Athena

Yes, that is what I want to know! I need to know both how the brain develops and what to do to help the young in my family comprehend math. By the way, grandparents are important, because their personal agenda of our early years is in the past, and we have the time to learn this stuff that working and over stressed parents do not have. This also is not what getting an elementary teaching degree is about. When my grandmother began teaching, 18 year old's with a little preparation for teaching, began teachers and often taught several grades in one class room. There is no way they could do the teaching that a better informed person, and I don't think the college education for teachers has improved much. They learn what to teach the children, and may be teaching math, although they barely understand algebra, because their knowledge of math is dependent on math and parroting, not a functional understanding of math, so they can not adequately teach the children. Making "the tree's" statement quite profound. How many parents are knowledgeable on how to prepare a child for thinking? At home the child is not prepared to think. The teacher knows too little about how the brain works, what psychological/emotional issues do a child's ability to learn, and how to best prepare the brain for thinking. What is human potential if we have a better understanding of how to prepare a child for thinking?

I love time travel stories, but I have a hard time believing in any reality other than the moment. I may be planning on attending a wedding, but if I am hit by a truck, I will not be at the wedding. My sense is, the future does not exist so we can not travel into the future. Same with the past. If the building I live in is burnt to the ground, it is gone. The past does not exist. Only if the building does not burn to the ground does it exist. If either the future of past exist, of what are they made? By the way, if the past does exist, that makes us all eternal doesn't it? How about this, ghosts are people stuck in time, and if we study ghost, we might be able to figure out how to move in time?

Yes, the more I have been reading about math and thinking about how children learn, the more certain I am, the children who appear to do very well in math, are probably the children who have parents that communicate in mathematically helpful way, just as a matter of every day life. I am now totally convinced that parents should not expect public schools to provide their children a good understanding in math. Teachers will teach children to parrot, but few elementary school teachers, have the skill to teach children how to really understanding of math. Unfortunately, few parents can help a child with math, beyond adding and subtracting whole numbers and maybe multiplication. This is so sad. The parents can not help the children, and the public schools are not really doing the job, leaving only a very few students who can successfully go on to higher math skills. The really successful students are going to be the ones who have parents who are accustom to using math concepts daily, and aren't even aware of why math seems to come to them so naturally. I really want a better explanation of what you have said. If you don't provide a fuller explanation, I will google for information. The math book I am reading now, makes it very clear graphing information is essential to comprehension. Without some kind of visual, children learn to parrot, but are not actually learning the concepts. Please, explain what you mean by Graph theory and Fussy Media theory. Last week I would not have recognized the value in what you said. Thanks to the math book I am reading now, I see great value in what you said. But now, back to preparing a 3 year old to have the better comprehension. A 3 years old is not ready for the popular math games, because they are still having trouble conceptualizing the sequence of numbers, and relating a number to number of objects on a page. The math DVD I got for the 3 year old is no longer my idea of what is helpful. It can teach him to parrot the numbers, but not to understand math.

