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

"Help card, sometimes known as prayer" ?

Do you mean the plea from perhaps 50% of the competitors at the start of an important race, when there can only be one winner?

Or the plea for a "help card", that congregations offer up on behalf of a parishioner`s sick child, perhaps? No guarantees, of course, but if it works, then the prayers were answered, if not..well it wasn`t "meant to be"

Me, I`ll stick with random chance, sometimes known as, * the way things are*

im very sorry i seem to have upset u Lurcher, i wasnt trying to be offensive in any of my views, i was just trying to present them in a friendly way, the exchange of ideas being the point of conversations rather than presenting your opinions as the only possible answer which i certainly did not want to do. i believe in a merciful God who listens to prayers but who , being God, knows better than we do and doesnt answer them all in the way we expect. praying to win a race is perhaps rather a trivial prayer in the grand scheme of things. not everyone will agree with me on this, u perhaps dont believe in intervention like i do, but if everybody thought the same we'd get tired of talking to each other, to paraphrase the song. i apologise again if i have offended anyone..
peace and love

No offence taken at all, sorry if it came out that way.

We are all entitled to our opinions and beliefs...and in a forum like this, to state them

What if we are all soul mates?
what if we are all made up of the immense energy that is creation, call it god call it what you will.
Miracles come in small packages and we call them coincidences.
Scientists split from spirituality, but look at some quantum physicists and you'll see that science is now coming up with evidence of spirituality.
One scientist on discovering that new technology says they can now prove the big band theory by finding the point of origin
He described the Universe as "this preposterous Universe"

When quantum physicists experiment they find that a watched experiment comes out different to one left alone.

[on a deeply beside the pt and silly note i have this theory that the reason nothing happens in my life is due to the observer effect. im watching and analysing so much im screwing it up and narrating it rather than living it. mind u this is just daft idea#8338 from someone who thinks her life is being secretly filmed to show english students the meaning of irony.

ive heard of the pt of orgin thingy hasslefree, its exciting sounding isnt it? but id be lying if i said i knew what half of it was about. im more your arts and philosophy type, i only took physics at school on the understanding that i would b like "sliders" and we'd discover wormholes. that didnt happen so im doing law. blah. but i suppose given the infinite unlikelihood of planet earth or any one of us existing, anythings possible...

glad i checked here b4 turning in for the night, im quite cheered up.]

Does ugliness have to exist, just because there is beauty?

How would you define beauty if they were no ugliness?
indeed what would upness be without a down?
How would we define hot if there were no cold?

I don't understand physics either
I think that they are talking about a more powerful telescope that picks up a 'signiature' of the event horizon of the original big bang.
I suppose like finding debris.

It always amazes me that exactly what we requre in life is here already waiting to be found.
Need transport? find the metals and the fuel and every component you need, it's all just lying about the place.

It amazes me that there are exactly the same amount of atoms in the universe today as there were on the day of the big bang.

Now that's what I call re cycling !

I'm a chemist, so um I'm going to say, the overall no. of atoms isn't the same as the start of the uni but the overall energy is, E=mc2 and all that.

Can you explain 'energy' for me?

ah, but here's the rub. Who determine what is "beauty" and what is "ugly"?

As far as choosing your fate, you choose the path your fate will travel every time you do something, by choosing one path over another, you may choose infinite riches over infinite joy. In the end our fates are all the same, but how we get there is defined by the path of our everchanging immediate fate. So saying that it was fated for something to happen is to just confuse the fact that what happened is truly a manifestation of your decisions along the path.

ah, but here's the rub. Who determine what is "beauty" and what is "ugly"?

As far as choosing your fate, you choose the path your fate will travel every time you do something, by choosing one path over another, you may choose infinite riches over infinite joy. In the end our fates are all the same, but how we get there is defined by the path of our everchanging immediate fate. So saying that it was fated for something to happen is to just confuse the fact that what happened is truly a manifestation of your decisions along the path.

