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

hadn't heard the story. I guess your right when you take a strict definition of faith, I was only trying to say that if, after participating in all of this, one still holds true to his or her beliefs, they have passed a test of faith. I don't want to seem needlessly messianic (as DNA would say) but there's always the Prodigal Son parrable where the father ended up loving the bad son who repented and came home just as much as the good son. And don't think I'm well read in scriptures, I was in a high school production of Godspell my freshman year, which is where most of my biblical knowledge comes from. ::sings:: "Day by day..."

No replies in two days? I didn't realize my singing voice was that bad...

Terribly sorry, Irv old sport! Jury duty on Monday forced me to actually sleep nights. Oddly, in light of this discussion it made me think when they were talking about oath-taking and the option of not swearing on the Bible. It woulddn't have bothered me if I had to swear on it or not. But does that affect my commitment to the oath I make?

Now, if people are running out steam on this particular topic, perhaps it's time to start a new one. If we accept that God is dead, where does that leave Good and Evil? Do they solely belong within the human experience, or are they separate eternal entities as in the dualistic model? Do such concepts even apply anymore? There are now varying degrees of evil (as in the American degrees of murder) and there are also factors that can mitigate an evil act (such as in the case of mental illness).

It is also accepted now that different people find different things G or E. There's even a growing international definition of G & E: just look at Kosovo or East Timor; and talk of a permanent UN army, a new knightly order, a modern day Knights Templar.

As for your singing, it just always sounds better in the shower, doesn't it?

I'm insulted now, I think I'll go sulk.

Hey! Isaw Pi! I saw Pi!

It was pretty good.

I rather like this way of thinking.

Everyone does have a message for the world, providing that you can cut away the bollocks and get to the nitty gitty. I suppose its much easier to be successful at getting your point across when you can amaze your crowds by doing godly stuff.

Most religions all seem to say something like 'be nice to people' just all the convulution seems to have got religion at each others throats, which I don't think is what He intended. I myself am reasonabley agnostic, though somethings point pretty well at creation (like the complex dynamics of the human body) or whatevertheotherthingis (like what science thinks they can prove so far). I like to take a pretty liberal stance on the whole thing. I certainly think a lot of people go about trying to enforce religion on people, which bothers me.

I think the whole God is dead thing came into play when someone (might have been Niezchie) wondered if why God didn't put in all the appearances he did in those good old days as he does today.
I say the good old days, because back then you didn't need to have faith. God was there, sodomising the enemies of Israel and taking on apperances of burning bushes. There's something that was easy to believe in. He sends his son who starts working miracles. He asks people to follow him. Easy. Where do I sign?
It sure was easy in those old days huh? No more convoluted history to make your way through, and enough cameos from God to show you that there was definately something up.
Back then you didn't have to depend on philosophers getting you a clear answer, because its pretty obvious after 2000 years, noone can prove if there is a god or not. I would have liked to have seen some dialog between Jesus and Mohummad on one side, and Plato and Socrates on the other. That might clear a few things up.
I'd rather like to see Jesus turn a bowl of water and loaf of bread into enough McDonald's happy meals enough to feed all of ancient Athens. Socrates could have put away his thinking cap and saved us all the trouble.
Vroom.

Glad you liked it. Though the scene where he prods the brain with the pen is always a bit much for me. Likewise the part with the drill... (notice I could have called it the "drill bit" but I refrained)

> though somethings point pretty well at
> creation (like the complex dynamics of the human body)

ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!!!!! ARRGHH! ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!!!! ARRRRARRRRRHHHRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Are you just trying to wind me up?

Show me what you got

And help you define the boundaries of your gods in the gaps?

God is a label for what you don't understand. He used to cause fire to come down from the heavens when his people had sinned. No longer. He used to make the Sun rise and set and paint rainbows in the sky. No longer. He used to send lights across the sky to foretell of times of upheaval. No longer.

Where are your miracles?

