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

Toxx...

i think that most guys would agree that (ahem) blue balls means the shade doesn't really matter! ???

....sorry....hands...possessed.....can't control....

Hi guys,

I don't know if this has come up already...X'000 entries is too many to wade through...

how about this as a hypothesis:

God = (synonym for) universe + (awareness of) "sacred" interdependence

this actually seems to work well for most religious teachings, which would make sense as they all refer to the same universe,

did anyone mention the striped balls?

Raindog - if you want to check what someone actually said while you're writing use the back/forward buttons on your browser instead of the previous/next post hootoo buttons. You shouldn't lose anything that way.

TMFDM - God = the universe has been mentioned, and spirituality = awareness of "sacred" interdependence has certainly been hinted at, though I can't recall it being put so clearly.

As usual though our language games describe our ways of life, rather than any facts as such.

Noggin

Hi Noggin. I guess 'sacred' means: 'somebody thinks it's very important'.

Thanks, Noggin. I usually fall for the 'way that a thing works being the only way it will work'caper.
Hi Hasselfree, and everybody else, Diversity I think I get the point, maybe not- I can be fairly dense, I will try to relax though.

Love, Love, Lovely, Lovely, Loving, Love (calming now). Lots of room for that in my world. Plenty of huge great mounds of LUVVVERly LURVE.On a rational level however I can only believe that it is a complex nature/nurture stew of aesthetics, genetics, frenetic with the chemical,epemeral and seminal(the last bit possibly raps-it will be taught the error of it's ways)but, it does not do anything supernatural, beyond the obvious seemingly magical, fleetingly tragical teenage style yearning and leaping and getting silly and waiting for phones to ring and screaming when doorbells ring etc etc. It is a fine thing but evidence of a creator?, No, not for me.

I think the problem with things like love is that it seems really small minded and churlish to quantify it on some kind of rational measure. I cry at sad, moving movies (A Matter of Life and Death, not Titanic-I'm with Royston Vasey on that one). Of course I want to believe, I still think that God getting a big 'G' and love making do with lower case 'l'is wrong wrong wrong. But it is impossible for me to go too far with it, although if the right test conditions were arranged; watching 'Bringing Up Baby', while Van Morrison does 'Tupelo Honey' and a nice man says 'more of this St Chinian, sir?', I could fall heavily. Nice, yes but only so far.
And even then you know, or I do anyway, that assessing and measuring it is like going over the body of a loved one with a microscope and assessing aesthetically every square inch. Me and everyone else that I know just want to believe the myth, go along with the magic, pretend to believe for as long as it is practicable. That's my, unfortunately realistic, perspective-what do you (all) think?

God=Fact

And about movies, titanic is great! .... just wanted to say that, you can say whatever, but there is something about it that I just love. I want to belive life could be like that, peopel could be like that, love could be like that... Do you understand my point?

( sorry about the bad spelling and language...)
/ C.o.S.

Oh, I wanted the jewellery and the stereo, Jimmy Nugget (my son) is the car-obsessive! Actually, Jimmy later said that he didn't like the idea of hocking off anything that had been in the family for so long...

Toxxin, I'll check out this kalam site when I can, which won't be soon - our home modem died, the one at my educational institution is on a permanent go-slow (half an hour to load operamail, I am not kidding)I didn't look at the kalam thing before, but I will soon!

Hi Raindog

"Diversity I think I get the point, maybe not- I can be fairly dense, I will try to relax though."

You're O.K.

Actually, I chose the name diversity as a backhanded swipe at the mentality that seems to be making inroads in societys collective conscience. There is no right or wrong anymore, only... acceptance!

I'm a cafeteria catholic so I can update my belief system as I see fit. Acceptance! Good act... hope it works in the hereafter.

Anything that I don't care to explain thru the physical sciences gets written off as magic. Real time saver when it comes to, well, acceptance. If I can't explain it, why maintain it? At 43, I have forgotten most of the important stuff I need to know anyway.

You'll do fine up here. It's nice to see a fresh face every now and again!
diversity

I hope you'll enjoy it, Della. It is a summary, so it's fairly brief, but maybe too compressed for some. I was expecting Raindog to have looked at it by now, but the early promise seems to have come to nought.

I agree with you very much, of course, Lady of Sweden... Not every one else here does, though...

I wish I could check it out now!

Child of Saunola: Hi, all mechanical 'getting the thoughts across' stuff excused as of right-they let ME play.
Diversity: Hello again, hope I get the hang of this, usually don't mix well with the other children(some talk of adoption). Can someone please tell me how to punctuate with small 'doing-thing-faces'
White screen-no options-why?? I am actually doing computer science as a subsidiary-how sad is that? I am so useless at it at times.

2.10 p.m.now-Boy calling for his dad-11 a.m. lecture tomorrow- goodnight all.

Raindog
Just touch on a smiley face (here's one to get you started).
If you click on it, you can magically (or a god takes you there, whatever) go to a vast sea of smiley option pages. Then just put carrots around what word you want to convey into a face when you type.

Still amazes me how those college kids think this stuff up!

Hi All,

Sorry for the absence from the convo'. Been on a galactic cruise in my office (Newspeak for budget time at work).

Hello Raindog .

Been reading your posts with interest. Nice to see a fresh brain turning over the dried clod of our debate and letting all the worms out again .

