Do you believe in God

[Paul McKeown]

A suggestion for the next instalment: please tell the story of the three villainous Ouldof brothers who occasionally show their ugly faces here - initials C, W and SH.

Treacherous villains who have me tearing my hair out in rage whenever they show their pox riddled pates.

[Richard James]

"While drafting the rules for something, the most contentious issue some of their creators had was whether the rules should say "not less than forty moves" or "not fewer than forty moves". While agreeing with the principle of the rule, we couldn't agree on whether it should be less (the forty moves was one entity), or fewer (each move was a separate entity). "

It's "not fewer". Sometimes you can get round it by slight rephrasing. I was delighted to see an "8 items or fewer" queue in Waitrose! To get back on topic, I sometimes invoke God's name when I see the standard (and I use the word loosely) of literacy of some posts. But there are more important things to get excited about, er, I mean about which to get excited.

Part of a question from an 11+ Verbal Reasoning Practice book I was going through with a Year 5 group at school today:

Doron has two less pets than Zahedah...

TWO LESS PETS?!?!? What the ****! (And where do they get the weird names from anyway?)

Nearly as bad as the chess journalist who called the director of Bobby Fischer against the World Liz Arbus instead of Liz Garbus (perhaps unwittingly confusing her with Diane Arbus).

Just don't mention the number of typos on http://www.chesskids.com.

[Matthew Turner]

Matt - do you believe that humans evolved through natural selection and share a common ancestor with birds, reptiles, fish, insects etc?
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that this true. Enough to convince you that it is true?I personally think there is so much evidence that you have to conclude that Darwinian evolution takes place. That does not necessarily mean that all life on Earth can be explained by Darwinian Evolution.
How old do you believe The Earth is?
Last weekend I listened to two very eminent academics tell me it was 13.7 billion years old. This is the normal estimate for the age of the universe, the age of the earth being about 4.5 billion years old. My mistake, yes you are absolutely right.I accept that they have studied the subject in much greater detail than me. However, I also think that it is an interesting idea that if everybody believes something to be true then it must by definition be false.I don't understand this at all. Are you talking about the argumentum ad pupulum? If so you appear to have misused it here. Science is evolutionary and theories are forged in the furnace of debate, where no debate exists, science stagnates and its theories have the status of folklore.But the crucial part of science is not the theorising, it's the experimentation and confimation of prediction. I do not think that you can draw a clear distinction between theorising and experimentation. The two go hand in hand. Take for instance the shape of the Earth. It is relatively easy to prove that it is round and we have had the scientific sophistication to do so for thousands of years. However, for most of this period, most (western) scientists believed the Earth was flat. This was because it was obvious that the Earth was flat, there was no theorising about it being another shape and hence experimentation didn't happen. Perhaps the same thing is happening now, maybe the Earth is in fact square or dodecahedral?
If you are lumping all "gods" together then perhaps one could imagine one (or many) who is likely to exist somewhere. Perhaps I could suggest a being so far advanced of others in intellect and technology that I could lump him/her/it into the god set. I would still insist that they evolved in some way from the bottom up though rather than being craned in from godland.

Yes, the slug in my garden may accord me the status of God. From it's perspective, I have existed from beyond it's comprehension of the beginning of it's universe and I will go on (hopefully) beyond it's comprehension of the end of it's universe. I hold it's life and death in my hands. If a being existed that had a similar relationship to me as I had to my slug, would I be wrong to call him, her or it God?

Call it what you like but I would like to suggest that we give it the attribute of being hauled up by some form of evolution rather than being craned in fully formed.

If you accept that a supreme being could evolve (or maybe is even likely to exist in the multiverse theory) then you blur the distinction between creation and evolution, because evolution itself could be guided towards the supreme being's goals

[Alex Holowczak]

(And where do they get the weird names from anyway?)

Political correctness. I remember a number of exam questions - assuming they didn't have any stupid mistakes in them - would always have a mix of names from different backgrounds. "Mark and Vikram" and "John and Rupinder" spring to mind.

[Richard James]

(And where do they get the weird names from anyway?)

Political correctness. I remember a number of exam questions - assuming they didn't have any stupid mistakes in them - would always have a mix of names from different backgrounds. "Mark and Vikram" and "John and Rupinder" spring to mind.

Partly. It explains the foreignness but not the weirdness. After the lesson I was looking at the revised edition of an English text book first published in 1965. It's full of questions about girls with names like June and Barbara which were old fashioned even then.

[Nick Thomas]

Matt Turner said:

If you accept that a supreme being could evolve (or maybe is even likely to exist in the multiverse theory) then you blur the distinction between creation and evolution, because evolution itself could be guided towards the supreme being's goals

But hang on a bit . I don't think I said supreme being. I said that something might exist in a universe somewhere which I could accept that you might want to call a god (because it is technologically and evolutionarily far advanced of us). I would not accept that it was omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent or was craned into being though but would need to have evolved from lesser (for want of a better word) forms. How could it's evolution be guided towards this godlike (you call it supreme being) things goals if it hasn't evolved into being a godlike (supreme being) thing yet? Who or what is doing the guiding? Surely not the yet to evolve godlike thing?!?