I like question, why would one expect universal anything? You follow this question with a comment about social structure. I think it is safe to say, human beings are social creatures and as such do need social structure. I think we should look at other social animals to understand our own nature. There are some universal laws shared among social creatures. Beyond what social animals share in common there are differences. Chimpanzee are male dominant and Bonobo are female dominant. This means they have different social structures. More to what you have said about our sexual behavior, there is much variety and yet also shared behaviors. How about cutting off pieces of genitals? We know Jews have practiced circumcision for religious reasons, but so did the Aztecs. Some Africans, and for awhile those of European descent, circumcised women. Among those of European descent this was considered especially necessary if the female would become sexually aroused, because this was associated with being like an animal and immoral. Then there is the African tribe that whacks a young man's penis whenever it becomes stiff. I think their are different explanations, for circumcising males than for circumcising females, but a shared goal is controlled reproduction and agreements about the duties and rights of parents. If a female lacks sexual urges, she is less likely to have unwanted children. Another way to achieve this goal is to have honor killings. That is to kill the female who is seen with a male other than her father, husband or son. Fear of death is a pretty good inhibitor. And so is fear of social rejection. In the US one of the major cries is objection to unwed mothers and the welfare problem this creates. Not only is this a budget problem, but is apt to lead to many social problems as well. And it is personally a terrible problem for many women. A mother does not have freedom, so she better think twice before having causal sex! Unwanted children and the spread of sexually transmitted are very good reasons for creating sexual inhibitions, and the burden of this in the US rest on the parents, while the media seems intent on promoting sexual freedom, creating a morally lax culture from which we can not protect our children. Only recently has the US enforced child support payments by garnishing a parents pay check, so it was thought birth control was a protection for women only, not for men. This resulted in a double standard with males enjoying sexual freedom, and social rejection for women who had sex outside of marriage. It was a terrible burden put on women, especially considering the pressure males put on females to have sex. Male carelessness and complete lack of a sense of responsibility or commitment, can be a serious relationship problem between males and females. Considering the importance of both parents to raising children, why would an intelligent person have causal sex? In the animal world where two parents are needed to raise the off spring, there are high standards to meet before mating can begin. A male whose only intent is sexual relief, does not meet the standard of a desirable male. It is a sad fact that so many women do have sex with very low standard males. Actually human females are more sexually free than many animals. Among humans, the female can be sexual receptive even when it is obvious the male will not be a good father, and males can be completely careless about how good of a mother the female will be. Not only do some animals have more rigid mating standards, but they don't excuse bad behavior with fantasies of love. Perhaps nothing gives humans more trouble than fantasies of love. Hey, these are some exciting arguments. In political philosophy, it is mentioned the democracy leads to excessive conformity. Tocqueville his book in "Democracy in America" warns of this problem, and seems to favor aristocracy. While I argue for democracy, I also agree with Tocqueville about the benefits of democracy. In the US we not only have a democracy but we are Christian dominated, and have made quality a priority. Then WWII exasperated the problem of excessive conformity, because of a paranoia of anyone who is different. Then we follow WWII by replacing liberal education with education for technology. Among other things, this change in education is literally a change in how we condition the young to think. We have gone from a focus on independent thinking to "group think". This is devastating to our democracy where independent thinking is essential to our liberty. The night of a government that rules over the minute details of our lives is being manifest, and I am horrified by the number of careers that have been destroyed because of what someone said. It is like Hitler's Germany, because our education for technology is an adoptation of Germany's education for technology. We now not only have "politically correct thinking", and policies that come with the power to control what we say, but a population that thinks this is a good thing!

When I came of age good girls didn't have sex before marriage. Some did, but didn't want others to know about it. I am unaware of there being words for males, equal to slut, whore, bitch. Amazingly around the world, it is females who treat a loose woman the worst. I believe The Scandinavian countries and India are an exception to this. There are places where people are much kinder and do not attach shame to female sexuality. However, I remember being terrified of getting pregnant. There were no food stamps or welfare, only charity, and it is was socially shameful to be dependent on anyone but a husband. I was raised by a divorce mother, when women were restricted in education and the jobs they could have, and even if they worked the same job a man worked, the woman was automatically paid less. Clearly a single mother would not do well, and on top of her hardships, she had to care for a baby. There are extremely few jobs where a mother can work and care for her baby too. The problems of being a single parent are terrible from my point of view, and I knew if I became a mother, I w was on my own, with no family to help me. And from my point of view this is restricted to the past! I will return to this argument after taking my Great Grandson to day care and my granddaughter to work.

