Talk:Order of magnitude and Talk:Original sin: Difference between pages

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This article needs some reworking so that it addresses the doctrine of Original Sin, which is a specific Christian doctrine dealing with the inheritance of Adam's original sin, rather than just a title assigned to the sin that Adam committed.

I believe that a lot could be added to this article for someone knowledgeable. There are probably implications of this doctrine for such things as infant baptism, the Catholic doctrine of immaculate conception, and perhaps the differences in the Protestant and Catholic approaches to this issue. I also suspect that the comment in the following comment sounds a little Protestant to me, and may not be quite how Catholics see it, but perhaps I am wrong:

"The only way we are justified in God's eyes and reconciled with God is by humbly asking for forgiveness, believing that his son Jesus Christ through his death and crucifixion? took on himself the due punishment for our sins and trespasses (atonement?, and living life in obedience to God" -- Egern

I once read that Augustine held that even if you lead a perfect life and humbly ask God for forgiveness etc., He can still through you into hell because of the original sin. There does not appear to be a way to wash it off, you have to hope for mercy and have no right to expect it. I wonder if this is still doctrine, and whether catholics and protestants disagree on that point. --AxelBoldt

That certainly sounds like Augustine. Augustine probably marks the earliest point of theological departure between the Western (Catholic and Protestant) and Eastern branches of Christianity. (And this has nothing to do with the filioque clause or cultural issues like leavened/unleavened bread.) Augustine taught that you inherit the guilt of Adam's sin (maybe of everyone between you and Adam, I'm not sure), whereas Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that we inherit a corrupted human nature with a tendency to choose sin, but that we are only guilty of our own sins. Original sin is why the Catholics felt a need to come up with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, I think in the 19th century. The Eastern Orthodox church sees no need for such a doctrine, because Mary wouldn't inherit any guilt anyway, just like everyone else.

Because Augustine wrote in Latin, and wrote such large quantities, most of his contemporaries in the East didn't read much of his work, and so didn't have any immediate reaction at all, positive or negative. The Western church of course paid it much closer attention. As for as Protestantism, Augustine's doctrine of original sin still shows up in various forms, particularly in Calvinism (see Total depravity under TULIP, I think) and to some extent in Lutheranism. Arminianism doesn't hold to total depravity, but I can't remember what they do with original sin right off.

Do jews have an equivalent doctrine, or do they just ignore it? And muslims? -- James

I believe that the most recent change from "Judaism" to "Judaeo-Christian" really misses the point of the article, which is to trace the development of the idea from a traditional Jewish one to the idea as it developed in Christianity. Also, the term "Judaeo-Christian" is controversial and fraught with difficulties (see the article on that subject in this encyclopedia). Therefore, I propose undoing the last change to the article. -- Egern

In lie with the first comment on the talk page, I have revised the first paragraph with an eye towards NPOV. Given that different people/religious traditions read the Bible in very different ways, I think it is especially important to distinguish clearly between what the Bible says and specific ways in which the story is read.

First, I changed the account from a description of a "sin" to a description of an "act." The Bible describes an act. It does not explicitly label it as a "sin." It is only specific traditions that interpret it as a sin, or even as the "original" sin.

Second, I deleted the association of the serpant with satan, for two reasons. First, I am not sure the text actuaually identifies the serpant as satan. Second, I am sure that what the Hebrew word "satan" means is open to question. Some religious traditions identify "satan" with a specific entity or power, some do not. I think most native english speakers will assume "satan" is just the name of a specific entity. But this is an interpretation, not the plain meaning of the text, so I think the article must be clear.

Third, I changed "apple" to "fruit." The Bible doe snot identify the fruit as an apple. People may call it an apple in the sense that "apple" is sometimes used generically to refer to fruit (thus, in french, a potato is a pomme de'terre, and apple of the earth). But most native English speakers think "apple" is the specific fruit of a specific class of trees, and to call the fruit an apple here would be misleading.

Finally, I changed "embarassed" to "ashamed" which I do think is closer to the language of the text.

I of course have no objection to the following section explaining how some people think this act was a sin, how some people think that the snake was Lucifer, or how some people think the fruit was an apple. I just think the initial description of the Biblical story should be neutral. SR

