Jamie123

I'm British but I've often driven in the USA and ( once) in Canada. It is easy except you have to concentrate when you turn a corner not to go down the wrong lane. The bigger problem I think you will have is that nearly all cars in the uk have stick shifts. If you are not familiar with a stick shift see if you can find a car hire company that supplies automatics.

What if a thing were only 49% bad?

Interesting! So why isn't it called Utah Fried Chicken?

All I know about Kentucky is Colonel Sanders. (Oh - and I believe there's something called the "Kentucky Derby" too - but that's about it.) So as for Kentucky laws banning-pastors-from calling-the gay-lifestyle-sinful I have no idea. But I agree its rather doubtful. In fact I have no problem at all with that part of your post. (Except perhaps your use of the word "prosecution" - that is normally reserved for criminal cases, and not all laws are "criminal" laws.) It's paragraphs 1, 3 and 4 I take issue with. P.S. I've just thought of one more thing: Jack Daniels Kentucky Bourbon. (Not that that's at all relevant to what we're talking about here.) P.P.S. Colonel Saunders wasn't a real colonel (as in the army). "Colonel" is an honorary title given to leading citizens of Kentucky. "Colonel" Sanders was no more a colonel than "Sir" Isaac Newton was a knight in shining armour. So I guess that's another thing I do know about Kentucky. (And again this is not really relevant - my apologies.)

Not all laws call for anyone to be incarcerated if they are broken. For example it is illegal to ride a bicycle after dark without lights, but no one gets sent to prison for it. It is also illegal for an employer to dismiss a long established employee without giving them suitable notice (unless of course misconduct can be proven). When have you ever heard of an employer being imprisoned for that? No - the matter would be dealt with by an employment tribunal, which would have no power to send anyone to jail. There are many different sorts of "illegal", and not all of them call for arrests and imprisonments.

As far as I can see, pastors have been told not to call LGBT lifestyles sinful in their capacity as counsellors to juvenile offenders. There may be a good case for this (a time and a place, etc.) and there may be good arguments against (that counsellors should be allowed to bring all their beliefs and understandings to bear on the problem). But either way, this is not the same thing as what the title suggests. (Note the ellipsis at the end of the title!) Tabloid journalists use this kind of trick to raise readers' hackles before they have even started to read the main text - where the actual facts can be slipped in via the small print. It allows newspaper editors to manipulate public anger while disingenuously claiming that their articles are "balanced". A notorious example of this happened back in the 1990s when Colin Stagg was released from jail, having been cleared of murdering Rachel Nickell. The Sun carried the front page headline "No Girl Is Safe" beside a large portrait of Stagg. The headline was arguably true (the real killer was still out there) and the story was certainly to do with Stagg's acquittal (justifying a picture of him). There was no explicit claim that Stagg was the reason why no girl was safe. But that was certainly the message the public got! (By the way, a man called Robert Napper was eventually convicted of the murder. The original "Not Guilty" verdict had been quite correct: Colin Stagg had had nothing to do with it.)

A mathematician named Klein Thought Mobius Loops were divine He said "If you glue The edges of two, You end up with a bottle like mine!"

I can honestly say I've never seen Vort and Superman at the same time, so who knows?

