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

Thanks for the references Xanatic. I am not sure where my bibles are at the moment (most of my books are in cardboard boxes just now), but I shall certainly look them up. Any-one know of any on-line bibles?

agcB

Jesus flames the Pharisees! Thank you very much for the references, Xanatic.

Here is the passage from Matthew. It is virtually the same as the one in Mark, but a little easier to read.

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat."

He answered them, "And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.' But you say, 'If any one tells his father or his mother, What you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father.' So, for the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God.

You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'" And he called the people to him and said to them, "Hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."

My main comment is that he is not saying "Children who speak evil..." etc. The context seems to be adults dissing their parents, not children playing up. I am sure that it has been quoted to lots of small children over the centuries, though.

So Xanatic, I hear what you are saying, but disagree that Jesus advocated executing children. Adults? Well at best he is neutral in this passage, and at most he does seem to support it.

Thanks again for substantiating your remark.

Having had the chance to read through the postings, I have a few comments to make.

Duncan - I am not seeking to disprove Christianity. I am just curious to know why it does work for other people. If you'd like a response to your comments on Buddhism (note I said "response": I don't claim to have answers, *wry smile*) then pop me an email at [email protected].

Xanatic - You say: "When your body dies your mind doesn´t fly off into heaven. Your mind is electricity and when your body stops producing that, like when a switch is flicked, your mind isn´t being produced anymore." Well, I am not so sure that the mind doesn't fly off. I can only go by personal experience here, and some well documented cases of "near death experiences". In the NDEs, it is well documented that people's sence of perception can leave their body, and their point of view is above the place where they are. They look down, usually on doctors and nurses working hard to revive them, and they have the choice of staying or going. Obviously in the documented ones, they chose to stay. Now I have not had a NDE, and don't intend to try; but I was there when my father died. He died after a year-long illness, and after several weeks of touch and go. He actually thought he had died that morning, but was woken up by the nurse. He told my brother about this on the phone that day and said "So I shall just have to do it this evening". The nub of the experience for me was that when he died, (stopped breathing, heart stopped, etc) there was no sense of him leaving the room. In fact for a few days afterwards I had a fairly strong sense of his presence. The way it felt at the time, was that he was going away from us for a year before and several weeks after he died, and the moment of death was just one step on that journey, and not necesarily the biggest step. Now this is NOT proof of anything. This is personal SUBJECTIVE experience. But nothing can invalidate it IN THAT CONTEXT. And you can understand that I would rather not be flamed on that one.

Silly Willy - Interesting stuff about deja vu. You say "a memory is stored across the left and right hand side of the brains. The synapses fire slightly after each other which gives the person a feeling of experiencing something before." It would also explain why I sometimes have the sensation of jumping before I hear the noise. I'll buy that.

Zis Guy - right on topic - you say that for you it answers questions of why we are here, and why we should be nice to each other. Thank you. If you'd be kind enough to email me, I'd like to ask you some other things about redemption, if I may.

Xanatic, Zis Guy - Take a look at the books by Dawkins, specifially "The Selfish Gene" for thought-provoking and compelling arguments about altruism's place in Darwinianism. I confess to avoiding his "Unweaving the Rainbow" for fear of what it might do to me. I know that I cannot avoid it forever though.

Finally, thanks to the individuals who have posted to me privately. I appreciate the honesty and openness of your answers.

The point Jesus was making here is that slavish devotion to rules, such as the kosher laws, was less important than acting and speaking honourably. He was pointing out that the Pharisees (high priests, you will recall) were explicitly disavowing the requirement to honour one's parents in certain circumstances - I think they were permitting people to give money to the temple instead of their parents, thus leaving their parents in penury; in old-fashioned Jewish terms this would have been seen as unacceptable It was, of course, an example of the Pharisees' money-grubbing.

Jesus was saying (in keeping with his teaching that honouring god and loving your neighbour are the two most important Commandments) that honouring your parents is always a requirement, and that you should therefore give first to those in need rather than to furnish the temples with rich trappings. So I understood it, anyway.

The image of Christ as a child-hater is usually taken from a misunderstanding of the phrase "suffer the little children" - or "suffer the little children to come unto me" in full, which is of course taking the verb to suffer in the archaic sense of to permit. The scribes had sought, as I recall, to prevent the children from hearing Christ's teaching.

