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

It already looks very solid. You'll find a reply to it in a thread where you earlier wrote something similar. Maybe it's an idea to cpoy my comment to this forum as well

I think I will.

I should probably list contributers in the entry, as i doubt I would submit this (unless it became less of an editorial, and very fact based, which it may very well do).

-jb

Here's that mentioned reply


>Eventually, as one tribe began to dominate, their only accepted 'god' would become the God we've all come to not quite fully believe in today.

Great phrase. But anyway, from the looks of things, you might say that religion has probably advanced from the tribal stage to the metropolitan stage at the same pace as everything else. Mass-production and specialisation worked for them as well as for any other trade or art.

The only fashion in which they didn't keep up is, they kept with their original teachings too long and too literally, where they actually should have adjusted these to reflect the needs of more modern times. If someone can prove that we have evolved over a longer period of time, rather than to have been created in merely six days, they should adjust their teachings to have creation take place over a much longer period to make it acceptable.

Jesus Christ may actually have been the son of a carpenter Joseph and his young wife Mary, who at the moment of conception was *believed* to be a virgin. We may even assume that she wasn't even aware of the fact that her virginity was 'stolen', so to say. In which case those -in our eyes rather primitive- people may have regarded Jesus' birth as a miracle. I could accept that!

If they then start following his words, because they believe him to be something special, and his words do *indeed* show great wisdom -which we also can assume to be true- then it's also easy to see how the NT has come into being. That doesn't make the bible a work of some god, but it's still an impressive book of tales.

I do not literally *know* all of what's in the book, but what I do know is that I can't take it too literally, because at the time most of it takes place, writing is not a common pracice, so most stories will have been handed on orally, allowing for exaggerations, twisted truths, errors etc.

If the churches took those simple facts into account and adjusted their teachings to incorporate such annotations, they would be much more credible. But no, they hold fast to some almighty super-human that can't be seen and touched, but has a say in everything. And even though this alledged super-being shows some sadistical and arrogant tendencies if you take the books seriously, they still say he's good and loving and caring. If you use some common sense, it must be hard to digest such things.