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

Peace be with you all
Is there anybody interested to have a serious debate on this topic.

With the today becoming more out of balance environmentally and politically,
I ask "Can mankind solve their predicament without Divine guidance?"

Ok, I'll bite.

Yes. And they will have to work out how to live co-operatively amongst themselves without resorting to a higher power. But I think an examination of conflicts throught the past couple of millenia shows a move away from fighting over who's got the best imaginary friend (The Crusades, f'rinstance) and more about who's got the best ideology (Cold War). A cynic might argue that today's conflicts are about who's got the most oil

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*Sigh*

You know, this time I'm not even going to bother.

So seriously now, you read a thread about how people are sick and tired of the god-botherers baiting the militant Dawkinists, and then the first thing you do is start a nothing thread like this?

You ALREADY KNOW what the responses will be around here. I'm sure someone's definition of insanity was "the act of repeating the same act and expecting a different outcome."

Well here's your outcome. You'll get 12 pages - initially reasonable thought out replies saying God isn't necessary for peace, which will deteriorate into the same faces having the same "Darwin was a plank" "No! Jesus was a plank!" arguments.

I think a big step forward could be if there could be a collective realisation that there is so little that divides humans from each other. What differences do exist are trivial and should be rightly regarded as such. I don't think anyone can seriously look at what we know now about our evolutionary past and the diversity of our populations and then conclude otherwise.

I suggest the sticking points will be inertia and irrationality. Inertia becuase, racism and discrimination is memetic it will take some time to eradicate it as a cultural force. But I think the knowledge of who and what we are beats prejudice. At least that's my hope. Irrationality becasue (and I don't mean to launch this into another religious debate) But some thing will be seen as important be they cultural, or political or yes, religious, too important to compromise and it will become intractable, not amenable to reason or persuasion, and then war will continue. I suggest if Israel/ Palestine were a territorial dispute this could have been settled decades ago. but there is more bound up in it and so it perpetuates and prolongs itself.

I think the pressures of the future are already visible, water and energy to name two, population is another and we can't discount fundamentalism just yet. Quiet how the world we will react I don't know.

But my suggestion is we are living with two big neuroses, each rather characteristic of the century just gone and the century to come. Namely, the problems of race and the problem of irrationality. I think if we conquer both of those, peace is at minimum more likely.

Now can we do it without a god? Absolutely.

Just this morning we've got:
A Jewish state bombing the out of a Muslim statelet.
Hindu and Muslim states still eyeing each other nervously after a recent terrorist atrocity.
A predominately Buddhist state murdering respected journalists to justify their war against predominately Hindu separatists.
A Buddhist state using torture against its own Muslim citizens.
Fundamentalist Muslims blowing themselves up to attack Protestants.
Muslims fighting Catholics in one the most durable and least reported insurgencies of recent times.
Muslims and Christians hacking each other to pieces.

Yeah, that God fella is a real help to securing world peace

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Okay, I'm gonna bite.

Religion is not evil. Humans are. End of story. God has nothing to do with it, He/She/It is merely the excuse.

Mr D, isn't the reverse of that also true? If humanity managed to achieve world peace, God wouldn't be the reason, merely the inspiration?

God couldn't bring about world peace, if it's forced upon us then we don't have free will. God has shown itself remarkably unwilling to interfere with our free will, why would it change? If humans manage to develop sufficiently to stop killing each other, then *we* did it with our free will. God might have been the inspiration, but we made the choices and to my mind that's the hard part.

Well I don't know about peace on Earth, but it looks like we've gotten a peaceful resolution in Northern Ireland, so maybe there's hope for other places too.

It's probably best if I avoid discussing the God part, I'll only wind people (and myself up).

hmm

i will see which route this conversation takes before throwing my hat into the ring.

mini

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Very, very true... God(s) may or may not exist, I am one of those people who is perfectly prepared to accept the notion of a higher power but doesn't try to live my life according to what some bloke 2,000 years ago claimed His/Her/Its thoughts to be. I am quite happy for people to beleive in Gods, Angels, Demons and Flying Spaghetti Monsters and will not insult anyone who does by using terms like 'imaginary friend'. But regardless of whether or not there is a God, right here and right now the only beings that can change things are the human sort.

Anyone here ever heard of an Ice Age?

So lets notget seduced by the idea of an environmental balance because the environment and thus the life forms that inhabit it are never in balance. They may appear to be in terms of our limited lifespans but the history of the world does not give any cause to use the word "balance".

Likewise I cant see how people can be sure that we are in a time of increasing armed strife. What is certain is that we have a more effective method of gathering information from across he globe, more people with access to this information, greater access to the flourishing and divergent ways of maiming and killing each other and crucially more of us to kill and maim.

