What is conceivably `worst of all,’ as some alert observers have warned, is that ‘the fashionable despair about the prospects for humankind fostered by Postmodernism could easily prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ Yes, indeed. The democratic, egalitarian, and libertarian quest of the Radical Enlightenment might very well fail in the end—or rather be defeated and overwhelmed. But if so, this will be at least partly due to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century failure not just of philosophy on all continents but more broadly of the humanities, and the world’s universities, both in general terms and, more specifically, their failure to teach humanity about the historical origins and true character of the `modern’ ideas of democracy, equality, individual freedom, full toleration, liberty of expression, anti-colonialism, and our universalist secular morality based on equity.

Prof. Israel’s account of the Enlightenment includes illuminating portrayals of numerous scientists and mathematicians & are particularly recommended to young people who cherish—as they did—the hope and expectation that their work will make an enduring difference to a troubled world.

It’s admittedly true that parsing Prof. Israel’s lengthy sentences can be pretty challenging! But one gets used to it, and their content amply rewards the effort.

There are many websites where one can find this opinion but I went to one of my favorites:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/09/15/no-true-believer/#comments

Comment #19 says

“…Qur’an also says- ‘Whoever believes in One God, does righteous deeds and is just and reasonable, whatever he may call himself, a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim, he will be forgiven.’”

I won’t comment on and on this any further.

Certainly as plausible as the virgin birth business, and the even more thermodynamically challenging… rising from the dead.

In any case I hope the holidays and the spirit of the season brings peace to all of you and peace throughout the world.

Elliot

Of course Christianity adapted Christmas from other religions. The solstice holiday is very old, and every religion borrows and makes things up as it goes along. The very idea of a messiah is pre-Judaic, though messiah is just an adaption of the name Moses, or Moshiach in Hebrew. But where did Jews come up with the Feast of Lights, aka Hannukah? A Feast of Lights is a pretty obvious idea for a solstice holiday.

Every religion borrows and adapts. Why do Jews celebrate the solstice by eating pancakes made from an Incan tuber? Is this Atahualpa’s revenge? Why did Martin Luther encourage Protestants to celebrate the season by incorporating elements of Germanic tree worship? Why was the York cathedral only cathedral in England to allow missletoe in its solstice decorations? Was it because York was an old Druid center?

Our love of the spiritual is much like our love of music. Every human society has some form of spirituality in which the individual senses themselves as part of something greater, just as every human society has some form of musical expression. We are clearly equipped with certain organs of perception and enjoyment. What better time to experience that sense of a greater power than when the sun turns its path in the sky, whether we attribute this to the gods, one god or as a simple consequence of general relativity.

Given the remarkable events described in the gospels it is surprising that there are no independent contemporary accounts that refer to them in surviving historical sources in aramaic, greek or latin.

Jesus may or may not have existed, or been a confabulation relating to several Jewish religious teachers, we just don’t know – ignoramus. However in the form he is described in the new testament he appears to acquire the attributes of the ancient Egyptian god Osiris. So to the critical he is just another version of the ancient resurrected gods like Osiris, Dionysus and Baldur.

A merry Pagan Christmas I say as I watch the embers of my burning Yule log fade and look at my Christmas tree filled with Pagan significance and kiss my wife under the mistletoe considered holy by the ancient Druids.

If that was aimed at me, then I’m very sorry I grouped Aquinas into the “early” camp. You’re totally right, he’s not really “early”. But this slight blunder doesn’t make me theologically ignorant, although I have much to learn about Christian theology and its history. But I don’t have time, since I need to learn physics.

One way to love Osama is to pray for him if you’re religious, and also not to kill him if he is ever captured. But that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be caught and imprisoned, since he’s a danger to many other humans, who also need our love. Loving your enemies also means to forgive them, but that also doesn’t mean we should let all criminals or fugitives go free. I’m just speaking in general terms here.

Okay, I’m going to shut up now. Sorry…
Blogs are too addictive. But also, CV is a good blog, and I do appreciate Sean’s efforts to make this blog entertaining and informative. Congratulations on your engagement, by the way.

