h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

GB - Impressive, and I also like that Peregrin dropped in to dispute with you. Three cheers. How do you define Christianity as "throwing your life away"?

TG - Haven't you noticed how messed up we really are? Of course you have, thus the Clut-something bit. The blood and sacrafice bit ended with Jesus, as the perfect sacrifice. (I could tell you an interesting story about Israeli scapegoat goats, but I can't recall all the details and I don't think you'd give a darn anyway.) I assume that by the "mindless sacrament" you mean Easter. Oh, and my Elf Cleric casts Dispel Evil on your Gray Ghost.

Fine. If we want to go along those lines, you'd best duck and cover when Chronoton The Great Chicken Of Doom climbs from the center of the earth to lay waste to the major countries of Earth. Its followers are ordered to engage regularly in drunken carouses, preferably in the wee hours of the morning. How about that?

Davius - comin at you from a religious Jewish education here, so I can quote bible as well as you.

a - Your quote from Genesis is a wee after Creation. Noah was hundreds of years after Creation. It never says the Flood was the first rain. But even if it wasn't, a rainbow can be created by a waterfall... or any number of other things.

c, 2 - You're assuming that if there is a God he is the one you believe in. My idea of God (back before my godless days) is a bit different from yours.

Yeah I've heard that "The Lord" thing... Adonay, adonay, el rachum vechanun, erech apayim v'oseh chesed be'emet... Let me tell you. Try the story of Pinchas (I think anglified that's Phinehas), God's favorite, who stuck a spear through a guy for sleeping with a Canaanite. How about the guy who was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath?

Try Malachi, ch. 4, whatever verse is the last one, for fathers and suns being turned against each other. Or for specific examples, try the story of Solomon... his son, Rechavam, gets screwwed over for his father inadequacy, while Solomon gets to keep the throne due to his father's goodness. First kings, 11:11.

Oh and PS The US gov't is not god, and never will be. They haven't got the same powers of judgement as you know who. And the fact that they ddid it don't make it ok for God to do. Nor is murdering thousands of innocent babies cool, egyptian or no, god or no.

'throwing your life away'
If you spend however many (say 80) years of your life without any drunken carousing than wow does that suck for you... I would classify it as throwing some amount off your life away. Seriously... it's a whole rich bit of experience that you totally miss.

Isn't that whole communion thing intended to be a symbolic reenactment of the sacrificial rite? Ah whatever; I prefer gods of the non-bloodthirsty variety, but to each his own I suppose.

I have this nifty quote by Tolstoy kicking around that I think sums up my views on this rather wide-ranging topic nicely; "It is terrible to watch a man who has the incomprehensible in his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God."

Loreth; I fully intend to drink myself to death long before I get that old

a) Funnily enough - I believe in that research too - it's a *powerful* image. But sadly it completely contradicts the bible account of 40 days and 40 nights of rain - the process would have happened in a matter of hours, not days. Personally, it seems like the easiest explanation is that *all* the flood stories of the area are myths caused by this event. And your explanation seems to suggest that that is your belief too? Hard to tell...

b) I don't have the passage handy, but I don't recall arsenic being involved... But while you've got it handy, you might want to have a swig - after all, as a True Believer, you're immune...

c) Hmm. I'd prefer to be rewarded by the world. There are more important things than the approval of your biological parents, and last I checked they enjoyed the making experience...
#1 - well, Discordianism propogates by people thinking it's cool, and/or funny, and passing on the URL. Pterryism propogates as his books propogate. Tribal religions propogate by control of society from the priest. But you would have thought that if Christianity was true and blessed by God, whereas all the others weren't, it's path into our consciousness would be easier, and so not require the saturation bombing it sometimes appears as.
#2 - the injustice of humans does not excuse the injustice of God. Stop changing the topic.

d) You can't quote scripture to prove the correctness of scripture, sorry. See Article:"Circular Reasoning" for details... And ref. Hiroshima, the injustice of humans does not excuse the injustice of God. Not this time, either. Ezekiel 18:20 appears to contradict a goodly number of Godly sayings, so please reconcile them.

Well - you said "prove evolution" - so I did... You want proof of what then?

Evolution is a mathematical concept, which requires two things. Imperfect Replication, and Selection. In any system with those two categories, evolution should happen, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the effectiveness of the replication, and the effectiveness of selection.

