Holy units of measurement

edited July 2020 in Heaven
This discussion was created from comments split from: The church is the people not the building - the role of church buildings.

[I found this languishing in the middle of a serious thread in Ecclesiantics and decided it deserved a thread of its own and proper exposure. Enjoy! - Eutychus]
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  • (I know this conversation has moved on, but I'm still trying to find out what a theometer is. Google (well, Amazon) was not my friend :smile: )
  • ZappaZappa Ecclesiantics Host
    I would have thought, etymologically speaking, it measures the presence of divinity
  • That's very good :smile: It might be fun to speculate on units, and how one achieves repeatable calibration...
  • That's very good :smile: It might be fun to speculate on units, and how one achieves repeatable calibration...

    I would suspect you could get a lay person and a priest to bless a known volume of water at standard temperature and pressure, immerse the theometer and use those readings as calibration points. Though you'd need to know if your instrument was likely to be linear. If not then presumably you'd need some sort of more complex experimental method to derive a calibration curve. Does divinity follow an inverse square law, for example? Could you move the theometer further and further from the water and measure the fall off in the reading?

    As to units... surely such things are measured in HMs? (Hail Marys)
  • I think you'd need to rename them for a broader application ...
  • How about OFs? 'Our Fathers'...

    That should cater for most Christians, at least...
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    I think you'd need to rename them for a broader application ...

    You don't have to be an imperial citizen to use the foot, surely a similar logic applies here? The alternative is to fly the theometer by drone to the patch of air formerly containing the Holy of Holies, and measure everything in fractions of that (micro HHs and the like). I suspect that such an act might be Controversial.
  • O and there was me trying to be Ecumenical...
  • ...(micro HHs and the like)...

    I was wondering that - do they end up like the Farad (too big for normal use) or the Pa (much too small, in structural stress calcs). And will the HM be a stand alone unit, or for instance, do we need to consider HMm^-3s^-1? Though there we run into problems with omnipresence and timelessness.

    Power-spectral-holiness, anybody?
  • I was wondering that - do they end up like the Farad (too big for normal use) or the Pa (much too small, in structural stress calcs).

    Not sure exactly how big an HM would be, but I suspect that to be of widespread use, it has to be logarithmic.
  • I was wondering that - do they end up like the Farad (too big for normal use) or the Pa (much too small, in structural stress calcs).

    Not sure exactly how big an HM would be, but I suspect that to be of widespread use, it has to be logarithmic.

    That's what powers of 10 and prefixes are for. I'm assuming a full HH is somewhere in the same order compared with an HM as the metre is to the Planck length (~10^35 times). And yes, I did have the Farad in mind, along with the Tesla.

    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket? I also have to wonder what the mediating particle of divinity is. The Hermes, perhaps.
  • edited May 2020
    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket?

    It's a measure of how sad, or how bored, I am that I'm really enjoying this.

    The ancient Israelites seemed to have some kind of inverse square thing in mind as they approached the holy of holies - though dH/dx is not made explicit. Although it's not in the bible, I'm told the priest had a rope round his ankle in case he was overcome by D (or rather, H); it's not clear if a brief exposure to a fatal dose, or cumulative exposure due to a failure to consider the duration of the work event, was the risk they intended to mitigate.
    What's an Ephod? I really want it be some kind of bronze-age breathing apparatus; although it's always better to control the risk at source, in this case it appears that might not be possible.


    What about an impedance analogy? D(ivinity) could be expressed as Theomotive Force - or better, Scalar Theistic Potential. Then works of obedience come out as Pietistic Flux and the ratio {Potential / Flux} as (our).... Reluctance :smiley:


  • And yes, I did have the Farad in mind, along with the Tesla.
    That Elon Musk seems to creep in everywhere!

    Having, in the dim distant past, studied some electrical engineering theory, I like the idea of Pietistic Flux and Reluctance. However you probably need to also include the "Back Diabolomotive Force" of Temptation.

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited May 2020
    Erm...isn't there a Ship Rule that posts in a foreign language should also include a translation into the tongue understanded by the people?

    It's all witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy anyway...
    :fearful:

    I'll get me wand, and me grimoire.
  • Ah, but Catholic language is "foreign" to Baptists ... and vice-versa.
  • Erm...isn't there a Ship Rule that posts in a foreign language should also include a translation into the tongue understanded by the people?

    It's all witchcraft, sorcery, and necromancy anyway...
    :fearful:

    I'll get me wand, and me grimoire.