Get a subscription to a good science magazine and enjoy the banquet of sciences that is available. I used to live for my next Omni magazine, which came once a month. Nothing lifted my spirits better. Such non technical magazines are made to appeal to the average reader and so the articles are short and easy. I don't know how anyone could read them and not feel excited. Once you expose yourself to all the fascinating things going on in science, you will be driven to get more and more information. I don't want to get in trouble for spamming, but I enjoy The Teaching Company college lectures so much, I want everyone to know they are available. I just googled science DVD's and here is a site for less advanced people or children, http://www.learningfromdvds.com/Science-DVDs.html . At these prices, one does not have to depend public education to educate a child. National Geographic also has DVD's of popular science interest. There are more options.

I am a math idiot, and thought it impossible for me to change this. But I am fascinated by math, and read books about it and watch DVD's about math. W.W. Sawyer's book "Mathematician's Delight" is very helpful. He stresses the importance of being able to visualize the problem. Like there is all this mind preparation stuff to do, before trying to learn math concepts. I think those who natural do well in math, learned this pre math thinking from someone close to them, or through early experiences, such as using construction blocks or doing origami. The ideas are already in their heads, and learning the math, just becomes away of expressing the idea they already have. A good teacher can make a huge difference. I think if someone is really struggling with math, s/he might consider finding another teacher. Just because a person really knows something, that doesn't mean this person is a good teacher. W.W. Sayer wrote of public schools failing to teach math, when children are to parrot back what the teacher is directed to teach. This parroting back, may look great on those test the government is obbessed with, but they are not proof of real learning. Real learning is on a deeper level of understanding. A child with a good memory may parrot back a lot, only to hit a wall when trying to learn more advanced concepts. That is because, this memory and parroting is not equal to grasping the necessary math concepts. When we hit this wall, we need to begin working backwards to discover that concept we did not fully grasp, because we can not move ahead without a good comprehension of the basics. In his book he puts this delightful diagram of the math concepts in each chapter. Each chapter is represented by a block and the blocks are stacked in such away a person can see how the concepts are built on the one before. We can use this chart to see which chapter we need to reread, if we don't understand something in chapter 6 or chapter 11. How many teachers work with a child to help the child discover which concept s/he is having trouble with, and then being creative with an explanation that the child can relate to? PS The Teaching Company sells complete college math courses on DVD's. really cheap, compared to the price of actually attending college. They frequently have 70% off sales and that is when to buy. Then you can come here and ask questions when you need help understanding something. How cool is that!

Expelled for hacking? Why did you do that twice? Is the reason for this behavior something you can change or not? How long do you think it would take you to make the change? If you aren't willing to do things differently, than doing the same thing will get the same result, and that would make returning to college a waste of their money and your time. In Europe it is expected for the young to travel and learn about life, before committing to a career. Tell your Dad if he really cares about your education, to send you to a foreign country for a year. For sure, you will come home a whole lot smarter. One of those countries where people are dying because of poverty, and do not have the choices your have, would be a good choice. or- Get the audio tapes "The Cashflow Ouadrant" by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter C.P.A. and find out what it takes to become a million by investing money. You may not like the effort that takes, any more than you evidently like the effort required in college. Before you can make that decision you need to know what it will take. Also, how long is your uncle willing to support you? That is important, because your plan to accumulate money and then invest seems to depend on someone else, so you have to be sure you can depend on this person long enough to achieve your goal. That is not a good path to take if your uncle isn't willing to support you. Without a college degree, it is can be pretty hard to be financially independent and accumulate enough money for investing. However with support and the knowledge you need for investing, you could become a millionaire, and people who work for a living don't do so well. It is amazing to me that education prepares the young to be products for industry, but not to invest wisely and become wealthy. We live in a capitalist society, and one might think the priority would be preparing our young to be capitalist.

Thank you for that site. It makes the whole concept more comprehensive for the beginner. I think all our questions are pushing for the understanding that unites all things. Math is really pushing the envelop of our consciousness.

