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

Wheathampstead is just a place near where I used to live. I went on a course there once. That's all.
Fanny you're probably right, it's very unlikely that I can prove one way or another to my absolute satisfcation. I just thought I'd try.
Incidentally, I've just tried desperately to read the transcript of the Pope's diatribe in Bonn, but I got unbearably bored after three pages. He should have buried that remark in page seven, nobody would have noticed it.

benjamin stop being such a control freak. Certainty is so boring when all's said and done. It's the end of creativity. I'm glad the universe is built on uncertainty. I think it's like saying the universe/reality could be descibed as a perfect circle if we could have certainty, but it's actually something more like an quirky spiral, so there is always the possibility of new growth/ideas and life. The perfect circle is death.

I think whatever that idiot says is gone over with a fine tooth comb. So there's no possibility of burying anything on page 7. And what a bloody stupid hypocrite. All that indirect violence the Catholic church does by not advocating the use of condoms. All those people that die horrible deaths by aids thanks to Pope's encicliments .

The problem I find with believers, in whatever, is that they seem to have a 'rationalisation' cut off that is set hgher than mine. By this I mean I keep asking 'why' or 'how' beyond the point at which they say 'well it works for me'. Questioning beyond this point (which varies from person to person but exists amoungst all believers I have encountered) is taken as a personal attack.

You ask one question too many and you get the 'well thats what works for me', or variations, as a defensive mechanism. It isn't needed. What is actually meant is 'I dont feel the need to rationalise beyond that point' which is perfectly fine and neutral. But you rarley get that. I certainly have not encountered it, but would respect it if I did.

After all, the only reason I'm asking is because I have lots of questions and very few answers. And I am drawn to question those who do believe because they may have an answer or opinion that I haven't thought of.

But care needs to be taken with believers since belief is a very personal thing, and questioning that belief is often tantamount to questioning that persons reasoning for their existence (or at least questioning the basis on which they find their existence meaningful or at least acceptable), and that is naturally very psychologically importamt to them to them and thus they protect it as much as they can.

I cannot offer any proofs for or against the God question. It is THE question for this age. Organized religions are only as good or bad as those who lead them. Radical sects and persons often defame what is noble about their faiths. What we are left with is alot of people acting on imperfect information.
In the ongoing drama of existence we encounter so much mystery, confusion, pathos, mind numbing boredom, intense emotions, and the search for some over arching theme to make it a tad more comprehensible. I embrace the uncertainty and if there is no point in all of it, so be it. Yet, I do have this life and I have some call in what I can do to make it authentic.
Its not the grand design of the cosmos or any sacred text I read that caused my belife in God. Rather it is the tenacious question, the struggle, and the knowlege of how mortal I am that informs me of my faith.

Oh came across this http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060628-call_to_renewal_keynote/index.html

>>I cannot offer any proofs for or against the God question<<

Don't really get your point. As has frequently been explained on numerous threads on h2g2 it's impossible to prove a negative so I really don't understand the reason for this statement.

And the link you've just given is one of millions of a similar ilk on the internet designed to appeal to people of low intelligence or limited education. So what are you trying to say in the context of this discussion?

Ridge57... that site only shows how american politics work. What you pretend to do as a polititian doesn't count, only what you did and how well you can make a pragmatic speech.

Thats how the majority of america works. You just have to nag certain themes to stand in a lot of little minds (the expression that i intended to put is so negative in my native language that i can't find the translation), insignificant subjects to the politic life. We had that show in the last american election for presidency.

Nevertheless it shows how important it is to show the respect for other people's belief.

What I am trying to add to this thread? Perhaps that one's intellect should not be used as the only standard to understand something as sublime as faith.

'benjamin stop being such a control freak'

Well I don't know, I'd never thought about it like that. Maybe I'm just falling victim to the popular notion that, eventually, science will explain everything. What I do know is that I have a lot of questions, things that seem to me to be fairly congent arguments against the idea of God as I have been taught it, but I feel that, in the main, people I know are strong and confident in their own faith are either going to be hurt / angry at their faith being challenged to any extent or are, as has already been mentioned in this thread, defend illogical ideas on the strenght of, I don't know, faith rather than rationale. I've always felt that if something is real it shouldn't rely on faith. Ie, if God is genuinely there, I ought to be able to find him, and I can't.