    Physics, maths, alchemy, magic, heterodox theology... all the same to Newton.
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    Hail Marys/HMs? I would have thought it obvious that the unit of measurement for the presence of divinity would be a Belloq.

  • In Baptist circles it would probably be a Spurgeon.
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket? I also have to wonder what the mediating particle of divinity is. The Hermes, perhaps.
    I was under the belief that the answer is the holy water in itself is inert in terms of transmitting holiness if added to a larger body of unblessed water. So it wouldn't even be dilution: one would need to find the specific molecules of holy water within the bucket for it to have an effect.
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket? I also have to wonder what the mediating particle of divinity is. The Hermes, perhaps.
    I was under the belief that the answer is the holy water in itself is inert in terms of transmitting holiness if added to a larger body of unblessed water. So it wouldn't even be dilution: one would need to find the specific molecules of holy water within the bucket for it to have an effect.

    Ah, so it's a matter of dissolving then? Even so, that still leaves the question of whether each water molecule is in a binary state of holy or not holy, or if they possess holiness as some sort of continuous measurement, or indeed whether holiness can only exist in a handful of specific quantum states. Further, what quantity of divinity is required to raise the holiness of a water molecule by a given amount? Surely the Specific Holiness Capacity could vary between materials? Sacred stones seem very common, does stone perhaps have a fairly low SHC, in comparison with metals? We seems to have very few holy metal objects other than those specifically consecrated. The quantum state concept of holiness is surely supported by the existence of different classes of relic - what else could be being described here other than discrete quantum levels of holiness?
  • Don't get hold of an object with high SHC if you're in even a slightly lower state of holiness and don't want a nasty burn. (Nick - we're back to Belloq :smile: )

    The time angle is definitely something we need to work in, since sooner or later someone charismatic is going to start going on about works of Power.

    (My impedance analogy (accidentally) looks sensible here, as Power will be the product of the in-phase components of Scalar Theistic Potential (God's will) and Pietistic Flux (what we do). That sounds about right :smile: It also means that most charismatic bullshit, where Gods Will and Our Actions are orthogonal, is something like a reactive load. We need a charismatic power-factor correction.)
  • That sounds about right :smile: It also means that most charismatic bullshit, where Gods Will and Our Actions are orthogonal, is something like a reactive load. We need a charismatic power-factor correction.)

    Now I'm wondering how you build a resonant system...
  • Well...we impede God's work by simply Resisting his will; and when we're doing something orthogonal we can get ahead of ourselves and Lead, or drag along behind with what we should have done a while back, and Lag.

    So...if we can assemble a congregation where those who get ahead of themselves cancel out those who want to do what should have been done a while back, so long as the simple Resisters (note spelling!) tend to zero, the Pietistic Flux can tend to infinity! :smiley:

  • (Furthermore I now realised our elderly Methodist congregation are not spiritually moribund; we are merely Critically Damped :smiley: ).
  • Raptor EyeRaptor Eye Shipmate
    Pendragon wrote: »
    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket? I also have to wonder what the mediating particle of divinity is. The Hermes, perhaps.
    I was under the belief that the answer is the holy water in itself is inert in terms of transmitting holiness if added to a larger body of unblessed water. So it wouldn't even be dilution: one would need to find the specific molecules of holy water within the bucket for it to have an effect.

    Might it be different if it were shaken a lot, I wonder, as in homeopathy?
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    No, the water in and of itself does not have the power to make the surrounding water holy on contact. As an Anglo-Catholic, an ordained priest and the right words are required for that.
    Pendragon wrote: »
    As for the derived units, presumably rates of change are possible (we talk about a place being made holy by prayer over time, and also of desecration). Could it be that the per-unit-volume measurement is holiness, while the base unit measures divinity? This raises in interesting question: does a blessing of water (giving holy water) convey a specific quantity of divinity or a specific level of holiness? Put another way, if you get a priest to bless a thimble of water and add it to a bucket of unblessed water, is that water the same or less holy than if the priest blessed the whole bucket? I also have to wonder what the mediating particle of divinity is. The Hermes, perhaps.
    I was under the belief that the answer is the holy water in itself is inert in terms of transmitting holiness if added to a larger body of unblessed water. So it wouldn't even be dilution: one would need to find the specific molecules of holy water within the bucket for it to have an effect.

    Ah, so it's a matter of dissolving then? Even so, that still leaves the question of whether each water molecule is in a binary state of holy or not holy, or if they possess holiness as some sort of continuous measurement, or indeed whether holiness can only exist in a handful of specific quantum states.
    It is not holy until it is blessed. Thereafter however the water is enduringly holy, so like all such objects must be disposed of reverently.

