1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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I've boiled my beliefs down to the five listed below. Most of these faded before TTOMTE came along except for number 5. To lose that one having to do with our immortality may bother many other people too, and that may be the one where you will draw the line. See which beliefs you've already discarded and which ones you are willing to change, and perhaps write down the ones you know you can't give up. Use pencil. Or make your own list if you want because, for example, number 3 about Jesus certainly doesn't apply to Jews or Muslims.
1. A personal God exists.
From the age of five, I hardly ever asked for anything from God and didn't think I had to. He should have known what I needed already, and for those few times I did ask, I never got what I prayed for anyway.
I spent about a thousand hours a year in prayer and meditation for forty-five years trying to contact and worship this God. That's a lot of talking and listening, but I never got the feeling someone listened and talked back.
Conclusion: God may be personal to some humans, but I wasn't one of them. I accepted that possibility for the time being. (TTOMTE explained why I never got a response.)
2. God is the author of the Bible.
I always thought of the Bible as lessons and stories, not history, so it didn't bother me if the good tidings did not always match science. I still think any mythology holds some truth, but some of the events in the Old Testament may not have occurred at all. Archaeology has something to say about these stories.
Many of the Bible stories have a masculine slant: Someone changed the names of goddesses to a masculine form, and men were allowed, nay, encouraged, to have many wives.
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