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

>> what wisdom it is you claim to know from something which, as far as I can tell, does not exist?<<

>>Not a very wise question, I'm afraid. Most people gain some wisdom during their lives, but people who seek spiritual guidance and try to follow it are likely to gain substantially more.<<



Then permit me to try again.

What 'wisdom' could you potentially "turn your back on" which is contingent upon a belief in s god (and specifically the god of Islam)?

That's rather like trying to explain "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"

I would be wasting time in trying to convey the exotic flavours and how it makes one feel,
to somebody who doesn't recognise the pudding exists

All I can do, is wish for others that which I wish for myself, and bear witness that God DOES exist, and that there IS a 'higher' spiritual meaning to life. I also know that Almighty God guides whomsoever He wills .. anybody who takes a step towards Him, God will take a step towards them!

In other words, you aren't going to answer the question.

Typical.




Carte blanche for cruelly insensitive ridicule:




"The emperor's got no clothes."

"Impudent child! Why I *could* describe to you the locations and the names of the owners of the three finest tailors who wove his fantastic cloak and knitted his sequinned pantaloons; I could describe the warp and weft of the softest imported silk undergarments, the shimmering colours and the way the buttons catch the light in a radiant hue.

I only wish that you child could see the emperor fully clothed as I see him - I tell you it's true."


"but there's nothing there - look you can see his thingy."


"Listen, alright stop being a wise-ass! All I can do is inform you that the kings costume is the height of elite fashion, but a street urchin like you can have no grasp of this higher calling.

I know the emperor shall reward me greatly for complementing his clothes - that are so marvellous, they make me weep, - and convey the message of his clothedness to you. Good day to you sir!"

"But he's got nuthin on!"


etc....

Yes clive .. 'very clever'

The opposite is also true .. the one who turns away from Almighty God, God turns away from them!

That leaves a person devoid of true spiritual guidance .. NOT very clever .. effectively trading wisdom for a relatively short 'good time' of hedonism.
We have to grow old .. we have to die. To pursue happiness by following our desires is a "fool's paradise" .. Almighty God wants us to be happy, wants us to be prosperous, wants us to grow in health & wisdom.

"They will be pleased with God, and God will be pleased with them. This is in store for those who fear their Lord"

ie. fear - show respect & are filled with awe - remember Him - feed others for the pleasure of Him alone etc.

While I'm still amazed that so many intelligent, well educated folk will still 'debate' with the like of warner etc...

Clive, read 'Life Ascending' by Nick Lane. Feccin brill, so much so that I'm surprised you've not read it already. (and all the other honest folk too..)

You know, one of my little specialities in that academic side of my life concerns Wisdom literature, particularly in the Abrahamic tradition and . . .


Oh, never mind.

I think there are four things that have got me thinking. 1. The fossil record: how come we never find a trilobite fossil in the same strata as mammals? How come there are no land vertebrate fossils older than 300m years? 2. Humans cannot produce their own vitamin C. This is why Americans call us limeys, because our sailors ate citrus fruit to stop them getting scurvy. All other mammals can make their own vitamin C except for gorillas, chimps and guinea pigs. We have the same broken gene as chimps and gorillas clearly indicating common descent, a common ancestor for humans chimps and gorillas. Why don't the holy books give a hint of this? The quran has some nonsense about a alot of blood and the bible suggests God made humans in one go, not in stages.

3. The age of the universe: light from the furthest stars has spent billions of years getting here. Of course the universe is more than 6000 years old. Is God a liar that he would make it look older than it is to fool us? 4. Continental drift: we know it takes millions of years for the continents to move the way they have. It explains why marsupials are found only in Australia, South America and Antarctica better than the flood account.

Creationists like to say there are no transitional forms, but this is a bit strange. Clearly all creatures are in a sense transitional, going from being one thing on the way to being another.

Hi kuzushi,

Exactly, it's about not assuming that gods are real becuase it says so in a book and looking at what the physical evidence informs us about the world.

It needn't necessarily be so, but it so happens that these two accounts are inconsistent.

