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

But the claim about Cartesian coordinates (if it had ever been made) would have been false.

If ancient people claimed that Cartesian coordinates were the best model that they knew of for the existing information they had, that would be a reasonable (and correct) statement. If they claimed that it was the best and most accurate system for making maps PERIOD, they would be unjustified in saying that (and as it happens, they would be wrong).

The concept of what it is to be a map hasn't changed since that time, only the specific information represented on maps has changed.

No, the claims of atheism do not hold for all concepts of God currently in existence. We can exclude Gods who created the Universe and made it obvious that they had done so, since the world shows no signs of being "artificially' structured or designed. We can exclude Gods that wish to be worshipped by all people and make this fact obvious (since so many people have different Gods or religious systems, God would have to be really incompetent). We cannot exclude Gods who created the Universe but left no signs of their presence. We cannot exclude Gods who had nothing to do with creating anything (although you may disagree on whether or not such beings would qualify as Gods). Until we can do so, we can't make the statement that these Gods do not exist. We can, however, say that those who make statements that such Gods DO exist but have no evidence are unjustified (therefore, they are incorrect in regard to their reasoning and logic, although it's possible that they could be correct factually).

Claims of atheism may be reasonable now, but they cannot be considered to be logically correct any more than claims of theism can be considered logically correct. Time may show that one or the other system is correct -- but we can't do so now. Leaving the philosophy of the future to the future, we can only reserve judgment on the entire question.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

"We cannot exclude Gods who created the Universe but left no signs of their presence." - These still fail the logical tests applied to monotheistic systems. Occam's Razor isn't logical?

"We cannot exclude Gods who had nothing to do with creating anything" - These would not be gods, and are irrelevant.

Sadly, we don't have a time machine, so we can't test my analogy by going back to the relevant time and asking people to define the word 'map', and then handing them a globe and asking them if this fitted into their concept of a map.

> "We can exclude Gods who created the Universe and made it obvious that they had done so... We can exclude Gods that wish to be worshipped by all people and make this fact obvious..."

Ok - so tell us of any concepts which are intuitively recognisable as 'God' which don't have either of those two properties.

I believe in many beings which had nothing to do with creating anything. MyRedDice, for example. Caledonian on many occasions. But naming such beings God is an exercise in twisting words out of their sockets.

If a super-intelligent alien comes along and demands leadership of the world, such an entity could be called God. But 'the super-intelligent alien' would be a better description, as would 'Dra-Azoth' (for that is its name).

Occam's Razor can indicate whether a given hypothesis is the best working explanation for a phenomenon -- it has nothing to do with logical proof or the existence of God.

If an all-powerful, all-knowing being that is worshipped by humans isn't believed to have created the Universe or designed everything in it, you wouldn't consider that a God? I don't think that such a being would be irrelevant at all.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

I'll say this again... the CONCEPT of a map hasn't changed in thousands of years. It's the INFORMATION that is represented on the maps that has changed. A person thousands of years ago who had never traveled outside of his farming community could easily make an accurate map of his surroundings and verify that it was essentially correct. However, he wouldn't have sufficient knowledge to make any judgments about the shape or nature of the world as a whole, and as a result, could not make a map of the world.

Could you make a detailed and accurate map of the core of Jupiter? Of course not -- you don't know anything about the topology of Jupiter. Could you determine whether a God (or godlike being) is possible, or whether such a being exists? Of course not -- you're only a human being with a limited knowledge about the universe as a whole.

As for concepts that are recognizable as God, many Christians believe that God created the world but hid the fact that He did so, and that He wishes to be worshipped but doesn't announce this to the world openly. Do I think those beliefs are reasonable? No. Can I show that they're incorrect? No.

Additionally, who says that God would have to be intuitively recognizable?

