----- Original Message ----- From: "Reggie Bautista" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 10:25 AM Subject: Re: Israel and Atheism
> Dan wrote: > >IMHO, science and religion are on orthogonal axis. > > Meaning "at right angles," or "Of or relating to a matrix whose transpose > equals its inverse" (from dictionary.com)? I'm not as trained in math-ese > as some of the others on the list. Can you please explain a little? It > sounds like an interesting concept... > At right angles would be the best. Let me try to give a physical example to help you understand that metaphor. Normal space can be seen as spanned by three orthogonal vectors. For convenience we can use the ones that point along the lines up/down, left/right, forward backwards. If you deal with distances on the surface of the earth that are small enough to ignore the curvature of the earth, you could think of up/down, north/south, east/west. Since these directions/vectors are orthogonal, they are _by definition_ independent of each other. That makes sense. How far right or left an object is located is independent of how far up or down. But, how far NW an object is located is not independent of how far west it is. By saying this, I was saying that science/religion are not on the same line, the way liberal/conservative could be. That being religious is unrepentant of being involved with science. Dan M. Lets look at
