed one can call it a birth.
I am also interested in your thoughts on the London bombings. You
will have noted, I'm sure, that they were undertaken on July 7.
That is 7/7. I think seven is supposed to be a 'good' number.
I am a little lost with your arithmetic. I was under the
impression that they were 13 lunar months in a year. According to
your figures it must be a number somewhere between 12 and 13
(12.368460111317254174397031539889). Additionally I find it had
to believe that it is possible with any degree of accuracy to calculate
the number of years between those two biblical stories, or any two
scholars would agree with them.
Also I wonder why 70 has been considered spiritually average
lifespan. Certainly in recorded history that figure has not been
achieved until relatively recently. Even now in many many
countries in the world 70 is still a far-off goal for that statistic.I
recall in some Bible stories they wrote about people who are many
hundreds of years old. Perhaps this helps average out the masses
who died before 35 and the incredibly high infant mortality rates
experienced during the dark ages and probably before that.
Deriving divine meaning from coarse heuristics seems a little pointless.
I'm not sure what God's grace is supposed to mean, but it seems from
reading your e-mail that they have been several thousand years of
it. The vast majority of this time has been tough for the human
race. It is not until recently that even a minority of mankind
has experienced a significant increase in the quality of life. Of
course, some would argue that the quality of life has decreased rather
than increased, but I think for the Western world this would be
inaccurate.
So God's grace is supposed to be a period of time when God is letting
mankind enjoy the earth? I wonder what is supposed to happen when
it ends? Divine retribution? Throwing billions of people
into eternal damnation? Of course if you will go to eternal bliss
in paradise. I wonder of the London bombers believed they were
also going to Paradise? It seems there are a lot of different
Paradises most involving the distractions of many many innocents.
I am sorry if I sound harsh, but as I sit here and think, I cannot help
but believe that religion in its many many guises has a serious case to
answer. The reality is that it will not have to do so in my
lifetime.
Some would call me a cynic, I prefer grounded realist.
On other, vastly different topics, I have been playing around with
puppy Linux in also doing a little research into other distributions of
that ilk. I came across a distribution called damnsmalllinux or
DSL. It is about the same size as partly but I like it
more. It seems to have more standard tools and a nicer
interface. I would recommend taking a look at it if you get the
chance. One thing I did note that seemed a little odd is that
it's running on kernel version 2.4 rather than 2.6 I'm not sure what
puppy is on at the moment though it should be 2.6.
Mike
bravenet.com