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

I have read the prophecies in Revelation, which I assume is what you mean by 'The revalations', many times. I can't recall any prophecies regarding the city of Babylon. Babylon the Great certainly, but obviously not referring to Babylon, because literal Babylon as a world power fell about 600 years before Revelation was written.


He says one puts faith in things that 'lack supporting evidence'.
I say one puts faith in things that are 'evident', that is, backed up by evidence.
You say those two sentences mean 'EXACTLY the same thing'.
I am nonplussed.


But thermodynamic order is very different from order in the usual sense of the word. Thermodynamically speaking, there is nothing particularly orderly about my computers circuitry, but it is really incredibly complex and shows a high amount of order, which in turn shows that the computer had an intelligent designer.
Similarly for the sun - in thermodynamic terms indeed, it would appear to have started off highly ordered and to be decreasing in order. In normal English terms though, in terms of being well arranged, understandable and predictable, it was orderly once it had first exploded, it is orderly now, and it will continue to be orderly in the future. And it is this order, this complex and functional arrangement of many components, of which I was speaking when I said that the big bang gave no explanation for the order in the universe.


It would seem you have not read the threads yourself - there can be plenty of doubt, there is plenty of doubt, it comes in many different arguments, and it has been expressed many times on said threads.


Yes, the evident demonstration is beheld. The realities that they are demonstrating may not be. For example, looking out of my window at the moment, I have faith that there is some wind. I do not behold the wind itself. But I behold the trees branches moving from side to side, and this strikes me as sufficient evidence, sufficient demonstration, that the wind is out there, that it is a reality.


Are you suggesting then, that God shouldn't have created the Garden of Eden, since he had foreknowledge of the events to which it would lead? But if he hadn't created it, there would have been no events for him to have had foreknowledge of! Very paradoxical. In any case, the long-term result of the whole Garden of Eden thing is (or should I say, will be) nothing bad, so there's no reason for God not to have made it.
And to give another, simpler answer your question - why not?


Boringness is a matter of viewpoint. In any case, how would you suggest he make it less boring to young people? Put some music celebrity interviews in it? Many parts of it, anyway, I would hardly consider boring. The subject of the book as a whole, the story of the ultimate and real conflict between good and evil, of which we are all part, and the explanation of how we act on the good side, hardly seems like a boring one. And many cassettes I enjoyed listening to many times as a child, so often that I can quote much of them perfectly to this day, I learned as I got older had taken the scripts for about half of the scenes word-for-word from the Bible, so it would seem that it is quite fun for children, if read with some imagination (which is necessary really, in order to appreciate any account of an event, whether it is fictional or non-fictional).


A dress-code requiring a respectable appearance is hardly discrimination.


Because the American government, like most governments, is hypocritical.


Because a religion is a set of principles by which to live your life, and when a principle goes against what you want to do, human nature for most people is to make up your own, new principle, rather than adjusting your course. This also explains the existence of many 'Christian' churches - Henry VIII giving a fine example of someone starting a new church to suit what they want to do.


I think I remember a verse, the last one I think:
Stand in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions, bomb Iraq.

Sad that someone would honestly seem to view war that way, even more so that he should be given power over a huge country. Well, what can you expect from a society that has rejected God's principles, eh?

But you have had experience of the wind, have you not? A better example would be to say that you have faith that the pixies are shaking the trees, would it not? A very evident demonstration of a reality you have not beheld.

My computer was designed. Therefore everything is designed. Therefore the designer was designed. A vicious regress methinks.

Noggin

If I believed in a CHRISTIAN god, I would be Catholic because I fail to view Protastant as a religion for exactly the reason of Henry VIII choosing it to suit his needs. (please note: I am aware it was Martin Luther who started the protestant religion).

I don't think God would be discriminate against me wearing studs.

If God can end all evil, why doesn't he?

Is God a sadist?

How do you know god is telling te truth? In the bible Satan is called Satan the deciever. If God was lying, he would call his arch enemy 'the deciever'.

Don't you just HATE the answers why not and prove the opposite. They don't answer any of your questions.

Entrophy is growing.

RULE ANARCHY.