It’s 2000 years later and they still haven’t been able to kill the revolutionary message of Christmas. God knows they’ve tried. The Powers That Be will never be comfortable with The Power That Is. That Power – whether you call it God, or Consciousness, or Scientific Principle – is universal and freely available to all. That makes it subversive to centralized authority.
That’s true whether you’re the kind of Christian who believes Jesus is the sole path to salvation, an atheist who admires his ethical principles, a Muslim who acknowledges Jesus as a great prophet, a Hindu who sees him as an avatar of Brahman, or a Jew who considers him a great Jewish teacher.

How tough is Jesus’ message? Consider this: he instructed his followers to “love your enemies.” Now think of your enemies. Are they the secular humanists? The Godless liberals? Or are they the Fox News crowd? George Bush? Dick Cheney?

He said “love them.” Period.

Now think about this: Jesus has instructed you to love Osama Bin Laden, too. His orders are clear. He’s told you to love Al Qaeda, and the men who beheaded Michael Berg too. You can resist them, but you have to love them. Do you call yourself a Christian? Call me back when you love Osama.

Peace on Earth. Good will toward All. Those aren’t my words. They came with the season.

The rest of this quite good essay found here: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/4176

I wasn’t trying to be funny. Though I can be, as you’ll learn if you were to ask some of my friends. Neither was I trying to be annoying, but I was trying to argue for something. Clearly, my analogy wasn’t convincing. But I’m not sure why you find me annoying. I was just trying to argue my point. What’s wrong with that?

Chemicalscum, I don’t think there is no evidence that Jesus existed, and even if he didn’t exist, Christians believe he existed and so they celebrate the event of his birth on a particular date. Christians believe that Jesus was a really cool guy and so every year, on December 25th, they celebrate his birth. This celebration is called Christmas. Sure, aspects of the celebration contain pagan elements, and even the date was chosen because of a pagan celebration, but the celebration itself is for the birth of a particular man Christians believe once walked on this earth.

Chinmaya Sheth, I don’t mean to be annoying or anything, but I don’t think anybody thinks belief in more than one God is less respectable. However, there were some early Christian theologians (like Thomas Aquinas) who basically tried to argue not only for God’s existence (according to a certain definition of what is mean by ‘God’), but also what sort of “properties” can be attributed to this God, and blah blah blah basically came up with the conclusion that that God must be one. Anyway, I’m not too sure by what you mean by “the Earth (not to mention the rest of the universe) is a complicated place and I don’t think one God can handle all the variety.” I mean, how do the earth and the rest of the universe need to be “handled” by the single or multiple Gods. You know?

Going back to the non-reliable evidence, tell that to, for example, the guys named Peter and Paul, who were crucified for delivering the message of this other guy named Jesus, who may have been a figment of their imaginations.

In honor of which, I have composed a light-hearted Christmas essay on that contentious subject: quantum gravity. If your post ain’t filled with the Christmas spirit, don’t reply!

——–

Part – I: Alice’s Christmas Adventures in Quantum Gravity

As a Christmas shakedown test of her quantum model order reduction codes, engineer Alice Michanikos (her family name) is running a simulation of the IBM single-spin MRFM experiment.

‘”How very interesting!” thinks Alice. “The mass of the cantilever is 92 picograms, the decorrelation time scale is 100 msec, and the separation of its trajectory for spin-up versus spin-down measurements on this time scale is 280 picometers. Since the IBM team experimentally observed a mean-square spin polarization of unity (versus classical mean-square polarization of 1/3), it must be the case that quantum theories of gravity—once we finish constructing them—will support macroscopic polarizations for Schroedinger cats of this mass, this timescale, and this spatial separation.”

“Hmmm … ” thinks Alice. “If only the gravitational theorists would be so good as provide me with a well-posed mathematical recipe, it would be quite easy for me to include the cantilever’s gravitational metric in my engineering functional emulations. The good news is, that Bob Wald’s recent preprint tells me in great detail how quantum fields accommodate to metrics. Now, as a quantum system engineer, what I mainly need to know is how metrics accommodate to quantum fields. How hard can it be?”

Look at it this way. The major Pagan festivals were at midwinter and spring. The early church tried to incorporate them so christmas and easter have pagan origins an contain pagan elements. As for the birthday of Jesus their is no reliable historical evidence that he even existed let alone for a birth date.

Merry Christmas, everyone!