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

Yesterday's crash on h2g2. Let that be a lesson to all of you (see post 59). Thank goodness he wasn't really pissed off with you.

i thought i would edit this for the top editors but it is a good fast read for thoses in a hurry at first i had about 2,000 words but alas i ran it by my friends and family and they said it needed shortend pleases tell me if this is short enough thanks, trips

I think you did a bit of a stumble there, trips. You might want to start a new discusion on the Peer Reveiw page. This here is the forum on the 'God' entry.

Unless, of course, you were drumming up support.

Playing the part of the FFFF's and TG's cheerleader...

-jb

Well, bummer for him. He should have known, in all his omnipotent glory, what he was getting into when he created such a stubborn, inept, craven race as man.

The list of adjectives could be made much longer, naturally. Those seemed to fit best.

-jb

You were asking about the Nam-Shub of Enki. Here it is, translated from the Sumerian cuneiform:


Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion,
There was no hyena, there was no lion,
There was no wild dog, no wolf,
There was no fear, no terror,
Man had no rival.
In those days, the land Shubur-Hamazi,

Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the me of princeship,
Uri, the land having all that is appropriate,
The land Martu, resting in security,
The whole universe, the people well cared for,
To Enlil in one tongue gave speech.

Then the lord defiant, the prince defiant, the king defiant,
Enki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy,
The lord of wisdom, who scans the land,
The leader of the gods,
The lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom,
Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it,
Into the speech of man that had been one.


Astute observers may see a correlation to a similar passage to be found in the Herbraic writings of the pentateuch.

Genesis 11:1-9

1.And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2.And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3.And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4.And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5.And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6.And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7.Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8.So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9.Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.


The Nam-Shub of Enki, prounounced syllabically in the Sumerian tongue, was itself an incantation which supposedly acted as a linguistic meta-virus. It refers to a "me". Sumerian "me"s were linguistic incantations kept by the Sumerian priesthood containing instructions on various things like baking mud bricks, or bread, or digging irrigation ditches, or whatever. The mes were associated with all of sumerian culture, philosophy, poetry, and so forth. They were written on tablets, stored in the temples, and disseminated as necessary (or prudent).

This doesn't make a lot of sense unless you consider the Chomskian viws of linguistics and general semantics and the role they play in the development of consciousness. Some sense of the significance of information theory might help here as well.

A lot of very interesting historical theories about the development of human consciousness have sprung from study of these narratives, but it would fill up several Guide entries to give them all due credit. Notice the bit about 'changing the speech of their mouths' being associated with 'putting contention into it'. Perhaps the fragmentation of language allowed a hive-mind society to develop free will (or to generate their own "me" )

Twophlag (Hi Twophlag! ) mentioned: "Perhaps the fragmentation of language allowed a hive-mind society to develop free will".

Hmmmm. Julian Jaynes has some interesting things to say about this, in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". It's not exactly mainstream, but worth reading nonetheless.

Pattern-chaser

i got a little lost but thanks jb by the way god's name is bob he lives down the street from me
if you guys have any questions ill take them to him

I did some minor rewriting. Will probably wind up doing more. Added some new material though. Pattern-chaser, I'll have to check that book out.

I posted something similar under the page itself, but I will do so here too, just so I can keep a mark on its progress through Peer Review I think the trouble with this Entry (at the mo') is that it is too unbalanced. I mean it is an excellent Entry, it reads well, it is amusing in places, but it still shows only one side of 'God'. There really should be an Orthodox view in there, this should help even things up. Well, just a thought, until later.....
BCNU - Crescent

Looks much better - The only complaint I've seen in this forum that hasn't been acted on is the Palin section. Which is fair - it's 100% factually accurate - there was such a film - it had such a scene. If there are still complaints, I guess you could change the word "succinctly" to something like "succinctly, if irreverently,". Seems OTT, though.

"He Then leads his congregation" - caps on 'Then'.

Do you need to capitalise "It" and "Him" and suchlike? I wonder if leaving them uncapitalised might be better - you tend to see caps in religious texts - religious texts don't have this tone - setting people up in the wrong frame? *shrug* Who was it who decided gaseus vertebrates got capitals, anyway?

On a really petty note - in the last section on Yessue - "since then His worshippers have ..." - ought to be changed - not all his worshippers go to church regularly, and many have even shown a marked aversion to killing and torturing. And afaik it's only the catholics who believe they are actually cannibalising him - the Transubstantiation thing... change to "some of His..." ?

Second law of thermodynamics comment - under tiamat - the law only applies to closed systems - so the entropy of earth can decrease, provided other parts of the universe increase (in this case, the sun turns loads of high-grade nuclear fuel into heat and nuclear garbage). But you're right enough - many popular ideas in physics imply that the second law can be broken in certain circumstances, eg, when the universe is/was (re)created/destroyed, or when child universes 'bud off' from black holes - and other weird ideas.
Second law of thermodynamics is only a statistical law, too - it can break if you are exceptionally lucky - given quantum mechanics and certain weird experiments implying that human observation can effect random processes, this could be a handy loophole. And a super-conscious entity like god would be the sort of thing that could force extreme 'luck' on a whim and do the universe creation thing. Or somebody who invented an infinite improbability drive, of course.

under thou art god - "responsability" - responsibility.

This post has been removed.

> Pattern-chaser, I'll have to check that book out.

In that case, I'll try to give you a slightly better synopsis, so that you can decide whether it's worth your time.

