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

Thanks for reminding me Toxxin.

My Sum42 moment...

4+2=42 (although 50% of the time it equals 24....weird huh?).

Try it out before you poo-poo it. Write 4 on one piece of paper, and 2 on another, arrange as you please .

Blessings,
Matholwch the mathematically-challenged /|\.

Math
50% ?
sometimes it's 6

Jordan
There are quite a few people about with 'beautiful minds'
I suppose my delusions remain in my mind instead of running amouk in the material world.
This must be really hard for them because now they can't always rely on their senses.
But you're right, what you 'believe' can scare the pants off you, what we perceive to be real can get the adrenalin going just as much as the 'recognised by the majority' real.
Math
They sat mathematics can never lie, it just get's massaged every so often.

hey is there anyone here who is religeous? if so can u tell me what ur religeon says created/caused god to come into existance?

Hi If the universe is infinite, then im "a" center, 21+4^1+8+9=42 .

I am religious. I am a practicing druid, but I'm not exactly sure I understand your question. Would you care to rephrase it?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

how did god come into existance, was he always there or was he created by something?

Hi If the universe is infinite, then im "a" center .

Hmmm...a biggy huh?

First let's take the assumption that there is just one God out to the dumpster shall we? In my experience there ain't, there are many. Well that's me cursed for eternity by every follower of a monontheistic creator god . Don't worry I have one of the best collections of lightning conductors in Wales.

From what I can glean from my relationships with my gods they weren't responsible for creation. They developed as aspects of an already existing universe. Whether they came into being as a reaction to our need for guidance, or if they are beings that have gone on before us and now are happy to reach back and lend us a helping hand I really cannot say (yet).

It is because of this that I have no problem with scientific and/or rationalist views of the beginning of the universe and evolution per se.

Shall we now wait together and see if any of the other 'religionists' here (and there are quite a few, but they are very shy) will come out to play?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

who says that the gods need to obay the rulles of
mathematics phisics logic etc

That's exactly correct Anthea.

Hi iffy. I guess one source of this question could be my debate with Noggin and others. The one God of the Christian/Jewish/Islamic tradition always exists. He is eternal - outside time. He created time! Something has to be uncreated - to create everything else.

If it were some physical cause, its effect would be immediate. Assuming this physical cause is infinitely old (as we are), then the universe would be infinitely old (which it isn't). The only kind of agent who can decide when (counting backwards from now) the universe is to be created is a personal agent, ie; God.

hi infinite centre !
I explained my opion of God's creation in previous long befuddled posting, a page back I think.

'Interesting what you said about IQ. I'm afraid IQ tests are one of my bete noire's, especially those pushed around by that gang of elite anoraks - Mensa.'

Agreed in the latter instance, though not in the former! IQ tests can be tremendously useful to psychologists. Although in many cases simple common-sense and experience might suffice, it's often helpful to compare individuals to the rest of the population for diagnostic purposes.

I also suspect you hold little stock by conventional psychiatric practice, especially labelling. However, when we say that someone is a schizophrenic (for example) we're not simply talking about them believing they can talk to gods - it's a heck of a lot more. Generally, it's accompanied by a variety of symptoms, many of them alarming, and not least for the sufferer. For example, aviolition - a terrifying prospect, literally meaning the loss of will to act. Sometimes it manifests itself in extremis, with the patient completely lacking inclination to move or speak. Some patients display plastic rigidity (I've never experienced it, but it's extrememly strange). Is this a state in which someone should be left merely because we are reluctant to label them? Psychology certainly has something valuable to offer people, and if IQ tests are one of the methods they use, so be it.

I agree that IQ tests are, unfortunately, used by a few spectacular elitists for some reason or other. (The guy at boredatheist.com seems obsessed by them!) However, that's no reason to dispense with them.

'...not very druidic but hey everyone has their buttons and exclusive, self-serving, 'intellectual' elites are mine[.]'

Know how you feel. Exclusive, self-serving, 'physical' elites are one of mine, along with irritating folks who think they can sum the world and its beliefs into a short, undescriptive and inaccurate chain of poorly-used logic. It really gets my back up...

