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

Professor Sarah! good point about keeping this a scientific forum (in your post after this one which i am replying to) ...and i will search out the What was it like before the Big Bang thread when i have more time... thanks.

I am glad you brought up Carl Sagan's Cosmos... when i first logged into this converse i was expecting to see dialogue similar to his in here.

And yes, thank you, i can follow your thoughts better now! I myself am working on punctuation and capitalization... it is so haaaaaard but i am trying What i am doing is writing my way, first draft, then going in and fixing the stuff after.

actually... its a quote from Star Trek, The Movie.... and actually pretty poignant i might add.
just plug "V'ger Star Trek" into google and you will see

ok, will do.

OK, I meant option A. Which is to say, if you're the sort of person whose judgement is filtered through the primitive superstition of a middle eastern death cult, then quite honestly I regard your advice on *any* subject as suspect. You may consider that as impugning your intelligence, to which I say, damn right it is.

It's equally possible that the guy in the bus station with the bottle of cider in a brown paper bag and a winning, if unsteady, way with a harmonica is actually an authority of the paintings of Richard Dadd, but would I actually go to him for information? Probably not, even if he was the last expert on late Victorian art on earth. One makes a judgement about people based on their observed behaviour, and if their observed behaviour includes weaving about smelling of alcohol or talking to the sky in the hope it will forgive them for thinking about ladies' bits or something, then I for one am backing away making soothing noises and hoping I can reach a rock.



The problem with any conversation about what came before the universe, and therefore what might have *created* the universe, is that it is, in an important sense, meaningless. That is, you can string the words together, and they might make *grammatical* sense, but they don't make *logical* sense.

Two examples: Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. You can understand every word in that sentence. You can even parse it - it's a statement of a fact, apparently. But it's clearly without any meaning. For a subtle reason, which escapes most people, the sentence "He was around before the beginning of the universe" makes just as much logical sense.

Second example, a geometric one this time. Travel due north from where you are. Keep going. Eventually, you will reach the north pole, where all lines of longitude meet. At that point it is, for obvious reasons, impossible to travel, or for that matter even *point*, north. The direction "north" no longer makes any sense, since there is no direction you can point in which is "north" from where you are. It's a singularity, in a sense, in space. It's at this point that the Christian, if asked "where is God", might say "He's to the north", a statement which would make grammatical sense but would be meaningless.

Of course, they wouldn't *actually* say that. But that's an analog of what they DO say about him in regards to time - he was around "before" the beginning of the universe. But the problem is, the beginning of the universe is the point where "before" ceases to have meaning. It's a singularity in time.

Which, as I've said before, is why these conversations with the superstitious rapidly become tedious, because of this insistence on not just irrational, but actually meaningless expressions.



Furthermore, I've never heard this satisfactorily answered: various superstitions posit an omnipotent creator deity. They then variously claim when he created life, the universe and everything, and usually place the moment of creation anywhere between 6000 and more than 1000 billion years ago (Hindus, I think, regard the big bang as one of a near-endless cycle - is that right?).

BUT... if your chosen Big Dad is that powerful, then there's no evidence the universe is older than, say, five minutes. He could as easily have created everything, just as we see it, five minutes ago, complete with all our memories of previous existence. It's precisely as probable as his creating the universe six thousand, six million, or fourteen billion years ago.

Given that, doesn't that render life a bit futile? Doesn't the sheer grinding senselessness of it get to you? He could have just conjoured us all into existence this morning for a giggle, and we'd have no way of knowing.

I have two and a half questions:

1. Does anyone actually believe something like that? And if not, why not, do you suppose?

2. If you believe in the omnipotent creator deity, how do you know he didn't *just* create everything ten seconds ago? (And don't, please, say "Because that's not what the Bible says". He's created us in order to receive a particular kind of worship, so the whole Bible backstory is created in order to generate that.)

SoRB

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In which case, Sorb, you are a prejudiced bigot.

I don't take driving advice from drunks.

I don't take financial advice from gambling addicts.

I don't take fitness advice from obese people.

Prejudiced? Hell yeah.

SoRB

Or, and here's another interpretation - I'll am NOT prejudiced, and here's why: I'll respect someone's opinion on something. I'll take their advice, on, say, something they appear to have knowledge in that I need.

And I'll do that without prejudice, right up until the moment they tell me they have an imaginary friend in the sky who made everything by magic and watches us all and loves us and doesn't want to burn us in a pit of fire so we'd better all be good.

As soon as they tell me that, I start to consider them a bit of a loony. That's not prejudice. That's, um... judice? I didn't think you were an idiot until you TOLD me you were a Christian. That's not prejudice, that's acting on evidence - the very antithesis of prejudice.

SoRB

Fluffy K, I take it that means you're not happy with this.

No Sorb, it is prejudice. And you are a bigot.

Sorry, Fluffy K.

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I haven't said any of those things.

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Your logic is going to pot again.

If I tell you I'm a Christian that is evidence that I'm a Christian.
It is not evidence that I'm a loony.