>> ...experiments involving geochemistry are performed on those rocks laid down during the period of the dinosaurs dying out. <<

It is hoped we will soon know for sure who the first Masons really were. I have never accepted the heresy that Fred Flinstone was a member of the Buffalo Lodge.

~jwf~

>> ...seeking to convince myself one way or another, on the strength of reasoned, rational arguments, whether or not any sort of God exists. I invite anyone to offer their theories... <<

As for 'any god', yes many gods exist. So perhaps we still need to divide the kinds of god(s) and define the different states of existence in which they exist.

AZ'z gods of assorted household and social minutia are quite viable and are not unlike the many faces of panthesitic panthenons. There is for example a god of fire. Other gods may exist only in our minds (a popular theory in this thread) but we cannot deny they exist.


~jwf~

~jwf~ ... check your email, okay?



az

To all these people who believe in whatever god they believe in, where is he/she/it or is it none of those, what is it.

Do they live in the sky somewhere, do they take being form, do they have arms and legs, do they have eyes, what are they and where???

I think we all know people who think their GOD.mostly the ignorant of society.

<< And so we have the arts and more recently psychoanalysis to do that for us. Well for us intellectuals anyway.>>

Psychoanalysis? Give me a break! Now there's something requiring faith for you!

What a load of utter codswallop psychowossname is...

<< who believe in whatever god they believe in, where is he/she/it or is it none of those, what is it.

Do they live in the sky somewhere, do they take being form, do they have arms and legs, do they have eyes, what are they and where???>>

God encompasses he/she and it, and does not live in the physical universe, or have a physical body.

Which means I cannot show you God. But I believe Jesus did...

>><< And so we have the arts and more recently psychoanalysis to do that for us. Well for us intellectuals anyway.>>

Psychoanalysis? Give me a break! Now there's something requiring faith for you!<<

Oh you're so right Della. I bear witness that Sigmund is my Lord and Master. I bear witness to the absolute truth of Oedipus complex. Some doubt the miracle of Penis Envy, but I have faith. Freudian slips shows us the light of his glory, let us praise him. We believers in Psychoanalysis know the one true Freud, and shall be resurrected into his paradise of the true understanding of neurosis and dreams, and live with the holy trinity of the Id, ego and super ego, for ever and ever, Amen.

Fanny, Fanny...

I've done three psychology papers (not counted Ed Psych 101, and 201..) and my last lecturer was a fervent Freudian. My son is doing the menatl health part of his nursing course, and is from my point of view, sadly, deep into the wonders and joys of therapy.

Despite all the psych papers I've done, I've always had the utmost difficulty in having any faith in ole Sigmund, and his works.. Hans Eysenck in his book on the subject said that "maybe you have to be American". There are many jokes about Hollywood hostesses inviting 20 people and having to set 40 places, because all the celbs brings their analysts.

I am sorry, I just couldn't take you seriously, when you said therapy was the answer, no need for religion any more! honestly!

Della, it is perfectly possible for something to have meaning in one's life without it being a religion which requires faith. I don't have faith in anything. I thought blicky made this point very well way back on this thread, when he said he believed in West Bromwich Albion

I also believe in art, free speech, love, and England amongst other things.

>>I am sorry, I just couldn't take you seriously, when you said therapy was the answer, no need for religion any more! honestly!<<

This statement indicates to me you've got completely the wrong end of the stick and gone off on your own track of thought, because I don't actually rememember saying anything like that. I think I spoke of the arts and psychoanalysis as being useful in explaining one's existential feeling positon as a human being. There was also an element of humour in my original statement on post 556 which I fear you also completely missed. Post 577 was also meant to be humerous too, just in case that was lost on you.

Oh and one more thing, psychology is a science and requires experimentaion. Psychoanalysis is something altogether different, and is more closely aligned with the arts.

Ah, Fanny, what can I say? I have a touch of Aspergers (which my nephews and son have more of) and hence, great difficulty in recongising humour... but I still abominate Herr Fraud... er Freud!

Absolutely I agree psychoanalysis is an art - a black one! (No, Blicky that's not a racial slur..)