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

(decaf)

I'm in a hurry today...

Mornin' az, Math, Sceptic, et al

Jez - heathen and witch and late...

DP. You introduce an intriguing possibility. Perhaps people are not the same person becuse of their 'future history' in addition to past history. This requires some thought. Higgs might object that future history is even less apparent than past history. But then Higgs, in spite of his lip service to falsification, appears to be something of a verificationist! No, Higgs. We won't be able to verify that they are different by examining them individally.

Hi, Moth. Odd word that - 'caregiver'. I mean the way it means almost the same as 'caretaker'. Odd that. They should be opposites!

Hi Fathom ,

"As for telling me to 'get out more', Math, that was, frankly, unworthy of you. "

Prick me and do I not bleed? There are times when people are throwing incredible generalisms about that some land on my bad side and I do react in a human way. I don't apologise for my reaction, but I am sorry if you were hurt by it. Call it tough love .

Blessings,
Matholwch the Mauler /|\.

Hi Della ,

"Digression - my sister Trina always said that there should be an adjective to describe someone with integrity. Integral obviously isn't it. Doesn't anyone know what is?"

Honourable.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Hi Jordan

"In fact, I suspect anyone who does work thus is a pretty poor Christian."

Yup, they are, and unfortunately based upon my own personal forty year samplette, they are by far the majority. Look around you next time you are in church, any church, the pews are full of them (where the pews are full that is ).

They are the TV dinner generation. They expect their christianity served up to them as 'entertainment for the soul'. The most sincere and active people in most churches of my acquaintance are generally the older members, people who predate TV and the busy, busy, busy lifestyles of the young and trendy.

In the newer, mostly 'evangelical' churches, my experience is of charismatic and high energy services. I have worked on community projects with these people and on the surface they are caring and giving and have a personal relationship with a loving God.

Once you get past the surface, however (and its taken me five years to get there), they are often terribly insecure, obsessed with salvation and prey to all sorts of misinformed prejudices. Their Bible knowledge is incredibly selective and carefully directed by their Ministers to avoid the unpleasant and easily questioned bits.

It ain't a pretty picture Jordan, I can tell you. Over the next few weeks, if you are going to services, count the number of times salvation and its alternative are preached at you from the pulpit. Then consider if this is proportionate to all the other good things that Christianity claims to offer. Talk to your fellow devotees and find out how well they have thought through their beliefs and how much blind faith there is. I doubt you will get even close to the open-minded debate we maintain here.

I have a broad view of the Christian faith Jordan, based on many years observing the full gamut of doctrines and churches. My argument was that if you cleared away the cr*p, what you are left with is what I listed. I'm sorry if it doesn't read as very flattering but there you are.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Morning everyone!


Higgs,

<>

<>

You had been mentioning some other perspectives and so by saying this I meant to suggest that perhaps we can have other perspectives that do not belong entirely to 'this world', and thereby give us yet another perspective, which somehow makes sense to me but I am not sure how to explain it further. Perhaps I shouldn't be using the word 'world'.


Noggin,

<>

When I first came on this thread I asked *why* people needed to believe in their various religions and gods (I think most people ignored me ). There seems to be some basic need for us to do this. I have always wondered where the human need to believe in a higher entity comes from.

az

Noggin. I've just reread this since Az quoted it:

I guess we'd have to say: our exeperience of being told about religion, seeing churches and ceremonies, reading and watching television etc. This isn't all that dissimilar from my belief that Australia exists and has certain features, in spite of my never having been there.

hi toxxin,

And I think it is talking about our general 'human experience' even before we are taught things about religions, churches, etc.

az

Doberman Pharaoh and all, if you set your prefeences to Expert you will get a tree to navigate the thread;
_/_B_\_
A__|__C
___D___

A: An older reply to the parent Posting
B: The parent Posting, to which this is a reply
C: A newer reply to the parent posting
D: The first reply to this Posting

Alji

Higg's and Moth:

"Fathom:

> 'Positive result' clearly means a result that supports the
> hypothesis.

A scientist ought to be attempting to falsify an hypothesis - this is part of the 'Scientific Method'... an hypothesis is only provable in terms of the falsification its null hypothesis. For popular example, you can't prove all swans are white, but by finding a black swan, you can disprove it, thus proving that not all swans are white - a subtle but crucial difference."

What?

Of course I know this but that isn't what I was getting at. Firstly, at no point did I mention anything about 'proving' anything. The process of peer review in science is essentially to attempt to falsify hypotheses. If a hypothesis survives enough attempts it generally becomes a theory. Proof is the sole domain of mathematicians.

A researcher however may come up with new a hypothesis of his/her/its own. Do you think he/she/it is going to deliberately propose clearly improbable hypotheses just in order to falsify them? Of course not.

Once they have proposed their new hypothesis (all swans are white) they may wish to perform some experiments to test it. To some extent these experiments are to 'demonstrate' the hypothesis since they proposed it in the first place. After further research they may wish to attempt to falsify it instead, as other researchers are free to do too. A positive result then (all 500 swans on this lake are seen to be white), from the point of view of the researcher who proposed the hypothesis, will be one which tends to support it.

On the other hand, if I don't believe the hypothesis is correct I might run an experiment to falsify it. In this case I need an alternative hypothesis - (not all swans are white), say - and a viable experiment might be to search for a swan of another colour. If I find a black (or even purple) swan I can say this supports my hypothesis so this is a positive result for me.

[Having seen my results the first researcher might redefine swans such that non-white ones are not swans at all. This apparently sneaky approach may even be valid in some cases.]

