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

...urgh, that film!

I mean - why would a nuclear weapon have a manual trigger? It doesn't make any sense!

american films never do

Given the size of the asteroid in Armageddon, why did gravitational forces not make it more regular.
Actually, I quite liked it, despite it being absolute cobblers!

It was probably a one off asteroid

You mean they didn't get it from Asteroids'R'Us?

Shouldn't they have had a little triangular ship which spin on its own axis to shoot it with?

*Looks at the people down on Earth and scoffs as they ignore the large fleet of sleeper ships in orbit around Jupiter*

Its a pity they like "rational" explainations

Then again, some cannot get on with the 20th Century, so they have to invent their own pseudo science, and believe in the IRRATIONAL!
Sleeper ships, huh? Which ones are those then, AIRFIX, AURORA, or FROG?
Me, I am going for a S..t and then some sleep......

Has anyone ever thought that perhaps the universe doesn't believe in the irrational? Science has lost its way and is trying to replace the arts, humanities and religion. Science *cannot* do this and still be science. As one scientist wrote, "The trouble now isn't that science and religion are battling each other but they are both trying too hard to be the other"

To me SCIENCE is turning into pseudo-science and it has left me disheartened, give me maths any day

That should have been "Has anyone ever thought that perhaps the universe doesn't believe in the rational?"

D'Oh!

How about "Has anyone ever thought that perhaps the universe doesn't believe"...?

You know you can't prove atheism using science, nor can you make a case for it. You can't use science as a religion just like you can't use religion as a science

But you can use either, or both, as dogma...

You certainly can make a case for atheism using logic.

I agree you can't use science as a religion. If you're using it properly, science actually explains and illuminates, rather than simply sweeping mysteries under a carpet of faith.

Many consider Zen Bhuddism to be a religion which explains and illuminates, while others consider "cause-and-effect", the cornerstone of most science, simply to be a matter of faith.

It's arguable that we can't prove anything exists except our own consciousness. If we aren't prepared to accept any sensory evidence for the existence of an external reality, we *do* have to take everything on faith.
However, given that there's no evidence that reality *doesn't* exist either, a belief in the non-existence of the observed reality surely requires at least an equal level of faith.

If we *are* going to accept an external world, and trust our senses to some degree, then we can obtain information to check our theories. While at the deepest physical levels, there may indeed be events that aren't *caused* by anything in the classical sense, there is sufficient evidence at human scales that one event can repeatably lead to another. Maybe it wouldn't be sufficient to satisfy a philosopher who sought perfect truth, but what would be?

These people who think causality is purely matter of faith, do any of them actually lack that faith, or is it simply a philosophical position?

Mind you, maybe causality *is* wrong.
All those Siberian trees just fell down.
Problem solved.

Hey, this un-science is a piece of piss. Way easier than the real thing

Maybe I should get a job teaching creationist biology in Kansas?

I recently read a short article on a philosophical position that could be summed up thus:

1) Stuff happens.
2) Sometimes, we percieve two or more previous events interacting to lead to a new event.
3) By calling this new event an "effect", we assign the status of "cause" to the preceding events. This is an arbitary perception, which does not change the fundamental nature of the previous events.
4) Under some circumstances, without this process, the "causal" events might not even be percieved as actual discrete events, therefore the "effect" can be said to have brought the "cause" into being...

I paraphrased that clumsily, but the idea is interesting

I am surprised that we have not had the crap about the usual nonsensical situation. "Does a tree make a noise when it falls down if there is no one to see it"?
Sure it does, it goes sort of, whoosh, thud!

*shrugs*

To me all of science is severely flawed. My logic is trained the absoulut mathematical way and what science calls "proof" seems to me to be a load of dingo's kidneys.

You can make a very good case for not taking into *account* religion when doing science but you can't say, "science exists ergo religion does not." Even the Pope said that science is the way to find out how God did it.