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+This article needs some reworking so that it addresses the doctrine of '''Original Sin''', which is a specific Christian doctrine dealing with the inheritance of Adam's original sin, rather than just a title assigned to the sin that Adam committed.
-The individual size pages should probably all have a link back to this overview.
+----
+I believe that a lot could be added to this article for someone knowledgeable.  There are probably implications of this doctrine for such things as infant baptism, the Catholic doctrine of immaculate conception, and perhaps the differences in the Protestant and Catholic approaches to this issue.  I also suspect that the comment in the following comment sounds a little Protestant to me, and may not be quite how Catholics see it, but perhaps I am wrong:
+"The only way we are justified in God's eyes and reconciled with God is by humbly asking for forgiveness, believing that his son Jesus Christ through his death and crucifixion? took on himself the due punishment for our sins and trespasses (atonement?, and living life in obedience to God"  -- Egern
-A comparison of times would also be nice. And dimensionless numbers, like the number of stars in the Galaxy, the number of cells in the human body, and the largest known prime. --AxelBoldt
+----
-And the population of various countries and cities. --[[LA2]]
+I once read that Augustine held that even if you lead a perfect life and humbly ask God for forgiveness etc., He can still through you into hell because of the original sin. There does not appear to be a way to wash it off, you have to hope for mercy and have no right to expect it. I wonder if this is still doctrine, and whether catholics and protestants disagree on that point. --AxelBoldt
+----
-I think the example column should be placed immediately after the column of dimensions that it's an example of. As it is now, it's unclear what dimension things in the example column are an example of; for example, is the Sun an example of something that is 10<sup>9</sup>m in diameter, or is it an example of something with an area of 10<sup>18</sup>m<sup>2</sup>? This gets even more confusing when mass is considered as well. I'll move it over and see if it looks okay.
+That certainly sounds like Augustine. Augustine probably marks the earliest point of theological departure between the Western (Catholic and Protestant) and Eastern branches of Christianity. (And this has nothing to do with the [[filioque clause]] or cultural issues like leavened/unleavened bread.) Augustine taught that you inherit the guilt of Adam's sin (maybe of everyone between you and Adam, I'm not sure), whereas Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that we inherit a corrupted human nature with a ''tendency'' to choose sin, but that we are only guilty of our own sins. Original sin is why the Catholics felt a need to come up with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, I think in the 19th century. The Eastern Orthodox church sees no need for such a doctrine, because Mary wouldn't inherit any guilt anyway, just like everyone else.
-There, fixed. If everybody hates this, revert it; otherwise I'm going to add empty example columns for the other measurements as well for future expansion. :)
+Because Augustine wrote in Latin, and wrote such large quantities, most of his contemporaries in the East didn't read much of his work, and so didn't have any immediate reaction at all, positive or negative. The Western church of course paid it much closer attention. As for as Protestantism, Augustine's doctrine of original sin still shows up in various forms, particularly in [[Calvinism]] (see Total depravity under TULIP, I think) and to some extent in Lutheranism. [[Arminianism]] doesn't hold to total depravity, but I can't remember what they do with original sin right off.
-: Hmmm, I think having an example for every unit might clutter up the table too much.  My intention of lining things up in rows the way I did was to show a general sense of order of magnitude of objects that have "normal" densities (within an order of magnitude of water at 1000 kg/m<sup>3</sup>).  But perhaps this is not appropriate as things like sub-atomic particles and galaxies have densities that are much-much bigger or smaller.  So perhaps on reconsideration we should try to keep the table clean and not put examples columns, but just have people link down to the pages to see the examples.  --[[Eob]]
+----
+Do jews have an equivalent doctrine, or do they just ignore it? And muslims? -- James
-: Hi 129.128.164.xxx, thanks for entering all those examples, but I think that now the table is getting too cluttered up and some of the examples are not in the individual pages.  I suggest we do get rid of the examples column and move them to the individual pages.  That way they will be more useful in other pages that link to those pages. --[[Eob]]
+: I believe that the most recent change from "Judaism" to "Judaeo-Christian" really misses the point of the article, which is to trace the development of the idea from a traditional Jewish one to the idea as it developed in Christianity.  Also, the term "Judaeo-Christian" is controversial and fraught with difficulties (see the article on that subject in this encyclopedia).  Therefore, I propose undoing the last change to the article.  -- Egern
-:Heh. Sorry, got a bit carried away and wasn't reading Talk updates while I worked. :) I was getting those examples off of http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/distances.html for the most part, if you want more precice measurements. I think it'd be good to have at least a few examples scattered throughout the range of this table, however; otherwise the measurements are just meaningless numbers. - [[Bryan Derksen|BD, from a public terminal]]
-: Here is my reasons for not including examples in the table:
-## I think the table should be as clean as possible.  This will become particularly important if we add columns for time, temperature, pressure, etc.