If you accept "evolution the mathematical concept", but reject "evolution occuring in nature", I have to ask why. Which of the two requirements do you believe is lacking?

I meant "non-religious evidence" and "secular evidence". Hey, so I'm fallible!

Near death experience have a marked similarity to hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen to the brain. Having hallucinated, I see why people get converted by such things (except mine were caused by lack of sleep)...

MyRedDice - have you had a "dream from God" involving pagan symbols today?

Let's see if I'm clever enough to reply to two longish posts at the same time...

You first, Ioreth.
a. I know that. But how do you know that God didn't only fire up the light-refracting bit after the flood? (Unlikely, I know. So here's another one: A rainbow in the sky is far more impressive than the little areas of color that you can see in a waterfall's spray. Note that the Bible says that God placed his rainbow in the sky. Nobody says it wasn't somewhere else to start with.)

Well, the very next verse (1 K. 11:12) says that God did it for the sake of David his father, not for Solomon's sake. Besides, who says that Rechavam (known to me as Rehoboam, I think. Or is this a different guy?) was such a saint? If it was Rehoboam, he sure wasn't too great. Note the "I will scourge you with scorpions" bit.

RedDice, now.
a. Note that nobody makes any mention of it not raining. And it's not necessarily my belief, but I need all the ammo I can get here.

b. That was a joke, buddy. Reminds me of those guys who handle poisonous snakes for no good reason... (but it does seem to work.)

c. Witty.
1. I'm referring to the vast majority of other religions. (And don't forget about the guys with the John 3:16 signs at sports games. It's debatable if it's useful, but it gives the sign guy a charge. ) God gave us free will. Therefore, in keeping with that decision, He does not sledgehammer Christianity into our heads.
2. That was intended as a subtle and mildly sarcastic joke. Or does it require a little smiley face for it to count?

d. Well, if I can't use scripture, what am I going to use to describe God? And I've seen the article. The Ezekiel passage describes the New Covenant of Jesus's death and resurrection, not a change in policy at that particular instant in Ezekiel's life.

The problem is really the concept that everything came from some protoplasmic life form that came from nowhere, isn't it?

Chuckle.

Yeah, fine. Whatever you say, Mr. Science. How about the missionaries in Africa protected from guerrillas by the heavenly, invisible-to-protectee soldiers?

Uh, I'm 16. No booze for me, thanks. (On the other hand, I _can_ drink as much virtual stuff as I want! )

Bloodthirsty, you say? It seems to me at least that it's just a reminder of God's sacrifice of his son, once again to follow His own rules. This way, however, it was possible to dispense with the constant slaughter of innocent animals.

Wouldn't "the incomprehensible in his grasp" mean understanding the un-understandable?

And, to spare Ioreth telling you, that's an i, not an L.

There is evidence that plate tektonics allowed the Atlantic Ocean to pour into what we now call the Mediterranean Sea, and that people living in the Med may have been harmed, and their survivors moved to higher ground and founded the flood myths. However, the Hebrews have a very funny way of telling it if this is so, because this means no rain was necessary. The Hebrew flood myth and a flood through Gibraltar are incompatible.

By the way, if a rainbow appears in the sky, it is still raining. I've just returned from the Rainbow State, where I lived for nearly 5 years, so I know what I'm talking about. But there's nothing in that passage to suggest that it was the first time a rainbow ever appeared in the sky, and no reason to believe it is so.

Hmmm... isnt it ironic that something designed to remind mankind of the covenant with Noah should appear with the most regularity to the pagan masses of places like Hawaii, Tahiti, and the Caribbean?

Yeah, yeah. Great joke.

I know how rainbows work, you needn't remind me. Maybe God had the rainbow put on a special 1-time appearance sans rain, and then let it go into its current state. If you think about it, it's sort of like a mini-reenactment - the sky becomes gray (darkness of mankind), it rains (flood), the rainbow comes while the rain is stopping (obvious), and the sky is bright again (cleansing of the earth).

Read what you just wrote back to yourself. Does it sound to you like a reasonable hypothesis that can have a solid foundation in science, or does it sound like you're grasping at straws for something, anything, to validate your beliefs?

When your beliefs don't make sense, it is time to question them.