Beauty and ugly is in the eye of the beholder. The important thing is that there are opposites to relate one from the other.

I agree with your fate thingie. Only I think we make some decisions before we are born into the physical world. but we have free will to take another path that will take us to the same place, if we choose to. I believe that the reason we are all here , is to experience different things, and we can choose how to experience them. so if our original choice is to come into the world to experience beauty, we choose in which way we do this. If our original choice is to experience ugly, we choose how we do this when we are here. Etc

'The way things are'
As far as I can see this works really well if things are honky dory.
If life however is a little bit on the 'interesting' side and a pain , does acceptance of 'the way things are' bring contentment and enlightenment?
Is it not possible to change the way things are, if the way things are is horrible?
I talk about change on a personal level, because I fel that,that is the only real change we can make. We can't change the world, but we can change ourselves and how we are in the world can't we?

As for the prayer card, it works for some people and therefor it is true for them, if not for others.
Surely it is correct to allow people their own truths, whatever they may be ? Isn't war always about people arguing about their truths and trying to impose them on each other?

in some people's experience prayer works. therefor it has some truth for them in it.
This is a good thing or a bad thing?

It is possible to change the world

Some people may invent something that changes the way people live and perceive the world, example because of airplanes we no longer have to spend weeks or months travelling to distant places, so the world seems smaller.

Also other people are able to inspire others and bring about change, Ghandi or Lennon or any number of people, who inspired people to take to rebel or to take a chance.

So it is not fair to say that one person can not change the world.

i also think one person can change change the world, in fact, that everybody does. (i know it sounds dumb drivel but heres what i mean...)
your existence , the very fact of it, changes your parents and siblings experience of life ,(made them finanically poorer for starters prob!) your friends & family& your collegues all have learned something from you and you from them, youve explained things to people, or been theere for them or cheered them on such and such a day or given them a new persepective or found there pet rabbit cyril or whatever, every day you change peoples experience of their life by being part of it everyt ime you interact with them or choose not to do so. and of course, some poeple inspire others with a wider message or become more well known. but less well known people thru a ripple effect if u like make wider changes. u inspire the guy who inspires the girl who inspires the guy who owns the monkey who went to space, or whatever. im being daft knwo, but u perhaps understand the jist of this singularly ill thoguht out piece of reasoning...?

Is the World smaller in reality? Or are you merely as you say perceiving it to be smaller on a personal level?
Not everyone gets to ride on planes, Is their world a bigger place still then?
Do we live in two different worlds? The small one and the big one?
Has flight really changed the world or just the way we travel about it?

I loved Lennon's songs, but did he change anything in the world ?
Are we all now giving peace a chance?

Did peace last in India because of Ghandi?

And if any small things changed because of these two men, was it what they did, or how they died that made the difference?

If we hear a message of peace from these two men, do we automatically agree and change , or do we think about it and then change just ourselves.
If enough people change themselves, then the world can change.

Is the World smaller in reality? Or are you merely as you say perceiving it to be smaller on a personal level?
Not everyone gets to ride on planes, Is their world a bigger place still then?
Do we live in two different worlds? The small one and the big one?
Has flight really changed the world or just the way we travel about it?

I loved Lennon's songs, but did he change anything in the world ?
Are we all now giving peace a chance?

Did peace last in India because of Ghandi?

And if any small things changed because of these two men, was it what they did, or how they died that made the difference?

If we hear a message of peace from these two men, do we automatically agree and change , or do we think about it and then change just ourselves.
If enough people change themselves, then the world can change.

As for our birth changing our parents life, does that change the world?

I think that you don't actually need even to interact physically with people- the mere fact of your proximity can plant ideas in people. Observe how groups of people eventually bond. By this token, having a radically different view of the world than the people around you requires confidence, perseverance and a degree of moral courage.

Yes we all have a 'message' for the world.
That message is your life lived.