> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of John D. Giorgis
... > Exactly. Jesus, is of course a great choice to pray to, since he is, > after all the source. But, since Jesus has that whole divinity thing > about him, Mary - who is fully human - is sometiems amore > accessible person > to pray to, since she is a bit more like each of us. You (plural) don't believe that Jesus is fully human? BTW, the distinction you've made in this thread between "Catholic" and "Christian," seems strange to me. It implies that Catholics don't follow Christ, yet that's most certainly not true, in my experience. Of course, most of us Protestants believe that there is one catholic church, with many expressions. The important differences, IMO, have to do with abuse of authority and other human failings. From that viewpoint, there is not much difference these days between Catholic and Protestant, which one can view positively or negatively. In any event, it seems useless, at best, to dwell on what the other guys are doing wrong. However, it is human nature, played out in many ways, to have much more to say when we're negative. For example, it is a well-established pattern that unhappy customers talk to 10 times as many people about their experience than happy customers. Another one along the same lines, which we discovered at Opion, is that the number of people participating in an on-line discussion, the length of their messages and the variety of the vocabulary are all directly correlated to how negative they are about a subject. Thus, one can predict the box office for a movie, to a surprisingly great extent, simply by counting how many people are talking about it, how much they write, and how many distinct words appear in their messages, on average. One can also predict, a bit less reliably, that a stock is likely to drop when more people talk about it on-line. I wonder what the causality at work in this pattern is. What's the evolutionary advantage in having more, richer communication about negatives? Conversely, what is the advantage in keeping quiet when things are good? Perhaps something about the nature of information, or perhaps just the universe itself? Apparently, there is less survival value to a population in sharing positive information...? God certainly was clever to invent evolution. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
