Searching for GOD...

[Maeght]

We've been round this so many times ......but

What do you think perception consists of other than electrical activity in the brain as a response to external stimuli? Why is it any more than just that which we compare against our memory bank of previous such activity and intrepret its meaning based on previous experiences?

[floo]

We've been round this so many times ......but

What do you think perception consists of other than electrical activity in the brain as a response to external stimuli? Why is it any more than just that which we compare against our memory bank of previous such activity and intrepret its meaning based on previous experiences?

Alan needs to justify his belief system, but sadly isn't doing a very good job of it, imo!

[bluehillside Retd.]

Maeght,

We've been round this so many times ......but

What do you think perception consists of other than electrical activity in the brain as a response to external stimuli? Why is it any more than just that which we compare against our memory bank of previous such activity and intrepret its meaning based on previous experiences?

So far as I can tell, Alan Burns's position is: "OK, lots of complicated things can arise as emergent properties of simpler components. I also have a personal faith in something I call "god" that requires the existence of an intangible "something" I call a "soul" to hang together. Consciousness looks really complicated to me, so I'll decide arbitrarily that it's too complicated for it to be an emergent property, and thenI'll retro-fit my soul hypothesis to explain it."

It's all hopeless reasoning I know, but it seems to be all he has.

 

[Outrider]

But the word "pattern" implies something which is perceived.  The pattern does not perceive itself.  A pattern is only recognised by the perceiver of that pattern.

The word pattern only implies a perceiver inasmuch as any noun implies a perceiver. If I'm not in the room, the pattern of light on the television doesn't change, it's still the same pattern.

O.

[torridon]

I'm interested to know what an atheist is doing spending several years searching for God. Given Jeremiah 29:13 what is it which confirms your sincerity in your exploits and your conclusion that you have not in fact found God.
Also I am interested in what it is/was that sustained you in your search and finally, given your response you can now laugh at it.

I write as someone who felt attracted to seeking God who, as he got more real and personally relevant, wanted to recoil prior to accepting him.

I never felt any moment of recoil, as you put it, so I can't identify with that. Maybe that is in part because I never felt or encountered anything that seemed personal or real or visceral to recoil from.  My route has been that of someone brought up in a strongly religious home, all strong in the Lord, father a preacher, congregationalist hymn singing and all that, so it was inevitable that I grew up believing in God in the sense that children accept what their parents tell them as true. But I never came to feel any divine external presence in my life nor had any transformational experience such as everyone else around me seemed to have. I had to understand that, and that entailed daring to think outside the box of my upbringing, to work towards an understanding that encompasses the breadth of human experience, not just the born again Christian variety. That's where I am now, still blinking in the daylight, trying to figure stuff out.

[torridon]

English language comprises of words.  In physical terms, words are just ink stains on paper, or vibrating air molecules.  The meaning of these words does not reside in the words themselves.  The meaning resides in whatever perceives the content of the human brain cells which react to the image or the sound of the word.  The meaning does not reside in the brain cell, which is just a collection of atomic particles, it resides in something which, at any moment, perceives the collective activity of many brain cells and interprets meaning from them.  The perception is external to what is being perceived.  Our brain cells are just messages, like the ink stains on the paper, which get interpreted through perception.  So is there an invisible, intangigble cloud of perception which reveals meaning to our physical brain activity?  Could it be the human soul?

and when solar radiation bounces off a lion and ends up instigating corresponding patterns of excitation in the visual cortex of an antelope, the interpretation of all that neural activity must be done by something external.  Could it be the antelope soul ?

[Alien]

Excellent post,  Torri. 

You too, enki.

I tend towards the viewpoint that there is no ghost within the machine, and that what we call free will is probably the result of the complexity of our brains. There is plenty of evidence that many people whose brains have been damaged respond quite differently to stimuli in contrast to how they did before the damage took place. Perhaps it's partly a case of the brain acting upon the information it absorbs to make its decisions. It may be true that quantum indeterminacy plays a part in this, but, if so, this still would not be a case for free will.

With the above in mind, I think I understand where Torridon is coming from. And I think he expressed it beautifully, so I think I would disagree with you about being more critical, unless, of course, you can bring powerful evidence to the table that free will actually exists..in which case, I might well change my mind.   

