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

Got to bed just before 3am. Hardly slept at all; then at about 7am some people started talking loudly outside my window in Afrikaans. I managed to get an hour or so's kip, then at 8.30 the doorbell went and Grieta arrived.

However it's one of my golden days, 31 degrees already at 8.30, so I'm already showered - don't want to miss any of it! My tea is ready in the kitchen so if I slurp that it might wake me up.

No, it's of course not 31 degrees so early in the morning - I don't think even in Upington it gets so hot so early - Grieta said when she arrived that it was 31, and in my sleepy state I took that to mean it was already 31, but I just asked her and she said that's what they said it was going to be, on the radio.

Still, it is still a golden day out. However I don't feel much like going out... I may try to get a bit more kip, once Grieta's gone.

Slept for an hour. Now I'm out to get some veggies for a chicken stir-fry. I will walk to Die Boord, I think - it's a nice walk.

It's the hottest day of the summer so far. It must be about 36-7 out there - boiling! I had a lovely walk to Die Boord where I got some vegetable stir-fry for my tea. Well, it's so nice I don't want to miss out by staying indoors - but I don't want to go to town particularly, and I've been to Die Boord - I can't think of anywhere I particularly want to go. Perhaps I'll just sit outside in my shady yard and carry on with The God Delusion.

Why oh why do some people use the word "Ivrit" to denote Modern Hebrew? Surely we have an English word - "Hebrew". It really gets up my nose. To me it smacks of nationalism. It's similar, but not the same, as people calling Xhosa "isiXhosa" and so on when they're speaking English. I don't detect nationalism there, just PC. Nonsense! The Xhosas, when they're speaking Xhosa, don't say "yintoni le ngeEnglish" (what is that in English) - they say "yintoni le ngesiNgesi". So why should English speakers use the Xhosa form for "Xhosa" when they're speaking English? We don't say "an umXhosa" for "a Xhosa". It makes me mad, and I hope I'll never say it (in the same way as I hope I will never use the word "Godself"). Rant over.

should read ngaEnglish, but the form is hypothetical anyway.

Dawkins' book is making me think. A question that I want to answer is what is the relationship between reason and faith. Luther said, apparently, that reason was the enemy of faith; Ratzinger says no, reason is part and parcel of faith. I can see both sides, and have wavered between them in postings in Mustardland.

However Dawkins is appalled at some of the stories in the Old Testament, and what I would like to hear from the religious professionals is a rational account of them, to answer his objections. If reason is indeed part of the wider revelation of God, as the Pope (but not Luther) says, then this ought to be possible.

"...if his epistles can be seen as John on pot, then Revelation if John on acid"



That's actually very funny, IMO.

The last section of The God Delusion is the best. It is interesting to seee that atheist scientists like Dawkins are coming to agree with the revelation in Ecclesiastes that "hakkol havel" - everything is a breath.

It really is a most beautiful evening... used to have evenings like this every evening, back in Upington. This summer hasn't been particularly great. But it's gorgeous tonight. I'm downloading an interview with Dawkins re God Delusion - I may go out for a wander before listening to it. It's too nice an evening to waste it sitting indoors.

Kath & Kim (first 2 series) arrived yesterday. Still haven't got around to watching it.

He does say that it is very unlikely that God exists, because if you wanted to posit a designer of something as unlikely as an eye, that designer would have to be even more unlikely than the eye is.

And he says, Therefore it is very unlikely that there is a God... and really, to all intents and purposes, proceeds as if there is actually no God - encouraging people to spread the atheist gospel of "light and hope" on this basis.

But wait a minute - is he conceding the point that an eye is unlikely? Yet the eye exists - so logically, there wouldn't be anything to prevent an even more improbable God from existing, either.

But he argues that you can't draw any conclusions from the unlikely phenomenon of a finished eye. He explains the seeming improbability of a designerless eye by recourse to natural selection. He says that natural selection proceeds by incremental steps, by which you slowly climb Mount Improbable.

What about a very improbable God?

He dismisses God, because it's very, very unlikely that God should exist.

But an eye exists - even though it's very unlikely that an eye would exist, if you look at the finished product without understanding the incremental process of natural selection. Dawkins dismisses the creationist's jump from "very unlikely" to "designer", by recourse to natural selection.

But in the eyes of Dawkins, it's very unlikely that God exists - only he uses that unexamined idea of an unlikely God to conclude that therefore God in all probability doesn't exist. That seems to me to be as much of a jump, as the creationist who uses the unlikelihood of an eye, to infer a designer.

Dawkins doesn't admit of the possibility that there is an accounting for the unlikelihood of God, which does the same work as the theory of natural selection in accounting for the unlikelihood of an eye. Dawkins rests his whole case on natural selection, but he won't allow the possibility of there being a similarly powerful theory to explain how the existence of a very improbable God could in fact be understood and explained in another way.

Now it's true, theologians haven't found such a theory yet. (And they probably won't, because the whole basis of Dawkins' argument is entirely untheological.) But neither have physicists - natural selection won't work for them - but Dawkins allows for the possibility that one day, a Darwin of physics will come along and explain it all for us. He lets physicists off the hook in the meantime. But he won't do the same for theologians; he won't allow for the possibility that a Darwin of theology will come along and explain the improbability of God, in such a way as to contradict his reasoning in chapter 4 of his book.

So I think Dawkins is making the same sort of jump as the creationists, only with impunity, because there isn't the theological equivalent of natural selection to appeal to, to explain the phenomenon of a seemingly improbable God.

I may have made one or more logical mistakes - logic isn't my strong point - but on the basis of the above, I think Dawkins is biased.

Surely he would only have said this as a counter to the same argument being used by creationists/IDers that something "so complex as an eye couldn't have evolved".

I have not read this book, Dagesh.. and I haven't read all you have written (too tired) but from the bits I have read I conclude that you have a very long way to go before you're able to unblinker your eyes. And oh.. you still come across as really rather arrogant, to my eyes. But I guess you'd say the same of me.


Hope you are well... and HNY to you.

jont {;¬· >···{

Guilty as charged. But read the book and see if you agree with my point.