Let's say that a super-intelligent alien arrives at Earth and announces that it formed our planet billions of years ago and seeded the first life upon it. Would that count as a God? Possibly. What if the alien had control of physics on a level we couldn't comprehend? Would that count as God? What if it preserved the minds of dead humans? Would it matter if its name were Dra-Azoth or Yaweh? Do I think this scenario is at all likely? No, but I can't show that it can't happen.

What qualities would a being need to have for you to call it a God? Please be prepared to defend your answers.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

You're entirely right - the concept of a map has never changed - clearly it's just different information that needs to be represented. I've been wrong and stupid, and thank you kindly for enlightening me. The analogy is a fatally flawed one that need be discussed no longer.

moving on...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so any sufficiently advanced alien creature is indistinguishable from a God.

But h2g2 *doesn't* work by magic, and Dra-Azoth *isn't* a God.

I believe I've defined the three types of God multiple times over the course of thise argument, so I'm going to meander from the topic somewhat, if you don't mind... There is a balance to be struck between completeness and soundness. {(for any observers) soundness: only true things can be proven. completeness: all true things can be proven}.

Requiring absolute soundness leads eventually to the model where nothing is true - stong agnosticism on all topics, up to and including whether the sun will rise tomorrow. Requiring absolute completeness leads eventually to relative truth and "all statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense".

I suspect that most people find those two extremes rather silly. So one needs to make a compromise somewhere down the line. I choose to compromise with a bias towards completeness. You choose to compromise with a bias towards soundness. Would you care to explain why your compromise is better than mine?

Thank you so much for killing the analogy! I was afraid it would go on forever, but I couldn't think of any way to stop it.

In regard to your (excellent) question: I suppose the "correct" balance between soundness and completeness depends on the context that a person is thinking within. In everyday life, completeness is useful and adaptive -- you don't actually need to KNOW that the sun will rise tomorrow, only that it will almost certainly do so again, and act accordingly. In logic or philosophy, we would need to recognize that we were assuming that the sun would rise and that we didn't actually know that it would.

In the everyday sense, I suppose that I'm as much of an atheist as you are: I don't believe that there are any immensely powerful Creators influencing my actions or caring about what I do. I also don't believe in lots of similar concepts that you might not call Gods (I don't think that there are any benevolent beings who enter the world again and again to help humanity achieve enlightenment and freedom from suffering as in Buddhism, for example).

In a strictly logical sense, I neither believe nor disbelieve in the above concepts. Many of the concepts are not able to be emprically tested right now, and a few will almost certainly never be able to be tested. Without a great deal more accurate information, I can't justify having one position or another on the issues, since I have nothing to go on but my intuition, which is frequently wrong.

I regard the question of whether a God exists as a purely logical one, so my answers are biased towards soundness.

Perhaps that's the inherent problem with this argument -- looking back over the things you've said, I realize that they all are perfectly reasonable from the everyday, non-empirical point of view. Maybe we both just approach the question differently.

In any case, your distinction between soundness and completeness is a very interesting idea... I'll have to think about this for a while.

[bows gratefully]

--Caledonian

Wouldn't the way a "weak" athiest is described just be a very skeptical agnostic? It looks the same on writing, maybe there is a pride element or competition between weak athiests and agnostics.

I used to be agnostic. I am now an Athiest. However I will admit that agnostisism is the more logical theory as it is the only one that does not rely on a certain form of faith.
As an athiest, I beleive that there is no God, but this is as much a belief as those of religious types because I cannot disprove God any easier than they can prove him. All I can do, if anything, is disprove certain details of certain religions. This may be enough to disprove certain religions entirely (ie. how would Christianity stand after disproving of Noahs Ark, Adam and Eve and the ressurection of Christ) but can never disprove the existance of God. Therefore my atheism is a faith. If I was to rely simply on logic and what can be proven then I would have to resort back to agnostisism (is that right spelling?)
Even though my beliefs are considered closer to that of agnostics, I still have the same doubts towards my faith as religious people do. Doubt and sceptisism is what has pushed the evolution of society. Without doubt you are just a paranoid schizophrenic.
It's strange that if a man preaches to the world that God created the world, drowned everyone (but let a few survive) just to start again, somehow had a son and let him go down to Earth to be horribly murdered, almost lost the whole thing in a minor scuffle with a particularly nasty fallen angel and then destroyed everything so that everyone could be one with him his son a spirity thing that are somehow the same person then the preacher would be considered a pillar of society, listened to, respected and paid well but another man could be locked in an institution for simply saying that God is his cat.
Interesting?