I am not sure I understand you have said, but what you caused me to question what would exist if we start removing things such as gravity. This is how I reason this. Fire is dependent on fuel. With no fuel there is no fire. Without particles whould gravity exist? Without gravity, particles would no longer gravitate to each other, so atoms would not exist. The container would be empty. We can not have this without that, and this is all there is so there is no outside.

Is there a relationship between spacial and musical harmony that can explain the entire universe? Musical harmony being a vibration. Spacial being a position in relation to other positions.

Here is the information I was looking for about the stages of math skills development in children. Anyone interested in working with children and developing their math skills might check this site. http://www.ixl.com/1c I found that site while checking out Ramanujan. Ramanujan saw each number as a personal friend with its own characteristics. What Schwartz has done is put this kind of imagining in a book for children. In reply to the comment about religious crap, the Greek understanding of the monad, dyad, triad, etc., it is the foundation of our sciences, and we can thank men such as Pythagoras for this.

http://www.suite101.com/content/pythagoras-and-the-history-of-universe-a189473 Pythagoras saw numbers as representing more than quantity, and as I understood Schwartz's public radio interview, he also presents numbers as something than stands for more then quantity. There is an element of quality. I tried to obtain "You Can Count on Monsters" from a local book store and was told it is sold out. I will have to wait for a second printing before I can find out if there is any relationship between the qualities of Pythagoras's numbers and and Schwartz's numbers. In the mean time, does anyone know the child's cognitive developmental stages regarding math? I believe it would be harmful to expect more of a child than is possible. For sure a 3 year old isn't ready for addition flash cards or algebra. But I did find much more age appropriate learning material at a local book store than expected. Either this is an unusual book store, or times have changed a lot! Still rather than depend on the labeling of learning material, I would like a better understanding of a child's cognitive development stages. I know Socrates lead a young man through a complex math problem by asking a series of questions. He believed we were born knowing everything and only had to remember what we already knew. I sure the boy would have been over 8 years of when the brain is more developed. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh you read the book? Surely you have more to say than that, because it is about more than that. Perhaps you know at what age a child can grasp mathematical concepts? How many 3 year olds have worked with and what was the most successful for getting a young child to understand the concepts?