I can think of one example of where a thought experiment is used for proof: "reduction ad absurdum" when the reverse of the proposition to is assumed true and logical consequences are shown to contradict that assumption. A classic example is Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers. If there are (for example) only 3 prime numbers A, B and C, then any other number must be divisible by one or more of these and give no remainder. However the number (AxBxC+1) will always give a remainder 1 when divided by A, B or C and so must be another prime. Whenever a finite number of primes is assumed, the conclusion must be drawn that there is at least one more. So the number of primes must therefore be infinite. Beyond this being a kind of reductio ad absurdum (see above) I don't understand it at all. It seems to be what Dawkins would have called an "argument by incredulity"; since we cannot imagine our ancestors having a different number of eyes from us it therefore can't be true. At least that's the best I can make of it - if I'm wrong, please put me right. But if so I can think of many things that also seem incredible. I've watched my now-nearly-11-year-old daughter grow from a new-born baby, to a toddler, to what she is now without noticing any of the changes as they happened. (Admittedly she never grew an extra eye, but she changed enormously in other respects.) To me she always looked exactly the same one day to the next. And when I look at myself in the mirror and see the laugh lines around my eyes and the worry-lines in my forehead, I can't understand how I can have become what I am now from the fresh-faced kid in my graduation photos. But it HAS happened. Though I quite like Richard Dawkins as a science author, I've never been impressed with his arguments against God. I don't think he asks the right questions. It's a while since I read The God Delusion, but I remember him comparing God to things like the "Pink Unicorn" and the "Flying Teapot"; things which if they did exist would be within and part of creation. My conception of God (though I'm not certain most LDS would agree) is something/someone outside and giving rise to creation. It's like C.S.Lewis' (sorry to bring him up again) argument about looking for Shakespeare within Shakespeare's plays, and, not finding him, concluding that Shakespeare does not exist. As for evolution, the evolution-based argument against the existence of God has always sounded to me like a steel-girder-based argument against the existence of architects. (Evolution proves how we got here - therefore no need for God. Steel girders explain how buildings stand up - therefore no need for architects.) P.S. Another argument creationists make against evolution could be called the "it's not very nice argument" - which basically claims that the killing off of non-favoured individuals (those without the 3rd eye, to use dowis' example) is not something our "Nice Christian God" would allow. People who make this argument have obviously never read the Old Testament! P.P.S. Some creationists will tell you that the only reason anyone believes in evolution is because they want to evade responsibility for their sins. However, when you ask them how they explain the existence of Christians who believe in evolution - Christians moreover who believe in sin and the need for grace - you'll get something like this... Creationist: These believers in evolution - they just want to eliminate God so they can do as they like without taking responsibility, or being held accountable by the God who made them. Critic: But what about Christians who believe in evolution? Creationist: There are none. Critic: There are plenty! Creationist: (shakes head) These so-called Christians are deceiving themselves. Jesus told us Himself “In the beginning God made them male and female”. They are calling our Saviour a liar! Critic: Whether they are or not is irrelevant. They believe they are sinners. They believe they need God's grace. If you're right, what can possibly be their motivation for believing in evolution? Creationist: (laughs) How on earth would I know? Go and ask them! Critic: What do you mean "how on earth would I know?" You told me less than a minute ago that you knew exactly what their motivation was! Now you're wriggling out of the question by telling me that you don't! Creationist: (laughs and shakes his head, and goes to find someone else to talk to)

I think Lewis himself would have been quite disturbed if you did think that :) Lewis' degrees were in English, classics and philosophy - so I suppose you could call him a philosopher. You could certainly call him a theologian too (so long as you didn't mean an academic theologian). Another thing I like about Lewis is he was definitely a flawed person. As a young man he very probably had an affair with a married woman much older than himself. He was not a good sportsman. He almost certainly struggled with masturbation for much of his life. And even if I'm libelling him here, he certainly smoked and drank rather more than was good for him. (Though he was never an alcoholic to the same extent as his brother Warren Lewis.) It makes me think there might still be hope for me!

I originally posted this in another thread, but it was so off-topic I don't really think it belongs there - it needs another thread of its own. It has to do with this quote by Folk Prophet I tend to agree: C.S. Lewis has been such a part of my general reading experience over the years, I have to guard myself against confusing certain "Lewisisms" with Biblical teachings. Its not even as if I necessarily agree with everything the guy wrote. (I totally disagree with the "trilemma" for example.) But he has a way of casting a spell with his words - and like he says himself "spells are used for breaking enchantments". He's helped me to see many of the dogmas of the modern world for what they are. Another things about Lewis is he seems to be one of the few non-LDS Christian authors that LDS people know about, read and respect. Whenever I've mentioned my other favourite Christian authors - Adrian Plass for example, or Philip Yancey or Henri Nouwen on this forum, I've been met with blank silence. Whenever I bring up C.S. Lewis everyone here knows immediately who I'm talking about. Yet another interesting thing about C.S.Lewis is that the religious and literary "intelligentsia" of America seem to take him a lot more seriously than do their counterparts in the UK. For example, the Episcopalian Church in the USA (I believe) have a feast day for Lewis in their calendar; Lewis is not so honoured in the Church of England. American universities keep collections of his letters and manuscripts; British universities barely acknowledge his existence! And this is true also of the other Inklings authors - most notably J.R.R. Tolkien. A few years ago two surveys were performed in the UK to discover the "greatest book of the 20th Century". One survey involved the general public, the other the academic literary community. The general public put The Lord of the Rings firmly at the top of the list, while C.S.Lewis' books were not far behind. The literary academics' list did not include either Lewis or Tolkien. It was full of Graeme Greene, T.S. Elliot, G.K. Chesterton and Evelyn Waugh (all great authors, I don't deny) but not a single mention "the people's" favourites! The Inklings are not considered "high brow", but who cares? They are appreciated by the people who matter - such plebs as myself, Americans and the LDS!

