Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 November 13

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November 13

What is the correct number of figures in Rodin's “Gates of Hell”?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Rodin#The_Gates_of_Hell States The Gates of Hell comprised 186 figures in its final form.[25] 25.^ a b Jianou & Goldscheider, 41.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Hell States The Gates of Hell (French: La Porte de l'Enfer) is a monumental sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It stands at 6 m high, 4 m wide and 1 m deep (19.69'H × 13.12'W × 3.29'D) and contains 180 figures. 132.198.153.130 (talk) 00:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It's going to depend on how you define "figure". There are some real asses and elbows parts of the piece where it's hard to tell what belongs to whom, and there are skulls lying around and such which you might or might not add to the total. Here is a fairly high-res shot of one of them where you can see what I mean. --Sean 20:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

History of Volkswagen

Hi, i need help. Could somebody help me to identify the man on this picture? [1].

It seems like the CEO of Volkswagen during the 1970s but i am not sure. He is posing in front of a newly made Volkswagen Golf Mk1. The picture dates possibly from 1978.

Thanks in advance.--HappyApple (talk) 02:11, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Rudolf Leiding perhaps? He ran VW when the Golf first came out. I can't quite tell from the photo labeled "Rudolf and the SP2 model" on this page if it's him (much older), but it looks like the same chin. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

For some reason, I can´t get the link to work, but the URL indicates that it may be Ferry Porsche. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 21:30, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Ferry it is. The same image shows up when I search for "Ferry Porsche photos", and the third picture here is a good match too. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:51, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Interest rates and money flow

Where does the extra money paid by borrowers go, when interest rates are raised by a central bank? e.g. mortgage interest payments.

In a historical and simple view of a single bank, the extra cash would end up in savings accounts at the bank through a higher savings interest rate. However in today's global economy where securitization is prevalent and everyone lends to everyone else, I'm guessing it doesn't end up with bank depositors or the banks themselves.

I know that corporations suffer with higher interest rates as they are usually geared, so I guess it doesn't go to shareholders as a group.

I know that a government must pay out higher bond coupon rates on new borrowings, so I'm guessing it doesn't go to government.

Where does the money go then? And how does it flow there? What are the gaps in my logic? CrazyGoldy (talk) 03:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Be careful of basic assumptions. First, the US Fed (to take a familiar example) adjusts the rate it charges other banks, not the rate they charge customers. The action is most effective at the short end (30 days), rather than on longer-tenure bonds. Second, raising interest rates may result in a loss of interest income. For example, ten loans are made for $100 each, at 2.5% interest. When the interest rate is raised to 2.75%, one borrower drops out, and the remaining nine loans are rolled over. Income from the 10 x 2.5% loans was 25, whereas interest from the 9 x 2.75 was 24.75. In other words, there was no increased income from raising the lending rate. Third, rising interest rates affect not only loans but also deposits. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: The money supply shrinks by that amount, unless the central bank is willing to hand out larger loans and the commercial banks are willing to risk borrowing larger amounts. So it is the destruction of money, as the (under a system of fiat money only symbolical) liability of the central bank called "currency in circulation" shrinks.

Long answer:

The Federal Reserve rarely lent money directly to banks before the recent financial crisis, but the European Central Bank did (and does) lend money for 7 days by its "main refinancing operation". What the ECB basically does is it gives euros to the banks, under the condition that they give them back plus some interest. Now if we ignore some legacy gold reserves etc. we can assume that a central bank just hands out money that it creates (and nobody else is allowed to create) and then seems to expect to get paid back more than it created. Of course that cannot work. Either banks default or the loans have to be refinanced.

In the refinancing the central bank requires some collateral. This collateral is usually again a loan, but this time a loan that the commercial bank made e. g. to a shoe manufacturer. The loan runs over several years (while the commercial bank's loan from the central bank runs only over one week) and it has a higher interest rate than the (current) interest rate that the central bank charges the commercial banks. Now the central bank usually will only hand out a loan that is smaller than the value of the loan pledged as collateral, and this value itself varies with time, as the perceived creditworthyness of the shoe manufacturer (often assessed by a rating agency). So the commercial bank actually needs some other capital - some equity - that it pledges as collateral. Theoretically the owners of the commercial bank could pledge some gold or some houses they own as collateral if such a monetary system would have to be bootstrapped.