I would agree that it is possible that we have the illusion of free will. However, until someone demonstrates we don't, I'll carry on assuming we do have it. Why? Because it seems to be correct and I see no good reason to think otherwise. There could well be mileage in what you say about brain damage, but I'm not yet (totally) convinced. That is partly due to not being able to define free will totally to my own satisfaction. Does free will mean making decisions without being forced into them by an external agency? If so, then even a person with brain damage can do that, but is such a definition useful in determining whether someone is responsible for good and evil moral decisions (assuming we ever came to an agreement on these boards as to whether there is such a thing as a morality which is meaningful (rather than just "what I like" or "what is best, in my subjective view, for my own particular species").

There is also the problem for those holding the view that free will does not exist in that they can never have a good reason for believing free will does not exist. Note I am not saying that free will cannot not exist, but rather that there cannot be a good reason for believing it. If free will does not exist then those who believe it does not exist can't help but believe it does not exist and those who do believe it exists can't help but believe it exists.

And stuff.

Hi Alan,

I agree that for all intents and purposes we act as though we have (limited) free will. However I think that there is a case to be made that normal(classical) physics is time reversal symmetric. In other words, physics can, in theory at least, describe all events in the forwards time direction as easily as the back time direction. If the workings of our brains follow the laws of classical physics in this regard then what we call free will could well be deterministic, but it could be that the huge complexity of our thinking, factoring in the experiences and data from our nature and nurture,(and including the ability for forward thinking) might well disguise any deterministic pattern.

As regards the problems of personal responsibility it is interesting that we often accept that there are circumstances which, at the very least, have a part to play in the actions we take. In other words we constantly look for causes which influence our actions. It is not accepted(generally) that this absolves us of this sense of responsibility, of course, but it can be used to modify the degree of responsibility that we infer.

One of the major problems which has yet to be overcome is how the brain works both in its highest conscious state of awareness right through to the subconscious. Recent research seems to show that, in certain circumstances, the subconscious can make decisions before the conscious brain becomes aware.

There is plenty of evidence that a wide range of animal species also seem to exhibit free will behaviour. Indeed this could well extend to fruit flies, who, under controlled conditions, appear to exhibit characteristics which suggests that that they can 'think before they act' rather than simply acting instinctively.

Your final paragraph is interesting, and it is somewhat similar to C. S. Lewis's idea propounded in his book, 'Miracles', where he alludes to J. B. S. Haldane's statement "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true…and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." Like many critics I see no problem with these ideas because I have no reason to think that such qualities as logic, rationality, justification etc. are dependent on free will/determinism  at all. Similarly, if evidence were to allow a comprehensive justification that there is no such thing as free will, then whatever I thought would have no effect on that justification.

Which brings me right back to what Torri said, especially this:

. But for most practical purposes I can go about life enjoying the blueness of the sky and the comfort of my armchair; when I am introduced to someone I don't bother introducing also the billions of cohabiting microbes that form the bulk of me. Likewise i can go around making choices happily without consideration for whether my choices are truly free or are they ultimately largely predetermined.  So long as it feels free then I am happy with that.

Just a few musings....

Actually, interesting musings. I cannot prove that free will exists. It is something that seems to exist (and we base our criminal justice system on to a large extent) and I'll probably keep on thinking it exists until someone shows it does not.

Anyway, thanks for the chat. I do prefer it when the discussion is civilized and thought-provoking.

[Alan Burns]

English language comprises of words.  In physical terms, words are just ink stains on paper, or vibrating air molecules.  The meaning of these words does not reside in the words themselves.  The meaning resides in whatever perceives the content of the human brain cells which react to the image or the sound of the word.  The meaning does not reside in the brain cell, which is just a collection of atomic particles, it resides in something which, at any moment, perceives the collective activity of many brain cells and interprets meaning from them.  The perception is external to what is being perceived.  Our brain cells are just messages, like the ink stains on the paper, which get interpreted through perception.  So is there an invisible, intangigble cloud of perception which reveals meaning to our physical brain activity?  Could it be the human soul?

and when solar radiation bounces off a lion and ends up instigating corresponding patterns of excitation in the visual cortex of an antelope, the interpretation of all that neural activity must be done by something external.  Could it be the antelope soul ?

