Really? From your name I’d say you were an Irish Catholic by upbringing, and from my experience the Protestants seem to believe that Grace comes from, well, I dunno where, while the Catholics accept that Grace was brought on Pentecost with the Holy Spirit and, if one leaves the slightest opening, it can be slammed into your soul. This happened to John Newton, though he continued in his Protestant beliefs. Guess it didn’t hit him hard enough, though it didn’t help that he was English.
How has Pratchett pissed you off?
Where’s My Cow??
I thought it was cute, myself.
Usually happens in the first few sentences, which saves me a lot of reading. An old rule of thumb, but one that saves me from buying the book. 
I’ve never liked the bird-sharpening-its-beak-on-the-mountain example, because not only does it describe a finite time, it’s a really pathetically short finite time compared to some of the big (but still finite) numbers mathematicians can come up with.
Now, when you learn about, say, Graham’s number, and then realize that that’s still finite, too, and that any infinite number is incomprehensibly greater than that, then you’ve maybe got some glimmer of an understanding of what “infinite” means.
Is there really such a thing as an infinite number?
I’ve read this and reread this post a number of times and I can’t figure out how it pertains to what I said earlier.
Yes, and there are many of them. There are infinitely many rational numbers, but there are provably more irrational numbers (more than infinity). :eek:
I get that some infinities are larger than others. It just seems to me that trying to compare a finite number to something that is infinite is a non-starter.
Hence Douglas Adams’s proof that the universe is devoid of life. From memory it goes like this:
The universe contains an infinite number of worlds
Not all of these worlds are inhabited.
Ergo, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds
Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, so the universe is virtually lifeless.
Ain’t math and logic fun?
I’m not sure which is worse: that I listen to Air Supply, or that I belt out “Two Fewer Lonely People in the World” to drown out their error. :smack:
I think you are confused. One of the great divides that separates Catholic and Protestant theologians is the question of the source of salvation. The Catholic theologians say it results from “Good Works”, i.e. you earn it. Protestant theologians say it is “God’s Grace” i.e. a gift from God that all the good works in the world will not earn you. “Amazing Grace” comes down solidly on the Protestant side. And so, although I love the song and have 25 or 30 versions of it, as a Catholic, I have to reject its central message.
You mean Newton anticipated Cantor on transfinite numbers?! :o
(BTW, I agree with all your comments here, on a more serious note.)