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

can they find 3 wise men?????

boom-tish

the old ones are the best

Wise men? In this country?

TRiG.

he wern't born in Cardiff!!!!

couldn't find a virgin

Is this thread permanently derailed,or is it still discussing the original topic?

Whatever you like! If you've got something to add, feel free to do so.

alji

We've come through many derailments before and emerged unscathed.

TRiG.

OK - then beliefs in god(s) were the product of a race of beings migrating across the parallel universes and showing skills which were not available to those of this particular parallel...

no!!! that was indiana jones and the crystal skull!!!!

it was the elves showing and nurturing mankind!

just before they were captured and corrupted by black magic into orcs

then another wizzard melded man and orc to produce the fighting uruk hai

Josteyn,

It's an idea, and it's an idea we could debate, but does anyone actually believe it? If not, debating the idea is just intellectual masturbation (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's nice to know when it's happening).



I don't think your hypothesis would explain belief in a Creator god. And I don't think aliens are needed to explain belief in thunder gods. They could explain some other things, though.

TRiG.

Yep

""OK - then beliefs in god(s) were the product of a race of beings migrating across the parallel universes""

gods are created by the ignorant to explain the universe

But...the Great Gopher is REAL!

On, a more serious note, there are a fair number of people who think that the apocalypse will be in the year 2012. I wonder how I would be living my life differently if I believed this too. Probably wouldn't be very different, except that I'd spend my savings for college on a trip to the amazon rainforest. (Maybe it's a good thing that I don't believe in the 2012 apocalypse.)

I can't. I simply can't imagine this process I call 'I' believing the stupid drivel about the world ending in 2012. No. A person who believed such garbage would not be I. There is no possibility of me imagining what 'I' would do if 'I' believed such a thing because no person who could ever be identified with me could possibly swallow such unfounded idiocy.


Now, if it were discovered tomorrow that a pretty amazingly large asteroid were headed irrevocably toward a very precisely specified spot on the Earth's surface, *and* the mathematics were published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, *and* the mathematics were repeatedly run by a multitude of investigators, both professional and amateur, all with the same result, *and* if the impact site were precisely specified by multiple, independent calculation, *and* if the probability range of destruction were completely within the range of 'So. That's it. We're going to die.' . . .

Then, and only then, I can imagine that someone who might be termed 'I' might cash in that person's savings and take a trip -- but it wouldn't be to the Amazon.






There's more chance that I won 50 million dollars (Canadian) on a certain lottery this very evening than that the world is going to somehow end on whatever that day is in December next year. I try to avoid speculating on what I'd do with 50 million, never mind mucking about with stupid New Age racist Mayan Calendar crap.

Unfortunately, it's fairly easy for me to imagine myself believing in these sorts of things. When I was seven, I read a book of Greek mythology and believed in the Greek Gods for a while. When I was eight, I read a book on ESP and UFOs and thought that I was psychic when I predicted that my parents would tell me to clean my room that day... Oh, yes, and I was a devout christian for half at the age of nine after I saw a particularly nice church.
After a while, I realized that not everything I read in nonfiction books had to be true, and have since been skeptical about everything I read everywhere, and need to look everything up in multiple places to verify that it's actually true.

What do you mean, not everything in non-fiction books is true????

NO!!!!

What about the Teapot on the Far Side of the Sun???

That's real, isn't it???

I mean, you can't prove me wrong, but it\s still a teastable hypothesis!!!

It's a theoretically testable hypothesis, anyway.

TRiG.

There is no teapot. I have received para-natural communications which prove that there is, in fact, a coffee pot!

And soon I will have written out the book of revelations which I have received, which are currently only available in code in a collection of unwashed tea-cups and coffee mugs, which will prove I am right.

After that, all of you will have one opportunity to repent of your false and dangerous heresies and brew the one true infusion.

OMG...

"which are currently only available in code "

Javacode presumably?