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'm interested to know what an atheist is doing spending several years searching for God. Given Jeremiah 29:13 what is it which confirms your sincerity in your exploits and your conclusion that you have not in fact found God.
Also I am interested in what it is/was that sustained you in your search and finally, given your response you can now laugh at it.

I write as someone who felt attracted to seeking God who, as he got more real and personally relevant, wanted to recoil prior to accepting him.

I never felt any moment of recoil, as you put it, so I can't identify with that. Maybe that is in part because I never felt or encountered anything that seemed personal or real or visceral to recoil from.  My route has been that of someone brought up in a strongly religious home, all strong in the Lord, father a preacher, congregationalist hymn singing and all that, so it was inevitable that I grew up believing in God in the sense that children accept what their parents tell them as true. But I never came to feel any divine external presence in my life nor had any transformational experience such as everyone else around me seemed to have. I had to understand that, and that entailed daring to think outside the box of my upbringing, to work towards an understanding that encompasses the breadth of human experience, not just the born again Christian variety. That's where I am now, still blinking in the daylight, trying to figure stuff out.

In a sense I guess we have that moment of rejection of what we have been told/or led to believe in common. You talked about seeking God. I confess that doesn't come out in your above post....how does the seeking fit in?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

That's just daft. All sorts of animals perceive patterns for example - that's why they run away when the think the pattern is a tiger in the grass. This is one of the various problems you give yourself when you pouffe into existence a little man at the controls and call it a "soul" - you have no choice but to give souls to everything else that has the appearance of free will too.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB,

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

That's just daft. All sorts of animals perceive patterns for example - that's why they run away when the think the pattern is a tiger in the grass. This is one of the various problems you give yourself when you pouffe into existence a little man at the controls and call it a "soul" - you have no choice but to give souls to everything else that has the appearance of free will too.

I think what Alan means is that a creature could be quite able to do this but not be conscious of doing it. I think Paul Davies the physicist has stated that consciousness is not actually required...And I can see the point even though Our leader has bid us to have no truck with 'people who are nice to religion'

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I think what Alan means is that a creature could be quite able to do this but not be conscious of doing it...

Well, daffodils will follow the sun across the sky over the course of a day without being "conscious" but it's pretty clear I'd have thought that all sorts of animals are conscious according to any meaningful definition of the term. Alan's problem is that, having invented something he calls a "soul" to explain his idiosyncratic understanding of consciousness, he has no choice but to give souls to every else that's conscious. 

I think Paul Davies the physicist has stated that consciousness is not actually required...

He might have done, but why decide that it's not required for, say, chimpanzees but it is required for people? If you want opt for a top down, "skyhook" god who favours one species over the others and then retro fit the notion of a soul to only that species that's up to you, but you can't just invent it bottom up and then use it to justify your belief in a god.     

And I can see the point even though Our leader has bid us to have no truck with 'people who are nice to religion'

?

[torridon]

English language comprises of words.  In physical terms, words are just ink stains on paper, or vibrating air molecules.  The meaning of these words does not reside in the words themselves.  The meaning resides in whatever perceives the content of the human brain cells which react to the image or the sound of the word.  The meaning does not reside in the brain cell, which is just a collection of atomic particles, it resides in something which, at any moment, perceives the collective activity of many brain cells and interprets meaning from them.  The perception is external to what is being perceived.  Our brain cells are just messages, like the ink stains on the paper, which get interpreted through perception.  So is there an invisible, intangigble cloud of perception which reveals meaning to our physical brain activity?  Could it be the human soul?

and when solar radiation bounces off a lion and ends up instigating corresponding patterns of excitation in the visual cortex of an antelope, the interpretation of all that neural activity must be done by something external.  Could it be the antelope soul ?

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

It is you that keeps defining that which derives meaning as a soul. When I see a lion creeping up on me, I get scared and leg it.  Same with the antelope, basically. Sensory information which is basically patterns, be it in electromagnetic radiation or airborne compression waves, is converted into something meaningful; if I need a soul in order to convert all that data into something meaningful, eg a scary lion looking to eat me, then the antelope must have a soul also. I think you're still tying yourself in knots trying to avoid acknowledging that other animals have inner experience.

