Rationality & Christianity: Mutually Exclusive?

[Gilrandir]

They are not finite numbers, they are terms of comparison. A thing with two properties is complex next to a thing with one property but simple next to a thing with ten properties. The the case of the current discussion the quantities are infinite, so the only way to describe them is using terms of comparison like "simple" and "complex".

Still, the difference between one and more than one is obvious while between "few" and "many" is vague. Like if you have three children - for Uzbeks it would be few, for Ukrainians (at present) - many. Thus, using such terms should be very limited for the sake of accuracy in debates on philosophy.

The problem, you see, is that it's not possible to actually prove anything other than that you ARE thinking.

That's not to say that we should throw out mathematics and physics, far from it, but we should recognise that they are a theoretical system we use to explain the world rather than a universal truth contained within the world.

All sciences can be roughly divided into those that study human and groups of humans aka societies (those are humanities) and those that study the world around the human (natural sciences). Some sciences thrive as a case of overlapping (technical sciences in the broad sense - those that explain how humans can profit by knowing what's going on around them, e.g. pharmaceutics, agronomy, engineering). Philosophy fits neither category as it aims to expose the most general laws which rule the world, the society and the mind. Trying to study everything results in discovering nothing. Practical application equals zero. Hence, pseudoscience.

I had to sit and think about this. The tense of "dove" is the past or "perfect" sense whilst "dived" is the "plu-perfect". So In this case I said "dove" because that was what he did, he "dove" in. On the other hand I could have said, "after he dived into...". So Dived indicates something that happened and has finished, while Dove indicates something that may be ongoing.

Compare "Hung" and "Hanged". Pictures are "Hung" on the wall but men are "Hanged" and then cut down - but while they're on the gibbet they're being "Hung".

Actually, either "dived" or "dove" can be used in either of those contexts. I don't know about relative frequency or geographical distribution, but they are pretty much interchangeable for most speakers.
This is a different matter entirely. We are speaking of two distinct verbs that happen to be homophonous except for these participle forms.

For example:

I ringed the fire with rocks; I rang John on the phone.

Having been teaching the history of English for 5 years I know what were Old English and Middle English like. In the former the number of irregular verbs (they were strong verbs back then) was much greater that it is now, with the course of time a significant part of them turned into what is now regular verbs (weak verbs back then) because of the general tendency towards analytization which has become increasingly stronger since V century a.d. Some of such changes were indeed based on analogy. At the same time some weak verbs (much fewer in number) became strong. In some cases the process is still going on (like double forms of learnt/learned, dreamt/dreamed). Sometimes these differences are rather lexical than grammatical (hang can form its past simple and past participle in two ways which depends on the meaning of the verb - it is regular if it means to execute and irregular in other meanings). But this is polysemy - several meanings of one word. If we consider lie, then different meanings aren't related thus they are two different homonymous words (to be in horizontal position is irregular (lie - lay - lain) while not to tell the truth is regular (lie - lied - lied). The case of dive is clearly one of borderline cases when lanugage changes are in process and modern norm evidently allows two parallel forms, but they are not marked by any lexical or grammatical differences. Being aware of the language facts I was interested in speech facts, that is how extensive is the usage of dived vs dove. According to Montmorency, the former dominates, yet if I remember correctly, he is an American, so his observations may be accurate for the USA only (and perhaps only for the part of the country he lives in).

Christians do not believe in a magic man or a sky fairy or other such nonsense.

Tolkien was a most devout Catholic, but look at the world he has created.