In the cutting Edge math theory thread, I provide a link to a very exciting DVD about Origami and its relation with math, science and art. The DVD is titled "Independent Lens: Between the Folds" and is great for getting high school students excited about math. Then this morning on the National Public Radio station, I heard about a book for children, done by a college professor. http://www.richardev...m/monsters.html Surely everyone has heard Pythagoras put down for treating numbers like beings with personalities, but that is exactly what the college professor has done. His number characters are monsters with individual personalities that children can identify with and love. The idea behind this is, we are more interested and remember better when we humanize objects and numbers. The ancients humanized things like rock formations and told stories about them, so people would remember the land marks, that had some kind of survival purpose, like where to find water. We like to name our cars and computers and talk about their personalities. It is fun and does help us remember. Richard Schwartz has taped into this for introducing children to math, and now that a modern mathemetician has done this, I question how seriously Pythororas took his ugly numbers? Perhaps he too was only speaking of numbers in a more interest way and did not expect people to take him literally? Richard said this is what people who engage in math do, so they can better relate to the meaning behind the numbers and symbols. Whatever, I just wanted to created a space for discussing what parents and grandparents might do to encourage children to enjoy math. Do you have any memories of something that got you interested in math, or an idea for encouraging a child to get excited about math? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dionysus brings up an interesting aspect to this discussion. When reading of him, my first thought was his importance as foreigner with exotic animals, and a following of women. Sounds like a very charismatic person who is traveling like the master of a circus and really enjoying life. I thought of Homer's Odyssey and concern for how the stranger is treated. Homer was writing during the Trojan war, and at first his peoms were used to teach children how to read, and later became as the Greek bible. His work was based in history and he was telling stories. This was not understood as a revelation from God, as the Torah, Christian bible and Koran are assumed to be revelations from God. Socrates objected to turning these stories into religion and he asked questions, such as, are the gods good? Everyone answers yes. Is adultry good? Everyone answers no. Then is Zeus good? Zeus was an adulter, and Socrates said people should be careful about their stories of the gods they tell, fully aware of how they were used by schools to trainsition children into good citizens. Duinysus, was probably a real person, and in part his story tells us how to treat a foriegner. Following the Persian wars, Athens uses the wealth it gained through war, as an investment to increase wealth. Two major investments were rebuliding Athena's temple with murrals portraying the new relationship of the gods, and principles of democracy. The second investment was a university. Both invited foriegners to come and learn and spend their money in Athens. This could not happen without first having a positive attitude towards foriegners. Ritualized freedom is a great safety valve, and the explanation of Duinysus, mentioned ritualized excesses. Today you can get drunk and get wild, but tomorrow we return to law and order. I think Islam could benefit from this. On the other hand, the West has something to gain by realizing a limit to freedom. Religious myth is not all about god. It is mostly about humans. How can we convey the necessary lessons when we have only one God to talk about? Seriously, why do any of us care about stories of Jews? It was said Greek theatre comes through Duinysus, and as good as it was, it is not as good as today's film industry and the dramas coming through Christianity. Some of these Christian passion plays, can really make a person want to be a believer. In conclusion Duinysus has much to tell us about our human nature. I am not sure Islam forbidding alcohol is equal to Islam having different morals from Christianity. The US also had a period of alcohol being illegal, for the same moral reasons, Muslim countries make alcohol illegeal. The US however, had a different understanding of morals and freedom, and were never as obedient to authority, as Muslims, except in Germany, the Christian country we imitated when we replaced our liberal education with education for technology. Whatever, the US could not effectively enforce the law and gave up. It is the cannibolism issue. The morals are the same, but the method of enforcing them is different. We can also add the effect MADD has had on drunk driving law. In the US people did not go to prison for driving drunk and killing someone. That was an accident not murder. MADD changed our point of view. Murder was always illegal, so the morals didn't change so much as the point of view and understanding of drunk driving. What is important here is our ability to reason. I believe the US, because of Athens, puts far more importance on individual, indpendent thinking. While Islam puts all the importance on being obedient to religious authority. The problem with individual indpendent thinking, is it requires education for good moral judgement, and the US replaced that with education for technology, and left moral training to the church. The result is devastating! Among the problems is people absolutely can not comprehend a God without religions defining God. This is extremely unfortunate! And they do little better with morals. Arguing that we do not have shared morals is an indication of how poorly we are doing. We have shared morals, because a moral is matter of cause and effect and is not dependent on religion, and bad reasoning, the inability to reason through cause and effect, has devastated our morality. So someone reasons, it is okay to kill someone who is dying, because the person is going to die anyway, and ignores the reasoning against this argument. Without education for good moral judgment, people just don't have good moral judgment. PS, including Satanism as religion is interesting. I do not believe Satanism can claim to have God's revelation laws, as do the God of Abraham religions. At best Satanism can be man's reasoning, but this not a revelation religion. However, it is dependent on the superstitution of the revelation religions.

Hum how rounded are your curved lines? Does the piece have to form a circle or can it be open? What if the curved line is pleated and flexible? I bought a grandchild C shaped plastic pieces with three evenly spaced dips on each, and they can be put together in interesting shapes. I am keeping an eye out for such toys, but they are not found in regular stores. Strange, the more I talk about this, the more exicted I get. What if we have limited the imagination and future skills or our children, with the toys we do not give them? You saying it was a book your brother gave you, that got you going, is like a seed in my mind. I had thought helping children realize shapes and their relationship with one another would be benefactial, and my old books says so, and you really prove the point! Something given to a child at the right moment can spark the child's imagination and be the beginning of further development. But then will schools kill that or nurture it? I was never a good student, so I am not sure I learned easier at a younger age, but know I am much more motivated now. When we are young, so many personal agenda things can clutter our minds. My personal agenda is behind me, and now I really want to get into the world of math. My daughter is taking a math class that might interest me. I am waiting to see her text and get her report on the class. She said I might be able to audit the class, and that is something I will look into if it appears to be something that will help me put origami and math together. I want to focus on math and origami, because I was so excited by the show, and think this is a good way of exciting children. I can use this information as a volunteer at our Science museum and through the museum take a demonstration to our schools. It would be wonderful to inspire an interest in math in our children. I think this is the only hope for their future. We need new answers to old problems, and today's math is so awesome! I think schools are doing a terrible teaching job, because they are not exciting children with math classes they are forced to take. I want to bring some excitement into the classroom.

