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

na mu myo ho renge kyo

Strontium Dog

>>It seems to me that God is fundamentally a product of human need, we feel we need an explanation for those things we don't understand and God comes wrapped in an all questions answered packaging.

>>The problem from my point of view is the packaging, the commandments edicts and laws laid down by 'god' were all heard by humans and written by humans (Mainly men, which probably explains the frequently patriachal point of view 'God' appears to talk to humans from)<<


From my (heathen) point of view, the only thing that gets close to a 'commandment' is this edict which I was taught, but which does not appear in the Eddas or the Sagas as such...

"Do only that which you can bring proudly before your gods."

Now, that works for me, but if I followed one of the Chaos Lords of some magicians, it might not be too nice for other people... And even Loki has His moments, of course...


>>Personaly I find it much more straighforward to view God as the embodiment of all the forces of the universe which I either don't understand or have no control over, I find it very difficult to personify it, and find polytheism attractive as it allows me to understand the points of views of others better and seems a better representation of what appears to me to be going on on a day to day basis.<<

I am a 'hard' polytheist - my gods are real, independent, separate beings, beings with their own lives and agendas, their own take on the universe and their place in it, some of whom are interested in me or in other humans, many of whom are not... Some people who say they are polytheist actually see the gods as aspects of a divine or supreme or pantheist presence, and will call them archetypes, etc. I don't fall into that camp - the gods who have dropped into my life and the lives of my friends are quite definitely not simply aspects of anything... any more than I am an aspect of humankind, or actually the same person as a human who shares some of my lifestyle choices...

>>Certainly Princess Diana appeared to take on a role in the public imagination of a kind of Dyonisis figure and other 'Famous' people appear to become associated with attributes that in Roman times would have belonged to one or another demi-god.<<

Not quite sure how Diana can be equated to Dionysus...

>>The deification of roman emperors may well be the historical antecedent of this as it made it possible in the popular imagination for living or only recently deceased people to be worshiped as if they had been gods, Elvis Presley for instance. Allthough I think this is over the top, it seems to make more sense to me than some of the assertions of christianity for instance.

>>And the parallell process between the deification of Roman Emperors and the development of Christianity is an interesting coincidence.<<

Certainly is

>>Humans being made into gods and god becoming human, seems almost like a reactive cycle to me. Particularly since the 'deification' of Christ only appears to have truly happened in the early 4th century and was probably more about Constantine wanting a symbol of absolute authority than about the truth of the son of the Capernaum Carpenters life. In this context the human need being met was Constantine.<<

Jez - heathen and witch

i'm listening to radio4 it's hilarious

9 11 seems likely to have been just what it appeared to be, There were no confusions, no particularly difficult unanswered questions about who was responsible, the mobile phone coversations from passengers seemed to answer that one as well as the records of other transmissions from the planes. Not that I don't think politicians took advantage of this, see previous post on real Politik.

The problem with 11 M if that is what the Spanish are calling it and I suppose they have the best Claim to name it, is that there is confusion and a lack of clarity. The case of the Birmingham Six springs to mind, where assuming the appeal genuinely cleared the matter up, the police were more interested in catching someone, rather than the right one. I believe there may well be a danger of that happening here.

This lack of clarity and a number of possible explanations will probably mean that we will never know for certain what the truth is and despite who is or is not convicted different hypothysis will float arround for years. Personaly I favour Al Quaida as no 1 suspect, with ETA at no 2 and the CIA a close third. That it was ETA's MO (Mobile Phones) implies that ETA/Al Quaida is a fourth possibility although they seem strange bedfellows to me

The extraordinary confusion arround the JFK assassination is the best example of this I can think of, e.g the magic bullet, which managed to make dozens of different holes in the car and people in it. This unlikely explanation seems the main reason that the grassy Knoll was considered at all, the strange number of very important people crammed into the operating theatre, not to mention the dissappearance of the presidents Brain, i.e the best piece of evidence they had, add more confusion and a list of important but unanswered questions.

If there are similar strange occurances in the detection and prosecution of possible offenders in the case of 11 M, I would begin to push the CIA up the list of suspects, Though British intelligence might be an equally possible culprit come to think of it, or Both.

I wonder if the Media will ask any of these questions in the imediate future or if we will have to wait years, when all those best suited to answer have done a bunk or died.

"Do only that which you can bring proudly before your gods."