[torridon]

I'm interested to know what an atheist is doing spending several years searching for God. Given Jeremiah 29:13 what is it which confirms your sincerity in your exploits and your conclusion that you have not in fact found God.
Also I am interested in what it is/was that sustained you in your search and finally, given your response you can now laugh at it.

I write as someone who felt attracted to seeking God who, as he got more real and personally relevant, wanted to recoil prior to accepting him.

I never felt any moment of recoil, as you put it, so I can't identify with that. Maybe that is in part because I never felt or encountered anything that seemed personal or real or visceral to recoil from.  My route has been that of someone brought up in a strongly religious home, all strong in the Lord, father a preacher, congregationalist hymn singing and all that, so it was inevitable that I grew up believing in God in the sense that children accept what their parents tell them as true. But I never came to feel any divine external presence in my life nor had any transformational experience such as everyone else around me seemed to have. I had to understand that, and that entailed daring to think outside the box of my upbringing, to work towards an understanding that encompasses the breadth of human experience, not just the born again Christian variety. That's where I am now, still blinking in the daylight, trying to figure stuff out.

In a sense I guess we have that moment of rejection of what we have been told/or led to believe in common. You talked about seeking God. I confess that doesn't come out in your above post....how does the seeking fit in?

Through my teens and twenties, I suppose, the best part of two decades, I was doing that, daily prayer, bible study, fellowship meetings, church attendance etc. By the time I got to my thirties, I was beginning to doubt the whole story, never having had a prayer answered, never having felt any divine presence in the ways that others claimed.  I was beginning to feel like I was praying to a brick wall, how could it be that people like Alan Burns apparently pray and get answers or at least some sort of response almost daily, but I could never elicit anything but complete silence from this God in 20 years ? Where I am now is basically a journey of trying to understand all that and fit in the diverse experiences of other peoples plus what we have learned through research synthesised into a single overarching rationale.

[Alan Burns]

English language comprises of words.  In physical terms, words are just ink stains on paper, or vibrating air molecules.  The meaning of these words does not reside in the words themselves.  The meaning resides in whatever perceives the content of the human brain cells which react to the image or the sound of the word.  The meaning does not reside in the brain cell, which is just a collection of atomic particles, it resides in something which, at any moment, perceives the collective activity of many brain cells and interprets meaning from them.  The perception is external to what is being perceived.  Our brain cells are just messages, like the ink stains on the paper, which get interpreted through perception.  So is there an invisible, intangigble cloud of perception which reveals meaning to our physical brain activity?  Could it be the human soul?

and when solar radiation bounces off a lion and ends up instigating corresponding patterns of excitation in the visual cortex of an antelope, the interpretation of all that neural activity must be done by something external.  Could it be the antelope soul ?

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

It is you that keeps defining that which derives meaning as a soul. When I see a lion creeping up on me, I get scared and leg it.  Same with the antelope, basically. Sensory information which is basically patterns, be it in electromagnetic radiation or airborne compression waves, is converted into something meaningful; if I need a soul in order to convert all that data into something meaningful, eg a scary lion looking to eat me, then the antelope must have a soul also. I think you're still tying yourself in knots trying to avoid acknowledging that other animals have inner experience.

I think you are confusing meaning with reaction.  Computer programs can be used to analyse visual data and define a typical animal's reaction to it, but this just involves a chain of reactions without any perception or meaning being given to the data.  Of course no one knows for certain what the animal actually experieces, we can just make assumptions based on the animal's behaviour and compare it to our own inner experiences.  This is where the human perception of fear could be confused with an animal's instinctive reacion.  We naturally assume that the animal experiences fear because its external reactions suggest this, but we do not know for certain what the animal's inner experiece is.  What we observe in the animal is what you would expect from a bioligical machine generated by the natural selection process, but it does not need conscious perception to be able to react this way.

[Maeght]

Why do you think humans are any different to this Alan? More complex maybe but still the same process going on. Other than because you need to believe that of course.

