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

Not at all. I have seen some really truly unpleasant religious flaming on H2G2. Yours was not a flame at all.

agcB

Whew! Thanks agcb. I genuinely am interested in how people develop beliefs but I can see how questions like mine could be taken amiss. I think I'll play safe and just watch the thread develop for a while.

No, do please keep on posting. Most of the people on this thread seem to be very open to other people's beliefs.

Perish the thought, but maybe the thought of omnipresent and eternally vigilant moderators is moderating the flaming. They may not count every sparrow that falls, but they do watch us all, even the canaries.

agcB

No, do please keep on posting. Most of the people on this thread seem to be very open to other people's beliefs.

Perish the thought, but maybe the thought of omnipresent and eternally vigilant moderators is moderating the flaming. They may not count every sparrow that falls, but they do watch us all, even the canaries.

agcB

Never beleive IE5 when it says it cannot find an H2G2 server....
agcB

No it's them damned Capital "A" Atheists who come in and kick sand in everybody's face any time they see a philosophical conversation. They can be really annoying. Hell, I'm DNAgnostic.
And in a few more postings I may turn 180 degrees and play devil's advocate on anything anybody's said here, including me. I'm just glad we have all been able to play nice and keep our sense of humour so far. Usually these discussions become long flaming rants and personal attacks.

Hey Ben, feel free to 'entertain' us. I didn't mean this thread to be a personal vent for my own 'superpowers' and 'mystic experiences' but there seemed to be some doubt cast on the credibility of such things and a demand to know if anyone had had such experience. I know I have.

*still wrestling with several points from Pillowcase, Ekki, MaW, Apathetic, Xanatic, djsdude,... and some folks from the first 20 posts, most of whom had a firm position one way or other, stated it gracefully and probably don't want to be challenged *

peace
~jwf~

Well I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks of some kind of dissipation and recombination in a different form when they think of reincarnation. There I was thinking I was weird!

And as for mystical experiences... it may very well be an effect of expectation over actual perception, but there are a couple of times in old houses or castles that I've felt a definite presence in a room, that's not a presence of one of the other visitors. Nobody else is ever able to feel it (well, either that or they don't admit it) but... and yes I know there are lots of theories about cold draughts, expectation etc. etc. but that doesn't diminish at all what I've felt.

To fit it into my idea on reincarnation, it's like some people, when their soul scatters, end up with some or all of their soul drifting to a place and lurking there rather than being mixed up with the whole general lot and becoming anonymous. It is this lurking of part of someone's being that creates such feelings.

I've never actually seen a ghost by the way, just felt one.

Oh, and I also get uncomfortable in churches and other places of worship, but that's probably because I'm worried about someone taking offense at my being there because I don't believe. That's probably an expectation thing - although I feel it more in churches (which is probably because I've been in more churches than anything else).

*obviously, post 66 by me was a reply 60 from Shorn Canary which Ben had already made the point ..of.
That:
- atheists (small 'a') are the fuel of the fire that make questions possible
- it's the Capital A flamers who are always trying-on intellectual put-downs and that sorta crap that annoy and discourage an open discussion*

Loved the fallen sparrow bit

There is a tendency in the UK to convert disused churches and chapels into houses. Could you have sex in a former chuch? I know I couldn't. The god I dont beleive in would mess with my brain if I did. Now thats omnipotence!

agcB

Maw, you know I believe that as well. Stop trying to be rhetorical.

I can't really add much to what MaW and agcB have said... though I'm afraid to say that I believe that morals simply don't come into 'reincarnation'. It just happens - I mean, if you can't remember previous lives (I don't really believe in that hypnotic regression stuff), how are you really supposed to know that you're being punished or rewarded...?

Anyway.

I don't believe in most religious teachings. I acknowledge them, but they don't make sense to me. Sorry. It's probably my belief in science that prevents me from being religious...
I've nothing against people who are religious in any way. But most of the time I just don't get it.

Oh, and All Tomorrow's Parties is the sequel to Idoru (and I think both are great. The Sprawl Series was good too though).

Maw, you know I believe that as well. Stop trying to be rhetorical.