"The foolish believeth every word." Proverbs 14:15

Jokes... they're either funny, or they're not, and I guess my dig at arsenic swallowing wasn't... ahh well... I guess I missed your humour in mentioning Hiroshima too.. oh well - no harm done.

I was merely commenting that true things don't require chain-letter style exortations to spread themselves. Does the Theory of Evolution require you to go out and preach it to the masses? Is the joy of sex something which turns you into a preacher mid-orgasm? Did the Helo-centric universe require a TV campaign to be accepted? No!

You can use anything you like to describe God, just the same way I could use anything I liked to describe dracula. But the bits of the bible which say "these words are true" are about as relevant as the bits of a good ghost story which say that the drama about to unfold really happened.

So how do you reconcile that passage of Ezekiel with the various "unto the Xth generation" statements elsewhere in the bible? That's still unanswered.

I didn't know what your problem with it is - that's why I asked!

The very first replicators took a long time to arrive, counting from the existance of Earth, so there was a long time for random re-arrangements of atoms to chance upon a replicator. You can get chemicals which are self-replicating, in that they catalyze their own reactions. This happens imperfectly, due to damage from the environment (which was nothing like as clean as inside your mother's womb), so you get the necessary imperfect replication pretty early on.

AFAIK, The smallest ones we've found are slightly too big to have arrived by chance in the time available, which means either that we've not found the smallest one (highly likely), or that the Earth was "seeded" by proto-life hitching a ride on a meteorite, or that the processes at work in that primordial soup built up high-complexity chemicals faster than we expected, or just that we got lucky. Any of these reasons seems plausable - I find the second most aesthetically pleasing, but that's more because of the implications it would have for SETI than any logical basis...

Never heard of them. But then I guess you never hear about the missionaries who miraculously get riddled with holes by the guerillas, just like you don't hear about the snake handlers who miraculously die from their snakes poison... "Killing holy men is bad luck" is a belief that spread through many cultures, and held true for all types of holy men, including witches and devil-worshippers. Heck, it's still bad luck - there are enough people who refuse to touch Ouijja (sp?) boards, regardless of their beliefs.

If you've never hallucinated, you really should try it...

I see a passage that *contradicts* that policy, not one that nullifies it...

Not quite sure why you need an example of you claiming untrue things - you were doing that already..... or was I?

I took "according to what they had done" to be unspecific because it was hugely general, and covered everything.

Here's the big book of quotes from the bible which say that you need to be good to get to heaven...
Job.34:11, Ps.62:12, Jer.17:10, Mt.16:27, Mt.19:17, Jn.5:29, Rom.2:6, 13, 2 Cor.5:10, 2 Cor.11:15, Jas.2:14, Jas.2:17, Jas.2:21-25, 1 Pet.1:17, Rev 20:12-13.
So there you go - my old church had more evidence on it's side than I thought.... hint: showing quotes from the other side just means that you show the bible is self-contradictory. What you need to do is show that all those passages are mistranslated or misinterpreted...

Nah - I'm expecting that God will abandon the christians in the same way he abandoned the jews, and that the Messiahians will be the people who *actually* get into heaven....

Thanks, Davius

Booze is fun whether or not you're of age, trust me.

Anyhoo. One of the things I never uunderstood about Christian theology is the whole Jesus died to save us thing. If God is omnipotent, why did 'He' have to sacrifice 'His' son in order to redeem us? Couldn' t 'He' have made it so 'He' could just forgive us when we were sorry?

Oh, and wasn't it God in the first place who commanded those sacrifices?

Gosh is this forum fractured.

"Well, the very next verse (1 K. 11:12) says that God did it for the sake of David his father, not for Solomon's sake."

The next verse says Solomon doesn't get screwed over, for David's sake. So basically David is good, Solomon reap the rewards, Solomon is bad, Rechavam gets screwed over.

"Besides, who says that Rechavam (known to me as Rehoboam, I think. Or is this a different guy?) was such a saint?"

Same guy... but it doesn't matter, because we're specifically told he's being punished for his Dad's sins.

"God gave us free will. Therefore, in keeping with that decision, He does not sledgehammer Christianity into our heads." However, if we don't believe in Christianity (because we're stubborn, the way God made us) we're going to burn in Hell forever?