The magic of carpentry

reply to post by Utnapisjtim


Excellent, I agree and understand your love of the craft of carpentry, my grandfather was a brick and stone mason by trade and I learned these skills and some carpentry as a teen, back when you had to really had know what you were doing and come up through the craft! but I won't go into any in depth analysis of your post, but you did put it in the Conspiracies in Religion, I only have the following.

I will accept whatever is said of the occupation of Jesus and leave it at that, I mean I know plenty of modern day preachers whose day jobs and occupations were brick masons, electricians and also carpenters, this fact alone is proof enough to me, that of any occupation, the carpenter or craftsman would fit well with the persona of Christ as he is described in the ancient texts and the bible, 2000 some odd years later, I just don't don't think I have any evidence at my disposal to disprove those who actually knew him, and what was written about his works.

reply to post by phinubian


The main reason I put this thread in the Conspiracy section is that part of the big scheme with the whole Jesus and all the rest of it, is that we are led to believe stuff that didn't happen. Jesus built a boat and walked around in it while crossing a lake, and thus he "walks on water", however the magic steaming 'walking on water' part is the parable for the meek and unlearned, the truth is most likely, that he was a carpenter and knew how to make a boat or a raft.

However he seems to have been a man of the Word too, so in order to make a good story he tells the truth in a way that make people scream 'alleluyah at the top of their lungs even 2000 years after the story came into print. Truth is boring, you don't win elections by being upright and honest, you win it with bribes and being a good liar and being good at keeping secrets-- But magic is magic. Make people believing one thing to make something else happen. It's what magic is all about, and the bible is powerful magic. To make people believe certain things that in effect set things in motion. The main function of such magic in book-based religions is to make people easy to handle and convince and be loyal to death and more predictable.

Utnapisjtim

EA006
reply to post by Utnapisjtim

 

So Jesus used his carpentry skills to feed the 5000, raise the dead, ascend to Heaven......

He was also a rhetorical genius. For instance: Anyone could feed 5000 with a fish or two and a couple of loaves, knowing that back then whales were counted as fish. Give me two blue-whales and a couple of them 20-ton desert-baked Jesus-breads and no problem. As for waking up the dead, Jesus himself concidered higly living people dead, or did you forget the part about how "the dead can bury the dead" ? The truth is normally quite boring so people tend to favour magic and miracle.

As for ascending to heaven, that part was added by a certain group of clergymen a few centuries after it supposedly happened in an effort to groom a new god for their new religion.

Two blue whales and a 20 ton desert bread? Jesus was the shizzle

EA006
Two blue whales and a 20 ton desert bread?

Jesus was the shizzle

And a doggie bag the size of a lorry. Think about what his chippie would be like

Nobody knows, but maybe Jesus invented this dish: foodbeast.com...

originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
...Squaring the circle...

Squaring the circle usually refers to an old geometrical problem that planted grey hairs in the scalps of the ancient mathematicians and geometricians, until finally in the 19th century it was utterly debunked as bloody impossible-- there is apparently no way you can construct a square with area π (or sides equal to √π in other words) in a finite number of steps using a square and compass. Drawing a circle with area=π is a walk in the park though; you just draw a circle with radius=1 and the circle's area is π, or draw a circle where the diameter is 1 and the circumference equals π. But with squares-- not that simple.

Back when Euclid and Pythagoras and the others searched for the ultimate fraction for π this problem of squaring the circle wasn't such an absurdity as it may seem today. In ancient Egypt 255/81 was a fraction used for π, and Plato argued how 22/7 was not an accurate enough fraction for π. But they still believed it was possible, that π could be fractioned absolutely and elegantly, they simply couldn't live with the idea of irrational numbers, or as in the case of π, transcendental numbers. Everything in their world could be broken down into simple fractions of natural numbers, it was like a religion, they saw certain fractions everywhere, in music, astronomy, arithmetics and certainly in geometry. For instance, Archimedes proved that π lay somewhere between 3 + 1/7 and 3 + 10/71 in his third proposition in his work on Measurement of a Circle found on p.93 in 'The Works of Archimedes' edited by T. L. Heath, ISBN 978-0-486-42084-4.



Squaring the circle and many of the other mathematical enigmas of Antiquity belongs within the borders of pseudoscience, for π just isn't a rational number and you can't really construct a straight line with length π using just a square and compass, although, one turn of a cylinder where the diameter is 1 will give you a straight line of length π, but to square it sensibly using fractions? Nope. The cylinder example was probably how they measured the Great Pyramid, since nearly all measures are relations between the royal cubit and π. They measured up the thing using a drum with diameter equalling the royal cubit, thus 100 turns will give you a multiple of 100 x π, or 314.1592654... royal cubits.

Or so they say anyway. For there aren't any lack of attempts at rationalising π and constructing a square with sides equalling √π. It was said that all the secrets of geometry and the universe would unravel as you'd squared the circle. And what do you know, up through the ages, mathematicians have devised just about every utility available to solve this problem. So in a way the old saying is probably right. For even if you knew everything there is to know about math, you'd still be unable to Square the Circle.

Leonardo also had his take on this, you may have seen The Vitruvian Man before: