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

*thinks* Well, there's all these nice people who don't want me to leave... But I only get on hootoo, at most, twice a week... And then I have 70 posts of backlog to read... *thinks*

So if anyone can think of a way I can not read all the backlog and still keep up with the intelligent conversation, please speak up.

EMR: Which Tom Lehrer song did you listen to?

"What exactly does 'theistic' or whatever its root is mean, though? I looked in my vast repository of Latin dictionaries and couldn't find it. Is it Greek?"

yes.
θεος (theos) means god singular. Obviously there is a plural but I have insomnia and it's a long time since I learned Greek and I can't be bothered to hunt for the plural of nouns ending in -os.

So 'theistic' would mean something like 'of gods' or 'to do with gods' or (if you're monotheistic) 'of god'.

Feminist Christians change the noun into one of the Greek feminine endings by altering the -os to -a or -as, and so creating the word 'theastic' , being to do with a goddess. But they don't intend it as pagan.

Pantheon.

I would conjecture that this was a reference to something like spherical geometry where the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180 degrees. You will note that what I said precisely was:

"If you deny that 2+2=4, given the usual meaning postulates, then you throw away any chance of numerical reasoning."

That 'given the usual meaning postulates' was my way of covering myself against such attacks. I bet your teacher was introducing alternative meaning postulates - by which I mean something like 'moving the goalposts' or twisting the meaning of the words. OK, we can use a number base other than the standard 10, such as binary. It still doesn't stop 2+2=4 being correct on the usual assumptions.

toxx

Another point, EMR. I assume you have access to the rest of the net (some people are on keyboards attached to a tv, so they don't). You have access to practically every work of reference on the planet! Google is still the market leader, I guess. http://www.thefreedictionary.com and http://www.dictionary.com are cool.

I have a copy of the Tom Lehrer Songbook somewhere.

toxx

I like your initial analysis, HS, but I'm afraid you're correct that it isn't quite good enough. You didn't think I'd ask an easy question did you?

"I have a copy of the Tom Lehrer songbook somewhere."

Ooo! So do I!

OK, I could have looked up the word online; I realise that in retrospect. I feel relatively stupid, chasing all over the house and searching through about half a dozen dictionaries. Oh well....

Given that the 'theistic' bit means 'god' or 'gods', we arrive at a-theistic, 'not-god(s)'. Ergo, someone who was atheistic could have a degree of religious or spiritual belief, or practice some sort of recognised religion without believing in god(s), or being an atheist. I cite Buddhism as an example. Thus I rest my case.

EMR

The important point being this many sticks that many sticks will always give the same amount of sticks at the end, even if some of the sticks are imaginary.

Whether this works or even exists when you don't have any sticks at all could be debateable. IMO You need stuff (matter, anti-matter, energy etc.) to have maths.

Might be interesting if it was the other way around. i.e. the universe and all that's in it was an emergeant property of maths .

Toxxin, your cannon ball analogy explains it very well, but I still find myself disagreeing that the universe needs a cause. In a timeless space or non-space, why could it not have 'always' been there? Even if you find that unlikely, is it less unlikely than postulating and entire new class of stuff (your deity/deities) that is somehow not bound by the same rules?

Echo, you've just demonstrated that atheists can have beliefs? Its a bit of a strange case...

Deism; The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.
Where did he/she go?

Theism; Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.
If god is in charge he/she isn't doing a very good job!


alji

But Bouncy, you can do maths with invisible pink unicorns!



I don't understand this at all! The universe is temporal and spatial. In fact, it's defined as whatever exists in time and space. Ergo, it couldn't have existed in timeless non-space.

toxx

Thanks for explicating my terminology, Alji. But do you really disagree with Leibniz that everything is for best in this, the best of all possible worlds?

I've argued all this before, and it comes down to the 'freewill defence' and the fact that it's unreasonable to expect God to do the logically impossible.

toxx

< Echo, you've just demonstrated that atheists can have beliefs? Its a bit of a strange case...>

Dunno about that, Bouncy. Isn't the belief that there is no God, a belief? True, that is a little different from Echo's point that not even all religious beliefs include belief in a God or gods. Apart from Buddhism, which is perhaps arguable as an example, I'd want to say that Secular Humanism is a belief system which can be characterised as a religion.

toxx

Echo. I wonder if you'd be surprised that there are plenty of university students who don't use the facilities on the net, or use them inefficiently. Not everyone realises that they're doing a Boolean, in-context search when they query Google.

Even today on the 'Questions, Questions' board where I sometimes hang out, an educated guy included the word 'definition' when he was looking for a definition of something. He ran a strong risk of getting a definition of 'definition' by doing that. If you want a definition of 'square' for example, it's probably best just to enter the word, maybe with a context word such as 'geometry', if you don't want to be told about people with boring tastes or St Mark's Square in Venice. This isn't something that we absorb without reading or being told.

Oh yup. QQ lives here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/h2/h2.cgi?x=y&board=radio4.questions&state=view&sort=U

Hmm, I'll do this in 2 parts...

Atheism as a belief, I'm not saying anything new but I'll try to put it in a more sense-making way:

The base level non-belief in my opinion is that there is most probably not a god, but could be. Assuming you knew nothing about gods or their effects or whatever.

From there, based on belief and whatever evidence you see, you could move towards strongly atheism i.e. "I believe there isn't a God at all," or towards believing in Gods. Either direction requiring some belief.

Buddhists officially don't worry themselves about gods, assuming I'm not misinformed, at the level of the first statement. They do however have additional, non-god related beliefs about reincarnation and souls and stuff, although this stuff is in a simlar vein, and I would myself reject it for similar reasons that I reject gods.

Secular humanism could either have no belief about god (my suggested base level) or some belief that there is no god at all (although I still am of the opinion this is less belief than actually believing in a god). On the other hand, they have additional beliefs about people being important. These incidentally, I would also reject. I don't belief people are important, I choose for people to be important to me.

"...included the word 'definition' when he was looking for a definition of something"



Useful little thing, you can actually get Google to define for you:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=define%3A+useful&btnG=Search

not always all that reliable though.

Hi, Roadie. He didn't use that syntax, which is something I recall from the old AltaVista era. I think it's still about.

I find that, apart from using the various online dictionaries, Vivisimo.com is a very handy search engine for such purposes. All the definitions will be automatically collected together under its 'clustering' option. Not only a powerful search engine but also a powerful display system. There's a free toolbar too that will coexist with Google.

toxx

<...I still am of the opinion this is less belief than actually believing in a god.>

Bouncy, I don't get it. A belief is a belief; it doesn't come in quantitative terms. Something can't be less a belief than something else, because a belief is a subjective thing, and so it is logically impossible to make such a statement.

And talking of the logically impossible:
<...it's unreasonable to expect God to do the logically impossible.>

But toxx, for a God (with a capital G) to be a God, He/She/It has to have some degree of omnipotence, or else He/She/It wouldn't be accorded such a high status. If a God is omnipotent (from the Latin, 'all-able') it follows that He/She/It could do *anything* and *everything*, which could include the 'logically impossible'. Logic does not restrict God!

EMR

Oh -- Esty and Coren, I listened to 'Irish Ballad' (sung in the Irish ballad form, a girl kills her entire family in various gory ways).

EMR