[bows under the strain of metaphysical debate]

Good night and God bless.

Sick God, sorry, Bob.

I wrote this article, and that includes the "leap of faith" line. The arguments over that line eventually caused me to regret writing it... even *I* no longer believe it to be true.

I'm a strong atheist, obviously (or I wouldn't have written this), and I believe that my lack of belief is not a leap of faith... it is a conclusion, based on the available evidence. There is a dearth of evidence *for* a god, and plenty of evidence against.

But, of course, in order to have evidence for a god, you have to know what you're talking about. I tend to use the term in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic sense. I have no belief in such an entity. If there is another, yet unnamed creating force, then that does not fit with my concept of what a god is. If we discover it, we'll give it a name, and that name is not "god."

That's where the agnostics and atheists divide. I think we'd both agree that there is no J-C-I god, but they are undecided on the existence of a god of another type... some ethereal consciousness, or unnamed force, which the human mind has yet to conceive of, much less discover. But I think that gods are the creation of human minds, created to be deliberately unproveable. History bears this theory out.

With this in mind, atheism is at least as rational as agnosticism, if a little more extreme.

Doh! My article on Atheism has received some recent forum activity, and I mistook this forum for another of those. I did *not* write this article. I was talking about the Atheism article. Sorry for sounding like an idiot...

I choose to firmly belive in the non-existance of any deities. I'm very devout. It's more fun that way.

The way I would sum up the issue is that atheists put their money on the belief that God (in any understanding) doesn't exist, theists put their money on the belief that God exists (in their understanding) and agnostics refuse to put money on either side. (God either exists or God doesn't exist).

But a question I would pose, is where do atheists or agnostics find meaning in life, the universe or anything?
Speaking as a theist (Catholic) I don't understand why y'all don't jump off a cliff, or otherwise commit suicide because I see no meaning in a Universe that hasn't been given one by something outside of it (if you can give me an example of anything within the Universe that has a meaning of and in itself then I would be very surprised, as I see it anything only has a meaning because something sentient outside of it's "system" gave it one). And if meaning doesn't exist at all, then why did we come up with it, and why do we search for it? If God didn't exist wouldn't it be much easier and more efficient that we would be devoid of any allegedy delusional search for meaning?

Ah, but what you do not realise, my theist friend, is that ignorance is bliss. I have to say that I see things the opposite.
You have said that "I don't understand why y'all don't jump off a cliff, or otherwise commit suicide." I've wondered this about thiests (no offence meant) since you all seem to have found afterlives that are much more enjoyable and happier than this world. When you do not have faith in an afterlife, death is not very appealing. You have said that life is pointless unless we know the meaning. I beleive otherwise. I see life as pointless if we DO know the meaning. It's the chase thats the fun part. I actually beleive that there is no "all consuming" meaning to all life. I don't think that there is a "universal theory for everything." I think that anyone who thinks that they can find this is deluding themselves and will never understand the truth of the world or how to live with it. In my eyes the whole thing is just some big random mistake and we might as well enjoy it while we have it. I think that people spend too long looking for answers for everyone and don't look for answers for themselves. I think people care too much about where the world came from and don't spend enough time just thankful that it exists. Why must we explain everything. Why can't we just be stupid and happy for it. "The wisest man is he that can admit that he does not know" to quote a famous Chinese philosopher. It's not that I beleive in nothing. I just don't belive that anyone can truthfully tell me EVERYTHING so why must I believe anything I am taught. I belive in love and I beleive in music. I beleive in nature and in science and in art and in beauty. This is because these are things I have experienced myself. I do not need faith feel touched by a poem. I do not need to explain the nature of aesthetics to find a landscape stunning. I do not need to understand my entire emotional makeup and know my own destiny to fall in love. Religion is an excuse. Find yourself first, then try to explain how you did it. Life goes on, whether we are watching or not. I do not wish to offend at all but I see theists as creating God because they like the idea of their lives being completely under anothers control. Take control of your own life, and find your own religion. Don't beleive indoctrination. There is no meaning of life, but every life has a meaning. I suggest you find yours.