[Moved this post to General Discussion - it is too off-topic to include here http://lds.net/forums/topic/57525-the-inklings-authors/ ]

I guess I'm just a mortal, short-sighted and selfish kind of person. But at least I know my limitations P.S. Having just written that, doubt now assails me... Perhaps I'm putting God into His box again! P.P.S. A random thought: if Man were intended to have more than one wife, why didn't God create Adam and Eve, Denise, Felicity, Gina, Helen, Irene and Jane? P.P.P.S. I know I'm being a bit flippant here, but now I've thought about it some more I think Folk Prophet does raise an interesting point.

I can understand why a man might want to have a woman (or women) on the side in addition to his wife, though even that might lead to a rather complicated and stressful life. But why would anyone want to have more than one actual wife? There was a TV show a few weeks ago about a "Mormon" man who had (I think) seven wives - and several sets of kids by different wives - all living together in one house. It was, admittedly, rather a big house - but all the same. How could anyone live with that level of aggravation? How much nicer just to have one wife, and all your kids by her!

I've been thinking like this for some time. There was a day when being a Christian meant more than putting on your best hat every Sunday and yawning through a sermon with a bunch of other well-groomed bourgeois*. You took your life in your hands. Bishops back then were always old men - not because old men are wise, but because they knew they had less to lose than the young. Christians - especially prominent ones - often came to nasty ends. I imagine those early saints looking down from their clouds at today's Christians wondering what most of us are complaining about. (OK there is actual persecution of the church in some countries, but not in the USA or Western Europe.) Not that I want a return to those days, but who knows? The sort of secular liberal opposition we're starting to see might shake things up a bit! *P.S. Not that I'm ever particularly well-groomed when I go to church.

Even if Iran and ISIS never ever get together you might still get knocked down by a bus tomorrow. Repentance is always a good idea.

That's very interesting! Imaginary numbers are a constant source of amusement. I remember reading this paradox a while back: -1=i^2=sqrt(-1)*sqrt(-1)=sqrt(-1*-1)=sqrt(1)=1, so -1=1 and 1+1=0. I once showed that to the head of our math school; she was stumped for a while, but later got back to me with the suggestion that you need to say sqrt(1)=-1 at the last step. (But why isn't the positive root just as valid?) Another solution I found on the web is that the rule sqrt(a)*sqrt(b)=sqrt(a*b) is not valid when a and b are both imaginary.

"Caesar ad sum jam forti Brutus et erat Caesar sic in omnibus Brutus sic in at" "Latin is a language As dead as dead can be First it killed the Romans And now it's killing me!" Isway Igpay Atinlay anyway oodgay ootay ouyay?

(Sorry - repeated post by mistake)

Thanks Vort! It's great to hear from you :) You are quite right - the value for n=0 is 0.20788, not 4.810... as I said. I did my calculations in MS Excel and I missed the minus out of the formula. The true values are the reciprocals of the values I listed. (My suspicions should have been aroused by the values increasing instead of decreasing with n - but oh well...) Having said that though, what you quote at the start is not Euler's *equation* per se, but Euler's *identity*. The full version of Euler's equation is: exp(i*theta)=cos(theta)+i*sin(theta) which simplifies to exp(i*pi)=-1 (Euler's identity) for the special case of theta=pi. But if theta=pi/2*(1+4n), the right-hand side of the equation remains equal to i irrespective of n (so long as n is an integer) since all angles are modulo 2*pi. It therefore follows that the LHS, exp(i*pi/2*(4n+1)), is always equal to i, so i^i must be exp(-pi/2*(1+4n)). This takes a different *real* value for each n. I'm not really suggesting that God or Man are really representable by number systems; it is just an analogy. I can imagine a simplistic Unitarian argument running something like this: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all God, but Father is not Son, Son is not Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit is not Father (as represented in the Trinity shield). But if Heavenly Father is God, and God is the Son, then Heavenly Father is the Son. Reductio ad absurdum - Trinity disproven. One might of course say that "God" is more like an adjective than a noun - that more than one individual might "be God" (just as more than one person may old, fat, ugly etc.) but this is straying close to polytheism, which most Trinitarians reject. I have had this very argument with Jehovah's Witnesses who claim that all Trinitarians can say about the Trinity is that it is "a mystery" beyond human understanding - which explains nothing. But this may not be the case - this example shows shows something well within the field of human understanding which behaves exactly as the Unitarian claims the Trinity can't. P.S. An additional thought; another possibility is Monarchianism which maintained that God is one being but has separate "roles" as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just as I am a father, a husband and a son....though now I think about it maybe that's not such a good analogy because I am these three things to different people. OK - so maybe a teacher has his own son or daughter in his class - he is a father and a teacher to that kid, but the roles are compartmentalized. I have heard a Baptist minister I used to know teach this idea to his young people's class - and only years later read that it is considered a heresy (the "Monarchian Heresy"). Maybe someone learned in theology could explain why this is.