'I questioned some friends who are Mensans (sounds like a chemical lav to me, but they like the title). According to them your IQ stays more or less the same (within 4% apparently) throughout your life.'

You're quite right - that's b*llocks. (Hey, I could still be referring to bulls... ) My IQ shot up one and a half deviations in seven years. Numerous studies have shown that IQ can change throughout one's lifetime. Of course, most people's IQs seem to remain /around/ the same level. However, what do they mean by 4%? A common misconception is that it's impossible to get an IQ below 0 - and thus, above 200. Both the antecedent and the consequent are wrong. It's quite possible to get an IQ above 200, or indeed below 0. The real problem is measuring them when they get that low. The mistake is made because we tend to treat IQ scores as discrete units of intelligence. That's not possible! All it does is indicates your position relative to the rest of the population - i.e. your distance from the mean. If the Mensa test were accurate enough, it wouldn't be inconceivable to get an IQ below 0, because of the large standard deviation it uses. Also, 4% in the positive direction is a far bigger difference than 4% in the negative direction. The figure is vague, to say the least.

'In one of my poems I once wrote a line:
"How can a kingdom be so fine and clever, with not a drop of wisdom".
Personally I'd rather follow the leadership of a wise person than a clever one.'

I'm not sure. 'Idealism or realism' can be come 'fantasy vs. cynicism' if one isn't careful. I'd rather follow a man with vision, be that wisdom, or intelligence, or cunning, or all.

'How did I slip into that little rant? '

Something I often ask myself. Glad to see I'm in such good company!

- Jordan

Hey Iffy!

Our religion says that the guy we call 'God' was once just like us, but that he 'ascended' to become a God. Thus, we have tons of gods but we're only concerned with one. I don't think that stretches from infinitely far back in time - I think that at some point, there was an original Creator (and Creatress ) who started everything. And, what's more, I think that they came into being because just as something, necessarily, has to exist, so does the universe, and that physical and spiritual laws - and also, the existance of these Gods - were necessary entailments.

- Jordan

Jordan, nah! I appreciate and admire many of your posts but that last one was a dog. I disagree with just about all of it. Saying that things came into existance (sic) because they necessarily had to is utter waffle!

Necessity is a strange critter anyhow; even the ontological argument for the necessary existence of God relies on the actual, but contingent truth that there exist beings (us) who can have conceptions. So necessity is derived from contingency.

And a timeless God can't create. If something is created it wasn't there BEFORE, but it's there AFTERWARDS. I'm tempted by QED, but I don't doubt Toxx would contest it.

Noggin

Is it really? I'd like to see a better one! Either something or nothing exists. If nothing exists, then neither the concept of nothing nor the concept of existance could exist. In fact, it's impossible for there to be nothing because if it existed, then there is (at the most basic level) the existance of a concept! Thus, only if something exists can we escape the contradiction.

And why are there any physical laws? There must be physical laws because if there are none, then we could have contradictions. Well, from a contradiction one can prove any statement, no matter how fallacious. (Literally - a fallacy instantly implies that anything is true, or false.) A logically contradictory universe could not possibly exist - arguing that it could is pointless, and unhelpful - so there must be laws that govern it.

As for the necessity of the existance of the universe, I have (as of yet) got no support. And, as I said, I'm not /certain/ on any count. I simply think it's a possibility. Note the use of the words 'I think' - indicating flexibility!

- Jordan

I'm still working that over. It looks like you're argument is similar to saying that a resident of flatland couldn't anything in the third dimension, implying that a God outside of the Universe couldn't do anything, because it couldn't affect the people in different dimensions from itself.

I recall that the traditional Judaic God is one of Matholwch's famous 'triple-O deities'. Weren't they already discredited as impossible?

- Jordan

Minor trolling there, for which I apologise!

- Jordan

Of course I would/will Nogg! A timeless God can create. Surely it's obvious that time has to be created by something timeless! I guess logically we would have to say that time was the first, or a joint first, thing to be created.