Jaynes discusses the first appearance of the conscious (human) mind, which (he says) was around the time that the Greeks first became civilised. Jaynes describes a pre-conscious human as resembling you or I whilst driving on 'autopilot', with our minds temporarily elsewhere.

Not the most significant book ever, but I found it worth the trouble; hope you do too.

In that case, while I'm looking that book up take the time to read "Snowcrash" by Neal Stephenson. It's a sci-fi novel with a similar theme as related to Sumerian mythology

This article's getting better and better! I still think you need more gods in it, though. I'd like to see a brief of the Hindu gods, and Allah needs a mention in connection to the western theologies. Oh, yeah - and the Egyptians had some gods too, as I recall.

Yeah, a lot of people say so. I think I should reiterate that the point of the Entry originally wasn't to make a comprehensive catalogue of various Gods worshipped by humans now and throughout history; if I were to do that, I could just as easily write a book on the topic. Rather, I'm trying to offer a digest of insights on the topic at hand by dealing with the major archtypes. Allah is more or less a slightly different take on Yahweh, so was passed up. Hindu theism receives a mention in broad terms, and Shiva is alluded to further down in the text. I considered alluding to some other interesting pantheons like the Aztec, Norse, and Egyptian ones, but I don't feel that doing so would add anything to the entry beyond bulk.

I'm already uncomfortable with how long the bit on Western theism is. It seems grossly unfair to devote so much space to such an overgrown and bastardized cosmology as Christianity, but doing so is the only way that the piece will pass political muster with the largely Western/Christian readership of the Guide.

I think I'm about ready to give up on this one, actually. I have spent the last couple of weeks doing a lot of research, refreshing myself on the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and the history of the Mesopotamian "fertile crescent" from which these religious systems derive. Basically, I have reached the conclusion that any serious attempt to deal with Western theism 'fairly' will be possible only by relating the entire story, front to back, of the cultures from which it springs; once again, a task worthy of a book. Thus it seems I'm barking up the tree on this one. I don't think the Guide's current policies have room for any entry about "God".

I think I'll just shorten it to read "Mostly harmless".

Do not do that, it is an excellent Entry. Though to do it 'fairly' you do not need to go into that much detail, you just need the Orthodox view in there too. I know you think it is intellectually dishonest because it means 'ignoring' logic and science and history, but none of those disciplines seems to disprove the Orthodox view, sure, some hit out at the extra bits that people have tacked on over the years, but the central principles have never been disproved, though it can seem unlikely, it is not impossible. The Orthodox view is a valid view, held by millions of otherwise sensible people, it should be included. At the moment it is not even mentioned, it is totally ignored, which is not so good for an Entry about God. It hardly needs to go into all the detail of every different view, but at least a nod to it should be included. Well, again my £0.02, and that is all I think this Entry needs, with that included I would put this forward for Edited Guide status, next time my turn came along (a couple of weeks or so . However it is your Entry, and what you say goes I hope this expands my view, and until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Do not do that, it is an excellent Entry. Though to do it 'fairly' you do not need to go into that much detail, you just need the Orthodox view in there too. I know you think it is intellectually dishonest because it means 'ignoring' logic and science and history, but none of those disciplines seems to disprove the Orthodox view, sure, some hit out at the extra bits that people have tacked on over the years, but the central principles have never been disproved, though it can seem unlikely, it is not impossible. The Orthodox view is a valid view, held by millions of otherwise sensible people, it should be included. At the moment it is not even mentioned, it is totally ignored, which is not so good for an Entry about God. It hardly needs to go into all the detail of every different view, but at least a nod to it should be included. Well, again my £0.02, and that is all I think this Entry needs, with that included I would put this forward for Edited Guide status, next time my turn came along (a couple of weeks or so . However it is your Entry, and what you say goes I hope this expands my view, and until later....
BCNU - Crescent

"The" orthodox view? There are millions! (just over 6 billion, some would say...)

Aye, but most of them can go along the lines of - God is our Lord, all seeing, all powerful, giving the justification to our lives to do what we do, those that believe are good and God will reward them well in the next life, those who do not are evil, and God will punish them in many ingenious ways. God gives us the rules to our life, is the creator of all things etc. etc. etc. You get the general idea. in the whole of the text there is no indication that God could exist, it is all about how man has done these things and where RELIGION has come from, and what RELIGION has done. It is a fairly effective attack on the belief of God, but in that it is unbalanced, the other view - where God is the foundation of the cosmos, does not get a look in, is not even mentioned as being around. Heinlein and Tolstoy get to have their views, but the Orthodox view is not allowed there. There is something very wrong with that, methinks......
BCNU - Crescent

Most of the major western ones, you mean? In any case, even in western places, there is some difference. For, eg, "those that believe are good and those who do not are evil" is the "salvation through belief" viewpoint, and there are many firm advocates of the "salvation through works" viewpoint amongst western sects.

I think most of your complaints there are in the text - I can't see any reference to the rewards due followers (aside from avoiding the punishments) but aside from that, I think he's captured all the points adequately.

It gives no indication that any of the various Gods exist - or that they don't. Why exactly is this a problem? Neither do other edited articles try and claim knowledge of fact where there is none: see the entire contents of http://www.h2g2.com/C538 - the Atheism articles doesn't say that the atheists might be right - the Nihilism articles doesn't say that nihilists might be right - the 'Names' articles doesn't say that those who believe you can control things by knowing their true names might be right. Why should western theology get special treatment, exactly?