A Girl Called Ben: After you mentioned it I went out and bought that Richard Dawkins book. I was quite disappointed I must admit. Since he is known as Mr Evolution I had expected something quite brilliant. It was quite average, and I knew most of it already. Instead I would suggest Dark Nature by Lyall Watson, that s a brilliant book. Evil in a scientific perspective.

Regarding Dawkins, there is only so much that any book solely on tha subject of evolution *can* say to someone who knows the general theory, given that the theory itself is basically very simple.

Having said that, one book I'd really recommend to anyone with an interest in evolution and some knowledge of geology is Stephen Drury's 'Stepping Stones', which covers the intimate connection between the eveolution of life and the development of the Earth itself. (Anyone who enjoyed the TV series 'Earth Story' really should buy this book)

Concerning Christianity, and religions in general, I'd be really interested to hear the thoughts of someone who became religious (or converted from one religion to another) as an adult, particularly regarding why they came to choose one religion above all the others.
Has anyone decided on their own to become a believer, and then looked around to find the right religion for them?

Being an atheist, it's not easy for me to imagine the kind of thought process someone goes through. The nearest analogy I can think of is that it's something like falling in love - you don't logically decide to fall in love, or who to fall in love with, but if you're in a susceptible state of mind, you can fall for any person who's not obviously wrong, and subsequently, you can be honestly convinced that they are the only person who's right for you.

Hi Ben,
Why are you getting these men so worked up? You and I both know that religion is a very personal, even selfish feeling we all have about ourselves. At least that is what your stated interest in karma and re-incarnation and the Buddah tells me. He taught us to know ourselves. This is what women do naturally.
Christianity's big idea was to deny ourselves and love others. Men have trouble with that even if it is to save their own souls. You will get very little sense out of any of them.
GW

A man-hater, how nice. Actually I was hoping the Dawkins book could teach me some stuff, cos I m not a big fan of Evolution. I believe in it, but not overwhelmingly. I find it hasn t made enough predictions, and I don t like it s ideas on psychology.

wow, this sounds like a very deep, intellectual conversation that i'd like to join. after all, i've some VERY inflammatory views on christianity.

should i elaborate? who was it that wanted to know why christianity doesn't work for some people? he or she might like to hear my story...

Potholer: About changing/choosing religion I ve just started to look at something called Scientific Pantheism. But I am an atheist, and this is basically just finding out there is a name for how I already feel. So I don t know if you can call it a conversion.

Hey Sea, I would be interested to hear the whole story. I started out a Christian, and started broadening my views only a few years ago. My family members are still Christians, my sister and her husband extremely fervent ones. This is causing relationship problems that I wish it didn't. I have to respect Christians, because I know these people, they are great people, I know their reasons, too, and well, I cannot see how THEY could have made any other choice, but as for me, I have to listen to my own reason and conscience, not those of others.

wellll... since you asked.

i was born of two ardent Catholic parents. (i just heard several people groan. yes, they're the reason i harbor an unnatural dislike of Catholics) i was raised as a catholic, ie. church every sunday, celebrate the sacraments, all that good stuff. i even went to a catholic elementary school.

which was fine until i turned 11 or 12 and started having opinions.

i always believed in reincarnation, which is NOT what the Church teaches. they teach the philosophy of heaven, which is nice but- IMHO- wholly unrealistic. heaven always sounded boring to me. and besides, what's the point of living here if we're all going to go to heaven and be happy?

i also always believed in magic. parlor tricks as well as witchcraft. movies, books, TV shows, you name it; if it had witches or magickal people in it, i loved it. by the way, witchcraft and magick are VERY big no-nos for catholics.

so here i was, thinking that dissatisfaction with the teachings of the church was normal. i thought that until 9th grade, when i overheard some girls in my gym class talking about how they had cast a spell to heal a tree. they called it Wicca.

i was fascinated. i went home and used that incredible portal to the world of information (the internet) to learn more about wicca. the second i read about what wiccans believe, i knew that i was, and always had been, wiccan.

suddenly my life made sense. i became more outgoing and happy. i've changed immensely since i discovered wicca. i've never regretted it once. it's given me a reason to live. before i found wicca, i was mildly suicidal, but i haven't even CONSIDERED suicide since i looked up that web page.

the part about dislike of catholics comes from when i decided to tell my parents.

all this time when i had been practicing wicca in secret, my parents were forcing me to go to church. church has been (and always will be) the most boring place a person can go. so one day i told them.

they freaked out. they threatened to go tell a priest, and have him exorcise the devil out of me. *rolls eyes* so i haven't really pressed the issue.

but anyway, long story short, i've been openly wiccan for two years now, and i've been practicing for three years. wicca is my sanity, my salvation. i was in a terrible depression today because of this situation i've been dealing with at school, and i prayed to the goddess and cast a spell to help the situation. just the act of casting the spell brought me out of my depression instantly, because it made me feel like i had power over my life again. if nothing else, that's what wicca does for me. it gives me power over my life.

sorry to anyone i might have offended, but that's my story and i'm sticking to it.