We seem to be getting stuck in the Judaeo-Christian-Moslem God image again. Something I regularly do in this convo' Raindog is try to steer it away from focusing exclusively on Jehovah and expanding it to encompass the many other concepts of divinity. Comes from being the resident Druid I suppose (be aware that to many here 'druid' = 'fruitcake' ).

"One of the main problems I have about belief in a God is that it is a largely taught phenomenon"

Not necessarily so my friend, not necessarily so. Many of us come to a belief in a divine being through experience. From a realisation that there is a unifying force or purpose to life beyond that conveniently explained by science. Some of us come to our beliefs through direct experience of the inspiration that a divine being can invoke in us. To repeat one of my favourite quotes:

"If you speak to God you are pious. If he speaks to you, you are schizophrenic" - Lily Tomlin.

It is utterly reasonable in my view, for rationalists who are uncomfortable with this experience to categorise those of us who have had such divine inspiration as schizophrenic. After all if I am schizophrenic I have no way of realising this for my delusion is complete.

Unfortunately as the rationalists have yet to take such belief seriously they have failed to come up with an acceptable lexicon with which to adequately define such experience. Thus the only real debate that exists upon the true nature of divinity rests with us 'deluded' fools. The least wise amongst the rational simply dismiss us as cranks at best or dangerous at worst.

But the beat goes on. In every society an underlying belief in the divine nature of being exists. This belief ebbs and flows, but is always present. Even in societies where it became illegal to hold such beliefs, or was defined as mental illness and was brutally repressed, the belief went on.

Why is this? Why, in the face of 'irrefutable' evidence from the best scientific minds that the rationalists can provide, has the belief continued, and in fact grown? We have never had a better educated populace, or a more widespread scientific media. Some even go as far as to say that science is the new God. Yet the belief goes on.

Could it be that we who feel we have direct experience of the divine have tapped into a basic need in the human consciousness? The need to believe that life has a purpose? That it is not a random, one shot experience that ends in darkness?

I fully expect that the rationalists here will roll their eyes again and dismiss me as that funny old fool, secure in his delusions.

But what if I am right?

Blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

Raindog

"Love, Love, Lovely, Lovely, Loving, Love (calming now). Lots of room for that in my world. Plenty of huge great mounds of LUVVVERly LURVE.On a rational level however I can only believe that it is a complex nature/nurture stew of aesthetics, genetics, frenetic with the chemical,epemeral and seminal(the last bit possibly raps-it will be taught the error of it's ways)but, it does not do anything supernatural, beyond the obvious seemingly magical, fleetingly tragical teenage style yearning and leaping and getting silly and waiting for phones to ring and screaming when doorbells ring etc etc. It is a fine thing but evidence of a creator?, No, not for me."

I wasn't suggesting that love was evidence of a creator. I didn't say that.

What I was suggesting that there are things in the world that can't be seen, touched, photographed, or looked at under a microscope and yet the majority of people would say it existed.
So the question wasn't do you think Love is evidence of the creator. the question was can you prove love exists at all

Hi Matholwch
Where do Druids check in on the 'Earth's travel thru space= time' bit?
Has that changed greatly since their inception? I know the Catholics did a on the Gallieo theory a couple times, and Copernicus too.
(hope those two don't see how I spelled their names...)
diversity

Hi Diversity .

I think that you will find that most Druids are very supportive of advanced science and indeed any search for the truth. We do not see that scientific fact denies our beliefs at all.

For instance - Evolution. An anathema to the Christian Churches, common sense to most Druids.

My ancient forebears, the Druids of the Brythonic and later Celtic tribes, were natural philosphers, alchemists, herbalists and pretty fair astronomers. Pythagoras says that they were not bad mathematicians either. They sought the truth and although some of their beliefs can be seen to have been fanciful now, then they were at the cutting edge of what we call science.

I wish I had half their mathematical ability for I often get left behind in the conversations on this list . I suppose that a druidic perspective upon the space time debate would be that if it can be proved scientifically then it most likely is true.

Most modern Druids leave science to those best qualified to comment upon it. We do comment and sometimes criticise the direction and use of science though. For instance many of us are very concerned on the long-term effects of GM crops on the land. We can see the advertised advantages but look backward at what was promised of manufactured chemical fertilisers in the 1940's. We now know that the overuse of nitrate fertilisers poisons the water table, reduces diversity of both flora and fauna and is becoming linked with many modern diseases (especially cancer). What will be the effect of GM? The scientists for all their bluster about saving the world, are commercially backed and motivated and will not wait 20 years to find out if this advance will spell disaster. These are the same people who wowed us with the wonders of DDT in the eradication of malaria mosquitoes, and said that antibiotics were the saviour of mankind.

In fact in the last hundred years scientists have led the charge in eliminating all the natural checks on human population growth. Net result: our population has quadrupled and half the world is starving whilst the environment goes to heck in a handbasket. Nice one boys.

The search for truth must go hand in hand with a moral imperative to leave our planet in a better state than we found it. Otherwise what is is all for?

Blessings,
Matholwch the Luddite /|\.

I must say...this is interesting. I have been a christian for all my life(almost 16 years). I can not think about a life without God in it, I mean how can people live without God? Where do they get there strength??? And as everyone says, it takes much more faith to believe in "Big bang" then it takes to believe in God.
/C.o.S.