The shoe manufacturer will eventually complete building his factory and will start generating a cashflow. I. e. people will buy shoes with the money that has been issued by the central bank and that has been lent to commercial banks, then either to consumers or to other financial institutions or to nonfinancial corporations and these corporations have paid their workers. An important question now is which price people will pay for the shoes. As I have just described that a monetary system has been bootstrapped (a currency reform), people will probably be willing to pay about the same fraction of their annual salary for a pair of shoes as they paid before the currency reform (prices are "sticky").

The shoe manufacturer will pay his employees certain salaries/wages. If the annual production of pairs of shoes per employee is larger than 1/(the fraction of salary/wage that one is willing to pay for a pair of shoes) and the employees receive a wage that is about average then the shoe manufacturer has some money left for paying for other costs (raw materials etc.). If there is some money left after that, then he can actually start paying the interest on the loan.

In other words, the productivity per worker divided by the wage of the worker has to be high enough, or the manufacturer will default on the loan. Now the shoe manufacturer may actually be able to repay his loan, but that cannot be true for all businesses, because the money for the all the interests just does not exist!

The banks are, however, willing to refinance loans, depending on their (or the rating agencies') judgement regarding the ability of businesses to create cashflows. This ability depends on the prices of their products. Now these prices depend on supply and demand. And if banks are willing enough to extend credit, then the borrowers may bid up prices. Unfortunately I don't know a formula for the demand curve for shoes that results as people have more money to spend.

The central bank is usually willing to extend credit to banks as long as their equity/assets ratio doesn't become too small (capital requirements) and as long as they keep some of the money that it borrows short-term from other people (depositors, they think they have a certain amount of money on their deposit, while the bank has lent most of it longer-term to someone else, see reserve requirements).

If the central bank now raises interest rates, then immediately, the banks will experience a smaller spread between the interest rate they charge and the interest rate they pay, thus their earnings will be reduced or even turn negative, which means that their equity shrinks. Now the banks will raise the rates they pay on deposits in order to have to borrow less from the central bank at a somewhat higher rate. That means in turn that bonds (securitized loans) will become worth less, and the equity of banks holding these bonds will shrink further (assuming mark-to-market accounting, which has been suspended this year in the United States, so banks are allowed to basically assign just some value to these holdings, as they do to the non-securitized loans). In order to counter this, the banks raise interest rates for loans to consumers and businesses. This means that consumers are (usually) no longer bidding up prices. Businesses will have to pay more to banks and thus they will shut down less profitable operations. The only thing that can remedy the situation is a growth in output - then the businesses can restore the old earnings at a lower margin. If they want to restore the old profit margin, they generally have to cut wages or increase productivity.

Increasing output without increasing productivity means for the whole economy usually increasing the number of workers (if the wages are cut across the whole economy, then there will be not enough consumers buying the products).

The part that is hard to foresee is how prices (and wages) will develop under a certain interest rate and how productivity will develop. I said 'usually' people will stop bidding up prices when interest rates are raised, but that is not true if inflation expectations are high enough.

MMMMM742 (talk) 18:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Health Insurance Costs in the 1960s

I read a youtube comment on a video implying that government inclusion in the Health Insurance system drove up costs of Health insurance from their original levels in the 60s, that being around 15 dollars a month. Is their any truth to either claim brought up?

How much is 15 dollars adjusted for inflation? 74.236.23.152 (talk) 05:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Which country ? StuRat (talk) 12:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's an interesting take: In the 1960s, US households spend 24% of their consumption expenditure (goods and services) on food and healthcare, combined. This decade, the total is 25%, because as healthcare got more expensive, food became much cheaper. Source: http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=70&Freq=Year&FirstYear=2007&LastYear=2008. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course, you can have 1960s level health care for much less. But that means no transplantation, no useful chemotherapy, not MRIs or CTs, no synthetic insulin, ... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see if procedures and operations done the same as in the 1960's, like maybe a tonsillectomy, are now more expensive, when adjusted for inflation. StuRat (talk) 12:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. But for the OP, that probably would have to be "procedures and operations done the same as in the 1960's and covered under 1960s health care plans" to be a useful comparison. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:56, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Medical school costs have risen far faster then inflation in the US as well I would suspect (since every other type of college seemed to). It would be interesting to compare tuition at various medical schools in 1960 vs today. Googlemeister (talk) 14:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

