TraderZones,
I studied japanese (reading, writing, speaking, including a syllabus of 3000 kanjis on top of hiragana, katakana) at university - but only for one year.
Memorizing and learning japanese was pretty hard, and on top of that because we had a female tutor, we learned to speak like japanese women.
Now, I have several friends who studied with me and also took latin, esperanto and more - in fact one of them has one of the few websites fully in latin and esperanto versions.
I would wager to say that learning japenese for me is a bit more difficult than learning latin, hebrew or greek - partly because of the cultural distance.
But, in the end this has no bearing on my statements. You guys seem to think that learning and "understanding" religion entails learning (ancient) hebrew and/or (ancient) greek. That is just preposterous.
I did not say that you need to understand every detail nook and cranny of all sciences to make do with science in your life - i.e all aspects of science is not required for feeling fairly sure that you understand and can rely on scientific facts for living. Neither is the whole history or everything ever written about religion needed to believe in religious systems. You do, however need to grasp a holistic and basic concept of various sciences to connect the dots ... I would wager to say that is a bit more challenging than say - "it's a miracle!" as an explanation. I may be going out on a limb here though ... or not!

BernardRichards,
I do not have moral - but I do have personal integrity and perform most of my work/actions with some form of ethics. I do not succumb to moralism however - and the religious belief systems can kiss my ass as far as I am concerned. "Right and wrong" - "good and evil" ... well, apart from risk analysis and decision theory - I would say I am very open minded. I am egoistic - just like any living being, or structure that you can imagine. I am law abiding too - as otherwise would be very detrimental to me taking part of society. Otherwise, I follow my own decisions with little influence by others - mostly for the sake my own selfish gains.
How about you, Bernard - are you more of an altruistic person forsaking your own good?
I studied japanese (reading, writing, speaking, including a syllabus of 3000 kanjis on top of hiragana, katakana) at university - but only for one year.
Memorizing and learning japanese was pretty hard, and on top of that because we had a female tutor, we learned to speak like japanese women.
Now, I have several friends who studied with me and also took latin, esperanto and more - in fact one of them has one of the few websites fully in latin and esperanto versions.
I would wager to say that learning japenese for me is a bit more difficult than learning latin, hebrew or greek - partly because of the cultural distance.
But, in the end this has no bearing on my statements. You guys seem to think that learning and "understanding" religion entails learning (ancient) hebrew and/or (ancient) greek. That is just preposterous.
I did not say that you need to understand every detail nook and cranny of all sciences to make do with science in your life - i.e all aspects of science is not required for feeling fairly sure that you understand and can rely on scientific facts for living. Neither is the whole history or everything ever written about religion needed to believe in religious systems. You do, however need to grasp a holistic and basic concept of various sciences to connect the dots ... I would wager to say that is a bit more challenging than say - "it's a miracle!" as an explanation. I may be going out on a limb here though ... or not!

BernardRichards,
I do not have moral - but I do have personal integrity and perform most of my work/actions with some form of ethics. I do not succumb to moralism however - and the religious belief systems can kiss my ass as far as I am concerned. "Right and wrong" - "good and evil" ... well, apart from risk analysis and decision theory - I would say I am very open minded. I am egoistic - just like any living being, or structure that you can imagine. I am law abiding too - as otherwise would be very detrimental to me taking part of society. Otherwise, I follow my own decisions with little influence by others - mostly for the sake my own selfish gains.
How about you, Bernard - are you more of an altruistic person forsaking your own good?