Works for me too, but as you can no doubt tell I am somewhat ambivalent about my god or gods, this doesn't mean there influence on my life hasn't been profound.

I may explain later but it's time to go now so read you all later.

Yo, Dog. Jesus frequently characterised himself as 'the suffering servant'.



The *concept* of God might be so described. To paraphrase Frege: the concept of God is not God. Like HS I prefer to be ontologically 'hard'. We get too much of this woolly 'true for me' stuff on this thread. Humbug, humbug!

toxx

But an ontology is something humans have, not something the universe has. Failure to coordinate ontologies (and epistemologies) is what gives rise to this "true for me" stuff.

Noggin

Noggin. I completely agree. I would suggest that an ontology is part of an epistmology or, better, of a belief set. Surely it's just a set of beliefs about what there is. Yes, I love your analysis - and if we attempt to map our belief system onto our conceptual system (unicorns etc) we will soon be in trouble.

This is very close to the link you cited earlier. I think the guy is really offering a critique of meaning - not truth! If we suggest that meaning is correspondence with belief in the Davidsonioan way we shouldn't have a problem. If knowledge is true belief (let's forget 'justified' for now), then we can see the relation between truth and meaning in a helpful way. Given that 'true' is correspondence with the facts, I think it makes rather a pretty picture. Shame I'm too pissed to draw the diagram! I confess, I've only read the first half of the linked paper so far.

Cheers, toxx.

You people use so many long words.

{ltp}BouncyBitInTheMiddle yup they do

"But an ontology is something humans have, not something the universe has. Failure to coordinate ontologies (and epistemologies) is what gives rise to this "true for me" stuff."

Noggin, it's late and I've had a hard day and one glass too many: remind me of the meanings attached to 'ontology' (apart from cancer) and 'epistemology' (all I can think of presently is drunks or skiers )

Sounds extremely painful too me, I thought I had one of those when I gave birth!!! an epiwhatsit!!!!

Jane, attempting to be humerous!!!

I actually have been away from H2G2 for ages, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

So any comments with regard to any noticeable changes,and that bring me nicely to the point in question.
does the informed reader think
Views and comments made in the popes speeches and includeing archbishop of canterbury ,have shifted over the past say 75 years.

Are our individual Goverments/dictatorships relying to much on "religous" alligences to control us.?

I wondered how the date thingy worked in Spain...
I am still reserving judgement as to whether is *is* Al Q on their own, and think probably not. Maybe in cahoots with ETA?

RECENTLY I HARD A CONVERSATION W/ GEORGE CARLIN.IN THAT HE REFLECTED UPON THE FACT THAT IN THE NAME OF RELIGION MORE DEATHS ARE CAUSED BY IT THAN WARS OF NATIONALISM.THIS MAY BE TRUE.BEING HUMAN WE ASPIRE TO BECOME MORE THAN WE ARE.WE QUESTION LIFE AND THE LIVING.IT IS NOT WRONG TO EXPLAIN THESE THINGS EITHER THROUGH SECULAR HUMANISM,MONOTHEISM,ETC...THE IDEA OF BUILDING RATHER THAN DESTROYING
EACH OTHER IS ESSENTIAL.BE ONE WITH HUMANKIND.SORT YOUR DIFFERENCES LATER.

BBITM and LTP
I'm with you 2 on this

And speaking of conspiracy theories, how many of you think that Bin Laden will be 'captured' sometime before the US elections in November?

az

Welcome back, Jane, and hello to Debs and Everliving.

HS
I think you'll find cancer is oncology (though I'm betting you know that anyway

Long words department
Ontology - Theory of entities
Epistemology - Theory of knowledge
Phenomenalist - Our perceptions are all we have.


toxx

Agreed. I don't think ontology and epistemology can really be separated. Not sure about meaning as correspondence with belief, although I do think that meaning is derived from the position of an item within a belief system. Reference and truth/knowledge are bigger problems, especially in an essentially phenomenalist system. It could be argued that Dogster is not eliminating the concept of truth from philosophical discourse, but only substantially redefining it (he pointed me to this article as a result of a discussion on another thread where I was doing the same thing for the concept of veridicality)> I raised it in this thread because the notion of an ideal concept seemed potentially applicable to the concept of God(s).

Noggin

i thithink you'll find oncology was the word you were lookin fer

personally i reckon osama has been dead for sometime