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

<< these have all been genuine enquiries >>
Nonsense. Neither funny, nor clever.
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What on are you talking about? (Or should I ask, *who*?)
Blicky, my friend, you have your mind made up, and no amount of fact (or explanation) will ever change it. You *want* to believe that all Christians are, or should have to be Creationists, well, have it your own way. The same goes for azahar.
Be happy in your own sweet ways, if people want to know, they can ask, you obviously do not.

Im talking about King James the First of England, who early in the 17th century gave his assent to what has become the standard version of the Bible for the English speaking world.

His bi-sexual flings are well known and caused him some PR problems at the time. This did notstophowever "his" bible becoming the one widely used by English speaking protestants at the timeand still today.

The main difference between then and now is that at the time it was something of an article of faith that the bible was word for word theutterances of the bigG and *every* bit of it was true.

one love

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Ad hominem, Blicky? Are *ou*sayiong 'his' Bible is discredited because of his sexual preferences?
You *o*know that he commissioned it, but had nothing more to do with it than that - that he didn't actually work on the translation?
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No, you're quite wrong. The "heavenly dictaphone" theory, as it's known didn't come along until 19th century USA. What makes you think differently, I mean where have you got your recent ideas?

Ad hominem. Are you crazy?

James' sexuality is pertinent considering the church's current upheavals regarding the status of homosexuals. Being gay does not discredit anyone or anything they say and you know me better than to think that I would ever think that way.

However I chose to point it out because the irony is that portions of a book he gave his assent to has since been widely used for metaphorical gay bashing.




Who told you that the idea that the bible is the word of the bigG only originated in 19th century USA?

one love

Well well well, haven't things taken an interesting turn while I have been absent, if I may I would quite like to leave the bickering about the validity of the bible and return to the original topic which was about whether a god or supernatural being exists.

Bearing in mind that not all religions have stemmed from the same roots and that not all have the same image of god(s) I think we can see that man either has a propensity to invent gods or that many of them exist in different forms (or one in many forms). The question remains as to whether it is the former atheistic view or that of the various religious disciplines.

I do however strongly believe that if there is a god then any of the scriptures we hold today are about as close to him as I am to a banana, people tell me that we share many DNA characteristics but the similarities are totally unrecognisable. For me this will discount scriptures as proof of the existance of any higher being and all they serve to do is to show how easy it would be to set up a religion, more so 2000 years ago than now but the principle still holds.

So once the scriptures and organised religion are forgotten where does this supernatural being manifest itself? How can one say that there is or is not a higher lifeform that watches over us? With science at the level it is now we do not have all the answers and the ones we do are often far from concrete, proof on either side of the barrier is running very thin.

So where does this leave us? The answer is faith, there are those who put their faith in science, hoping that one day it will answer all the questions that it currently cannot, there are those that put their faith in religion and follow it despite the flaws which have been woven into it's rich tapestry during its lifetime. On the other hand there are those who are quite happy just to sit back and play a game of wait and see. What is most interesting about these 3 basic groups (of which there are many subsections) is to look at why people are in the groups they are in.

Myself for instance I have been brought up a Catholic, educated at a Catholic school and taught by the Catholic teachers, I studied the bible at the age of 18 with a priest at a local church and I had many of my questions answered. However when the literature I read showed me how easy it was for man to have a predilection for religion of some sort I began to question my beliefs and I found that they rested on very little. This has left me at my current state of agnostic indifference, I am tending towards atheism but that will inevitably require more reading

So to summarise I think the important question to ask is not which group you are in but why you fall into that group, when you can fully understand that position you are ready to expand you knowledge and become either more entrenched in your current faiths or to change where you stand and approach a new group with a new set of horizons.

Do not be afraid to question, do not put your faith in anything you do not feel comfortable picking at for fear it will crumble away. It is better to be a strange new group than to be left in a comfortable one for fear of peeling back the gold leaf and seeing the woodworm beneath.



Mel

hi Mel,

I agree with you that scriptures have very little to do with god(s) - at best they are an attempt to define them in human terms.

But I disagree that any god would or could be supernatural. Anything that happens within our universe has to be a natural thing existing within that universe.

If something were truly supernatural then we would have no concept of it whatsoever. imho.

Like you, I was brought up Catholic, in fact RC. I'm always very happy for a lovely French Canadian priest who taught us 'the stories' during catechism class *as* stories. Full of drama - he would have us act out the parts.