Unquestioning belief in concepts dreamt up by uneducated early humans (The existence of God(s) etc) strikes me as more than a little sad

something which has internal meaning? Number theory. It's a fully self-consistent system which doesn't have any relation to the real world, yet the statements of number theory certainly have meaning within the system.

Similarly I have meaning within the system of the universe. How much is, of course, open to debate...

"Occam's Razor can indicate whether a given hypothesis is the best working explanation for a phenomenon -- it has nothing to do with logical proof or the existence of God.

If an all-powerful, all-knowing being that is worshipped by humans isn't believed to have created the Universe or designed everything in it, you wouldn't consider that a God? I don't think that such a being would be irrelevant at all.

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian"

You have a good point about Occam's razor, but isn't any decision about whether the universe is created and or controlled by a god a working hypothosis to desscribe a phenomonon (the universe).

We are almost certainly unable to know everything about the universe and, unless a god chooses to give us uncontravertable evidence of its existance, any decision about a god's existance is a working hypothesis awaiting evidence

I fully realise that I am late in the conversation, at the wrong point in the conversation, and probably in the wrong conversation, but I would like to know that, if Agnostics are people who aren't sure or who don't believe anything, and Atheists are people who are reasonably certain, on the whole, that a god does not exist, then are people who believe in either everything, or as much as they can believe, Omnostics or Omnitheists or something?
Sorry, my Latin isn't too good, but if no one has heard of 'em, I may just be forced to create my own region of belief and write an article about it.
I would also like to apologise for the many thousands of sweeping generalisations I have made, and it is also likely that I breached some etiquette rules for forums, being as I am generally happy to sit back and observe.
So, sorry.

People who believe in everything already have a name. Gullible.

Everybody believes everything they can believe. WHAT they can believe decides what they're called.

Noggin

Gullible? I believe, scientifically, that the universe is utterly, utterly anthropic, and that the mind is easily powerful enough to lie to us about everything we see, every day.
If I see the colour red, and point to it, how do I know that the colour I see is the same colour you see, besides the name? The name isn't the article.
Police often have to file hundreds of eyewitness reports in a day, and even if there are only two witnesses, both of whom had a good, long look at the subject, their descriptions of the suspect never match up exactly.
Christians look at life and define it through their reality tunnel so that all articles *proving* God or Jesus seem more reliable, more believable than any which *disprove* God or Jesus. Atheists do exactly the opposite.
Now, I'm no solipsist, or even a fan of Descartes, but he had a point.
The only given value in the universe is our thoughts, and any way they intrude upon the multiverse is mostly pure coincidence. Go look up about Von Neumann's Catastrophe sometime.
I am no reliable judge of what is true about anything, and as a result I refrain from believing anything equally. But belief, as Neil Gaiman said, is the lifebelt that gets people through the choppy waters of life. It doesn't matter what you believe in. It's the though that counts. So, I believe in everything.
The only way my personal opinions, prejudices, judgments, whatevers, have any say in the matter is that I believe in some things more than others. I have the same belief in Wiccca, as in, say, everything I have said before this sentence, but hundreds times that in the Paratheo-anametakystichood Of Eris Esoteric.