DonRamsay

Really Turbs, you should get your mind out of the gutter . . .

I think Gnarly has given up on us all thinking we are all destined for HELL! However, relax, the apes know better . . . . [ATTACH]48022._xfImport[/ATTACH]

A teacher teaching English to a pilot's child: [ATTACH]48019._xfImport[/ATTACH] Well, maybe it was a bit of a stretch to get it into aviation humour . . . but I thought it was funny.

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If you can see the Southern Cross (or Pole Star in Nth Hemisphere), what more do you need? An Almanac and a tide chart ? But, the best advice is to carry a satellite phone and/or a Spot Tracker in remote areas and don't move too far from the crash site. Even a decent mobile phone will give you a GPS (with downloaded maps) that makes a compass look like a stone wheel.

You may have a good memory for the bad old days of the Cultural revolution, and they were terrible days indeed, but it would appear from your comment that you may not be aware of Mao's status (or lack of it) in China these days. Sun Yat Sen is seen as the father of modern China - not Mao. Chou En Lai is more revered and the Cultural Revolution is (quietly) seen for what it was - a disaster. There is even talk (in whispers) of moving Mao's mausoleum away from Tiananmen Square. Perhaps remembered as more Devil than God.

Enjoyed Xian as a favourite city. The wall was impressive and I loved this sign outside the wall: [ATTACH]48000._xfImport[/ATTACH]

I agree it is important to understand that the warriors are just the tip of the iceberg but I can't agree that the warriors are "are boring on their own". We were very privileged to be invited down into the Pit. The invitation came with a very stern warning "not to touch". [ATTACH]47999._xfImport[/ATTACH]

The skills to build the great pyramid were not acquired overnight but over centuries if not millennia of trial and error and progressive development. Early pyramids just fell down. Later the stepped pyramids were more successful. I would love to see a pyramid at Giza restored with its polished limestone outer casing and the gold cap. What a sight that would be. Guess that will never happen due to cost and damage to the pyramid. However, perhaps one of the mega rich could build a pyramid using modern technology and cladding that in limestone with a gold cap. The treasures that came from Tut Ank Ahmun's ("The image of Ahmun) tiny tomb are spread all over the top floor of the Cairo museum and are a thing of wonder in themselves. A rival to the pyramids might just be the tomb of the first Chinese emperor Qin. The warriors are well known but the vast underground city has yet to be touched. There are suggestions of underground rivers of mercury and that might just make it a very difficult proposition.

I visited Abu Simbel a few years ago. Wonderful. It was originally on the floor of the Nile Valley and due to be flooded by Lake Nasser (Aswan Dam). UNESCO organised for it to be cut up into blocks and moved to the higher ground where it sits today. If you look closely you can see where the bits fit together but all-in-all they did an amazingly god job. I did not see any evidence that it was other than a temple with the big statues of Ramses II and his missus. It is about 250 kms up the river from the Aswan Dam wall (near the cataracts) which is about 1,000 kms South of Cairo. The Hatshepsut temple (Valley of the Kings near Luxor) is as magnificent as it looks in the photo. The paint on the ceiling is still in pretty good nick after thousands of years. Love Egypt.

The Inca Earth God is known affectionately as Pacha Mama. The "mama" has been substituted for the original "Kamaq" as it was more catchy sort of title for the Earth Mother.

Other than poking fun at the illogicality of belief as a way to live your life I don't need to think about whether there are gods or not. For the same reason I don't devote a lot of time wondering about the existence of Leprechauns or admirable Russian despots or economics geniuses in Zambia. I live my life atheisticaly - without reference to deity. I don't actively disbelieve if there is such a thing. I Don bee to be anti-theist but it is tempting. I o however understand that you cannot have a logical discussion about belief because belief requires a suspension of the scientific method. When a scientist says that he believes he will have a cure for Alzheimer's within 5 years he is really saying that he "suspects" or expects to have a cure based on extrapolation of the current rate of success to date.

Turbs, I can't accept that it is logically possible to have a disbelief in a God(s). You can accept that there are Gods on faith alone (belief) or you can think and consider the evidence. When it comes to deities, I prefer to look at the evidence and make a logical decision. It's not that I have a disbelief in gods, it's more that I haven't found any reason to suspect that gods exist. I think there are no Gods and that is a different position to suspecting or believing (based on no evidence) that there are no gods. I think therefore I live in a chaotic world where things just happen. I can live with that. I don't have the primal urge to require total order where in reality a form of chaos exists. Things don't always happen for a perceivable reason but I will grant you that if there is a God and I've missed the evidence they surely do work in mysterious ways. I love that there are more suns in the universe than there are grains of sand on the planet Earth. Either the Gods of the heavens are over achievers who don't know when to quit (one sun is enough for the Earth) or they have some other unfathomable experiments going on.

Did that and quite interesting. There is an evolutionary reason why people always want to believe there is order and not chaos and Brown explores that well.

Facts are facts and beliefs are beliefs. Never the twain . . . But for Constantine's meddling with the Christian faiths and uniting (most of) them under the creed of Nicea Christianity would either have disappeared by the end of the 4th Century or there would be hundreds of versions of it with scores of New Testaments.