That's right — when President Eisenhower had a heart attack, the premium medical care of the day for a sitting president was to get 2 weeks of bed rest in the hospital and then another 6 weeks of taking it easy at home. These days they'd rack up US$1 million of charges on day 1, I imagine. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The mega-corporatization of U.S. health care drove up costs at least as much as government interference. In the 1960's, auto manufacturers etc. put health-care benefits in the contracts they negotiated with employees unions as a relatively cheap substitute for offering pay raises -- and by the late 1980's (corresponding with the rise of Humana etc.), many of them were beginning to strongly regret it. Exploding costs of the health-care benefits that were specified in union contracts was one factor driving GM's bankruptcy... AnonMoos (talk) 22:08, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Man and God

It has been said that one reason the Jews do not believe in Jesus Christ is because Jesus Christ is at best still in part a man while God is not man and the First Commandment prohibits them from accepting any other God before Him. This argument seems to be trumped by Jesus saying that in fact he is God so that the inevitable result is that since man cannot be God Jesus is lying and attempting to nullify the First Commandment through deception to win allegiance to God for Himself. This is a great argument for not believing in God unless you consider the idea that man and God are joined in a manner similar to a caterpillar and a butterfly or an egg and a chicken. Man and God certainly seem to be joined by a covenant so how is it impossible that man and God can be joined in flesh and in spirit? 71.100.0.254 (talk) 08:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• It sounds to me from what you say the difference is the same as thzt between consubstantiation or pheumatic presence and transsubstantiation at the eucharist. And if that divides Christians how on earth do you expect a Jew to agree with anything similar or different or whatever? It's not as thougfh we can do any experiments to determine anything like an answer. Dmcq (talk) 10:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
• What? I mean "the question presupposes a lot that is not obvious and/or wrong and/or employs circular reasoning, and could be clearer". "The Jews" probably have many different opinions. Most of them do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah of the the old testament. Some of them do not believe he existed at all. Heck, some of them even believe God does not exist, although those are probably not religious Jews. We do not know what Jesus (if he existed at all) actually has said, much less why he said it. The main sources, the Gospels, have been written long after the events depicted, and they do not agree to well with each other. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

There are lots of reasons why the Jews do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah, let alone as a manifestation of God. Bear in mind that even if he was able to do miracles, the ability to do miracles was never proof of being the Messiah - for example, in the OT you can find Balaam who could do pretty amazing things but was evil. You need to look into this further because your basic premise is flawed. --Dweller (talk) 11:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

As Dweller wrote, there are a lot of reasons why Jews don't accept Jesus as the Messiah-I don't know where to start from, but it's noteworthy that the first of the principles of the Jewish faith is that God has no image or physical form and that it's one. Unlike Stephan I do believe that Jesus most probably existed -but it mean nothing about his being the Messiah. There is only negligible precent of Jews who accept Jesus, but those are messianic Jews and part of them is not even Jewish...--Gilisa (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe that "Jesus most probably existed"? , please! Seriously, I do believe that he most likely did exist - there only is a small chance that he is a complete amalgamation. I do believe, however, that most sources on Jesus are highly questionable in almost every detail. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Stephan, just made incorrect commentary of "..We do not know what Jesus (if he existed at all)". Apologize.--Gilisa (talk) 12:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