Insight you seem to be very confused - Let me try again. Faith by definition is the belief in something that has no supporting evidence - or even is contradicted by evidence. If you put faith in things that are evident then by definition you beliefs are in something that has evidence!

<But thermodynamic order is very different from order in the usual sense of the word. Thermodynamically speaking, there is nothing particularly orderly about my computers circuitry, but it is really incredibly complex and shows a high amount of order, which in turn shows that the computer had an intelligent designer.

Your computer shows an incredible amount of thermodynamic order! otherwise it wouldn't be a coherent object. You and I display thermodynamic order - but as with the computer, work must be done to maintain that order. As with all things on Earth, the gain in thermodynamic order by you, me and your computer, is offset by a massive loss in thermodynamic order in the Sun. Eventually the Sun wil become totally disordered and life on Earth as we know it will end.

Big Bang theory though not perfect can explain many facets of the current Universe. There is no different type of 'order' other than Thermodynamics.



I've read many of them - There is a lot of confusion about what evolution is displayed but I've yet to see any rational or logical alternative. If you believe a god created all life on Earth 6000 years or so ago you have to ask - why go to all the trouble of leaving evidence that it evolved? Why have design flaws in many of your creatures? Why design a wasp that lays it's eggs inside a parylised but living spider so that the young can eat their way out? The only answers I've ever heard to such questions are that 'god moves in mysterious ways' and 'have faith in gods plan' which are other ways of saying 'I don't know'.

>Yes, the evident demonstration is beheld. The realities that they are demonstrating may not be. For example, looking out of my window at the moment, I have faith that there is some wind.
>I do not behold the wind itself. But I behold the trees branches moving from side to side, and this strikes me as sufficient evidence, sufficient demonstration, that the wind is out there, that it is a reality.

That's not an example of faith again! it's a logical conclusion from what you know causes branches to move from side to side!

an true example of faith would be to say 'If I blow myself up on this bus full of unbelievers, tonight I shall be in Paradise'.

You mean, why hasn't he YET?
2 Peter 3:9 - "Jehovah is not slow respecting his promise (to end wickedness, as the rest of the chapter speaks of), as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with YOU because he does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance."
Jesus said, "He that is not on my side is against me." There are only two sides to be on in the Universe - Jehovah's or Satan's. Whoever, therefore, is not on Jehovah's side is part of the evil that will be destroyed at some point in time which Jehovah has determined. Since you have said you do not need God, it would appear that you are on that side.
Jehovah does not want you, or anyone else here, to be destroyed, so he has given a fair amount of time for people to rethink their course.
I do not want you, or anyone else here, to be destroyed, so I've been on threads discussing biblical points many times to try to help people to see what side they should be on and how to get on it.
But it can't go on forever on that basis. The time must come of which Revelation 16:14 spoke, and by that time you have to be on the winning side. If you were in charge, therefore, and you cared about everyone, would you not leave it as long as you thought was reasonable?


He doesn't. Society does. When you're a Christian, you have a commission to go out as a representative of God. You must therefore look respectable, according to whatever your culture is. In our current culture, most people don't consider studs in men respectable, probably because it's often something youths do to be rebellious.

WOW! That is both so true! But i'm not going to start believing in god without proof. I just don't twist like that. Unfortunately, with proof, god wouldn't exist:
'Proof denies faith and without faith I cannot exist'. However, if god appeared to me I would change my evil ways and join Jehovnah. I think I'm done.
RULE ANARCHY.

Insight - I've been to many a bible class in my youth and I certainly don;t recognise any of your quotes. Judging by our use of Jehovah, do I assume your a Jehohva's witness?

Whatever, If you want to believe that all moaral authority and wisdom is contained in a poor translation of a couple of Hebrew documents then that is up to you. I respect your right to believe that. However when you use that right to preach about destruction of unbelievers you cross the line and I lose any repect I may have had for your point of view.

The destruction of the Earth as we know it has been prophecied again and agian since man learned to think - and it hasn;t happened! Armageddon, Ragnarok, Revelations - none have eve come to pass - despite many sects setting dates.

Think for yourself for one minute.