To answer Duncan's points on reincarnation...

- not all animals are conscious. 250-year old bacteria being an example...
- who says one individual traverses the entire range of species?
- who says that all individual animals have a Buddhist mind? Does a cow have the Buddha nature? Mu!
- Is the number of animals growing? The number of humans is growing, sure, but it's not clear to me that the same is true for animals in general.
- Don't forget about other planets than Earth. Don't forget about other 'planes of existance' and suchlike. Numbers on earth can happilly do what they want, really.
- What scientists don't know about the brain would fill up several warehouses worth of CDs. The information is transferred somehow - quantum effects being the normal speculation.

Specific religions conflict with science - but to my mind this is a fault of those specific religions. Most mainstream religions don't have such a problem.

To answer Duncan's points on reincarnation...

- not all animals are conscious. 250-year old bacteria being an example...
- who says one individual traverses the entire range of species?
- who says that all individual animals have a Buddhist mind? Does a cow have the Buddha nature? Mu!
- Is the number of animals growing? The number of humans is growing, sure, but it's not clear to me that the same is true for animals in general.
- Don't forget about other planets than Earth. Don't forget about other 'planes of existance' and suchlike. Numbers on earth can happilly do what they want, really.
- What scientists don't know about the brain would fill up several warehouses worth of CDs. The information is transferred somehow - quantum effects being the normal speculation.

Specific religions conflict with science - but to my mind this is a fault of those specific religions. Most mainstream religions don't have such a problem.

Yep, widespread altruism is a problem for evolution, because it seemingly isn't great for your chances of success. Various explanations have been put forward for it...

- it's beneficial to me. EG, I help someone and so they might help me later, or others might see me as a helpful person.

- it's a mistake. Evolution doesn't stop me double-posting(), and it doesn't stop me deciding to throw my life away. Mistakes happen.

- it's beneficial to my relatives. Because my relatives share genes with me, if I benefit them, they will suceed more, so my genes get passed on.

- it's a 'meme'. The brain is designed to store, act on, and pass on ideas, and evolution can't perfectly distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas. Altruism is such an idea, which happens to be good at getting passed on, but not wonderful for the individual doing the passing.

- it doesn't exist. I've never seen anyone sacrifice their lives for the greater good, have you?

- it's a combination of the above.

I'll expand on any of those that people want. Note that I don't necessarilly hold all of these beliefs myself...

(regarding my last post, ie. the one above that is pending moderation)

wow, okay, i hadn't realized that my post could be interpreted as offensive!!!

how is telling my life story offensive? because i mentioned thinking of suicide? hmm... well, all i have to say is that i shall be extremely irate if someone tells me that i can't describe my religious awakening because it's offensive. that's discrimination. if i was saying how i discovered God and became a christian... i doubt if my post would have been looked at twice.

perhaps i'm jumping the gun, here, and maybe my post will be returned, but still...

someone PLEASE tell me what was offensive? is h2g2 becoming anti-wicca?

This s***s HUGELY!!! I wanted to read that! Man, I hope they return that post! People's lives, talking about things that happened to them, things they did - how can that be offensive? Speaking of myself, sure I have done lots of things that when told might and probably will offend almost everybody. But those things really happened, I really did them, and if I just tell the truth about them, how can that be wrong? Are they censoring reality now? And people's lives? Or even people themselves? Please dearest moderators, I am sure you are reading this, please, return that posting!

It's not been censored - just the squack who read it was unsure how to proceed, so they referred it to Peta/Abi. Just wait till Monday, and I'm sure it'll be reinstated...

The moderators are still learning their trade - so there are going to be a few hiccups as they get to grips with what this site does and doesn't allow. 'Blasphemy' is sadly illegal in the UK, so I can understand there being caution...

Again with the moderation! Oy vey!

The really amusing thing is that my post above which has been temporarily removed included a positive comment on the temporary removal of sea's post...

In fact, that was all I could think of that was in it - but I guess there must have been something else... Ahh well, we'll find out soon enough...