No offense taken. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:20, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I am asking whether God and man can be one but have different forms in the sense that a caterpillar and a butterfly can have the same DNA but exist in different forms. I was a bit hasty in asking the question without reviewing the reference more slowly and in greater depth. It appears that the reference is much more thought out. And deserves to be quoted. It will however take more time to quote the reference so I will restate the question with the quote in a few hours. 71.100.7.164 (talk) 12:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Maimonidies, based on Talmudic sources, codifies that Judaism rejects any realization of a corporeal God. The few times mention is made of an allusion to such an idea (the frequent "Hand of God," and the unique and rather awkward reference made of God revealing to Moses the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, during which Rashi quotes the Talmud which states that God appeared to Moses "wrapped in a tallit") are purely and utterly allegorical. There are not many reasons why Jews reject Jesus -- there are really just a few. Jesus, or at least his teachings according to his followers, apparently came to do a number of things: represent God incarnate, modify the law as presented by originally Moses in the OT, and present himself as the Messiah, perhaps in conjunction with modifying the aforementioned laws. As stated above, Judaism rejects diviine corporeality, so that takes care of #1. As for Jesus modifying the rules, that doesn't jive with Judaism for a number of simple reasons. Firstly, the Torah specifically makes reference to people, including prophets, appearing and changing rules. Rules may be changed in I'll say an "acute" (immediate) form (hora'as sha'a -- search for the word "navi") but not in a "chronic" (long-term) form. (An example is Elijah, who allowed extra-templar sacrifice, but only to make a limited presentation of God vs. the Ba'al, and not to establish a new, long-standing rule.) Not less than 37 times does the OT refer to its rules as taking effect ad olam, (lit. 'until forever') "meaning eternally". If God meant to change his rulebook, he'd have made room for that, not provide regulations that utterly and completely preclude such a possibility. A prophet who comes and violates the above rules is a false prophet and is to be executed. As for #3, times of the Messiah will be as described in Isaiah with swords being beaten into plowshares. There has literally not been one day in the last 100 years without war happening somewhere in the world. So the common Christian response to such an attack is to respond that Isaiah is to be taken as referring to peace in ones heart. Jews, who have the Oral tradition with which they interpret the Written tradition, do not take this to be allegorical, and as such, contend that the Messiah has not yet arrived. For those Christians who see this as an implausible contrivance, the concept of a second coming was established -- this idea is necessary in order to defend their position in relation to a world in which the Messiah has come but still appears to be distant from a world of peace, harmony, serenity, etc. Judaism, which does not accept Jesus as embodying the first coming of the Messiah, need not fall onto such an idea as a second coming, and thus, reject such a concept as well. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 04:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

DRosenbach, I think that this sums the all issue.--Gilisa (talk) 10:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed -- the Pablo Christiani debate probably does sum it up. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:55, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

380 villages destroyed by Ottoman Syrian Druze?

Does amyone know where I could source and list the names of the 380 Ottoman Syrian Christian villages destroyed by Ottoman Syrian Druze and Muslims during the 1860 Lebanon conflict? Thanks! Chesdovi (talk) 09:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Only ideas about who to ask. Our article (which gives the 380 number) has two sources: (1) Lutsky, Vladimir Borisovich (1969). "Modern History of the Arab Countries". Progress Publishers. [2] and (2) Farah, Caesar E. The politics of interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon, 1830-1861, p. 564. I.B.Tauris, 2000. ISBN: 1860640567. Farah at least can be contacted through the University of Minnesota and might be able to point you to the correct records. Another scholar you might ask is Yusri Hazran [3], currently at Harvard. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 14:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Ships used in the Battle of Lake Erie

The ship noted as brig Adams built in 1799 and then captured and renamed the HMS Detroit by the British. A brig is a two masted ship yet the picture of the Detriot has 3 masts. Can you clerify this for me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.239.0.84 (talk) 15:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

All is answered in HMS Detroit. In short, there where two ships of the same name, in the same theatre, at the same time, the brig (captured by the British from the US and renamed), and a 3-masted flush-deck corvette (British-build, but captured by the US in the Battle of Lake Erie). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

History: how horrible was it?

From what you learn at school and read in books you would come away with the impression that in the Middle Ages peasants basically ate pig dung for breakfast while the lords sat around on top of a pile of gold-plated skulls saying "hahaha I'm rich bitch." How accurate is this impression, though? Dudes did revolt sometimes, obviously, but if conditions were as bad as I imagine them to be they'd have been freaking out basically all the time. What responsibities did the lords have? Vitriol (talk) 21:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It was kind of like in third-world countries today. Sometimes life is great, sometimes life sucks, but I suppose for most people it sucks more often than it's great. Sometimes there is a very rich lord who doesn't much care for the people below him, and sometimes you go hungry or die of diseases. Sometimes your crops might fail and you can't harvest them, sometimes you might have a larger than usual harvest. Maybe you live in an area where knights go around fighting each other and burning each others' villages, or maybe you live in a peaceful area. Maybe your lord works you to the bone, or maybe there is a local monastery that does the same, but maybe your lord (or your local monastery) is very charitable towards you. Maybe you can use the lord's ovens and maybe you'll get to eat a lot of meat...or maybe not. Maybe you'll live in or near a city, maybe a city is an entirely foreign concept to you. Of course (as I say whenever we have a medieval question), it depends on where we are talking about, and what time period, because the Middle Ages covers all of Europe (and even Asia and Africa to some extent) for over a thousand years, and obviously it wasn't the same everywhere at the same time. Do you have a particular date and place that you are thinking of? It's very difficult to give an appropriate answer otherwise. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