Extraordinarily lengths are gone to to round-peg-square-hole this fact, I'll take your third observation to make this point: there are those who say that the light from those galaxies and quasars that we can measure was 'created en route' so that it 'looks as if' the light came from far away and took a long time to get here, but actually it only took between 6 - 10 thousand years.

Which is right about the time that the Neolithic 'city' Çatalhöyük. in Northern Turkey was being constructed upto about when the horse was first domesticated.

Now you can decide for yourself if you think that is a credible claim.
If you ask Warner, he will tell you it isn't important *exactly* how old the universe is. Well, do you think it's important - I do - I presume now you do too.

And I think there are several strands to this. It is interesting to note how the 6,000 figure comes up - because you will search in vain to find it mentioned in the bible.

You can research for yourself how is it that we know how fast light moves trough a vacuum and how can we calculate how far away distant galaxies are - how reliable are these calculations?

Lastly it brings us back to, and as you have realised, the nature of god and the content of the variety of holy books allegedly inspired by the divine.

In the case of the light 'being created en route' quiet apart from making absolutely no sense and relying entirely upon a magical and inexplicable event, it casts god as deceptive. The world looks old except it isn't really. *wink* *wink*

Which depending on how seriously you take theology, this should at the very least concern us.

And why isn't the bible a better guide to what is real?

Take Genesis 1:16 - The Fourth Day of Creation

"God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

There you have it *after* The Earth was created, The Sun was created followed by The Moon, followed by THE ENTIRE REST OF THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.

This statement has within it everything that was now know about the universe back to front.

And this is why grappling with how the bible was written, when, why and by whom is illuminating because, for example, you come to understand Genesis 1 was probably written after Genesis 2(hence their disagreement) and 1 was intended to be more doctrinally monotheistic giving the God Yahweh credit for the entirety of creation by people who could not possibly have known what the universe was really like.

And what evidence is there for their remarkable claim - none at all.

And if you know a bit of what science has discovered so far and crucially how conclusions are reached, it change the way you think. Now you can start to see the holes in the position of the other side, when they say "god is the evolver" or "I have wisdom from believing".

As it happens I do suspect there is such a thing as moral wisdom, just as there are experts in engineering. I don't however think this requires belief in unseen divinities. And from those divinities emerge much that is wrong and immoral.

And what what happens when you ask someone who believes in divine wisdom what wisdom this is - they won't answer the question!

Which is frustrating but not unexpected becuase I don't think they really know, they just make-believe that they do.

-------------

As you climb up this long hill of thinking for yourself.

Welcome to the sun-lit highlands of rationality, out from the gloomy valley of faith. We have cookies.

And inspiring words like these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiU5u6zAtyc

@ Pedro.

Well I'm done swatting at Warner for now. I got his admission that "God the evolver" was am empty phrase of meaningless words and currently he is demonstrating his cowardice in not answer a simple flippin' question.

I've got nothing worth putting into that spectacle.


Thanks for the book recommendation. I've added it to my wish-list.

It's my birthday next month so I'm going to buy a load more books for next years reading and I'll see if I can include it.

If I read one worth recommending I'll pass it on.

>> The quran has some nonsense about a alot of blood and the bible suggests God made humans in one go, not in stages.

I'm sorry? What's this about blood?

The Bible does NOT specifically tell us that God made humans in 'one go' .. in any case, what does 'in one go' mean?
You are simply visualising this to mean that God effectively went 'abracadabra' and there was Adam.

And what about Eve? I suppose you think that Eve was literally made from the rib of Adam? Does that mean that God sawed-up Adam's body?

Nay! Almighty God fashions His creatures in whatever way that He wills.

"A day in the sight of your Lord is as 1000 years"


This means
1. the calculated time-spans associated with paleontology does not necessarily correlate with 'biblical time'
2. Almighty God could have created Adam over a long period of time in whatever way He wished

"In the name of your lord and cherisher, who created man out of a mere clot of blood." That's how Allah made man according to the Quran, sura 96.

I see

Do you think that that verse (Almighty God) is referring to the whole of mankind ?
[ perhaps *excluding* Adam & Eve ]

I would have thought so

In another verse, the Qur'an tells us that mankind was made from clay, or yet another from water..

