[Gatac]

- Okay, no more metaphysics. I don't think we'll agree with each other there, anyway. Still, it's been an interesting discussion so far.

- The way I understand it, the council's chief bone of contention was the issue of the Holy Trinity versus the one God above all. As I recall, the Holy Trinity won out, but this was by no means uncontroversial at the time.

What about all the splinter groups of Christianity?

- Fortunately, I can swim.

- What's the relevance of the various biblical stories of people's exploits, especially when there's no clear moral? What's the relevance of Revelations when you're not in altered states of consciousness? I think the modern bible contains plenty of passages that border on being almost impenetrable; a warning against a sort of witchcraft seems almost like an oasis of straightforwardness.

I'm not saying the bible is unreadable, far from it, but I do think passages that don't make any immedeate sense to the reader have been retained for a long time. I can't discount that something might have been dropped, of course. But if I approached the bible as "Let's cut this down to the basics", there's other stuff I'd kick out first. My subjective view, of course.

- Yes, let's not get into the take life / give life thing.

- A zombie butterfly?

- The conflicts we have now are terrible, but I think it can be argued with some success that they a) do not approach the level of total warfare we saw in, say, the Thirty Years war and such, b) are fought by less developed nations we have, in a way, uplifted to our tech level without giving them the time to adjust their culture. (I know, big big BIG minefield...)

- Given the area and population density of the small kingdoms involved, that would still be a very sizeable percentage of the serfs.

- I'm saying he would've gotten a few good ideas on using that as a force multiplier, but I have a firm policy on not exporting tech to the past, so we'll never find out.

- What other options? Cut off shipping and starve out the civilians? Surrender to Japan, maybe? Like I said, it was a shopping mall of suck and they went with the lesser evil.

- Fair enough, though I think the economic potential is mostly positive.

- I beg to differ, but I'd rather not have a "Science is not Religion" debate here.

Gatac