Quite right - it's incredibly hard. But is it any harder than "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."? I don't think many of God's commandments are actually going to be obeyed in this life!

There is also Platonic pre-existence. I once read a book by an LDS author (I forget who - it might possibly have been Gordon B. Hinckley) which argued that William Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality was an attempt to express the truth of pre-existence which he instinctively felt: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting..."

Try reading some of Adrian Plass' "Sacred Diary" novels, and see if you keep that opinion!

I think what bothers me most about the "no beginning" thing is that if I always existed, why do I not remember anything before my own birth? Now I know that Mormonism has an answer to this; that a "veil" was pulled over my pre-mortal memories. But let's suppose we go back to before that time (or forward to the time when that "veil" is removed) what would I remember? Would I not have an infinite number of memories? Would that make me an infinite being? If not, then I can only suppose that while existence may be eternal, memory is not. Perhaps memories fade with time (or whatever serves as "time" outside this earthly existence). And the upshot would be that even God does not remember the entirety of His own existence!

I find it a lot easier to imagine the future extending from now to eternity, than the past stretching back to eternity. This would mean that whatever point in the past we go back to there was always a "before that". The mind reels at the thought - we feel there ought to be a start - an origin. But the mind reels at that idea too; we ask what caused that origin? In other words we start demanding a "before that". This reminds me of when I first read the novel The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. (Hoyle, who was well as being a novelist was also a physics professor at Cambridge and co-originator of the "steady state" theory of universe. It was he who coined the phrase "the Big Bang" to ridicule other physicists who believed the universe had an explosive beginning; little did he know these "other physicists" would soon start using the phrase themselves!) Anyway (*SPOILER ALERT*) in The Black Cloud Earth's Solar System is visited by a huge interstellar dust cloud which settles around the sun and causes the Earth to freeze. Scientists studying the cloud discover it is actually an intelligent living organism and find a means to communicate with it. The cloud-being is equally surprised to discover anything so bizarre as intelligent life on a planet, but nevertheless permits sunlight to return and humanity is saved from a frozen grave. The scientists question the cloud for some months, during which they ask it about its origins; they learn how the cloud-creatures reproduce, but when they ask how their species began the cloud disagrees that it ever had a beginning. The main character (a Cambridge professor and thinly-disguised fictionalized Hoyle) then does a metaphorical victory-dance over the Big Bang theory. But of course it's now (almost) universally accepted that Hoyle was wrong; the universe did have a beginning and it was a Big Bang. Furthermore the very idea of time before the big bang is shown to be meaningless. But who knows? Maybe there was another kind of time which ended when our time began. Or maybe there is a kind of "Time" that transcends and contains what we know as "time" - that is occupied by Gods, Spirits etc.. Interestingly though, as for any future "end of time" the evidence of cosmic inflation is against it. It was once believed that the expansion was slowing down - that it would one day reverse and end in a "big crunch". But not a bit of it - the universe is not only expanding but it is expanding faster all the time. It would seem that time had a start, but will never have an end. So it would seem....but who knows. I wonder whether cosmologists will still be saying the same thing 100 years from now? P.S. Another really great novel by Hoyle is Inferno - in which the cloud-beings also make a brief appearance.