Now I am really impressed. That was some awesome reasoning, and I can see I have logically undisciplined. Rarely does anyone even attempt to argue with me in these debates and you have taken everything to a higher level. I very much appreciate that. I so have to continue my efforts to grasp math. It would be so cool if I could use B is not equal to A A is not equal to B to work through this problem of religious cannibalism. Christians begin with an of cannibalism, eating of the body of Christ and drinking his blood, but this ritual is symbolic. The Aztecs literally practiced ritual cannibalism. Christians have a God who wants the first born sacrificed to him, and later have to make a point of God saying he does want fathers to literally sacrifice their sons to him, and finally, everyone stops sacrificing animals including the Jews who do not consider Jesus their savior, and yet a religion that revolved around such rituals continues as though nothing has changed. How does one get this to fit into B is not equal to A and A is not equal to B formula? I think the basic morality of religion is the same, but now we have a taboo on cannibalism, unless it is completely symbolic, using a wafer for the body and a sip of wine for the blood. Yes, we are cannibalizing someone but we are not cannibalizing someone. How different is this from the reasoning of cannibalism? In all cases of cannibalism, the desired goal is to be better people and maintain law and order. So the morality is the same, but Christians who discovered the cannibalism of the Aztecs, did not appreciate their method of maintaining this morality. And today Christians object to Muslim honor killings, although they are very effective in maintaining morality, and Muslims object to the liberalness of Christians and the lack of morality in Christian dominant countries. Perhaps my logical error was not separating out the method for maintaining a shared moral code, but then, this is also about sanctioning cannibalism or honor killers, or holding both as taboo. How does the B does not equal A and A does not equal B formula work here? Serious, I really want to know. And is there a multidimensional math, the is different from the a and b math, that might perhaps work better? For sure using math for such problem solving is a great discipline in logic. I just don't know how to do it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now for the point you made about the difference between reality and truth. That is beautiful as it forces me to think, but I am not making the deisred progress with that thinking. I want to just give up and agree with you, without doing the necessary thinking, as you have said Christians might do. But_ Robin Willians once said, "Reality, an interesting concept". Religion defines reality for religious people. What possible redeeming truth is there in that, when it means rejecting history and science as the work of Satan? Religion is about at least two supernatural beings, one of good and one of evil. It leads to all kinds of ideas about reality that are far from truth, such as believing there is special power in a finger bone, or silver cross, or rabit's foot, and that there are witches who can defy the laws of nature by casting spells. It begins with a God who can rule by whim depending on if he is pleased or displeased, and capable to violating any law of nature he chooses to violate. For many people this is reality, and what is reality? How do we define it? For a religious person it is not history and science that defines their reality, but their holy book. If you doubt that religion defines reality, shall we consider Israel and Palistine and Islam and the condition of China. All these are people have created Internationally important realities based on their religious understanding of reality. The Jews were told they would be hated for their love of God and sure enough this has been their reality. Now the Christians have taken up the cause of God, and some of them also believe they will be hated because of their love of God, and they know an evil power has turned some from the true God, and we have a criminal justice system based on this belief in a punishing God and evil supernatural being. Please, religious mythology is not harmless and but leads people to believe things that are not true and from their they create a reality based on a faulted perception of reality.