And remember that happiness is relative. When a peasant in those days received an orange (as from the real Saint Nicholas), it was the most wonderful day in their life (I recently saw a story about the Berlin airlift, which related a very similar story). If we got such a gift today, we'd be highly disappointed. See how it works ? The more you have, the more you need to make you happy. StuRat (talk) 22:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

More likely they would wonder "what the heck is an orange" since they wouldn't have ever seen one before the thirteenth century :) Adam Bishop (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The stereotypes are totally inaccurate.

I would suggest reading Misconceptions About the Middle Ages[4] - Pollinosisss (talk) 23:44, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

"Totally inaccurate" ? No, that's not even what the book claims. For example, the first chapter on the corruption of the Church admits that there was a great deal of corruption, but says there were also attempts at reform. If there was no corruption, then your statement that "stereotypes are totally inaccurate" would be correct. The book also seems to lack a scientific approach. Of course there were both corruption and attempts at reform, as there is now. The question then, is the ratio of each. Had they listed each of the medieval popes and classified each as "corrupt" or "not corrupt", using evidence, then we could get an objective view of just how corrupt the medieval Church was. Instead, they just substitute their own totally subjective opinion that "it wasn't so bad" for the previous totally subjective opinion. I'd rather see some evidence. StuRat (talk) 14:21, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

My sense is that there were some very harsh periods in medieval western Europe, such as the 5th and 6th centuries at one end and the 14th century at the other, when life was hard indeed and the death rate exceeded the birth rate. Apart from those widespread hard times and more scattered periods of hardship due to war, however, I think that, most of the time, ordinary people (which is to say peasants) were about as happy or as unhappy as ordinary people are today in countries without grinding poverty. Apart from the centuries I mentioned, the Middle Ages were not a time of widespread absolute poverty. Most people had enough to eat most of the time. Don't forget that lords had some incentive to keep their people healthy and reasonably happy because this would maximize the lord's yield in the long run, just as you would not let a herd of cattle get run-down. Unlike cattle, peasants could be resentful and exercise passive resistance, so lords had an interest in maintaining minimal good will. Some peasants even prospered. Of course their idea of prosperity would look rough and austere to people in the present-day developed world, but they were comfortable enough and felt fortunate. Because of poor sanitation and health care, infant mortality and death in childbirth were high, and life expectancy was low, so lives were shorter, but I think mostly not less happy than ours. Marco polo (talk) 01:17, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Happiness economics is an interesting read too. Best, WikiJedits (talk) 14:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

It's difficult to judge such things objectively. While you or I might think of life in 9th Century Europe as filthy, boring, and harsh - something we could never find happiness in - someone from then might consider our times to be aseptic, horribly disjointed and fast-paced, and detached from the natural and spiritual worlds they were much more intimate with. To us, life back then would be a bit like doing hard time in a prison - a small-scale society with much more labour than we're used to, while someone with a huge amount of power over us looks after our "best interests". To them, our life might seem like drowning in free-fall, where each day is different, strange - and scary. Imagine living your entire life only having met the few hundred people in your local area and where technological innovation happens so slowly that you might count on your hands (if you could count) the changes you'd seen in your lifetime. Matt Deres (talk) 16:15, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I found this TV series to be an interesting look at this point.Terry Jones' Medieval Lives.Watch it if you can...hotclaws 15:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