I can't really add much to what MaW and agcB have said... though I'm afraid to say that I believe that morals simply don't come into 'reincarnation'. It just happens - I mean, if you can't remember previous lives (I don't really believe in that hypnotic regression stuff), how are you really supposed to know that you're being punished or rewarded...?

Anyway.

I don't believe in most religious teachings. I acknowledge them, but they don't make sense to me. Sorry. It's probably my belief in science that prevents me from being religious...
I've nothing against people who are religious in any way. But most of the time I just don't get it.

Oh, and All Tomorrow's Parties is the sequel to Idoru (and I think both are great. The Sprawl Series was good too though).

Looks like I am going to go backwards through the Gibson books then. Seems strangely appropriate.

agcB

*taking a break from 'religion'*

Loved IDORU, even if good friends laughed at me...
Someone here seemed to know more about the source of that name..? Please tell us. Is it a new Japanese techno-cultural thing?
For one thing is it pronounced Japanesey as ee-doh-roo?

I just assumed (because I think Gibson is a fellow Canuck) it was a play on 'I adore you' as he might have heard it spoken by a Vancouver oriental hooker. The alluring qualities he attributes to the character certainly reminded me of these stunning multi-cultural 'geisha'.

Zem, I don't think we've ever talked about spiritual belief in that way - not for a good long time anyway, and when we do touch on it it's normally when we're working out alien cultures for the book (which I've not had much success with lately... I can feel something coming though! Maybe the exams will liberate it).

I don't think I could live in a former church, architecturally wonderful though they may be - I'd rather build a house from scratch that _looks_ like a converted church, but has never been consecrated and which has network cables in the walls and an air-conditioned server room in the cellar

It seems like a terrible lack of respect that consecrated places of worship can be used so - or do they get unconsecrated?

They are unconsecrated first.

They tend to be victorian churches or chapels. The chapels in particular dont look particularly like churches, being bog-standard buildings without towers or spires or anything, though they may have tall or circular windows. Most of the victorian churches do look like your standard image of a church with a spire.

agcB

I am a strong agnostic. I disbelieve very few religions, and am interested in most. The only religions I dislike are the ones that dislike others. I don't really believe in moral reincarnation, but I kind of like the "soul pool" theory. I don't think I would have done anything in a past life to make me deserve this life. I think the creationism thing and evolution can work together, like this: God created the big bang in such a precise way that it would cause the earth to form, and an environment which would prompt animals to evolve into humans. Scientists don't really know where the big bang came from anyway.
-Twinkle, trying to make everyone happy

That's the best creationism theory really... and I buy it more than the idea that everything, including time itself, spontaneously came into being at the Big Bag. That just doesn't make any sense at all - there must have been something before then!

I used to imagine an endless series of bang-expand-contract-crunch cycles, stretching back infinitely far into the past and infinitely far into the future.

In many ways, I still find this quite a satisfying view, and reaffirms my belief that we are, universally speaking, insignificant.

Not that that's any excuse to go making a mess of things - in terms of the world we perceive with our senses, which is the most important world for us, we are highly significant.

Oh I am a cook, and I know that in order to create something you get together ingredients and a recipe and a certain amount of time.

I have no problem at all with the idea of a creator creating the universe with the intention of it turning out the way it has. (I just have problems with the personal god thing, and redemption, and stuff like that).

As Carl Sagan said, "in order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first create the universe."

agcB

I don't believe...

I could be wrong but this is what it looks like.

Some people are brought up (brain washed) in some religion and just accept that it's the truth. Some people reject it.

Some people look for something else after they've rejected the religion they were "brought up" in. Those people cook up a story for themselves that seems nice and explains stuff that seems to need an explanation. If it covers all the angles, they settle for it.

As I said, I could be wrong, but that's definitely what it looks like to me.

Oh Tibley Bobley, you could be right, and then where would we be. This thread would end, and I, for one, would find that a great shame, because it's far more interesting than the rubbish book I'm reading at the moment.

I mean your posting is very nearly, very true. If you believe in anything then, anything is what you will believe. It is a dodgy thing, belief.

djs