This post of yours, however, is evidence of your prejudice. I take it Muslims are loonies in your book, or is it only Christians?

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This statement by itself adequately demonstrates Sorb's prejudice.

I'm just waiting to see whether we're going to have one of those entertaining episodes where Sorb makes himself look daft by arguing about the meaning of a word until having to admit it does mean what it means.

"I take it Muslims are loonies in your book, or is it only Christians?"

Muslims, Christians, practicing Jews, Hindus, Scientologists, UFO abductees, dowsers, crystal healers, spoonbenders, spirit mediums, astrologers, the lot of you. I do not discriminate among the superstitions, if that's what you mean.

On the other hand, I don't go around necessarily TELLING Muslims that I consider them irrational, because, rationally, I'm scared of them. Those guys blow stuff up. Again, not prejudice - evidence. Then again, Christians shoot doctors, but thankfully not in this country, yet.

"If I tell you I'm a Christian that is evidence that I'm a Christian.
It is not evidence that I'm a loony."

I'll be the judge of that. "I'm a Christian" is not a statement one makes in a vacuum without implication. It's a statement that of necessity implies other things. It contains information. Specifically, it contains information about how you think. And I judge that how you think makes you, shall we say, a little bit mentally different than a rational adult.

Now, you can say, if you like, that you *don't* think differently than a rational adult. But then we're into the definition of "Christian". Which is kind of YOU arguing about definitions, rather than me. If you tell me you're the kind of Christian that doesn't believe in the supernatural, then I'm prepared to stop thinking of you as a loony and merely someone who uses the word "Christian" without meaning the same things as everyone else who uses it.

Saying "I'm a Christian", like it or not, is synonymous with saying "I have an imaginary friend". You may not like that that makes you sound like a loony... but that's not my problem.

SoRB

"I'm just waiting to see whether we're going to have one of those entertaining episodes where Sorb makes himself look daft by arguing about the meaning of a word until having to admit it does mean what it means."

Define "Christian".

Seriously.

SoRB

Let me put it another way... "I'm a Christian", in common English, usually implies one or more of the following:

1. I believe that the earth was created six thousand years ago and every human on earth is descended from a single family who survived a global flood.

2. I believe that a woman who had never had sex gave birth to a son.

3. I believe that a man was able to turn water into wine by will alone.

4. I believe that a man was able to raise a man from the dead.

5. I believe that a man was able to feed five thousand people from a supply of food one could fit in a single small carrier bag.

6. I believe in a supernatural being with whom it is possible to communicate.

7. I believe that when I die my consciousness will continue.

There are many other things I could list that are more ridiculous than the above, but I think those adequately demonstrate what I'm getting at. They're the stuff of fairy stories and childish wishful thinking. Any adult who seriously suggests they believe that kind of thing is, in my opinion, yes, a loony. What makes you think that believing that kind of thing is consistent with being rational?

SoRB

A follower of Christ.

By which I mean someone who follows the teachings of Jesus. Now you make a point about violent people, especially Muslims who are prone to blow stuff up. And Christians who shoot doctors. Yes, I'll agree that people like that are loonies, but they're not following Jesus's clear teachings against violence, either.

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There are all sorts of things that people believe in, that have no basis or only the flimsiest of bases. Christianity is based on the historical resurrection of Jesus. St. Paul says if Jesus did not rise from the dead "we (Christians) are to be pitied above all men". But the evidence is there that he did. If Sorb can prove that he didn't, I would, of course, give up believing in Christianity.

"Christianity is based on the historical resurrection of Jesus."

Then you can, of course, prove that it happened. Objectively, with reference to independent witnesses...

"St. Paul says..."

I said *independent* witnesses, rather than those with a very clear vested interest.

"if Jesus did not rise from the dead "we (Christians) are to be pitied above all men"."

Well, uh, yeah. That's kind of the point.

Except I don't pity Christians above all men. The only thing Christians should be pitied for is a certain rather witless gullibility. I pity people born blind, or born crippled, or born into grinding poverty far more than I pity people who never grew out of believing in an imaginary friend.

"But the evidence is there that he did."

Sure. Just as the evidence is there that there was a wonderful continent called Atlantis that was swallowed up by the sea. Etc.

"If Sorb can prove that he didn't, I would, of course, give up believing in Christianity."

And so we come to the usual end point of these discussions, where the irrational believer in superstition demands of the rational adult a logical impossibility - prove that something did not happen. It is the tiresome triumphalism with which the superstitious trot this one out that bores me so.

The burden of proof does not lie with me. YOU are the one making the claim, it lies with you to provide the evidence. And since the claim you make is, by any means, extraordinary - that a man lived, died, then lived again - the evidence must, logically, be extraordinarily good. And it isn't.

I have no problem with your reliance on this psychological crutch. But please understand that it is your bald statement that the resurrection was a historical fact which, to me, clearly marks you out as, shall we say for maximum political correctness, "differently intelligent"...

SoRB