[Nick Thomas]

Oh Matt by the way. I still have no idea if you believe that the world is 4.5 billion years old (or at least on that sort of magnitude) or if you believe that man evolved through means of natural selection over millions of years and share common ancestors with birds, fish etc. I don't know if you believe in creation or some sort of god. I know i've asked you some of these questions and you've answered but I couldn't seem to quite get to the bottom of it. Apologies if i'm being too direct and you don't wish to state your position on a public forum.

[John Clarke]

But there are more important things to get excited about, er, I mean about which to get excited.

There's nothing wrong about ending your sentence with a preposition. The idea that you shouldn't is a hangover from the days when English syntax was excessively influenced by Latin (where such a construction is impossible).

Bear in mind Churchill's (possibly apocryphal) comment on seeing one particularly tortuous example of such pedantry: "This is the sort of language up with which I will not put!"

[PeterTurland]

But there are more important things to get excited about, er, I mean about which to get excited.

There's nothing wrong about ending your sentence with a preposition. The idea that you shouldn't is a hangover from the days when English syntax was excessively influenced by Latin (where such a construction is impossible).

Bear in mind Churchill's (possibly apocryphal) comment on seeing one particularly tortuous example of such pedantry: "This is the sort of language up with which I will not put!"

It is not what you say, it is what you mean, but some folk don't give a damn about that, they use language to get you to do what ever they want you to do, basically they manipulate you with words, to turn you into their zombie.

[John Clarke]

It is not what you say, it is what you mean, but some folk don't give a damn about that, they use language to get you to do what ever they want you to do, basically they manipulate you with words, to turn you into their zombie.

"We know that you believe you understand what you think we said, but we are not sure you realise that what you heard is not what we meant."

Cheers, John

[George Szaszvari]

. Ignoring the retired Kasparov, amongst the top ten I can only think of one who is at least partly Jewish... In the fifties and sixties there were many more elite Soviet players who were at least partly Jewish...

We can add your hero, the venerable Lenin, if not an elite chessplayer, certainly a world changing elitist (you'll forgive
my digression) to another list....

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 13,00.html

[Simon Spivack]

We can add your hero, the venerable Lenin ...

The list of things I have been called includes: fascist, lefty, Commie, right-wing bigot, anti-Semite (this by an anti-Semite!), Jewboy, kike and racist. It looks like I must add Leninist to it. I have yet to be called a self-hating Jew, but no doubt will get to enjoy this pleasure eventually.

Perhaps some kind soul can explain what George's bringing up of Hitler and Lenin is doing in this thread?

[Sebastian Stone]

We can add your hero, the venerable Lenin ...

The list of things I have been called includes: fascist, lefty, Commie, right-wing bigot, anti-Semite (this by an anti-Semite!), Jewboy, kike and racist. It looks like I must add Leninist to it. I have yet to be called a self-hating Jew, but no doubt will get to enjoy this pleasure eventually.

Perhaps some kind soul can explain what George's bringing up of Hitler and Lenin is doing in this thread?

Hitler and arguments about religion go together like, two things that go together.

Because Hitler was an atheist who killed 50 million people to further the communist, atheist, fascist, gay, liberal agenda.

Or something.

He was also an occultist.

[PeterTurland]

We can add your hero, the venerable Lenin ...

The list of things I have been called includes: fascist, lefty, Commie, right-wing bigot, anti-Semite (this by an anti-Semite!), Jewboy, kike and racist. It looks like I must add Leninist to it. I have yet to be called a self-hating Jew, but no doubt will get to enjoy this pleasure eventually.

Perhaps some kind soul can explain what George's bringing up of Hitler and Lenin is doing in this thread?

Hitler and arguments about religion go together like, two things that go together.

Because Hitler was an atheist who killed 50 million people to further the communist, atheist, fascist, gay, liberal agenda.

Or something.

He was also an occultist.

It is a phenomena one often comes across on the 'Net.
Godwin's law

[George Szaszvari]

We can add your hero, the venerable Lenin ...

The list of things I have been called includes: fascist, lefty, Commie, right-wing bigot, anti-Semite (this by an anti-Semite!), Jewboy, kike and racist. It looks like I must add Leninist to it. I have yet to be called a self-hating Jew, but no doubt will get to enjoy this pleasure eventually.

Perhaps some kind soul can explain what George's bringing up of Hitler and Lenin is doing in this thread?

How wonderfully coy of you, Simon! You yourself expanded on what was earlier postulated in this thread on a matter
raised by several other posters here discussing Jews in chess, with the inevitable reference to anti-Semitism. Adolf
was mentioned as a leading anti-Semite of modern history who was very probably part Jewish himself. Nothing to do
with "Godwin theories", it was of interest to the run of the subject then under discussion, which might have spawned
yet another sub-thread, tending to be of interest to people of my age (and older) and background, but nobody seemed
able or willing ("Adolf fatigue"...?)

Although Vladimir Ilich was supposed to have played chess, it was more of a stretch in adding him to the mix, even if,
I admit, the "hero" was a tease hard to resist, for which I apologize if your "finer sensibilities" were offended (oh my,
we are getting stuffy in our old age, aren't we?) I really did hope, however, that being something of a Russophile and
keen historian/ researcher, you might have commented on the KGB revelation, even if only as an interesting aside...
oh well