I think it is the predilection for religion that has often confounded me. But this ended up being a good thing as it led me to read myths and particularly the writings of an amazing mythologist called Joseph Campbell. Reading his books is like taking a first rate class in comparative religion - he does it very well.

My current state is 'part-time pantheist'. Meaning that I can actually see that all gods exist but I don't necessarily agree about how they are perceived. Part-time is because I don't actually worry about this on a daily basis.

My take is that all religions came about as an attempt to explain the mystery of life and all that. The 'higher being' concept is something I don't get. Though most probably because humans tend to look for someone to lead them.

Meanwhile, many people have gods who are their equals and they have a daily relationship with them. Nothing supernatural going on there.

az

There is only one God which is the omnipotent.As I wrote in a book that I am working on, an animist friend once asked me :why do you always pray? I answered I had to worship God, he asked me who is God? There is no God,everything happens as it should be because we can see let say baba as a man but who have ever seen a god? My answer is There are certain level of the spiritual aspect that man cannot understand.We do not see the air but we know there is air, so by simply not seeing the air does not mean air should not have a name.Coming to the description God, gods, etc.What you have to know is the so called gods which are nothing than physical images creayed by somebody with belief that that thing can be worshipped is just a flimsy notion.In my curiosity of finding out how those who said they have gods to worship, I visited some shirines in some places in africa.each of them before starting thei so called incitation says God the almighty we ask you throught this gods that you gave us the power to creat so that you come to us through it to do so and so for me today.They know there is a mighty God as Jesus said in the Bible :Your God is one and the Prophet of Islam Muhammed (SAW) said "Allah is one"
Therefore the two truthful religion it is known that there is only one God (spelt with a capital G).All other gods are just images created tolead man to destruction.

baba, you talk about sacred places.

If the world was created by an all powerful bigG why are some places more special than others

Why did the bigG need to create all ythe other stars and worlds when the bigG could have created a self contained little world for us to play out our meaningles and bigG created little interactions?

Moreover where exactly do you get your infalible information about the way the unoverse works?

one love

"We do not see the air but we know there is air, so by simply not seeing the air does not mean air should not have a name"

Air has physical quantities that can be measured, we may not be able to 'see' it as such but we can say for definite that it is there becasue we can measure it. If you fill a balloon full of air it is very obvious that air exists, if you suck the air out of a box you can do scientific tests to prove that the air has gone. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, however most things that we can't see with the naked eye can either be measured or seen on a microscopic level. Gods do not fulfil this criteria, therefore we are not looking at omnipresent physical entities. This leaves 3 options, non-omnipresent, non-physical or non-existant.

Mel

If you cool air enough you can see its different constituent gases turn into liquids.

In my experience religious experience generally falls on a spectrum between the dogmatic and the "mystic", and there is a much greater difference between these in any given religion than there is between religions.

For the dogmatist strict adherence to the dogma and the ritual is the means of achieving "salvation" in another time/place. For the mystic the ritual achieves a certain frame of mind - "salvation" in the present ("In that moment I felt I had eternal life. I did not by any means believe I would live forever; but that I had eternal life *now*").

This difference is reflected in the metaphysical conceptions that accompany them. For the dogmatist the creator is usually separate from the creation. For the mystic there is a "unity" of the two - whether this takes the form of "I am that I am" (or that is that is), the weird, the ground of all being, or even (in physics) the abstract universal constant (energy). The question of what that consists of is found on reflection to be not merely unanswerable, but not a *real* question at all.

Noggin

hey
it COULD become the holy bible if you shoot the book...

Ford Prefect

i dont mind religion but i do minnd the people who bug others to join the 'supirior' religion. or the people who get all offended when they hear a "missusage" of gods name...

i showed my friend the h2g2 television show and right when we got to the part where man proves the nonexistance of god she stormed outta the room! now as i said before i dont mind religion but thats just too much.
Dont they have an understanding for other 'religions'? (or lack there of?)
And the all mighty creator might be you! some therories point to the eye of the beholder. everything the beholder doesnt see ceases to exist. thats more physics though...
Cheers
ford

has anyone here ever see h2g2tv shows?
if so have you noticed slartibartfast looks like a typical 'god'?
it maybe just because he is old, or because he hasnt shaved in years, but he looks like a god-like character to me
cheers
ford

he did create worlds
can't get much more god-like than that

I KNOW! He creates worlds, and he looks like the traditional godlike character, whats it mean?
cheers
ford

wanna set up a Slartibartfast cult?

SURE! why not?

cheers

ford