On the subject of free will, I have heard people argue that Christianity is logically inconsistent on the grounds that the notion of free will is incompatible with the notion that God already knows the future. Supposedly, if God already knows what you will do, then what you will do cannot be free by definition.

I find it ironic that in trying to show that other people’s views are logically inconsistent, people could make such a fundamental error in logic themselves. The chain of causality in the typical Christian claim (more or less) is that your act of free will causes God to know what that act is, which causes God to have always known what that act would be. This is not inconsistent unless one can show that the chain of causality is looped (i.e. that there is a chain of causality from God’s knowledge of your act to the act itself, or something like that). But one cannot demonstrate such a chain without making assertions that the typical Christian will not agree with (and if you do that, you’re no longer demonstrating an internal contradiction).

I think the whole argument is one that is made without thinking, in which respect it’s like a lot of other arguments on both sides.

If you haven’t read Raymond Smullyan’s “Is God A Taoist?” yet, please do.

I like your closing comment about Jupiter. A pity that piece of slang never caught on. It even has classical antecedents. Jupiter was the god of Thunder, after all, and I remember once getting involved in a performance of the play “The Cyclops” by Euripides (back when my wife was doing her PhD at Sydney uni and was active in the Classics Society). It is a long time ago, But I remember a line where the Cyclops is comparing himself to Zeus, and talking about how he in his belly will “Gloriously emulate the thunder of high heaven”. Go, Jupiter!

If you happen to have any of Bill Bryson’s books, give ‘em the same treatment for the same reason.

Is there any chance of the Skeptics endorsing the international political movement dedicated to protesting against the Law of Gravity and campaigning for its repeal? :-)

The OED’s entry is pure unrevised 1st edition, so not very helpful here, although it does point out that while:whilst is like among:amongst, amid:amidst, and again:against: the s is the possessive ending, and the -t was added under the influence of slightly irregular superlatives like first, last, most, least, etc.

Googling Project Gutenberg shows that out of the approximately 172K English-language documents (including site pages as well as texts), 101K have at least one token of while, whereas only about 18K have at least one token of whilst.