[Cronos]

My, aren't we respectful of other multi-thousand year old traditions.

i agree. Steelfish, such language is not becoming a Catholic. Our duty is to spread the gospel of Christ -- by using such language, you're hardly going to get anyone to listen to you. Also, that's just bad manners to use words like " Bobby Jindal toileted these beliefs " -- I'd say " Bobby Jindal changed his beliefs".

Christianity is a personal belief system that you come to as an individual and as a church.

Talisker -- you're a bit wrong about Aryabhatta: his discoveries were in 500 AD, not before Christ.

[Talisker]

Talisker -- you're a bit wrong about Aryabhatta: his discoveries were in 500 AD, not before Christ.

Thanks for the correction. I'd be interested to know if there was any previous development in Hindu mathematics that presaged this development, because of such widespread science enquiries in ancient Hinuism. I have read, however, that the development of zero was a big philosophical deal because of it's associated "creation" of negative numbers on the "other side" of the number line. Another cause for concern was the creation of fractions, which, while extremely useful, had a lot of Hundu numerologists very upset because they violated the integrity of whole numbers (and in ancient India, when the numerologists and their associated astrologers ain't happy, ain't nobody happy).