Scriptures are guidance of a spiritual nature, NOT science books.
Mankind will never know what Almighty God knows in it's entirety .. and while the physical sciences are extremely interesting and of great benefit to mankind ( and can also be their downfall! ), matters of a spiritual nature are a great deal more important .. success and prosperity does not emanate from this material world alone.

A strong belief in the life after death brings this home with greater understanding.

As I recall, that´s also how it describes babies being developed. I do wonder if someone can´t even get the basic facts right, why should I trust them on anything "spiritual"?

When it doesn't make sense, it's a metaphor.

This means
1. the calculated time-spans associated with paleontology does not necessarily correlate with 'biblical time

Translation: The books are wildly inaccurate on matters of detail however you look at it, so I'm just going to pretend that they mean something that they plainly do not.


2. Almighty God could have created Adam over a long period of time in whatever way He wished

Translation:

Now that I'm just making it up. I can go for broke and just say whatever I like starting with "oooh you sciency lot wanting everything explained - what's the matter with you? isn't mystery exciting? Why do you need everything explaining? Isn't it enough to just believe the story is true without having to go into specifics so we can check how accurate the stories are. I think vague generalities are much more fun to imagine! Of course I'm not going to be specific and say *how* it was done of course - ho - ho what do you take me for, a fool?

clive,

>> The books are wildly inaccurate on matters of detail however you look at it..

No they're not .. the Qur'an is a more trustworthy text, however, although translation/interpretation/context is still necessary for a complete understanding.

>> Of course I'm not going to be specific and say *how* it was done..

Of course I'm not .. nobody knows all the details of how the universe was created .. one thing though, as Einstein discovered, this universe is far from what it appears to be at first glance.
What's more, Almighty God can create as many universes as He wishes .. He is also able to cause us to be 'alive' again after our deaths
ie. give us new bodies, in any way which pleases Him

We find ourselves in existence a 'first time', why should you believe that it won't happen again?
. . .
It's difficult to know whether you're mad, even if you're not mad

Food for thought!
-------------------
The only way you can conclude that somebody is mad, is by their actions..

Is a person who gets drunk regularly, losing their mind, sitting in the street, fighting with the police mad?
Probably not .. but they're surely acting like it!

<>

No, but everything we do actually know has come from scientific discoveries and nothing has come from revelations from the holy books. Whatever the holy books say is either wrong or at best metaphorical and not very enlightening as far as telling us how the universe formed and man came to be. Now if the quran or bible really are of God, it would be impressive if they contained revelations about the natural world that transcend what people could have known naturally when they were written. For example, it would be impressive if the bible had revealed that the solar system was heliocentric rather than geocentric.

As we discover more about the universe, we should be going "Cor, it turns out the bible was right all along about that!" Instead we find ourselves going, "Hmm, well I guess the quran/bible is obviously being metaphorical here."

Leaping to warners defence...

>>Scriptures are guidance of a spiritual nature, NOT science books.

Entirely reasonable, surely? Even if hes not always consistent on this.


>>Mankind will never know what Almighty God knows in it&#39;s entirety

Leaving out the God stuff...entirely reasonable, surely? How arrogant to think were up to the job. cf a quote I read in a recent New Scientist, ~How would you explain quantum physics to a chimpanzee?~ (or, indeed, bonobo)


>> .. and while the physical sciences are extremely interesting and of great benefit to mankind ( and can also be their downfall! ), matters of a spiritual nature are a great deal more important .. success and prosperity does not emanate from this material world alone.

Again, a perfectly reasonable point of view, surely?

So is the fossil record etc etc particularly relevant?


Granted...

>>A strong belief in the life after death brings this home with greater understanding.

No. Firstly, there is no reason at all to even talk about an afterlife. Its not simply a matter of lacking evidence of an afterlife but that what we know with great certainty about life, consciousness etc makes the idea of a Self which survives death a non-starter. Life simply ends.

Secondly - Im not sure precisely what >>greater understanding<< means, but it is most certainly possible to have a meaningful worldview and ethical framework without the fiction of an afterlife. And thats good enough for me.