What motivation would he have to lie? He's omnipotent. If he wanted us to do something against our own benefit, he could force us, he wouldn't need to trick us. If he had done something wrong, there would be no point in hiding it from us because we cannot punish him for it. What benefit would God gain from lying, or what reason would he have to do so?


Don't they? The answer 'Why not' is basically a simpler way of saying 'It had to be one way or the other, and either way was just as good, but one had to be chosen, so we chose this one, even though it had no superiority over the alternative.'
E.g. Why do we call a table 'a table' and a chair 'a chair', instead of the other way round?
Why not?


I've given a definition. You've given a definition. Mine and yours conflict. Why does that mean that I'M confused? Furthermore, the definition of faith that I gave comes from the very book that tells me to have faith! What better definition could I have? It's like a contract defining it's terms at the beginning, you signing it, and then later arguing with it because the terms could be understood to mean something else! They could be, but they certainly shouldn't be, because the contract itself has defined them! The Bible has told us to have faith, and to avoid any confusion, has told us what faith is. If some bloke comes along hundreds of years later and writes a dictionary that gives a different meaning of faith, does that change what the Bible meant?


Thanks for pointing that out.


'An incredible amount' is a relative term. I never said my computer didn't show ANY thermodynamic order, just that it didn't show any special amount, no more than, say, an equivalent-mass cube of iron. But if you're going to get so worked up about the word order, then just replace the word 'order' in my original post with the word 'complexity' or 'design'.


What, evidence like the fact that many creatures are similar to others? Evidence like the bone fragment from an ass, that was once found and for a long time was believed to be from the skull of an ancestor of man, whom scientists could tell you how tall he was, what he ate, and that he had developed a rudimentary language? It would seem that scientists are willing to leap upon incredibly flimsy evidence to support evolution, and that describes most evidence that I have seen.

Like what?

Is there some reason you would expect God not to do that? If he allows carnivorousness, which he has shown he has, what difference does it make how it's done, even though it may seem gruesome to us?


Do you not understand anything I've said? Have I been speaking Russian, or something? Let me sum up everything that I (and the Bible) have told you about faith:
FAITH ***IS*** A LOGICAL CONCLUSION!
(Or technically, *belief in* a logical conclusion.)


I think I might have already mentioned why proof doesn't deny faith. Anyway, the only place I've seen that statement ('without faith I am nothing') is in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I don't know if that was quoting from some other book, but if it was, it wasn't the Bible.


The thing is, different people seem to have different ideas of what is proof.
I believe that if the Big Bang had been undirected, then all particles created would just have been sucked back fairly quickly to the centre-of-gravity for the universe, without getting the chance to group together into galaxies and the rest of the stuff we see in the universe today.
When more is called for, I state belief that the existence of well-designed life gives proof of a designer. I think life was already incredibly well designed by the time a single cell existed on earth, and until then no reproduction, and therefore no evolution, could take place. If a single cell wasn't complicated enough, things we see now are far more complicated, and while evolution gives a novel explanation, it is far from watertight. Likening it to say, the development of computers over the decades, new ones were based on previous ones, but with subtle improvements so that the computers became faster or could hold more information. But increases in continuous quantities such as speed and capacity were all they were. For a new ability, such as internet access, to be possible, these gradual improvements were not good enough - a new component had to be designed from scratch. Similarly, it is reasonable to believe that an animal can evolve a greater size or a different colour, but the transition from say, asexual to sexual reproduction, or scales to feathers, is not so feasible.
I think that's enough, but if it wasn't, consciousness surely would be. The Bible doesn't tell us how it happens, and Jehovahs Witnesses have no official belief on the matter, but my own reasoning tells me that consciousness cannot possibly be a mere physical process, the result of electrons moving from one place to another in my brain. Memory, yes, reasoning, yes, but consciousness? The quality that separates me from any artificial technology however intelligent it may /appear/ to be, that makes me more than just a reproducing-machine, as evolution would have us be, and not only show emotions, as a machine could do, but actually feel them? No, it just doesn't make any sense. And if my consciousness is not a physical process, but something more, then I who possess it (or indeed, could be said to BE it) must also be more than a physical process. And whatever created me must also be more than a physical process. It could be said that my parents created me, but that would carry on until you got to the first conscious being on this planet. And even if you believe that it was created by aliens, that just takes us back to the first conscious being in the universe, who either was there from the beginning of the universe, and is therefore God who exists within this universe, or was created by a conscious being outside the universe, which would instead be God but would exist outside the universe (which I think makes more sense, as God could then have created the universe itself, instead of the universe existing for no reason).
There may be more proof than that, but considering these three things, particularly the last one, have always been enough to restore my confidence in my belief in God, whenever my faith took a blow. So I've never had to think of any more proof. There are other lines of evidence, but I think evidence is all they are - not quite the same thing as proof.