  • It's in threads like this that I remember why I failed the first year of my electrical engineering degree (twice)...
  • Right ... well here's a good tip: do NOT bless an electrical machine with Holy Water, especially if it is switched on! It may provide you with a rapid (and spectacular) one way trip to glory.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    <bump due to split>
  • Right ... well here's a good tip: do NOT bless an electrical machine with Holy Water, especially if it is switched on! It may provide you with a rapid (and spectacular) one way trip to glory.

    As I understand it divinity cannot readily abide electricity, so on contact with the device the divinity in the Holy Water is driven out, in the usual form associated with divine wrath.
  • Something like this device could be attached to the pulpit to detect the point at which a gas analysis of the preacher's breath indicates that the divinity level has been reduced to no more than hot air, thus indicating a good stopping place for the sermon. I am not thinking of any particular preacher, of course.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Do cubits come into it anywhere? Everything in the Bible seems to be measured in cubits - arks, temples, people.

    Not to be confused with cucurbits, which just pop up (briefly) in Jonah.
  • In Baptist circles it would probably be a Spurgeon.

    Aka the Charlie ... [I can't imagine anyone who looked less like one tbh]
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Don't there have to be competing systems, an Imperial one and a metric one, the Imperial one with peculiar multiples, possibly based on 144, and the metric one rigorously to the base 10? If so, one could use HMs and the other perhaps pneums, with centipneums, hectopneums etc. And doesn't there need to be a separate system of measurement of impedance. Perhaps it could be measured in torticolls from torticollis a Latin medical term for a form of stiff neck?

    Another very important question is whether HMs have different half lives in different liquids, water, oil etc. or whether the effect wears off at the same speed?
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    And doesn't there need to be a separate system of measurement of impedance. Perhaps it could be measured in torticolls from torticollis a Latin medical term for a form of stiff neck?

    Perhaps, in a bow to ecumenism, the units could be oms.
  • I would have thought that Anglican churches (CofE) could be measured in Sextons.
  • tclune wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    And doesn't there need to be a separate system of measurement of impedance. Perhaps it could be measured in torticolls from torticollis a Latin medical term for a form of stiff neck?

    Perhaps, in a bow to ecumenism, the units could be oms.
    There might be some resistance to that.

  • Is anyone else struggling to read the title of this thread without adding "Batman!" to the end?

  • Is anyone else struggling to read the title of this thread without adding "Batman!" to the end?
    Gosh yes, Batman.

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    In Baptist circles it would probably be a Spurgeon.

    In C of S the Knox?
  • PendragonPendragon Shipmate
    Now we're getting into Centigrade/Celsius territory!
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Now we're getting into Centigrade/Celsius territory!

    Does the Calvin measure the level of divinity relative to absolute depravity?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    I prefer an empirically derived measure. Such as the volume required to cause a previously defined Standard Vampire to assume gaseous form.
  • EutychusEutychus Shipmate
    Pendragon wrote: »
    Now we're getting into Centigrade/Celsius territory!

    Does the Calvin measure the level of divinity relative to absolute depravity?

    :lol:
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Now we're getting into Centigrade/Celsius territory!

    Does the Calvin measure the level of divinity relative to absolute depravity?

    Only in Geneva. For Scotland, please refer to the Knox, above.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    I like the idea of a Standard Vampire. Surely we need a Standard Saint as well (someone who possesses 1.0000 HMs of holiness).
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    Now we're getting into Centigrade/Celsius territory!

    Does the Calvin measure the level of divinity relative to absolute depravity?
    No, that’s the Dort (or Dordt)—though to be precise, it measures the level of divinity to total, not absolute, depravity. There’s a difference, :wink:

    The Calvin measures the level of free will relative to divine sovereignty.

  • Ah, how silly of me get muddled!
  • Hey, I'm glad to see this silliness come back to life! Maximum points for the Calvin, ATMF.

    Regarding metric and imperial systems - it seems clear that the Orthodox would be Imperial; care would be needed with a range of hard-to-remember fiddle factors when making calculations based on a mix of units, whose omission could lead to projected levels of holiness differing from empirically-derived measures by orders of magnitude. I think my own Methodism and possibly the C.of.E. would regard themselves as metric - but not entirely metric, more 'metric as was first attempted in the 1960s, not adopted widely, and largely superseded in contemporary practice'.

    That leaves us stuck in CGS units, and generally lacking in Ergs.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Back in the old days we'd just measure depravity in Tulips. On a scale that went from Bulb to Entire Acreage of Holland.
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