[torridon]

I think you are confusing meaning with reaction.  Computer programs can be used to analyse visual data and define a typical animal's reaction to it, but this just involves a chain of reactions without any perception or meaning being given to the data.  Of course no one knows for certain what the animal actually experieces, we can just make assumptions based on the animal's behaviour and compare it to our own inner experiences.  This is where the human perception of fear could be confused with an animal's instinctive reacion.  We naturally assume that the animal experiences fear because its external reactions suggest this, but we do not know for certain what the animal's inner experiece is.  What we observe in the animal is what you would expect from a bioligical machine generated by the natural selection process, but it does not need conscious perception to be able to react this way.

All higher animals experience fear, along with the other common emotions; there is no particular reason to think otherwise. What distinguishes humans from other creatures, is upper cognitive abilities, such as abstract thought, extended contemplation

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I think you are confusing meaning with reaction.  Computer programs can be used to analyse visual data and define a typical animal's reaction to it, but this just involves a chain of reactions without any perception or meaning being given to the data.  Of course no one knows for certain what the animal actually experieces, we can just make assumptions based on the animal's behaviour and compare it to our own inner experiences.  This is where the human perception of fear could be confused with an animal's instinctive reacion.  We naturally assume that the animal experiences fear because its external reactions suggest this, but we do not know for certain what the animal's inner experiece is.  What we observe in the animal is what you would expect from a bioligical machine generated by the natural selection process, but it does not need conscious perception to be able to react this way.

No he isn't. To be scared you need to decide that there's something to be scared of, which requires pattern recognition. And it's pattern recognition that you seem to think is an indicator of consciousness. You can't have it both ways - either no species is conscious or lots of species are conscious. And if you really think that something called a "soul" is necessary for consciousness, then you have to give souls to all creatures that are conscious.

As for whether, say, an antelope experiences fear in a way akin to the way we experience it, while anthropomorphism is alway dangerous nonetheless the similarities - elevated heart rate, adrenalin production for the fight or flight response, dilated eyes etc strongly suggest that it is. You seem arbitrarily to be relegating all other species to robots and to decide on the basis of no evidence whatever that Homo sapiens is in a different category of our own.

Why?   

[Alan Burns]

 To be scared you need to decide that there's something to be scared of, which requires pattern recognition. And it's pattern recognition that you seem to think is an indicator of consciousness. You can't have it both ways - either no species is conscious or lots of species are conscious. And if you really think that something called a "soul" is necessary for consciousness, then you have to give souls to all creatures that are conscious.

As for whether, say, an antelope experiences fear in a way akin to the way we experience it, while anthropomorphism is alway dangerous nonetheless the similarities - elevated heart rate, adrenalin production for the fight or flight response, dilated eyes etc strongly suggest that it is. You seem arbitrarily to be relegating all other species to robots and to decide on the basis of no evidence whatever that Homo sapiens is in a different category of our own.

Why?

As I inferred earlier, animal behaviour is much more predictable than human behaviour.  All animal behaviour I am aware of can be defined from either built in instinct or learnt behaviour and can be generated without the need for conscious awareness.  We have the expertise to write computer programs which would simulate animal behaviour from their sensory input data, and it would include a learning capability.  If you remove free will from the scenario, then I would agree that human behaviour too could be simulated in this way, and there would be no need for conscious awareness because everything would be generated from the sub conscious.

But the truth I perceive is that I am not driven solely by instinct and learnt experiences.  Awareness of by brain activity allows me to interact with it to allow my conscious awareness to override instinctive behaviour and do things driven by free will.  This is what makes me human.

[Alan Burns]

We've been round this so many times ......but

What do you think perception consists of other than electrical activity in the brain as a response to external stimuli? Why is it any more than just that which we compare against our memory bank of previous such activity and intrepret its meaning based on previous experiences?

Electrical activity in the brain will generate reactions, just as electrical activity in a computer will generate results, but awareness of this activity only occurs in human perception, not in the computer.  Indeed we could ask the question: Does awareness of anything exist outside the human brain?

