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

Ummm... I didn't really have anything to say right now... But the other forum was getting a bit too long fractured to follow, and someone (we won't mention any names, will we, billypilgrim? ) nominated me to lead this thing off.

One thing I would like to say is that Twophlag's cleverly constructed summary of Christian idiotology from the previous forum is something that should be shared with others... perhaps he might be convinced to expand on it a bit, and make it a user page? "The Christianity Conundrum"? It would be an excellent addition to the FFFF library. What say you, TG?

Bp, I can't tell you about the New Testament, but 'hell (sheol)' and 'Satan' are mentioned in passing throughout the bible, plus especially in the book of Job. But the way they're mentioned seems like more of a reference to prominent concepts in the general religion of the day than specific theological entities within Judaism. And when the torah (at least the first four books; Deuteronomy comes into play a bit later) was written there was never a mention of rejecting the old religion, just having to focus it in on our favorite god, el/yahweh.

Being the arrogant fellow that I am, GB, I always sort of considered that sort of thing to be in the purvue of the intuitively obvious, and never much felt the need to set it down in writing except when going after fanatics I suppose I could do something comedic for the FFFF, or if you wanted to borrow the material and give it a shot, go ahead; I don't consider the the intuitively obvious to be my intellectual property It seems to me that anyone who gives the subject an ounce of thought must realize how ghastly ludicrous the whole concept of Christ-worship is; which brings us back to the whole 'people are morons' thing again.

Ioreth, the mention of Satan in the book of Job was added to the original text about 300-500 years after the fact, probably because some folklorist who had been getting into zoroastrianism decided it was worth setting up the jewish theodicy to be more in line with greek theatre, eg a prologue and epilogue where the gods are depicted playing chess with mortal souls. It is an irony that it does nothing but confound an already confused message that humans are insignificant insects who don't have the capacity or right to question the will of their creator. Sheol was a valley, literally, which the shades of the dead were supposed to haunt. Again, the concept of 'hell' or 'hades' was rather easily adopted when cultures began to collide a bit later on.

Sheol was a metaphorical valley... Gehennah is actually a literal valley, outside Jerusalem. I've been there. I've also been to Armaggeddon.

Why is armageddon called armageddon, and how did it come to be a term of mass destruction if it's just a placename? Or is this just the same as the "Hell" in Norway (etc)?

Armaggedon comes from the hebrew har megiddo. It's a hill in north central Israel, which Jesus decided (for some reason) would be the central location of the great war, end of days, etc. There's a nice view from the top, and there's a stream, and the ruins of some crusader fortress (I think - it might be older, I don't remember), but the only thing that really sticks out in my mind is the cafeteria and gift shop. Cleanest bathrooms in Israel.

Side note: found you something, GB, and possibly the rest of y'all. [Broken link removed by Moderator]

On a continuation of the way that Christianity/Judaism gives an explanation for the rainbow, I note it also gives one for the various languages of the world - tower of Bable. So - miles away from the primitive explanations of what man couldn't understand we find in the pantheon of Zeus, then...

heehee, you saw that one did you? I've been a regular on that page for a while, I find some of her more lucid arguments quite entertaining. For the record I always thought Sheol was a literal 'place' and that Gehenna was the fictitious one. Thanks for straightening it out; obviously been out of school for too long

I think, actually that there's a big difference between the "why we can't understand god" story and the "why we can't understand each other." The first person variant of which, of course, is the "why we can't understand ourselves."

Or am I just talking out of my ass?

That is a totally cool site! I think I'm in love...

TG: It is bleedingly obvious, at least to those of us here, but some people can't see the obvious. I'd prefer it if you handled it yourself, since your style would be, at best, difficult for me to imitate, and it is more of HOW you said it than what you're saying. Still, if you're not interested, I suppose I could cut and paste, throw in some code, and put it up.

Mis Bitch is one of my favorite sites. I saw the original link on TG's page; spent tons of time reading her stuff. lol.

What am I doing here?

-jb

*realizes that it's Babel, not Bable*...

Hmm - maybe I misread the Babel story - didn't God deliberately put a different language on each level of the tower to prevent it's completion? So it's an explanation of why we can't understand each other, not why we can't understand God...

I may not be able to understand myself, but at least I can have a decent conversation with myself...

The story goes like this...

Mankind was undertaking a project to demonstrate their greatness, a tower so high that it reached the heavens. God saw this, and was fearful, so he cast a confusion on them, seperating their language, so they could no longer understand each other. The people split up and went their seperate ways, each with the small amount of people they could still understand. This is how the Jews and their offshoots explain the variety of languages on the planet.

Of course, anyone with even a passing amount of historical knowledge knows that languages evolved naturally over the course of millenia, mixing and branching depending on the impulses of the civilizations in question. Just another form of biblical idiocy... of course, I don't hold the Bible accountable... just the idiots who believe every word.

Found out how to do it. Posted on Current Business forum.

Re to Caledonians comments -> does this mean we can get the Gideon Society sued for slander?

Sadly, no. (Although it would be interesting to try!)

I just wanted to point out that the Bible is written from the perspective of the Israelites, and that it therefore can't be considered to be an objective viewpoint. The Babylonians, Egyptians, etc., were actually better than the Bible makes them sound. (The Egyptians still weren't very nice, of course... but the Babylonians were incredibly open-minded for the times.)

Of course, this also weakens the claims that the Bible is the inspired Word Of God; would God really be that prejudiced and biased?

[answers own question: I certainly hope not!]

[bows respectfully]

--Caledonian

If there is a God, I'll bet he's having a bloody good laugh at us all.

Every culture has its own mythology. The tower of babel story was meant to explain why we have different languages, just like the story of Arachne is meant to explain where spiders come from and the story of Bad Sickness and Old Man explains why chipmunks have stripes and fawns have spots, and...

As long as we don't get our mythology confused with reality, that's fine... but when we do, it creates big problems.

People always say that children can't distinguish fantasy from reality, but I think that adults are worse...

[sigh]

-Caledonian

Actually, a far worse problem with adults is that they tend to dismiss as fantastic anything that seems at odds with their own cherished little view of the world, whreas children, at least, seem eager to explore new ideas.

To whit: the legends of the tower of Babel do indeed have some basis in history, and probably refer to the same events as the Sumerian myths concerning Enki and his nam-shub exorcisms. The word 'babel' means 'gate of God', literally, and the tower mentioned was probably a ziggurat, not particularly tall, but 'on a level with the heavens'. I don't know how much detail it's worth going into about this right now: I can recommend reading a good book (Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson) that deals with some of this in the form of a light SF novel, or it might even be worth a Guide entry all on its own. Don't be so quick to dismiss old myths, though... most of them have some basis in meaning, if not in history. Probably the legends about Babel were brought to Jewish culture from the Babylonians during one of the periods of captivity there, much as the creation myths and flood legends that also appear in Genesis were.