Hmm, I think you mistake me for a theologian. I was pretty much agreeing with the 'God is dead' thing because he hasn't put on a show in some time.
There are some things we can percieve in life that are either mindboggling coincidences or due to some form of creation.
The things we don't know about our bodies are staggering, like 'How do we think?' You'd think that someone could answer that one. Doctors can't even isolate our thinking action to the brain, just assume given its neurochemical energy.
The whole thing is enough to make my headache reoccuring.

> Hmm, I think you mistake me for a theologian.

I did and I apologise most profusely

> There are some things we can percieve in life that are either mindboggling coincidences or due to some form of creation.

"Coincidence", other than in it's most literal sense - more than one thing happening together, is not in my vocabulary.

OK, it's the word 'creation' that causes the problem, you see? Maybe there was once a creation event that kicked off the development of what we see in the Universe today. But, and here is the rub, intelligent design? No - most emphatically - there's simply no evidence for it.

There many things that we don't yet understand, but a couple of hundred years ago there were many more and the further back you go the less we knew. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? Yet people insist that the things we don't understand *today* are forever beyond us - the hand of god. Who the f**k do these people think they are? Don't you find that insulting?

Is it more arrogant to want to understand everything or to assume that we're not good enough?

> The things we don't know about our bodies are staggering,

Yes but, at the risk of sounding repetitive, they are less every year. And, when you start to look into it more deeply, the things that we *do* know are even more staggering.

> like 'How do we think?' You'd think that someone could
> answer that one.

I recommend Daniel C Dennett's "Brainchildren" and Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works" for today's best picture the human mind and it's evolutionary background.

> Doctors can't even isolate our thinking action to the brain, just assume given its neurochemical energy.

Neuroscientists are starting to uncover quite alot about how different parts of the brain contribute to our behaviour. It'll do as the mind's seat for now *until we know better*.

If, as I believe, the "mind" is an emergent property of a super-critically connected nervous system, then it will be very hard to pin down - though it should "appear over" the nervous system and "be concentrated in" the skull.

Woohoo, go Si!

I personally, having experimented with genetic algorithms on my computer, have no trouble with the idea that everything around me... how can I put this without using the word "coincidence"... that everything around me has ended up like this without intelligent design.

The problem with the word 'coincidence', in its most oft-used form - an unlikely combination of evens - is that it is entirely useless, misleading, it doesn't mean anything.

Let me give an example. Often on TV there are stories about an "amazing coincidence" saving someone's life... for example, some bloke cuts his leg open with a chainsaw and due to this "amazing coincidence" a doctor happens to drive past at that point, and saves him from death by bleeding...

Should we be amazed? And act of God, perhaps? No. All this means is that there is a very strong chance that lots of people have died under exactly the same circumstances because a doctor didn't happen to drive past at that point. These events don't tend to end up on TV.

As for the evolution of intelligent life... AFAIK it could be a 50% chance given earth's starting conditions... or it could be one in a million. The point is, it doesn't matter... the only reason we're asking these questions is because there *is* intelligent life on earth, therefore we're not in any position to comment directly on whether or not it is a "coincidence"...

However, I am personally of the - largely unsuppored - opinion that given reasonable starting conditions the chance of intelligent life evolving is good, probably better than 50%...

But then, who's given us those "reasonable starting conditions"? Just a thought....

> All this means is that there is a very strong chance that lots of
> people have died under exactly the same circumstances because a doctor didn't happen to drive past at that point.
> These events don't tend to end up on TV.

Heh I'd like to see a new TV series - "Where was my coinsidence?" Every week Carol Vordermann (or someone) would interview a few million people who *wouldn't* have lost their arm/home/livelyhood *if only* something could have been done by a passing "expert in the field" in "the nick of time" to save them.

> But then, who's given us those "reasonable starting conditions"? Just a thought....

Physics.

"But then who gave us physics"

Reductio ad absurdum...

*Shrug* there are lots of planets...

The point being that it's entirely probable that we'll one day be able to trace the chain of physical causality right back from the seeding of life on our planet to the Big Bang (or whatever it was.) At that point there will be nowhere left for god to hide except before that point - that was his creation event - his universal tinder box. However, it's currently held that space *and time* started at the Big Bang - there was no "before".

