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

'The Bible [is] the word of God theory'

1. For some Christians, that's not a theory but a tautology.
2. For everyone else (non-Christians included) it's nothing but a pipe dream.

- Jordan

I have used "=" though perhaps I was not the first person to do so, but in any case I take responsibility, in my wee "formula":

God = universal consciousness

(Yes I'm only replying in order to use the opportunity to repeat it yet again, for new readers. I'll stop soon.)

"Is" is a tricky little word with lots of uses. Two of them can be easily confused, when the reference is any way abstract. To clarify we take a non-abstract example:

Blair is English
Blair is PM

-- in the second the terms are equivalent, you can swop them around; not in the first.

"=" narrows "is" down to equivalence.

Harmless, useful, non-mathematical.

Hmm... I was having a go at defining a mathematical use of 'is'. At first I thought it could be defined by the 'is a member of the set,' but soon realised that even if PM was a singleton (i.e. PM = {Tony Blair}) it wouldn't work, since Tony Blair /= {Tony Blair}. But perhaps I can come up with a more precise mathematical definition.

I won't post it without a warning though. I might be starting to exclude some people with my zealous mathematical ramblings and I'm possibly going to mathasm (v. 'to have a mathematical orgasm') in your faces if I keep going and actually find a definite mathematical definition!

Speaking of which, I was hoping it would be a mathematician, but a boy would be OK! Or a girl. Actually, we /could/ have one of each... And we'd teach them both how to shave as soon as facial/underarm hair started to grow!

- Jordan

'anyone who's ever met a mathematician, and wondered.... how they got that way...'

'Discrete' maths, Jordan? does it take place underground?

Jordan. You could use the logical symbolism of the quantified propositional calculus. In English, what you could say would amount to: "There is an x, for which x is a swan and x is white". There, that covers both the existential and predicative uses of 'is'. Whaddaya reckon?

I flolloped when I read that, too. Voon.

Would you feed 'God = the universal consciousness' (or 'God is the universal consciousness') to a baby?

Well people do

Would you feed it to a baby?

Funnily enough my four-year-old grandchild asked me a few weeks ago "What is God?" and I was very glad that I had just thought of that way (no I won't reiterate it, I'm starting to embarrass myself) of putting it in a few words. Of course he immediately asked "Why" but I know that ploy and told him he didn't need to know why. Indeed he didn't need to ask at all, the question didn't arise out of himself, his parents more or less put him up to it. The subject passed over painlessly and no doubt will resurface in two or ten or twenty years.

I remember asking endless questions at that age, and I knew at the time that some were because I wanted to know, and others were to make adults go through hoops.

we all ask questions
no-noe knows why
whair did questions start and why?..........

I think they started when someone asked why...

Seriously, they would have been around before vocal language. Perhaps bees are asking questions - and in answer they get the dance of the fellow which finds the pollen? Or maybe the dog secretly wonders how it can get its master's dinner...

- Jordan

There is not a statement in the world to which you can't say 'why?'.

Humans (and, indeed, all animals) have a naturally inquisitive nature. When it moved on from 'Why is his cave bigger than my cave?' etc, it turned to 'what is the meaning of life?' or summat like that anyway. When cats evolve to be the master race, they will probably ask the same thing. Also, when they're killed off by the increasingly intelligent warthogs, they probably will too.And when the white lab-test-mice become masters of the universe - they won't ask, bcos they probably already know.

Its strange, though, on a more serious note, that humans are probably the only species on earth to live knowing that they're going to die - some to the point of obsession.

I heard this story - absolutely true. Three girls were born on the same day in this hospital, and this midwife cursed them (for some reason) saying one would die b4 her 16th birthday, one b4 her 21st, and one b4 her 23rd. The first two died on those dates, one in a car crash and one in an accident I think. The third one was really worried, so 7 days b4 her 23rd birthday, she checked herself into a hospital. She was examined, and found to be perfectly healthy. 3 days b4 her 23rd birthday, she died.

Did the curse really come true? Or was it something else? I'm not quite sure why I put this in, but I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason!

See ya!

It might seem this way to some people!

Erm, Kirp. How could you possibly know that your implausible story is true?

Unscientific, yes. Though one could test the hypothesis that the curse works by getting the midwife to hex a number of babies so that they would die at unlikely ages, to a number of different mothers. Using an opportunistic sample, of course - I'm not sure it would be easy to find participants...

- Jordan

It would have to be a double blind test of course, so as to discount the power of suggestion.

Noggin

Hey Noggin. That's kinda like a point I considered making about needing a control group. Then I started to wonder what exactly their treatment would be. The same nurse would have to be used since maybe she scares people to death whatever she does. She would have to say things that only seemed to be a hexing spell or whatever her 'real' method was. We'd also need a condition where she only conversed with the parent; and maybe yet another where a different nurse pronounces the curse.

In the end I gave the idea up as too methodologically challenging for a Monday evening!

Oh What Great Fun!(sarcasticly)
More philosophical crud!
Yawn! poo.

Your intelligent commentaries are most valuable to the furtherance of our jestive musings.

- Jordan

The topic of the post you refer to is scientific methodology rather than philosophy. Still, it's all poo to you, I guess, SG.

Hmm... I think he's making a philosophical enquiry into the nature of the Universe. Perhaps we are all craps of the Creator? A spark of the divine turd? A manifestation of the higher sh*t?

Methinks not.

- Jordan