I am not understanding your words and wish you could draw what you are working on. I will try going to the site and see if I figure out what you are talking about. I have this 1943 math book that has been reprinted many times, title "Mathematician's Delight", by W.W. Sayer. He explains we come to math through craftsmen and builders, who were just solving practical problems, but they didn't have theories to explain why what they were doing worked. It is said, it is the Greeks who worked out the theories. I think some of us can solve the problems, but we aren't good at theories. A theory is too abstract. Sayer stressed we must be able to see the problem. If not directly, than at least be able to picture it in our minds. From your words, I can't picture what you are talking about. I am really new at this stuff. 40 years isn't so bad, and you have a lot of experience in those 40 years. I am past 60 and I wish were 12, and could build my life on a knowledge of math. I had no idea how fascinating math can be, and I feel like I missed the boat. My Dad told me if I spent as much time thinking about science as I did thinking about the occult, I would benefit from that. But I am female and he didn't give me the direction he gave his son. I was told to get married and raise children, so I did, and we didn't have the Internet and the opportunity for learning we have today. Today anyone can get on the Internet and learn what s/he is missing. How totally marvelous to see reality as folds, and have a sense of movement and relationships. Makes for much imore nteresting mental activity than speculating if the nieghbor is having an affair, or planning a birthday party for a 6 year old.

What is with this absolutism and binary, either this or that thinking? I am guessing you were educated after 1958, when we literally changed how we teach our young to think. I have not been so blatantly aware of what a tragedy this is. I am not sure if meaningful communication is possible? The biggest problem with religions is they are based on mythology not science. Another problem is good reasoning is dependent on learning the higher thinking skills and not everyone does. It seems obviously better to me to reject myth and focus on truth, however this focus is pointless unless the individual has learned the higher thinking skills. Education and training in the higher thinking skills, is essential to our ability to reason. Without that ablity humanity is doomed! Extremely few schools have made the effort to teach students how to think. Especially the No Child Left Behind Act, has teachers focused on teaching children to what to think, not how to think. We have mass produced a society that parrots what they learn, but can not comprehend the meaning. We have produce "group thinkers" because this is good for the rapid advancement of technology. This is not equal to being an indepent thinker. Moontan man, you can jump at anytime and argue my understanding of God and morals is wrong. When people reject religion, they are rejecting the mythology. This does not mean rejecting God and morals. From the one came the many. That is, the whole of manifest reality comes out of chaos, a soup of quarks and the like. This soup was organized by laws into the manifest reality we sudy today, and before organized religions, studying manifest reality and universal laws, first through math and then physics, ect. was also inferring something about God. The Hellenist were doing this and they pursectued Judaism terribly, trying to stamp out this false notion of truth built on mythology, much later the church used Plato and Aristotle to prove their mytholgy is true . When religion is not trying to suppress science, it is using it to prove its mythology is truth . Now we have anthroplogist and archeologist, and related sciences tracing Hebrew mythology back to Egypt and Summer, and Christian mythology is the previous mythiology plus Zorastarism and Hellism. But we still have people who think theology and philosophy are the same thing, and do not realize God and morals are not exclusively a theological debate. Not all non believers are atheist and the reason for rejecting religion is the mythology and superstitution and what it has done to our abiltiy to actually think. My Christian friends reject history and science and cleave to their mythology and insist this is knowing truth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for those links. Have you ever tried to get math books from your local library? My local library does not have a good selection of math books. I will be using the links to access information and books. How long have been doing origami and what do you hope to achieve?