Perhaps you'd prefer the KJV:
'The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.'
But the meaning stays the same.


Yes. I tend not to use the name Jehovah very much on H2G2, but I really should do more often. As Jesus said when praying, 'I have manifested your name to the men whom You have given me' (KJV again). If Jesus made God's name manifest, it's what we must try to do too.


There is plenty of moral authority in the New Testament too. That's Greek. And there is little reason for calling it a poor translation.


If you respect my right to follow the teachings Jesus gave us, then you respect my right to follow his command to preach, and that includes preaching about coming destruction of unbelievers, as Jesus did at times.
And don't think I like writing about peoples destruction. As I said, I don't want that to happen. But what I said was the answer to Popes question. So I could speak about destruction of unbelievers, or I could remain silent and leave his question unanswered.
What would Jesus do?
What would Jehovah want me to do?


Thoughts must be based on something. Most of mine are based on the Bible. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking for myself - I had to do that do come to believe that the Bible can be trusted in the first place.

Insight - I have real difficulty following your chain of logic. The word Faith is defined in every dictionary. Are you saying the word Faith used in the bible is a different word meaning something different to it's dictionary definition?

You will also find there is far more evidence for extinct creatures such as dinosaurs than a piece of an ass's bone! I ask you again - do you believe that dinosaurs were real?

I'm not trying to overturn your faith or 'prove' that there isn't a god (or gods as the old testement acknowledges), I'm just pointing out your confusion as to what faith is, and how that is leading you to a flawed understanding of what we now understand about the universe.

You could say that. There are certainly different meanings to the word (my dictionary has nine of them), and I think that if the word is used in a biblical context, that is, a discussion relating to the Bible or Christianity, it must be the Biblical definition that is used.
Probably the best way to avoid confusion is to use adjectives - when we talk about someone exercising 'faith' in something without any evidence, we usually refer to it as 'blind faith'. By default we usually mean faith with evidence, but when that needs to be emphasized it is sometimes called 'substantiated faith'.


I can't recall your having asked me that in the first place. Yes, I believe dinosaurs once existed.

Why is there nothing in genesis about dinos then? 'And god created the heavens and earths and animals and people and had a short rest. OH NO WAIT. He also created large monsters that no-one would find out about for xm years but Jesus just forgot to tell us'.

Please don't try and change my 'faith'. I am perfectly happy not believing but there is only 1 person who can change me and he is god. But since I don't believe in him he can't. catch 22 I'm afraid.

God would have a reason to trick us if he was pure evil. How does Satan get people souls. He buys them. In other words he tricks people into selling them. You forget that Satan is also supposedly powerful. I've forgoten what point I was trying to make but if I remember I WILL GET BACK TO YOU. Watch this space.

RULE ANARCHY.

p.s. Please call me Eddie.

Personally, Ste, I don't think it's possible to *prove* God's existence - but I think it's a very reasonable hypothesis!

Only 1 person can prove gods existance and we are trying to prove he exists in the first place anyway!
RULE ANARCHY.

Why would there be? We don't have any need to know about it.

Well because dinos are animals and there are bits about other animals.
RULE ANARCHY.





p.s. Please vistit my space. I need the attention.

Hello,

Isn't Rule Anarchy a contradiction in terms?

Cheers,

Myriad.

I am well aware of the oxymoron involved in RULE ANARCHY.

Insight - Substantiated faith is an oxymoron

Substantiated - to make substantial, to prove or confirm.
Faith - belief in something without evidence.

As soon as faith becomes substaniated it becomes a fact.

Thanks. You really got me out of a tricky situation.
RULE ANARCHY.