Now I have no idea if people were more loving in times gone by or if they were more violent in intent than us but just couldnt send a missile further than a man could walk in a day in the time it takes me to write this post.

Today we have offensive weapons derived from technology unavailable in the past that can kill more people than I could comfortably get to know in a life time. Had these weapons been at the disposal of Ghengis Khan would he have used them? Would he have killed more people if the population at the time been more dense in the areas where he was doing his killing? Would we consider his times more violent if we had more information recorded about it?

All things that are ponderable for hours without being able to provide definite answers, in my oppinion yet Warner seems to be very sure that today we are in a state of increasing environmental unbalance and suffering from more and worsening wars.

Warner I say stick to your little religious books because your blinkered take on reality aint worth the shit on my shoe.

one love

blicky badger
Thankyou for your contribution to this debate, but can I please ask you to be
'more civil' in future posts (if any), as I was really looking for a serious
debate, which is threatened by abhorrent language. Thankyou.

>>US President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority
after he comes to office on Tuesday and is expected to approve the doubling of US troops
in the country from the 30,000 at present.<<

Is this not growing enmity in the world?

No. It's effective military strategy.

It's removing the last vestiges of one of the most brutal, backwards and repressive regimes this world has ever seen.

Good riddance, I say.

Peace on Earth will nor come about through divine revelation - it will come about either through extermination of the dominant species, or in the face of that threat.

No, its abbundantly clear Warner that what you were doing was not looking for a debate. You were simply spreading your idiotic take on the world around more of H2.

Which is something you are completely at liberty to do, good luck to ya.

But if you are expecting other people not to point out where your religiously retarded understanding of reality was undermining the points you were trying to assert then you are out of luck.


Do you even know what peace is?

Peaceis a religious concept that has about as much place in resonable debate as an Escher drawing has in a an architects blue prints. It is a nonesense, a lovely, sweet idea that unfortunately is a kin to having you cake and eating it.

Even plants compete. Sure they may have no cenbtral nervous system let alone a brain capablef registering attack or fretting about the possibility of attack none the less they compete with each other for resources.

Peace is not mearely the absence of war but it is also freedom from the threat of attack and not worrying about abuse from other beings. Take a look at nature it is "red in tooth and claw". Peace like virgin births, rising from the dead, Shangrila, Brigadoon and Mermaids is the stuff of fairy tales.

Enmity does not grow it comes in peaks and troughs at the moment we are experiencing in the west something of a peak in awareness of enmity. This perception of a peak is due to better news gathering/broadcasting technology, our involvementin some of those wars and a preocuppation of Governments and the media with highly emotive issues. When millions were dying in far of places and before cheap satellite links we knew and cared little about far flung wars.

I and other people should care as much for the preditions your flawed little books as they should for the prophecies of David Icke or Nostradamus.

one love

That's a good point about competition in nature. But is it not possible that humans, being of higher intellect, can eventually negotiate mutually acceptable conditions where there is no strife? Or are we so innately greedy and competitive that this is impossible?
I'm certainly of the mind that if peace is attainable it would be despite religion rather than as a result of it.

Ooh that's a tough one!

Id like to say yes we can unleran what is our nature, but socially changes are very slow coming. Moreover our nature is what got us here and while we might be convinced it is slowing us down in getting us to where we want to be it doesnt mean we dont need our competitive nature to keep us at the level we have acheived.

Then there are things we as rational adults have no control over, children, even heard of sibling rivalry. Try explaining to a child that they dont need to hog all the toys. Some of us can control our natures better as we get older but a lot of us dont seem to even get near to control...what then?

On one hand I think...after the first war might not people have thought, hey the loss of life and the ongoing resentment between our tribes just aint worth it, but the reality appears to have been we won great/we lost we wil have revenge. In our personal infancy or sociological infancy we have had experiences we are still trying to get over and mak sense of it seems.

Religion offers simplistic answers and so do Harry Potter books, but both rely on a source of magical power we seem to have difficulty accessing and working, that's if they even exist.

Consider the X-factor while for many it is revolting, offers a dream lifestyle that isnt all its cracked up to be, mocks and derides people, encourages bullying and seduces many into an attitude of waiting for their "big break" instead of working to be what they want, it is still insanely popular.

This is simply because it is profitable for some and these people use a portion of those profits to propogate their way of getting what they want more effectively to the masses.

War is profitable, offers glory and is promoted as something positive by those with a vested intrest in *other* people running round killing each other. Living humbly within your means and sharing isnt consistently promoted by many people or groups that well.

one love