As humans we are able to 'project' what we think others would feel into their scenarios, but we're very poor at it. There's an excellent TedTalk by Dan Gilbert about this kind of 'assumed unhappiness' issue. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA . Also whenever this type of question comes up i'm reminded of the words of a song by James. It goes "If i hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor." ny156uk (talk) 18:01, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting point, and one with wide implications. Not only does it affect our ability to understand history, but also the lives of modern people in other countries, or in our own country in harder circumstances: we assume widespread misery. More alarmingly, it affects the discussion of disabilities, provision for the elderly and living wills. Healthy young people pretty commonly report that they would rather die than (insert condition), whereas people actually in those situations very commonly feel differently. This becomes alarming when healthy young people get to make decisions about what should be provided for those who are disabled, or elderly, or dying, or are expected to make decisions that will be applied to themselves in these circumstances. 86.142.231.220 (talk) 20:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting side reference: after the Black Plague, labor was extremely scarce, and so workers wages (as measured by how many calories they got) soared to levels not seen again for hundreds of years. DOR (HK) (talk) 04:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Newton’s dark secret

Heresy is a condition, which can cover opposition to many religious doctrines . If one proclaims by the actions, words or deeds for instance that they put money before God then that is heresy against the First Commandment. If they hold that Jesus Christ is not divine then they commit heresy against the doctrine of the Trinity held by the Anglican and the Catholic church.. However, Newton is said to have held the belief that Christ is not divine in defiance of the Trinity doctrine therefore making the Trinity doctrine a blasphemy of the First Commandment (if you believe Newton). My contention is that Newton was wrong because Christ, while not completely equal to God in the sense that he was not around for the Big Bang is equal to God as an instrument of God’s will which many others have tried to imitate but have failed. In other words Christ is equal in the sense that his existence is in absolute conformance, compliance and fulfillment of God’s will which no one else has or can achieve. Is my contention logically unsound? 71.100.7.164 (talk) 22:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

That would depend on what kind of Christology you and Newton believe in. Newton might be wrong if you assume your definition is correct, although you yourself likely hold a heretical belief, according to someone else. Adam Bishop (talk) 22:16, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

You are talking about religious belief, logic doesn't come into it. It's all about blind faith. I will point out that the Bible says Christ was around from the beginning ("In the beginning there was the word and the word was God and the word was with God" or words to that effects. "The word" is interpreted to mean Christ, see Logos.) so your statement about Christ not being around at the Big Bang would seem to contradict mainstream interpretation of the Bible. --Tango (talk) 22:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I of course mean in the flesh rather than in spirit. 71.100.7.164 (talk) 00:56, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The Gospel of John says that. The Bible implies lots of other things too; that's why our Christology article is so long :) Adam Bishop (talk) 22:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

He said that he always does what is pleasing to him, and that the words that he spake were not his, but the father's. So I would say, no, it is not unsound. —Akrabbim^talk 23:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The assumption that "Heresy is a condition, which can cover opposition to many religious doctrines" is a fallacy, which creates apparent problems. Heresy, the "wrong" path, is a phantom that exists in the minds of those powerful enough to enforce their reading of "orthodoxy", the "right" learning. Outside the cult, these phantoms have no existence. --Wetman (talk) 09:38, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

The concept of heresy can also apply to science, you know. Did you know that Newton wrote 2 million words on alchemy? He wrote more on alchemy than he did on gravity. Was Newton an heretic when it comes to our concept of science? --TammyMoet (talk) 17:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

And when Edmond Halley questioned the basis of astrology, Newton replied "Sir, I have studied it, you have not!". -- JackofOz (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes, Newton would have been considered a complete nutcase in today's scientific community. We consider a rainbow to have 7 colours (when actually it is a continuous spectrum and you can arbitrarily separate it into any number of colours you want to) because Newton considered 7 to be a sacred/mystical number. Deciding on scientific definitions based on mysticism would get you laughed out of the lecture theatre today, but it was completely accepted in those days. Don't try and judge/classify historical figures by today's standards - that way madness lies. --Tango (talk) 20:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually the basis of Newton's distinction of limited colors is due to his use of a second prism to analyze the light coming from the first. 71.100.7.164 (talk) 20:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

According to Rainbow#The place of indigo, Newton originally said there were 5 colours (he didn't include orange or indigo) and then added 2 more because he liked the number 7. (Our article says it was by analogy to the diatonic scale in music, other things I've read have said it was for mystical reason [which would fit in with other things Newton did and said]. I don't think it really matters which.) --Tango (talk) 20:18, 14 November 2009 (UTC)