Probably the most famous experiment which failed to yield a positive result was the Michelson-Morley attempt to demonstate the existence of an 'aether' through which light is propagated. The hypothesis was shown to be wrong and this was later seen as a very important result. It was just as well they reported the results honestly.

F

Hi Toxxin ,

"This isn't all that dissimilar from my belief that Australia exists and has certain features, in spite of my never having been there."

But Australia doesn't exist, for if it did it would disprove the truth of this being a flat earth. Australia was invented by an 18th Century British Government who didn't want to admit that they just dumped unwanted criminals at sea. In the twentieth century the continued belief in Australia was reinforced by the denizens of Earls Court in order to gain some special privileges.

This belief is now so pervasive that the government will go to almost any lengths to maintain it as it underpins practically every major institution in Britain.

If famous 'Aussie' actors such as Nicole Kidman and Mel Gibson can't keep their accents straight for five minutes in a row, how could they have been brought up in this mythical place? Most modern 'australians' are in fact Californians who are fed-up with the politically correct nature of their homeland.

After all who could possibly believe in such supposedly 'australian' things as platypuses, emu's (furry ostritches, good grief!), Rupert Murdoch and kangaroos?

Next you'll have believing in the moon landings....

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

> clearly it wouldn't be detectibly different but it would be
> different

But not to the parties involved - i.e. the social aspect is not a differentiator.

> It is this objective history that counts, whatever the properties.

OK, but what of the situations (previously mentioned) where there is no available record of the objective history?

Fathom:

OK, I understand. Your use of 'positive result' in respect of experimental science was open to misinterpetation, but your explanation has clarified what you meant (for me, at least).

Math,

I have to agree that my belief in Australia is only based on hearsay.

What is the druid take on souls? You say you believe in reincarnation. So then there must be an eternal soul that keeps reincarnating itself.

What *is* this soul?

az

'Yup, they are, and unfortunately based upon my own personal forty year samplette, they are by far the majority.'

One would expect so. Decent people are seldom in the majority. Neither are considerate, honest, open-minded ones.

'They are the TV dinner generation. They expect their christianity served up to them as "entertainment for the soul".'

I haven't met many of these types, but I'll take your word for it. They sound plausible, anyway.

'Once you get past the surface, however (and its taken me five years to get there), they are often terribly insecure, obsessed with salvation and prey to all sorts of misinformed prejudices. Their Bible knowledge is incredibly selective and carefully directed by their Ministers to avoid the unpleasant and easily questioned bits.'

This is, as you say, 'often' the case, but it isn't like this in every case.

For example, my friend Insight can hardly be called 'ill-informed,' and his biblical knowledge is far from 'selective'. He regularly reads and analyses his scriptures, and spends an inordinate time on it too. He doesn't avoid any sections, and is on a course which is reading, slowly but surely, through the whole tome.

Of course, he might not concentrate so much on bits telling him not to eat bugs if he lives 6,000 years ago as he might on, say, the four main Gospel accounts, but one can hardly blame him for that.

Also, from my personal dealings with him, he is far from insecure. He has his needs, but he is one of the most self-assured individuals I have ever met.

He does focus on salvation, but moreso concentrating on how he should act to get there than focusing on the goal: he's sure he has found the right path, and he wants to stay on it.

I'd comment on Della, who doesn't seem at all obsessed with salvation, is very open-minded indeed and hasn't indicated that she's insecure in any way, but that would be speculation because I don't know her personally. Intuitively, I feel that she doesn't count in the 'often' camp.

'It ain't a pretty picture Jordan, I can tell you.'

Neither is most of the world.

'Over the next few weeks, if you are going to services, count the number of times salvation and its alternative are preached at you from the pulpit. Then consider if this is proportionate to all the other good things that Christianity claims to offer. Talk to your fellow devotees and find out how well they have thought through their beliefs and how much blind faith there is. I doubt you will get even close to the open-minded debate we maintain here.'

I shall. Interestingly, I went to a Christian Focus meeting, where a guest lecturer, an ethnographer, was giving a talk on interfaith and multifaith communities. In the whole session, salvation was not mentioned once, and none of the questions indicated closed-minededness to the slightest extent.

Possibly, if I remember, I'll make a few observations here in a few weeks time.

'I have a broad view of the Christian faith Jordan, based on many years observing the full gamut of doctrines and churches. My argument was that if you cleared away the cr*p, what you are left with is what I listed.'

I suppose something similar can be said about most faiths or social groups. Surely there are selective druids, insecure heathens and obsessive wiccans. I've met many a 'TV dinner atheist.' However, in all these groups, I suspect we can divine a few individuals who are truly at peace with themselves, and who have really tried to understand and help the world around them. 'Bodhisattva' is the word, I believe?

'I'm sorry if it doesn't read as very flattering but there you are.'

Don't worry, I didn't expect it to.

- Jordan

Dagnammit, Math. You've got me bang to rights! Just call me 'gullible' I guess. The rot started with Rolf Harris, then I began to believe in Neighbours. By that time I was well down the slippery slope: wallabies, didgeridoos, boomerangs, the list is endless. In spite of your convincing arguments, I still can't make myself believe otherwise.

A baffled toxx

Yo, Higgs. Sorry to have been misleading. I didn't mean to say that the social aspect is *always* a differentiator.



I don't find the argument that the discovery of a record can retrospectively change history terribly convincing; if indeed that is what you are suggesting. You seem to be taking the anti-realist position which, I confess, I don't really understand since it seems to me rather like the new verificationism!

toxx

I wouldn't mind betting that the first thing all you non-christians do when you're in serious trouble is say to yourself "oh god please help"

Scary. That might well be true, but it could refer to quite a long list of gods.