I do not understand your reasoning. Everyone is going to die. Does that mean it doesn't matter if we kill people? Is there some agreement of which I am unaware? Perhaps some kind of time limit. We can kill peole who have less than 6 months to live? Less than a week to live? If my uncle is dying and I learn he is going to change his will and write me out of it, and I kill him before he can that, I am innocent of any wrong, because he was about to die anyway? Oregon is one of the few states to make assisted suicide legal. Personally, I think we should respect the will of the dying, and if they want to end their lives that is between themselves and God, and government should stay out of it. But many people disagree with me, and most places make it illegal to kill oneself, let alone kill anyone else. That is because the effect of allowing people to kill others is not good, and some fear the effect of allowing terminally ill kill themselves would not be good. The moral really is cause and effect. If you think a moral is something besides a matter of cause and effect, what would say a moral is? How does the fact of cultural condition make what needimproving said an irony? Choosing between cherry or apple pie, is not equal to a moral choice. When it comes to moral choices, the religions are in agreement, so it really doesn't matter what religion a person is, unless one is practcing a religion that includes ritual cannibolism. Now that would be a different moral standard. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will quote from "A Beginners Guide to Constructing the Universe" by Michael S. Schneider. First I will say, we can observe cats are different but cats are cats and dogs are dogs, and an oak tree is not a rose bush. "If it were not so, if animals and plants simply inherited their progenitor' characteristics, the order of nature would soon dissolve into an infinite variety of creatures, undifferentiated by species and kinships. This observation, of one type with innumerable products gives rise to the old philosophical problem of the One and the Many. The problem is that, whereas the Many are visible and tangible and can be examined at leisure, the One is never seen or sensed, and its very existence is only inferred through the evident effect it has upon its products, the Many. Yet paradoxically, the One is more truly real than the Many. In the visible world of nature all is flux. Everything is either being born or dying or moving between the two processes. Nothing ever achieves the goal of perfection or the state of equilibrium that would allow it to be described in eccense . The phenomena of nature, said Plato, are always "becoming" never actually 'are'. Our five senses tell us that they are real, but the intellect judges differently, reasoning that the One, which is constant, creative, and ever the same, is more entitled to be called real than its ever fluctuating products." By the way Christmas is the time of the winter equinox. It is right that we reconginze the cycles of nature. Arguments about Jesus would be theology not philosophy. The difference is huge. Theology attempts to tell us what to think. Philosophy attempts to tell us how to think. And as far as I am concerned, if someone worships Jesus as God or the son of God, the person is a Christian. Who gets to make the rules about who is a Christian and who is not? Isn't it really offensive to tell someone who believes s/he is a Christian, that s/he is not a Christian? Who has the God given right to judge who is or is not a Christian? If we determine if someone is Christian or not, like we determine if someone is a Jew or not, there would be no atheist. Only if someone had atheist parents could s/he be athiest. That's it, no mixing. Everyone must marry their kind, so we can be sure what they are. Perhaps by law, everyone should have to identify what they are with a band on their arm, to avoid unwanted mixing and confusion? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wait a minute, not so fast. What is the dying person's will? Under what conditions would it be right to violate this person's will? It is a violation of the law, to violate a person's body even after death. How can you argue it is more right to violate a person with a week to live, or a year to live, than to violate someone with 20 years to live? Are there not undesired consequences to making it okay to violate another, regardless of how long the person is going to live? Some will argue it is wrong to disturb the dead person's remains even centuries after the person's death. It is the principle of the thing. I do not see where my argument about morals equals your conclusion. It is not okay to violate another. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you have Netflix check out the DVD "Independent Lens: Between the Lines. "Filmmaker Vanessa Gould takes you on a provocative odyssey into the mesmerizing world of modern origami, where artist and scientests use the ancient art form to craft works of delicate beauty and to model cutting edge mathematical theoriesl Pushing the envelope to include caricatured portraits and elaborate abstract designs, these experts examine how paper folding can reveal the profound connention between art, science and philosophy." This film is done by professors. Unfortunately, it goes over information too fast and does not give an in depth explanation of the math and physics, but if you are just getting into math, this show will be inspirational and make you want to know more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------