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Relativity (was Re:Nine Inch Nails and other sundries

Matt wrote:
> Truth is not, nor should it be, relative. 

It depends on the kind of truth.  2+2=4 is absolute, broccoli is delicious is
relative.  Hydrogen ionizes at 13.5 eV in its rest frame, but the rate at which
time goes by is relative.  (and that, ironically, is pretty close to an
absolute) Deciding which kind of truth an individual truth is is not always
easy (in my opinion ;-)).  Is it an absolute truth that a free market economy
is best?  Or did communism fail for ancillary reasons?  A lot of people will
tell you that's an absolute truth, but I am not totally convinced.  I prefer
democracy as a governmental structure, but that may be relative.  Do unto
others as you would have done unto you works really well until you throw
masochists into the mix.

> That which is, IS. Because it IS.

Ah, but how do you put it into *words*?  That is the troublesome part.  If I
say "the electron drops through several energy shells, emitting a photon", I
can almost guarantee you I have a different (at least to *some* degree) picture
in mind than you do of what that means.  How much more so when we start talking
about something as intensely personal (and less obectively verifiable) as
images of God?

> I appreciate that you are willing to spell out the word "Christ", at least!

That's rather ironic.  It's my understanding that many american Jews (can't
speak for all of them, and I know some that don't) write G-d as an
interpretation of the instruction to honor God's name and not say or write it
in its entirity.  She can say "Christ" (which is, after all, just the Greek
version of the Hebrew word for Messiah, and not a name, per se) precisely
because she doesn't think he is God.  The G-d thing is a mark of respect.

> You know, I just realized when his box set shipped that I'd never seen the 
> first episodes of "Buffy".  Yikes!

I've never seen the TV show.  Loved the movie, though.  "That's not a name,
that's a fish."  "Kill him a *lot*."  :-)

Getting out of your facial,
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"just because you're fighting evil doesn't make you good" - Rabbi Dobrusin
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