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

Yo Mox. First ya hafta *believe* that the choice is as you say; or even if there is a God, that his alternatives are thus. In other words: freewill allows us to believe any proposition or coherent combination thereof. You propose that popular debating stratagem: a false dichotomy! What you suggest actually entails that if you don't believe in God, then you don't believe that you will burn. Not as much coercion as you would have us suppose.

toxx

Hear Hear

Yo, YG. I often agree with Adelaide, but not this time. You're right, we can't choose what to believe in any direct way. We can expose ourselves to evidence and influences that will tend to bring us to certain beliefs, but that's about the limit.

A moment's reflection will suffice to indicate why evolution gave rise to this tendency. "Nah, there's no sabre tooth tiger over there, I just don't wanna believe it"! But in the real world: "AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!", ya get da hell outa there.

toxx

Murf. You are not the first to reply to messages on page 1. We're now approaching message #20000. Do join us at this end of the thread.

toxx

I'd have to agree with you there YB. Where survival depends on our model of the world corresponding in significant ways to the world as it is it makes no sense for us to have that sort of free choice.

The "world as it is" has for humans has, of course, a wider application than just the physical world, including existing explanations of social and moral relations and the like.

Noggin

Toxx this is true, I aint gonna burn , luv Mox

If I was thinking, I would have something intelligent to add to this conversation, but I'm not, so I don't.

However the accertian that i am not gonna burn comes only to the confiedent athiest, what about those who are unmsure or undecided

No, Toxxin, I don't so much mean "choosing what to believe" in the sense of I choose to believe there is only one doughnut... Just that I don't see that someone is 'born atheist' and has to stay that way, and burn in hell because of that!

"It's not fair that I have to burn. Not a very fair god."

then find another one, YB

None of the ones I believe in calim they're the only one (that would really be rather silly as they tend to know each other!), nor that anyone who doesn't believe in them will end up in Ragnarok.

Actually, our tales have it that even the gods (well, most of them anyway) end up in Ragnarok, and mainly because they, like everyone else, sometimes make mistakes. But not for sins - there are no sins, as Christians think of them.

"My websters unabridged dictionary definition 1 says "the one supreme being, the creator and ruler of the universe"."

You have to take into account that Websters, like most dictionaries, was written from a Christo-centric viewpoint. Nearly all religious words in dictionaries are primarily as defined by Christians, with only a minor interpretation given from other POVs. Once you step outside the monotheistic viewpoint you realise the choice is not 'believer in one God' or 'atheist' but that there is a whole array of potential alternatives.

"From what I have read about Gnosticism, there are at least two strands - Christian and non-Christian gnosticism."

From where I stand, Adelaide, they're both Christian, as is Satanism, as they are all derived from the same religion. OK, the Christian churches may describe them as anathemas or heresies, but, to an outsider, it's still a bunch of people with different takes on the same religion.

" 'A bodiless personal being, omnipresent, perfectly free and creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, and eternal.'"

Toxx, you know perfectly well we've been here before, probably back in the 18000s somewhere, and this won't hold for polytheists. our gods are not omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, nor eternal.

I'm not even sure we could describe them as 'bodiless'. At least, some of the time.

"The Gundestrup bowl, a beautiful piece of pre-Christian Celtic craftsmanship, clearly shows a meditating Buddha."

Alji, I'm sorry, but it does nothing of the kind. The figure you are referring to is one of the recurring symbols of Celtic relgion: that of a horned man or woman. It wears the torque and carries another in its hand. Torques have been made since the Bronze Age (there are some wonderful examples in the Dublin museum). it is surrounded by animals which had high symbolism for the Celts, such as the stag or the snake, though we are not always certain what the symbolism was.

In fact, the only similarity between this figure and a buddha is that it is sitting cross-legged. Unless you are prepared to say that *only* Buddhists ever sat cross legged and therefore *any* picture of someone sitting cross legged is automatically Buddhist (which, I would hope, you are not), you cannot claim this is a Buddhist image.

update!

The bats continue flying into the living room so frequently that I've arranged to have the cats vaccinated for rabies on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, I think I have discovered a 'nest'. It's just above my balcony door - a hole cut into the brickwork to allow the telephone line to pass through. A hole that squeaks!

I think I'll also get a rabies jab myself.


az

<>

Which seems to imply that being an atheist is somehow wrong and punishable by hellfire if they 'stay that way'. Do you think you were 'born Christian', Della?


az

"However the accertian that i am not gonna burn comes only to the confiedent athiest, what about those who are unmsure or undecided"

Well, no, Mox; it is also the conclusion of the confident duotheist, henotheist, pantheist, polytheist, believer in Jungian archetypes... etc etc etc. I reiterate (and feel I should as the board seems recently to have been taken over by only one POV!!! ) - monotheism (or atheism as a counter to it) is not the only option in religion. It is not even the only option in Western European relgion. It is certainly not the only option for those with any intelligence. To a growing number of people in Western Europe, the Abrahamic faiths are irrelvant, except inasmuch as that they impinge on the social rights of the rest of us by heavily influencing the laws governments make on social issues such as marriage, divorce, abortion, the inheritiance of property, what we may or may not wear either in public or on our own property, how long our shops may be open and on what days and what they sell, working days and public holidays, the public media and broadcasting, what can be said about a religion and what cannot, what our schools teach and how they teach it, what our museums contain, what we do with land, how we regulate funeral rites, how people are treated in hospital, how people may practice their sexuality, employment, housing, how we treat monuments, and so on (as that's all that immediately springs to mind).

'you cannot claim this is a Buddhist image.'

I don't HS. However, I do believe that Druidism came from pre-Verdic India (long before Buddhism came west).


Alji

You may be right about 'Duns Scotus' but 'Duns Scotus' is not 'Johannes Scotus Erigena'!

Irish Theologian and NeoPlatonist Philosopher (c800-c880), Johannes Scotus Erigena, "regarded man as a microcosm of the wider universe, because he has senses and reason to determine causes and mechanisms. He also regarded man's nature to be part divine and part animal. Sin, he contended, was derived from the animal nature and the divine in man was the means by which he would return, through grace, to God. He was convinced of the necessity for rational explanation of the universe and he tried to fuse reason with faith. He therefore attempted to explain the relations between God and the created world in a rational fashion. His ideas - derived largely from NeoPlatonists like Plotinus - came close to pantheism, magic and, curiously, modern rationalism. He even attempted to explain sin as misdirected will, claiming that as being and knowing are the same, so it would follow that some sin must be inherent in God's knowledge. In this sense Erigena is typical of the comparative freedom of speculation and freshness of vision and expression enjoyed by the very early Churchmen. A condition which prevailed before dogma had pushed its roots much deeper into the intellectual fabric of the Church. Yet John's basic position determined the tone of Christian thought for centuries, being developed by all later thinkers, and being far more influential than was ever officially acknowledged."
From http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/scotus.html

You can read about 'Duns Scotus' @ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus/


Alji