"But God exists outside of time"

Even so, what good is he? By that point, you (I mean a general 'you' - You, religion) will have conceded the causation of all physical phenomena - long gone the days of earthly miracles, the very things that are alleged to have alerted us to his presence in the first place.

Si, usually I don't mind people who don't believe in God. That's their buissiness. At least they don't go around forcing it on people like some religious fanatics do, which one of my main beefs with organized religion. But you, you yell and scream every time somebody brings up an argument that backs up God's existence. I can't tell if you're afraid of being wrong, if you're uncertain in what you yourself believe, or if you just have some deep seated hate of religion that causes you to lash out like this. It's quite upsetting to see how violently you attack people who believe differently from you, just as many of the above mentioned fanatics do. I'd like you to notice that NO ONE is trying to force religion on you in this forum, but almost seem like you are forcing aetheism on us. You are right and we're wrong so you're going to go on your own little crusade to prove it.

As for the Big Bang, it works much better than you realize as an argument for God. If something exploded out of nothing, where did it come from? One physical law of the Universe is that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Let's not look to the bible here, maybe you'll have an easier time looking at "Stranger in a Strange Land" -- "Thou art God". The theory that God is in everyone and everything all the time. So if that massively dense particle that became the Universe was God, then God doesn't need to "hide" anywhere, because he's everywhere. This is just my view on it, take it or leave it, I'm not well studied on the subject. I only know what I believe.

First off, I didn't think I'd ever be arguing for creation, but here goes!

>> There are some things we can percieve in life that are either mindboggling coincidences or due to some form of creation.

>"Coincidence", other than in it's most literal sense - more than one thing happening together, is not in my vocabulary.

Fair enough, its a pretty useless term, how about we just settle for some stuff that happened to happen.

>OK, it's the word 'creation' that causes the problem, you see? Maybe there was once a creation event that kicked off the development of what we see in the Universe today. But, and here is the rub, intelligent design? No - most emphatically - there's simply no evidence for it.

The old faith vs proof dichotomy that plagues humans. Here's something I wrote about a week ago on faith..

http://www.h2g2.com/A179354

I can remember some classical arguments that Aquinas and Paley put up, but they couldn't prove god created the world through logical argument by using the analogy of a watch. Philosophy did its old you-want-an-answer-here-have-another-question-instead.
I think though, there is very real evidence for potential creation by some sort of omnipotent god.
There's a system here in the universe, it seems to work though noone really seems to know what it is or how it works, or even how it got here. But one stable theory is certainly someone made it.
Heck, even if it didn't work (and I suppose we don't even know if it does) someone could still have designed it (though he might have to throw his omnipotence diploma away).

>Yet people insist that the things we don't understand *today* are forever beyond us - the hand of god. Who the f**k do these people think they are? Don't you find that insulting?

>Is it more arrogant to want to understand everything or to assume that we're not good enough?

Its certainly true that we're finding more out every day about the world and well, everything I suppose. But we don't even don't know how much we don't know.
I find myself thinking about it this way.
Lets say we jump into the future and Man has made a machine that breaks down any physical matter and replicates it somewhere different. If we have a soul, and its not in our physical bodies, it can't work that out. Crap.
They spend a whole bunch of money on R&D and in a few more years they can duplicate things that are nonphysical by figuring out multiple dimension theory.
Cool. Man now knows everything, how everything in the universe works. He has the power of creation and has become a God himself.
Ain't omnipotence a bitch.

>If, as I believe, the "mind" is an emergent property of a super-critically connected nervous system, then it will be very hard to pin down - though it should "appear over" the nervous system and "be concentrated in" the skull. (+ the other we know what we're doing stuff)

I hear what you're saying. We are finding out some stuff, but its all still pretty vague upstairs. Like you said, the jury is out. I've talked to a few doctors about it, and its really scary the basic stuff about the human body they don't know.... darn bunch of quacks. I'm getting aromatherapy next time!

I'm also emphatic to your plight. Every time I see a happy (maybe ignorant) xtian I kick myself that I can't just believe in something and be happy. Goshdarntarnation if it was all a little more believeable. But like most organised religion, each time they come up to you, its a face that you just want to hit.