[Maeght]

As I said - more complex but not necessarily different. Everything you point to can just as well be due to the chemical activity in the brain responding to external stimuli and comparisons to previous experiences. Free will cannot be used as any sort of argument as it cannot be demonstrated to exist, only apparent Free Will.

[Alan Burns]

But the word "pattern" implies something which is perceived.  The pattern does not perceive itself.  A pattern is only recognised by the perceiver of that pattern.

The word pattern only implies a perceiver inasmuch as any noun implies a perceiver. If I'm not in the room, the pattern of light on the television doesn't change, it's still the same pattern.

O.

But the patterns of light on a computer screen just exist as individual pixels.  They are only recognised as a pattern by a human observer, and any meaning attached to the pattern resides only in human awareness

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

As I inferred earlier, animal behaviour is much more predictable than human behaviour.  All animal behaviour I am aware of can be defined from either built in instinct or learnt behaviour and can be generated without the need for conscious awareness.  We have the expertise to write computer programs which would simulate animal behaviour from their sensory input data, and it would include a learning capability.  If you remove free will from the scenario, then I would agree that human behaviour too could be simulated in this way, and there would be no need for conscious awareness because everything would be generated from the sub conscious.

"Implied" not "inferred", and whether or not non-human animal behaviour is "more predictable" than human behaviour is moot. Either way though, degrees of predictability are on a spectrum - you have all you work ahead of you still to demonstrate a qualitative difference between human and non-human behaviour, and especially between human behaviour and the behaviour of other animals with a pre-frontal cortex.

And again, you conflate "free will" with "Alan Burns's version of free will that entails another agency entirely at the controls for which there'e neither need nor evidence of any kind, and that would itself in any case face the same problem of having another little man to tell it what to do and so on ad infinitum".   

But the truth I perceive is that I am not driven solely by instinct and learnt experiences.  Awareness of by brain activity allows me to interact with it to allow my conscious awareness to override instinctive behaviour and do things driven by free will.  This is what makes me human.

No it isn't. You don't "interact" with your brain activity, you are your brain activity. That may nonetheless be a truth "as you perceive it", but the hopelessness of your reasoning leaves the rest of us with no choice but to conclude that you're completely wrong about that.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

English language comprises of words.  In physical terms, words are just ink stains on paper, or vibrating air molecules.  The meaning of these words does not reside in the words themselves.  The meaning resides in whatever perceives the content of the human brain cells which react to the image or the sound of the word.  The meaning does not reside in the brain cell, which is just a collection of atomic particles, it resides in something which, at any moment, perceives the collective activity of many brain cells and interprets meaning from them.  The perception is external to what is being perceived.  Our brain cells are just messages, like the ink stains on the paper, which get interpreted through perception.  So is there an invisible, intangigble cloud of perception which reveals meaning to our physical brain activity?  Could it be the human soul?

and when solar radiation bounces off a lion and ends up instigating corresponding patterns of excitation in the visual cortex of an antelope, the interpretation of all that neural activity must be done by something external.  Could it be the antelope soul ?

But you are just describing a natural reaction to the visual information received by the antelope.  Such reactions can easily be defined without the need for perception as experienced in humans.

Humans are just further up the evolutionary food chain that is all, imo!

Humans may be.........Floomans, your species......not.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

I think what Alan means is that a creature could be quite able to do this but not be conscious of doing it...

Well, daffodils will follow the sun across the sky over the course of a day without being "conscious" but it's pretty clear I'd have thought that all sorts of animals are conscious according to any meaningful definition of the term. Alan's problem is that, having invented something he calls a "soul" to explain his idiosyncratic understanding of consciousness, he has no choice but to give souls to every else that's conscious. 

I think Paul Davies the physicist has stated that consciousness is not actually required...

He might have done, but why decide that it's not required for, say, chimpanzees but it is required for people? If you want opt for a top down, "skyhook" god who favours one species over the others and then retro fit the notion of a soul to only that species that's up to you, but you can't just invent it bottom up and then use it to justify your belief in a god.     

And I can see the point even though Our leader has bid us to have no truck with 'people who are nice to religion'

?

Blue your reply was OK except when you strayed into theology. Then you appeared out of your depth with your charicature presentation.

Oh well, another shiny motion for the collection.