-## The formatting on this table is tricky because of the use of HTML tables.  Many people will have problems editing it if we are going to keep on adding examples.  (In fact some of the recent edits had bad HTML which might have caused problems with some browsers.) I think that it should be more like the [[periodic table]] which does not get modified very often once it is set up.
-## Having the same info in two places would make it hard to maintain.
-Sorry but this bit of Wiki just doesn't do the business for me. I know that I should put the effort in to sort it but I just don't have the confidence to replace all this stuff. Could we get some more views?
-:What "bit of Wiki" do you mean exactly? What do you think needs sorting? What do you think needs replacing? You solicit views about what exactly? --AxelBoldt
 ----
+In lie with the first comment on the talk page, I have revised the first paragraph with an eye towards NPOV.  Given that different people/religious traditions read the Bible in very different ways, I think it is especially important to distinguish clearly between what the Bible says and specific ways in which the story is read.
-I generally agree that this page, while already very useful, needs work.
-First, why is this list of different units of measurement on a page called "orders of magnitude"?  The latter does not mean "units of measurement."  Why not put it on a [[units of measurement]] (or better, [[listing of units of measurement]]) page?
-:I'm not sure that "listing of units of measurement" would be more appropriate. We already have [[SI unit]] and [[conversion of units]], and all units are listed there. "Meter" is a unit of length, but 100m, 1000m, 10000m are not. I believe they are often called "orders of magnitude of length".
-:What we could do though is to break this list up and put the length part on [[length]], the mass part on [[mass]] etc., under a headline of "orders of magnitude of length" or similar. That however would lose the connection between different units, such as the connection between length and time given by the speed of light. Maybe we should do both: put it on [[length]], together with nice examples for every order of magnitude, and keep it here as a general reference table. --AxelBoldt
-Second, there are names like [[1e-15 m]].  For someone who wants to know what "1e-15 m" means, in the article, we are told: "To help compare different orders of magnitudes this page lists lengths between 10-15 m and 10-14 m."  This isn't very helpful for someone who doesn't know what "1e-15 m" means in the first place.  For instance, what does that mean, using decimal places?  Yes, any well-educated person knows how to figure it out; but a Wikipedia article about X, remember, is always for the benefit of a (perhaps theoretical) person who doesn't know much at all about X.
+First, I changed the account from a description of a "sin" to a description of an "act."  The Bible describes an act.  It does not explicitly label it as a "sin."  It is only specific traditions that interpret it as a sin, or even as the "original" sin.
-: Larry, I changed [[1e-15 m]] to be hopefully more informative in this regard.  What do you think of that style?  Also, these pages are not intended to be linked without an alias to a particular measure like <nowiki>[[1e-15 m|20 millionths of an angstrom]]</nowiki>, so I do not think we need worry too much about the page names per se. --[[Eob]]
+Second, I deleted the association of the serpant with satan, for two reasons.  First, I am not sure the text actuaually identifies the serpant as satan.  Second, I am sure that what the Hebrew word "satan" means is open to question.  Some religious traditions identify "satan" with a specific entity or power, some do not.  I think most native english speakers will assume "satan" is just the name of a specific entity.  But this is an interpretation, not the plain meaning of the text, so I think the article must be clear.
-Third, I generally agree with the person who said (somewhere) that the titles of these articles could perhaps be stated in more clearly recognizable words and numbers, without symbols, e.g.: [[1,000,000,000 meters]] (or metres, if you insist).  What's wrong with that, at least with the magnitudes close to 1?
+Third, I changed "apple" to "fruit."  The Bible doe snot identify the fruit as an apple.  People may call it an apple in the sense that "apple" is sometimes used generically to refer to fruit (thus, in french, a potato is a pomme de'terre, and apple of the earth).  But most native English speakers think "apple" is the specific fruit of a specific class of trees, and to call the fruit an apple here would be misleading.
-Fourth, I think the simplest, ''single'' examples should be given for each unit of measurement at each order of magnitude.  Again, the whole point here is not to make a pretty table but to make concepts clear to people who do not understand them.  If we need several tables, grand, let's make them.
+Finally, I changed "embarassed" to "ashamed" which I do think is closer to the language of the text.
-In general, try to bear in mind that our task here is to make concepts as simple as possible--it is ''not'' to build a merely pretty-and-clever system of webpages.  Prettiness and cleverness are good but must be entirely subsumed under the task of making concepts clear to those who do not have them. --[[LMS]]
+I of course have no objection to the following section explaining how some people think this act was a sin, how some people think that the snake was Lucifer, or how some people think the fruit was an apple.  I just think the initial description of the Biblical story should be neutral.  SR
-I disagree with the absolute mish-mash of units being used in this table. I replaced angstroms with nanometres, and gave microns their SI name (micrometres), but it still has four different units being used to measure distances (metres, nanometres, astronomical units and light years). Similarly, for time it has seconds, days, years, etc., for volumes it has cubic metres and litres, for mass grams, kilograms and tonnes, for energy joules and electron volts... the whole idea of "orders of magnitude" would be clearer if a single unit is used throughout. -- [[SJK]]