driving back from leeds this morning i passed a church in huddersfield which had one of those ‘trendy vicar’ advertising slogan type notices outside – designed to ‘get down with the kids’ and have the punters flooding in of a sunday. i couldnae photograph the actual sign, due to negotiating a tricky junction at the time, but i have masterfully reproduced it here. now on the face of it we seem to have the usual ‘jesus is love’ message, but zanily [and quite possibly 'bonkersly'] dressed up as a mathematical equation [these trendy vicars sure know how to target the youth market!] but let’s just doublecheck here and make sure the skypilots’ sums add up:
life - love = zero – OK. this either means that; life and love are opposites [eg. life = 1 and love = -1] or identical negatives [eg. both are equal to -1] or both are zero.
life + jesus = love – well, we’ve already established three possible scenarios for the value of life and love so we can try each possibility and use simple algebra to deduce the value of jesus. so let’s see now:
1. if life and love are opposites [eg. life = 1 and love = -1] then 1 + jesus = -1 which means jesus = -2. hmm.. surely that cannae be right? isn’t jesus meant to be a positive influence?
2. alright. maybe life and love are identical negatives [eg. both are equal to -1]. in that case -1 + jesus = -1, which means that jesus = zero. that cannae be right either, can it?
3. OK. last possibility. both life and love are equal to zero. that would mean 0 + jesus = 0 – which once again gives us the result that jesus = zero.
so there you have it - believing in jesus has at best zero effect and at worst a doubly negative one – and this is not just my cynical opinion. that is the official message of the church itself. i’m still not quite sure how this is meant to drum up more custom for the bible-bashers, but i’m sure the reverend trendy trenderson knows what he’s doing.
25 July 2005 at 00:33
Life = 1
Love = 1
Life – Love =
1 – 1 = 0
Thus Life=Love, not necessarily a negetive thing in either case
Life + Jesus = Love
1 + Jesus = 1
Jesus = 1 – 1
Jesus = 0
Thus life without love is worthless, as is love with life.
The value of Jesus is zero
25 July 2005 at 00:34
errata
Thus life without love is worthless, as is love without life.
The value of Jesus is zero
25 July 2005 at 00:52
well done for spotting my deliberate mistake! – “life and love are opposites [eg. life = 1 and love = -1]“ – because as every first year maths student knows, 1 – (-1) = 2. it should have course have read that life and love were equal. still, as you correctly point out, either way, jesus is still a big fat zero [with a beard and sandals]
18 August 2006 at 01:48
Alright, maybe Jesus equals zero, but a zero is like a circle, which has no
beginning or end. Therefore Jesus equals infinity. A great book for you to
read about this is, The Creator Beyond Time and Space by Mark Eastman M.D.
and Chuck Missler. Check it out, then email me back and let me know what
you think.
28 August 2006 at 18:03
er, thanks for the reference, but i think i’ll give it a miss. i’m sure there are lots of books out there which ‘prove’ the earth is flat, or that evolution is a myth too – but i’ll take the chance and remain uneducated by refusing to read them.