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Hi Dave and Fred, Nice poem. Tongue in cheek of course — Haldane was not serious about challenging religious explanations on this basis, and would not have imagined that he would convert any religious persons to atheism on this basis (come to think of it, I’ve don't recall any conversions in that direction, though Bertrand Russell comes close in describing his development as a child). A couple of points though, first that most medieval illustrators did not think that they were drawing hallucinations or spirits, and presumably thought of angels as real entities with weighty bodies and so on. Haldane’s example does take on that conception though I doubt that disparaging medieval monks was high on his list. The second is that there is no believable material evidence that anyone has ever recorded an angel (no photos or reproducible videos), so you can propose any modern explanation you like for the phenomenon, metaphysical or whatever -- no restraint is imposed by verifiable material details. This contrasts for instance with the new Heliocentric versus accepted Geocentric theory, where there was concrete information in favour of the former as the simpler model, later bolstered by Kepler then Newton. It took ~140 years to get works supporting Copernicus taken off the prohibited books Index, indicated that the authorities long possessed a tin ear. Steve (Hfx)
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